A squirrel in the studio

Wish I was keeping cool like this little fellow instead

of baking in the heat!

 As you can see a squirrel has appeared just as I was sewing up

the diamond quilt and is the cause of my becoming

distracted by a quilt pattern from Robin Pickens.

She has used, apart from one dark fabric, quite muted tones in her

quilt but as the title

is

POSITIVELY BOHEMIAN

this gives free rein to my love of rich, saturated colour.

My idea may or may not work, time will tell.

I need four colour families which I guess could be just using

a dark purple along with a lighter purple and

choosing two tones of the complementary colour.

This fabric above begged to be included in the quilt.

Now Kaffe Fassett uses many colours in one fabric design as

we can see above. and it can be difficult to assign them a definite colour category.

I love the green background, there are also lime green touches

in the tulip flowers, blue in the vase, yellow/orange in the leaves

and also a rich red.

Oh, I need five fabrics in each colour group.

Why not go totally mad and see just what develops.

This fabric has red, blue, orange/yellow and orange  and a little lime green

but is referred to as a lime colourway nor could it be used as a yellow,

would fabrics along the limey green/yellow side work as another colour group?

Also another fabric as a favourite is this Brassica with purple, rich golden orange

and also does have the green in but you can't see it in this piece.

Unless you can see the pattern it's going to be difficult to envisage

how the mix would look.

I would need another colour and then work from there

So just playing to get an idea of the LH fabric and the RH fabric and

this looks  a little like a disaster zone presently, but the whole

thing is a work in progress.

My cutting table is piled high with so many different  fabrics to be auditioned. 

As it's now just too hot to be in here so I'm off for a cool drink

and a re-think tomorrow!

See you in a few days

Maureen

Calling it done!!!!!

After more fiddling around, including turning all the lighter diamonds

to the reverse side to give better distinction between light and dark,

hating it and changing them back again, I moved pieces around

and changed out some of them.

I'm happy with it now and on with the stitching next week.

The odd fabric here is in the bottom row left hand side,

black fabric with pears. In the early days of our friendship

J was a great bottler of fruit. She would visit the market gardens and

come back with cases of pears, peaches, you name it she bottled it,

hence the pear fabric. I had to put that one in for her.

One of the consequences of spending so much time

trying to get the setting to my liking was not checking on my zucchini

plants for three days, this is the result

9" long zucchini and one marrow sized.

Sometimes they hide away under the giant leaves and are

easy to miss.

However, I had the makings of our evening meal with two of these

along with freshly picked beans

 a little fresh Genovese Basil

pasta from the cupboard, a hunk of Pecorino cheese
and store bought tomatoes - delicious!

Life then took a different turn.

Our eldest son, following the removal of a mole, had a diagnosis of melanoma he's

now due for wider excision surgery.

One day later we learned that our 17yr old grandson

had been in a crash in his car, thank goodness he wasn't hurt but

his car is a write off!

Two days later I had a 'phone call telling me that my long time friend 

living not too far from me had passed away.

We had similar health conditions and used to support each other

with many long telephone chats.

I am so glad that I had gifted her a quilt in July when  she became

very unwell.

Time spent flower gazing has been excellent therapy

and I love it when the hydrangeas begin to turn from their

usual vibrant hues to the colours below.

Oh my, I just have to show you this photo of a beautiful silk scarf made

in India but bought in Portugal as a gift for me from my ex-daughter-in-law,

she called in an hour ago to see me. She thought I would
like the rich colours!!

Have a happy weekend!

Maureen

This and That

Not a wildly exciting post I'm afraid due to

a gastric bug which laid me low for a while.

Luckily I was good for my grand-daughter's wedding on the

11th of this month - a super, super day!

I have all the pieces for my friend's quilt up on the wall,

tweaking is definitely needed and I feel

as if I lost my way as I reached the bottom

but I can play around some more during the week

Most of the diamonds are made up of two pyramids using

two different fabrics but with some with just the one

I've been using my electric GO to cut squares ready

for my Colourwash, the ones going through the machine

first up are from a 6" pack. The machine does have a little noise

during operation but the fact that it cuts with really

not much effort is a bonus.

The garden is very dry at the moment but the nasturtiums

are enjoying the heat

and I picked a few to brighten up the kitchen bench.

Back during the next week, hopefully with more to show!

Happy Quilting

Maureen

New Year, New Decade, New Word

I wonder what this next decade will bring for us all and

for the planet!

The disasters happening presently around the world and

close to home in Australia are unbelievable.

However, enough said on that subject, on to things to lighten our hearts.

My word for this year is a little different in that it's Greek

and there is no English equivalent word!

Basically it means to do something with soul, creativity, passion or love,

to put a piece of yourself into what you're doing.

It could be applied to so many things in life.

I don't remember where nor when I came across Meraki, I've hunted

for my Greek language book from aeons ago but can't find it. 

I looked for translations on the internet and they more or less all

have the same interpretation as above.

For me right now I'm putting Meraki into the making of the quilt shown

in my last post, and below, for my friend who haas cancer.

A few more mixed diamonds are on the wall, I will be shifting

them around when all are up there, but given the layout above

measurements would be

49" across x 72" down

and I don't want to go any longer but wonder if the width is sufficient

for a lap quilt, feedback would be welcome!

That's all from me today, I'm hoping to have more quiet time to work

out quilting goals and projects for this year over the next few days.

Maureen

Sue and Elle, thank you for your comments, I am unable to reply as you are showing as noreply-comment bloggers.

Last post before Christmas

I've been sidetracked with my quilting due

to the news a week ago that a darling friend of 39 years

has been undergoing treatment for cancer - first thought

was  -  she needs a quilt!

Lots hanging in the closet for quilting but I wanted to make a start

on one especially made with her in mind.

Looking for something simple I had a look through the

Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston collaborative books and

yes, pyramid shape would be perfect. One had a border the other not.

I was thinking of the layout above at first, then

remembered a quilt in a Sarah Fielke book,

the quilt below is named

Love Beads

love the layout but not wanting to deal with the hexagons

centred in the large diamonds.

So still playing on the design wall with this layout below

going with the Love Bead style but using

a mix of fabrics, two different pieces in each diamond.

Side tracked also watching the young blackbirds coming
along to feed, at first they were screeching for Mum to feed  them

but now they're good to go on their own

here is one of the latest three, just about two feet away from me.

I've been feeding birds for a long time, two blackbirds, male and female, have been

visiting me for a few years and raise their chicks in the

trees in the garden, poor old chap is now looking rather

old!!

He comes and sits right outside the window where my cosy chair is

and lets me know he would like food!

Christmas Day tomorrow and I'm wishing

you all a very Merry Christmas, and see you in a few days.

 Oops orientation of book shots going across when they should be going down!

Maureen

Refreshed and ready to quilt!!

My three weeks enforced leave of absence

 seems

to have had the desired results, but

hardly any quilting has been done apart from binding my

Tula Pink quilt

I used up a variety of the striped fabric in the her collection 

for the binding, luckily they all seem to work well.

the quilting lines actually go across the quilt, I just forgot

to rotate!

measurements 58" x 68"

quilted by Leeanne at

Quilt Me Kiwi

I haven't been wasting my time, I have been

spending some sitting in the garden here, especially in the early morning

and late afternoon

with a good book

which arrived only one week ago and is a treasure! I'm limiting

myself to reading about one quilter each day, I definitely recommend this one

and what a Christmas gift it would make!

Quite a lot of the featured quilters are new to me, which is good,

lots of variety in the use of colour and design.

The good side of having a rest is that the mind quietens and ideas

come steadily and clearly, I have found that I'm forming

a way forward with my quilting next year.

Scrap quilts are definitely on the agenda, colour with Kaffe Collective

as usual and I'm waiting for May when the new range

from Anna Maria Horner hits the stores, lots of brights!

Time out has also made me realise that I have bought fabric on  a whim

sometimes, fabric which really is "not me" so I am going to sell these.

Also I'm definitely not going to 'follow the trend' with regard to quilt patterns,

these too have been collected with gay abandon and

I realise now that I will never make them!

More on the above next year, but below I have snaps of three of

my hydrangeas which are performing nicely and along with

the other flowers in the garden gave me such pleasure

over the last little while.

Another benefit I have found is the time to really look, not just pass

by and glance fleetingly but really see what beauty there is in

the smallest gift from the garden

will you just look at the colour and detail in these

tiny wee seed capsules from the Japanese Maple lying on the

old table on our deck. I also enjoy seeing all the clumps of

lichen taking a hold.

Gosh, this has been a pretty long post but I hope you

made it through to the end!

Happy Quilting

Maureen