My finished ALQS4 offering.

Getting there!

I'm in the middle of a very busy couple of weeks so I haven't managed as much sewing or blogging as I would have liked.

The priority last week was to finish the Quilt which I did do on Saturday. I will give it a quick wash, and finish ( see it's not finished really !) hand sewing down the hanging sleeve.

But I am away for the weekend and would like to send off the photos to Kate tonight.

I have been looking at the 21 Quilts loaded so far - have a look if you haven't and have started my "would love" list.


My husband has a Harley Davidson and has wanted to do a "road trip" - well tomorrow he is off. It's not as grand as riding across Amercia as
a) We live in the UK &
b) I can only take a week off work to do the school run instead of him.
He wanted to do Europe but time, money and the sheer practicality of "who gets the kids to and from school if you're off for a fortnight" put the stops on that one.

Perhaps when they're older we could go off together to do it. (Note to Andrew - fit a bigger seat for wife before then).


I am taking the boys to Norfolk to see a friend this weekend - and we will get to the coast at some point.

Seminole

I keep all the offcuts of wadding, so for this mini quilt I pieced the wadding. Here it is tacked to the backing which I stretched out using my new clips. :)

I tacked either side of my seams, just to make sure it all stayed put.

The first 2 strips sew on.

The third strip sewn on to the top of the first 2. You can see the chalk line on the wadding showing the middle of the quilt. It's an important line as I need to try to centralise all my strips.

I wish I could say that having centred all the strips to the line the 2 side edges were the same - but no. Even if you scrutinise the picture below I don't think that you'll see the problem with the top strip. Just take my word for it, I had to draw several chalk lines on the front whilst deciding where to sew the side border strips.

I can't post any more photos until I charge my camera.

I did all this at Saturday Stitchers, I sat next to Jacqui and discovered that we go to the same Chiropractor. I am not suffering as much today as after last time as took a big fat pillow to sit on and I used the heat packs last night, and ensured I did the leg stretches. This is how I have to manage it - it won't go away so I just have to learn how to live with it.

ALQS4

I have cheated by doing the Snails trail by sewing onto gridded vilene - instead of the seminole method. My excuse is that I wanted accurate seams, I have to do sewn strips 1 cm wide to produce a narrow enough pattern strip to fit in with the other pattern strips.Left handed trimming!

Doh! I've sewn the strip on the wrong side!!

I have since unpicked it and sewn the 2 strips on.

Also I have sewn together the strips for the "syncopated piano keys".

I need to finish off the end of a couple of the pattern strips, but the main decisions to be made now is the placements of the pattern strips, and the choice of the strips inbetween.

I am off to London tomorrow to see the Quilt exhibition at the V&A and am returning quite late, so I won't have any time for sewing tomorrow.

This is not necessarily the final order. The size of the Quilt will be something like 17" x 20".

Doesn't this calf look so cuddly?

ALQS4