Quilting and television

I've just finished writing emails and updating my blog, and commenting on the Patchwork and Quilting magazine, December edition. There have been some very interesting articles this month, including one on blogging. The author of the article - Sue House - has her own blog, which I've added in the blogs I'm following. As time allows, I shall add other blogs I'm following / trying to follow as well.

I've been extending my quilting skills with Block of the Month projects from Antique Angel. There have been numerous times when I've cursed myself for starting them, but I'm glad that I'm doing them - learning new techniques, trying new things.

There are some interesting competitions in Patchwork and Quilting this month, including one about making a Christmas container - I'm tempted by this, but I think that I may end up submitting a stocking - and it will probably be one that I've made already, and that features on this blog. I suppose I could try something else, but timing is the issue, and there are already so many other things that I want to be working on.

Anyway - the title of this post. I'm just wondering what other quilters do when they sit and quilt. I'm lucky enough to have my own sewing room to go to - although the cats have assumed it as their room - with one of them sitting on the chair I use at the sewing machine, and the other sitting on the cutting table - and on the cutting mat. I like to sit in there listening to a talking book, or watching a film (generally listening to the film rather than watching it). When I'm upstairs doing some hand quilting (on my Harlequin quilt), I sit watching whatever is on television - such as CSI, Bones, Lie to Me, House, Criminal Intent, Deep Space Nine. I've recently seen some programmes advertised for quilting. Some of the CCTv programmes on MyChannel - (Sky 171) about textile artists, and Quilt in a Day on Rural TV (Sky 279 - I think). I shall watch these with great interest. However, all of us have some guilty pleasures - and mine are old soaps. A couple of years ago I watched Howard's Way to it's conclusion (from start to finish), and also Dallas (except the television company didn't have all the series, so kept showing series 1-5 - and I wanted to see the rest of them!). My current guilty pleasure is Dynasty. It is great - it is so bad, it's good! Don't you just love seeing all those shoulder pads, seeing Steven Carrington walking around like a wet weekend and looking depressed all the time; barely hearing what Krystle is saying due to her husky voice; seeing Fallon being such a scheming and manipulative little minx; Blake Carrington looking like a caring patriarch, and actually rivalling JR Ewing for the baddie. This is not how I remember Dynasty - I remember it with Fallon being taken up in a spaceship, and later coming back as someone different, with Alexis Colby coming in, and then the spin off series - The Colby's - with Sable Colby, and Maxwell Caulfield then whisking Fallon away...Oh, what delights yet to come!

Why do I sit and sew with the television on? What do other quilters do? I sit and sew and watch programmes because that is what I did 20 years ago (okay, maybe only 18), when I was at home. I remember Friday evenings sat with my mum and sister in the living room. I would be sat in a gold colour Parker Knoll recliner, with a twin lamp on my right hand side. We would sit and watch television - we would watch Coronation Street (I think), Gardener's World, Love Hurts (who remembers that with Adam Faith and Zoe Wannamaker - I'd love to see that again), and I would sit sewing. At that time it was English patchwork, and I still have the templates somewhere. The Harlequin quilt that I am currently quilting (by hand, as the rest of it has been done by hand), was started later, and I've not yet quilted the quilt I was making at that time. However, I have quilted my first quilt - the one that started this hobby / passion / obsession.

The quilt on the left shows my first quilt. I finally quilted it in 2002, having started it in about 1986. I bought my house in 2002 (which I have since sold), and that summer I went to Hythe to house sit for Grandad Banks. I took this quilt along, and sat handquilting it. It is all done by hand, and has vermicelli quilting on it. I dind't bind the quilt, I used a different technique - I used the self-finish, by folding under the backing, and then sewing through all the layers - using a running stitch. I had already tacked down the seam allowances of the hexagons.

Time for me to publish now, as I've just been asked if I have any buttons (stupid question), and how fast am I at sewing buttons on trousers - so I'm doing a bit of work for a stepson!!

Wow!

Well, where to start? I'm sitting in the lounge upstairs, with my snug rug over me (a brilliant invention - and one of the best birthday presents ever!). I'm waiting for the postman to arrive - I'm expecting several packages. One of the packages I'm expecting / waiting for is the block of the month from Antique Angel (http://www.antiqueangel.co.uk/). I saw their full page advert in the September edition of British Patchwork and Quilting, and liked the look of a couple of the quilts in the advert. I signed up, and have been cursing myself and the 'stupid idea' ever since! The blocks can involve some very small pieces, which means the piecing can be rather tricky. However, I don't regret my decision - except for the fact that I check the site to see when the blocks are being sent out, and have now seen another new block of the month on the site which I really like the look of! It has been a really good experience for me, as it is making me try different piecing methods, and use techniques that I wouldn't otherwise have tried (Suffolk puffs, for example - they don't really do anything for me).

Possibly you are looking at the date and time I am writing this post. Well, true to form, I have got a cold just before half term. I've fought it as long as I could, but I'm now croaking and coughing; people at school wouldn't thank me for passing it on to them in time for the holiday, so I'm staying at home. I thought I would take a bit of time to update the blog.

For those of you who don't read the British Patchwork and Quilting Magazine, the title of this post refers to the November edition of said publication. I've won the star letter for the month! This means that I've had my letter published, along with the pictures I sent in with it, and for being the star letter, I also get some fabric! I was quite delighted when I read the magazine, and saw it! I had received the publication a day or two after my birthday, and I read it in bed. I had been thinking of skipping to the end of the magazine, but then decided to read it all the way through from the front to the back. The letters page is right at the back, and I didn't realise that I had been published at first. I saw a picture of a quilt (the Celebration quilt), but it wasn't until I saw the quilt for Thomas that I realised that I was looking at my own creations!

Having re-read the letter (several times, just for good measure), I suppose I feel like I might have misled people into thinking that I had made the quilts and the aprons all in the summer holiday. That was not my intention at all, and people looking at this blog will see that the quilts were completed within the past 15 months. It wasn't until I re-read the letter I realised how some people might read it - it was not done deliberately however.

I've been busy with the block of the month projects recently, and also with finishing mum's kimono panels - I'm quite pleased with how they have turned out. I've also mentioned the aprons - so here is a picture of one of them.

The apron was a project featured in P&Q, and I didn't like the colours of the one in the magazine at all, but I thought that I really needed an apron, and I saw that the pattern had possibilities. I used charm pack squares for the aprons, and this worked well, although the seams do not always match up, because the size of the squares is approximate. However, if I let myself be worried by imperfections, I would never make anything! I've made five aprons in all - 2 for me, one for mum, one for Caro, and one for Joan (my mother-in-law). I still have several other projects on the go - but information about those will have to wait for another time, as I can hear the bed calling to me...

It's lovely in the sunshine

It's a lovely sunny day here in Westward Ho! once again. I'm keeping an eye on the shingles to make sure it's not coming back with a vengeance, and this involves getting up early in the morning. That's not entirely true, I get up early to make the most of the coolness in the flat before the sun comes into the flat. I love having the sunshine and the blue sky, and the heat, but the heat is not comfortable for quilting - well, it wouldn't be, would it; sitting under a quilt with the sun blazing down into a room that is effectively a greenhouse.

Anyway - the next installment of my endeavours. Today I'm going to show you a competition entry.

This is a bag I made for the Patchworks competition back in 2004. Patchworks is a shop in Scotland, and you paid about £6 for some fabrics that you made into whatever you wanted. You could add other fabrics as well. I can't remember which charity the competition was raising money for - it may have been breast cancer. I used one of my favourite fabrics - the chocolate one - twice; once on the outside, and then again on the inside for the pocket. I used and adapted a pattern from Barbara Randle's book - Crazy Quilting with Attitude, the bag also appeared in Popular Patchwork several years ago. I adapted it by adding a single shoulder strap on the gusset, and by creating a flap so that the bag could be closed over the top, rather than in the middle - I thought this made it a bit more secure. I used the stitch and flip method to piece the bag, and added ribbons and couched decorative threads for embellishments. The use of ribbon served two purposes; one was to use the means of tying the fabrics together for posting, and the second was to hide an unsightly join in the fabric. I couched the threads using invisible thread to add some movement to the piece, and used the colours of the fabric pack. I used some of the embroidery stitches on the machine along the ribbon, and along the gusset.

The bag didn't win any prizes, but it was fun to do, and I stretched the limits of my skills to achieve something that was attractive, practical and useful. It made me think carefully about what was required, and how to achieve the finished product - it was an exercise in creative thinking and problem solving.

That's all there is for now - check again soon for the next installment.