Need six hands

This is Nr. 15 of the Nearly Insane quilt - quite an easy one this compared to some!



And this is the first part of the border swag on Olivia's quilt (looking a bit wrinkled because I haven't pressed it yet). The quilt top was pieced and then these border crescents and buttons are applique. The most difficult bit is placing them accurately because they are all curves and so are hard to measure.

So here I am on half-term holiday, Stuart is working in Frankfurt today - I have a whole day's quilting ahead of me (apart from dogwalks in the snow) and I don't know what to work on. I'm really enjoying quilting the split nine-patch, really enjoying these applique crescents (and have a load of them to do) and yet the Nearly Insane is pulling me because I haven't done any of those since last autumn. When I first started quilting, I never understood how people could have so many projects that they were working on at the same time (and so many unfinished things). I began and finished my first two quilts without any other distractions. And then came an unfinished quilt, just needing binding and a little bit more quilting - it lies in a box. And now I have no idea now how I come to have three quilts on the go at the same time.

Had a lovely Valentine's Day on Sunday. We don''t usually do much beyond exchanging cards and going out somewhere nice for dinner. Because of the snow I didn't even buy Stuart a card this year but he got me one. And two huge bunches of pale yellow tulips (my favourite flowers). And took me for a delicious dinner. And ordered a Wii for me (online - it should arrive this week) because I had had such fun playing with it at my daughter's house. So, a very special day. I think a little bit of Stuart-spoiling is now required.

Enjoyed the opening of the Winter Olympics, especially after my friend in Canada had told me they had no snow and it was too warm for the snow-making machines to make any. I particularly enjoyed the huge sparkly bear and wondered how they did that - I was quite sad when it disappeared. Looking forward to watching the skating.

The Sun is Done!

There are many reasons people write blogs - well, today, I'm using it to get rid of my frustration.

The sun is on the back of our quilt group's fundraising quilt, the African fabric one. The quilt is so bright and busy that we backed it in black but Gay, who planned the quilt and did most of the work on it, wanted to connect the back with the front. She had a great idea - to make a quilted sun to applique on the back. This seemed simple but, I think, caused her more frustration than the quilt itself. She pieced the sun with scraps from the quilt but then had problems attaching it because she cut too much fabric off the edges to turn them under (there were other problems too). It is often the way that a quilting task that you think will take a lot of time and you postpone, often turns out to be straightforward and quick to do. The opposite is more often true, of course, that you think you can get a certain stage done 'in a morning' and you find there's no way and it drags on.

Anyway, Gay had understandably had ENOUGH (you know how that feels...) We decided that the best thing to do would be for me to applique the sun with embroidery floss and a buttonhole stitch (not blanket stitch which a lot of people think is buttonhole stitch). Blanket stitch leaves a little thread loop to neaten a raw edge and looks very pretty but in this case we had two fabric raw edges and places where the machine stitching was gone and the sun sandwich not joined. The buttonhole stitch is a tailor's stitch and is very strong. It needed to be when people were making buttonholes by hand, often on woollen coats where the buttonholes got a lot of use. There is a difference in the loops of thread around the needle that makes a little knot at the edge of the fabric to be protected and is really effective. My solution. Yes, I said, I can have that done in no time...

Well, yesterday I spent most of my day on that ******** sun and was humbled. I didn't have enough of any one orange floss so I made each length of floss from a mixture of four different coloured threads. This wouldn't have been so bad except that buttonhole stitch takes a lot of thread and I had lots of points and deep Vee-shapes to go round, so I was having to make floss lengths every ten minutes. I couldn't get a regular stitch depth because some of the sun had edge stitching and some didn't. The quilt was very heavy and I needed to turn every few stitches - couldn't put it in the frame because I was afraid I would sew right through the quilt instead of just the backing.

Now it's done and I can't imagine why I made such a fuss or why it took so long and wore me down. Weird, that. I will say, though, that I never want to see the colour orange again in any shape or form. Ever. Or at least a few weeks.

Going to see Avatar tomorrow (in English!) - not my sort of film normally but I want to see what the fuss is about. Have a good weekend!

Houses Quilt

This is a quilt to record all the places that I have lived - there are 30 houses and I can embroider addresses under 18 of them. I need some more embroidery floss of the right colour to finish; only half of the addresses are there at the moment. I got the pattern for the houses from Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville. Bonnie always has such good ideas and I loved her quilt 'Happy Houses' but I didn't want to do the tilted jolly houses, partly because I didn''t want to do a load of long triangles and also because I knew I wanted the addresses and a calm, restrained look.

The great thing is that I did not choose the fabric. I would never have chosen these colours or patterns. At the time I made this we were in extreme financial difficulties (ironically, caused by a house!) because we were paying rent here in Germany, a mortgage for a house in Holland which we were trying to sell and international school fees. I was making mini-quilts to be economical. But a friend of mine moved back to England and began volunteering in a charity shop there. Someone donated a pile of fabric. Although my friend, Anne, is not a quilter, she immediately realised these were fat quarters and offcuts from other projects. She put some money in for them and brought them to Germany. I was able to use some of them towards the last quilt group fundraising quilt and the rest gave me my happy houses. Really, the only reason I can think of that quilting fabric would be donated to a charity shop is if the quilter died or was for some reason unable to continue with her project - quilters never just decide they don't like quilting any more, do they? Anyway, I am so happy that her fabrics were not just dumped but found their way to me.

This is a special quilt for several reasons: it enabled me to connect with an ex-quilter and give life to her fabrics; it reminds me of the good friend who kindly gave them to me; it is entirely hand-sewn - yes, every single stitch, even the binding, because I wanted a project I could carry around with me and so I have many happy memories of where I was when I sewed different bits; it made me happy when we had a lot to worry about, and lastly, it is a real heirloom quilt because it is a record of my life which I can keep adding to if we move again.

Oh, I feel quite emotional, time for coffee!

Snow/Sew Day

Snowing heavily here today so apart from walking Logan we are having a cosy time. Stuart is napping as he had a stressful time when he returned from Madrid because he had to drive home on Glatteis (sheet ice) on the Autobahn from Düsseldorf. We are going to a Burns Night Dinner tonight and he is giving the 'Speech to the Lassies', so he's having a nice snooze and we'll take a taxi tonight so that neither snow nor whisky will cause a problem getting home. I'm going to continue with the Crescent and Star quilt blocks for my youngest daughter. They look like this:



I had wanted to make her a quilt for her International School graduation as I had for our oldest daughter but she couldn't make up her mind what she wanted. This went on until Summer 2009 (after two years at university) when she made her choice. If I'm industrious, it might be ready for her university graduation - only three years late... Although I could make these blocks by machine, the pattern recommended hand-sewing and it is really nice to have something very portable. I sew these while watching tv, take them on long car journeys to Britain, etc and they are challenging and interesting to make. Soon I will have enough and then comes a white border with applique swags and circles.