Picnic Party

 

Welcome to Picnic Party. The challenge  - to make something to use on a picnic.  I liked the theme of this challenge, I mean what's not to like. Picnic means summer, sitting outside enjoying the weather, maybe going to the seaside and having a paddle or somewhere near a river or waterfall and of course there is food.  Thank you Carol for coming up with such a great theme.

I decided to make a small quilt. I own a little two seater sports car that is perfect for me and John when we go on adventures.

The car has a small boot but our picnic basket fits perfectly. To make our picnics perfect we needed a picnic quilt. 

The starting point was some Tilda Garden Life fabric. I had to cut the fabric into squares before I could start sewing.

The fabrics are so cute and perfect for the quilt. It took me a little while to lay out the squares and get them how I wanted them. Next was some easy sewing as I sewed the squares into rows and then joined the rows. I used some brown fabric I had for the backing. This fabric had been in my cupboard for ages and so needed to be used up. I also found some red fabric for the binding. The quilt went together quite quickly. I decided to do straight quilting and stitched the binding on by machine. The finished quilt is very cute and a riot of colour. 

I was very pleased that I managed to get most of the joins matching perfectly.

There is a quilt we use for picnics in our family car. I made this quilt a couple of years ago and as you can see it is larger. We have enjoyed some fun family picnics and hopefully there will be more this summer.

Now you need to go and visit the other blogs taking part today. Here is the full schedule. I can't wait to go and visit everyone. Tomorrow I should finish a major work project and then I can relax, do more sewing and catch up with reading quilting blogs. Yipee!

July 17

Just Let Me Quilt

Quiltscapes

Days Filled With Joy

Quilt Schmilt

That Fabric Feeling

Crazy'boutquilts

 

July 18

 

Inflorescence

CQ4Fun

Just Because Quilts

Homespun Hannah's Blog

Karen's Korner

Vroomans Quilts

July 19

 

Selina Quilts

Patchwork Breeze

Songbird Designs

Words & Stitches

Beaquilter

Quilted Snail

Sew Many Yarns

 

July 20

 

MooseStashQuilting

Karrin’s Crazy World

Bumbleberry Stitches

Texas Quilt Gal

Quilting Gail

Ms P Designs USA

Scrapdash

Take care

Lyndsey

Losing - and finding the plot!

It's been a while since I lasted wrote a post. No major problems but lots of small issues that mean time has been very limited and there has been a lot to do to get back on an even keel.

I do seem to have lost the plot when it comes to sewing. I keep getting projects out to work on and find I'm putting them away again without having sewn a single seam or put in a single stitch on my embroidery. Is it pressure of work, the hot weather, the myriad of other things wanting my attention? I don't know why but I haven't felt enthused to sewing even though I have some fabulous new fabrics and patterns and a mountain of ideas. All in all this year has been a really slow year for anything sewing related. Having said all that I woke up on July 1st and heard my machine quietly calling me. I opened the patio doors in our dining room, set up the machine and settled down to sew whatever came to hand. In the end I didn't start sewing straight away as I had an urge to do some cutting ready for a new quilt. These fabrics are so pretty.

Having completed the cutting I moved to the kitchen and spent some time baking.  First I made banana bread. Mmm so yummy especially when the slice is spread with butter.

I made two loaves, one wholemeal and the other white

and finally a tray bake of banana parkin.

Having enjoyed my baking session I headed back to my sewing machine. Quite a while back I started making a summer dress but could get the fit of the bodice quite right so I put it in a bag and stuffed it to the back of my sewing cupboard. I pulled it out and after I had pressed the fabric I set about sorting it out. It proved to be extremely easy to get it fitting properly and by the end of the day I had a completed dress. I forgot to take a photo so I'll do that next time I post.

On July 2nd I also made a good start on my project for the picnic blog hop. By the end of my sewing session I had the main part of the project completed. I need to buy some additional fabric to finish it off.

The 2nd July was our 40th wedding anniversary. We went out to dinner on the Saturday night to celebrate. Our meal was delicious and we had a great time. We decided that we would spend some of Sunday visiting the wetlands centre at Barnes. We haven't visited for a while and we really enjoyed our day. There weren't a lot of birds but there was a profusion of wild flowers 

There were a lot of dandelion seed heads. We had fun as children blowing the seed heads to see what the time was. I want to try and do a painting of this one.

The wind started blowing rather strongly at this point as I tried to take a photo of the bee on the flower.

I think this one is common knapweed. It is such a beautiful colour.

This one is cornflower and the little one in the background is tufted vetch.

The teasels were fresh and green. They will dry out as the year moves on.

The white water lilies on the pond were just beginning to open.

I'm not sure what this one is called but it is a beautiful flower.

I also need to discover the name of this delicate flower.

Looking across the wader scrape there was a mass of purple loosestrife. It looked amazing but it meant you couldn't see any of the birds that were hiding amongst it.

This weekend we have driven to Yorkshire and we will be doing some birdwatching. I also want to do some sketching. I haven't done any for so long that I'm nervous I will mess up my new sketch book. I'm also hopeful I may come across a quilt or fabric shop. I'll let you know what happens.

Take care

Lyndsey