Kempton Park Quilt show

Last week wasn't great for getting on and finishing things. My son has been having very bad headaches for quite some time and has also had a painful shoulder. Both problems escalated and ended with a trip to the emergency unit. He has several appointments set up to try and sort the problems out.  On top of that work got a little out of hand, leaving me very tired. All that to say that not much sewing or knitting happened. On the upside I had booked tickets to the Kempton Park quilt show, so on Friday morning I put the roof of my little sports car down, carefully applied sun screen and enjoyed the breeze through my hair as John and I headed to the venue. The show was taking place at Kempton Park racecourse in the exhibition halls. Upstairs there were quilts on display and downstairs a good range of vendors and of course tea, coffee and snacks. I think I've mentioned that I'm trying to use what I have this year, so I wasn't planning on buying anything but we still walked round all the stalls.  Here are our purchases from the day.

The two on the right were my fabrics and I have a use for them. The others, John bought and he has a plan but he won't tell me what it is for. Guess I'll just have to wait and see.

There were a good number of quilts to see and because the show was relatively small, with less people milling around, you were able to take more time to enjoy them. They also generated a lot of chatter. It was fun spending time discussing colour, fabric choices and quilting with folks I've never met before. There were several bright quilts and people said how much they loved the colour choices but they wouldn't use them as they don't know how to put bright colours together. I suggested to one lady that she played with her scraps and a few bright fat quarters to create a quilt for a young child. I met her a little later and she showed me the beautiful colourful fat quarter bundle she had bought and her plans for using more colour in her quilts. 

So onto the quilts. This first quilt was one of my favourites. For all of them I have included the information about the process and the makers.

I only chose one area to show a close up as there was so much to look at on this quilt. It was difficult to make a decision about the area to show.

The meerkats appeared on several quilts.

I really liked this next quilt. Such a easy design but it had a huge impact especially from a distance

There were several quilts with stitch painting and I have three to show you.  They are both by the same person. This first one was such a fun theme that certainly resonates with me.

I took a close up of one of the faces.

A close up for detail of one of the dancers.

The third quilt by this maker is later  in this post. Following the stitch painting I came across this quilt. The colours pleased me a lot and the quilting was pretty.

The next quilt is on a theme that affects all women to varying degrees. It certainly got a lot of attention.

There was a series of mariner's compass quilts made by the same couple.  Here is the information related to them.

The next quilt reminded me I needed to book a trip to the seaside.

In the quilt below the meerkats are back but enjoying Shakespeare.

This quilt caused a lot of conversation. This was mainly about the difficulties of getting the stripes lined up above and below the stars. Everyone was commenting on how hard it was to do and how perfect this was. 

I have a love of batiks so I had to include this quilt.

This cute tiger caught my eye. Strangely this quilt worked better close up. Standing back from it, the tiger merged into the background.

This was another fun selection.

I particularly liked this next quilt and I like the idea of making a quilt in a day, on boxing day. The day is about coming down from the Christmas festivities and what better way to do that.

Having spent time looking at the quilts we went outside to the stands to look at the race track and cool off. It was so hot in the exhibition room! Outside we started taking to a couple of women and had a fun time sharing information about our favourite quilt shops and classes we had taken.

We sat and ate sandwiches by the winners paddock. We had fun watching the small birds busy taking food to their young in the hedges.

From the quilt show we drove to older daughter's house to spend some time with her and our grandson and to have dinner. The day was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed the quilt photos. The next show I'm going to is the Festival of Quilts at the NEC on 1st August. My tickets and parking are all booked and I can't wait.

Take care

Lyndsey

Bathroom, making dolls and other things.

The last week has been busy in our house. It all started with a brief conversation and turned into a full revamp of our bathroom. John, with the help of my father, moved our bathroom from upstairs to downstairs. We needed to do this as the original bathroom when we moved in was quite dated and since that date our family had grown to three children. The upstairs bathroom was repurposed as a bedroom but also we had space for an upstairs toilet with washbasin. The kitchen was enormous and had a step right across the room, so we used this line to divide the room and created a bathroom. We also had space for a hall area between the two with storage. The kitchen had a revamp a few year ago but the bathroom has needed an update for a while now. The brief conversation has turned into a full renovate and our son has spent last week taking up the floor tiles. removing wood and taking the bathroom back to the bones. The bathroom is still functional and won't take too long to complete but he needs some rest days and we need to decide on colour, accessories (taps etc). We are also sorting out the storage as we all have our favourite shampoos and body washes. I am enjoying the father and son working together. When John worked on the bathroom with my father he had never done any woodwork, tiling or even decorating and so my dad was teaching and helping as they worked. Our son has been helping and making things all his life and has excellent skills so he is taking the major role. It won't be a quick finish but I know it will be good.

Over the weekend I have been working on the crocheted blanket. I'm still hoping to have this finished by the end of the week.

Yesterday I made a start on my Chookshed challenge for May. This is to make the dolls for my doll house. These dolls are to scale 1 - 12. The biggest doll is 6 inches tall, i.e. 6 foot. The pattern instructions are very clear and easy to follow so I would recommend it to anyone mad enough to want to make their own dolls. As some of you commented I will have tiny clothes to make once the dolls are finished. I'll worry about that when I've made the dolls. Question to self, why did you start this project. The answer is simple, because I can and I like to try everything, however challenging, when it comes to crafts. I'd already stitched the body shapes, cut them out and used fabric glue on the edges to stop them fraying.

Next I needed to make the armature for the female and male dolls, the child one is already completed. This starts with a length of wire and a pattern showing how to fold it. The wire then gets covered with florist tape. Florist tape is fun as it sticks to itself as you stretch it a little.

Soon I had three stick men on the table in front of me. 

If you look at the picture of the three pieces of fabric /doll shapes you will see there is a slit in the back. Again fabric glue was used to stabilise the fabric around the opening. At this point I needed to turn the body to the right side. This was very tedious and took some time. I then put the armature into the empty doll body The body looks saggy on the 'skeleton' but once I start filling the body it will start to look normal and the right size. I was worried that it would be very difficult to get the armature into the body, but it worked very well and quickly. Let the stuffing begin!

By this time it was time to make dinner and so I packed away until later this week. I also need to find the stuffing before I can start the next stage. I am very happy I got this far. I enjoyed making the baby doll, it was very fiddly but doable. I'm hoping I won't have too many problems with mom dad and child.

After dinner John and I decided to work on a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle we started doing last week. The pieces we had left were all very similar colours but it went together fairly quickly.

This week is a little busy as I'm teaching for the next three days and on Friday I have to take Twiglet to the vet for his annual vaccinations. He was well behaved with injections when he was a puppy so hopefully he will be no problem.  John and I will then be heading out to the Kempton Park quilt show. We have never been before even though it is only a short drive from us. It should be a fun day out and older daughter lives quite close to the venue and has invited us over for dinner.

Today I am working from home but once work is all finished for the day I will be working on the sashiko on the Japanese quilt. For the moment I've put my knitting to one side. I feel I got a little traumatised by the rigmarole of picking up all 364 stitches, not my favourite knitting task. The knitting is also quite heavy now and my shoulder has been a little painful for the last 24 hours. The rest from knitting will do it good.

Take care

Lyndsey

Not finished yet but almost.

When I got home from work on Thursday I found I had the house to myself, no family members and no dogs. This was a perfect time to sandwich the 'happy quilt' This is a large quilt so first I needed to join the backing fabric to make it big enough. Once that was done I found it would have been useful to have one person at home as my new pack of wadding was very large and it was a bit of a struggle on my own. However I eventually got it done.  I pin basted the quilt and folded it to be quilted later. Unusually I already know how I want to quilt it but I have some other things to do first. I haven't got a photo of the sandwiched quilt as I forgot. The backing is a pale yellow chosen as it was the right size, suitable colour and in my stash. As far as possible this year I'm using what I have rather than buying but I will probably buy a little fabric when I visit my favourite quilt shop later this month.

In the evening I did some knitting and finished the second sleeve of my cardigan. 

I stitched the fronts to the back at the shoulder seams and read the instructions for the front band. To knit it I needed a 100 cm circular needle. I don't generally knit on circular needles and so I'd bought this in May in preparation. I needed to pick up stitches around the front edge, 364 in total. I decided to leave this for Friday. I started picking up the stitches, having marked each side in sections. It didn't go well and in the end I pulled out what I'd done and put my knitting aside. Today, Saturday, I marked out the right and left fronts very carefully, dividing them into sections. In each section I would need to pick up 20 stitches. This took quite a lot of time but made it much easier and I finally got all the stitches on the needle(s) and I have now knitted a couple of rows of the border. It is knitted in rib so this is not something I will be doing while watching TV. Full concentration is required. The pattern requires 14 cm of border to be knitted and when finished it will fold back in half. There are no buttons and therefore no buttonholes. The cardigan is all the same colour but the light changed between the two photos.

This evening instead of Knitting I'll be working on my crocheted blanket. I've joined all the squares in one direction and tonight I'll start joining them in the opposite direction. This is something I can work on while watching TV or listening to an audio book or pod cast.  No fancy stitching required.

I'm linking this post with Finished or not finished Friday I wonder if I can get at least one of these to a finish for next week?

Take care

Lyndsey

Back to work, and prepping for sashiko.

On Monday I went back to work after 10 weeks sick leave and 1 week annual leave. I had forgotten the Monday morning commute but the traffic was fairly light. I was surprised that after that number of weeks I still woke up before the alarm so I could turn it off without disturbing anyone. I had a good day and slowly got back into the swing of the work day. It was interesting catching up with the office gossip.  I have promised myself I will not be working in the evening and so last night I started work on the stitching on my Japanese quilt. 

The navy blocks on this quilt will have some sashiko pattern on them. I'm not adding the next round until I'll finished the sashiko. 

Sashiko is a Japanese style of needlework that was used for mending, reinforcing or decorating clothes. The sashiko also helped to make the garment thicker and therefore warmer. The work itself uses a running stitch and the stitches can be used to create fabulous geometric designs. I have a source book with lots of designs and there are so many that I want to try!

I got interested in sashiko several years ago but it is only recently that I have started to try the patterns and this is the first time I have tried to incorporate it into a quilt. The needles used are long and narrow and this helps to take a lot of running stitches before the need to pull the thread through the fabric which means you can't use an embroidery hoop. For this reason I will complete the sashiko panels before moving onto the next round as the fabric will be easier to manipulate.

Before I could start stitching I needed to mark the pattern I'd chosen onto the fabric. There are different ways to do this. The choices I have to hand were my Hera fabric marker, a white ink marking pen and a white marking pencil.

I gave the three of them a try to see what would work best for me. The Hera marker was good but not so easy if I use one of the stencils as it won't fit into some of th small gaps. The marks it makes do last well.

The white ink pen gave a really good, clear line but needs to be washed out with soapy water. The white pencil gave a more restrained line but just required a little water to wash it out. I also tried tailors chalk which worked well but got brushed off easily whilst holding the fabric for stitching.  I therefore decided to use the white pencil.  At this point I made a mental note that I should use the Hera marker more when marking quilting lines.

Having sorted out how to mark the fabric and the patterns I would use it was time to collect my threads and needles. Sashiko thread is a strong non divisible thread that comes in a large variety of colours. Below are the colours I have at present but I want to buy some of the variegated thread as it looks so pretty. You can use pearl cotton or embroidery floss. If using embroidery floss 4 strands are usually recommended. The white cotton on the left is a skein I've been using. The information I read and watched on YouTube before trying sashiko told me that when you open the skein it easier to cut the skein and then plait the thread to keep it together. When you need a new thread you pull it from the top of the loop and rest stays neat in the plait. This also gives a long length of thread.

I know I'm going to use white thread for some of the stitches but I'm hoping to use some of the coloured thread a well. So the markings are ready for stitching and I've made a start. For now I'm putting this project away so I can watch Silent Witness. We are currently rewatching all the series and have got to session 24. To do the stitching I need to concentrate on the marking and where to stitch next. This is not conducive to watching something that you need to concentrate on, therefore for the rest of the evening I will be knitting and if I'm lucky I will finish the second sleeve of my cardigan. 

Take care

Lyndsey