Work in Progress

As I left work yesterday afternoon I celebrated the start of a two week holiday. We have no plans to go away but we will be planning some day trips. How many, depends on John as he has a book chapter to write.  Although on holiday I also have some marking to finish and some preparation to do but it shouldn't take very long.

Yesterday evening Lucy and I went out to dinner which got my holiday off to a great start. John is usually out on a Thursday so we regularly plan a 'girl's' outing. Although we live in the same house there never seems to be time to have a good gossip. It was a lovely evening and the perfect way to start my holiday.

Today I started sorting out the projects I wanted to work on. Back in February I started the bird houses embroideries from Meg Hawkey at Crabapple Hill Studio. Unfortunately I still haven't finished them. Here are the ones I've completed.

I love how they've turned out and I need to get the rest finished.

I still have a lot to stitch and a couple of patterns to find that I've 'misplaced'. These are nice and quick to do so I will be working on these during my holiday. I need to find my pencils so I can do the colouring before I start the stitching.

I set up my machine this afternoon and set about quilting two of the blocks from the Austen quilt. There are 36 blocks in all and I've now completed half of them. Here are the two I quilted today.

and from the back it looks like this. It's taking me so long to get this quilt done that the fabric is getting creased so tomorrow I will resort it and re press if needed

I do like this backing fabric. I need to quilt some more of the sashing tomorrow. Whilst quilting today it suddenly went very hard to move the quilt around. Then I realised that Missy was busy pulling the quilt off the table so she could lie on it. It's why I only managed two blocks. I needed to refold the quilt and sort out Missy. In the end Lucy and I took her for a long walk to tire her out. With 18 blocks to go I would like to try and quilt 3 blocks a day which would finish the quilting in 6 days but I'm not sure that will happen.

Tomorrow, we are going to walk Missy early so I can get on with quilting. I also have bread to make and a cake. If I have time I'll cut out the pattern pieces for my quilted jacket.

Take care

Lyndsey