Purple Patch

I've been having a lot of fun in the past week playing with my purples. Purple fabric (as the background although it's now no longer visible), purple yarn of all shapes and sizes, purple buggle and normal beads, again in a wide variety of sizes, and buttons. All this is in aid of a project for the Quilters' Guild but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share the entire piece with you so I'm playing it safe and for the moment I'm only sharing a detail.

I was singing along with my American Anthem CD while making it which meant I was having a whale of a time! Or perhaps I should say I hit a Purple Patch!

We need your vote!

First of all, you'll notice a new button in the sidebar of this blog. By clicking on it you can vote for The Quilters' Guild in order to make it the most popular Lottery Funded Heritage Project and that in turn helps the Guild with it's funding. The Quilters' Guild now has its very own headquarters and museum in York and I'm hoping to pay a visit in the very near future. York is a beautiful and historic town and worth a visit in its own right but having a Quilt Museum there makes it even more attractive for a weekend away!

Here is the link again! And remember you don't have to be a member or live in the U.K. in order to vote. Just go ahead and click that button! Once you get to the Lottery site, clock on Best Heritage Project on the left hand side and then vote for Unfolding the Quilts!

The picture at the top is unrelated to quilts but as well as my blip for today it was also a major achievement. I've wanted to capture Neidpath Castle for a long time but its situation just off the busy A72 road out of Peebles made it virtually impossible to stop and take a picture, specially as there's no pedestrian access along the road. So I was over the moon to discover that in order to do some bridge repairs the side of the road had been coned off. I found a nearby lay-by and scuttled back along the road and then inside the coned-off area, in order to capture the castle in its full glory. It's a very Scottish, dour looking place with by all accounts a frightening dungeon and a ghost as its main claims to fame. And if I had left it any longer, trees in full leaf would have obscured the view.

You can also go down by the Tweed river in Peebles and walk along the banks of the river to reach the castle from the side turned away from the road. That will be something to do in the future!

Love makes the world go round!

It's a gloriously sunny day despite the fact that we have clouds of volcanic ash swirling about in the higher areas of the sky. We are sometimes (depending on the wind direction) under the flight path for Edinburgh Airport and although it's not very busy I realized how quiet it was while walking the dogs this morning.

Troi seems to be back to her usual boisterous self which can only be good news and I have also managed to make a small quiltie (size 12" square) despite it dropping off my to-do list somewhere along the way. No idea how that happened, I must have overlooked it while transferring the To-Do list from one week to the next! Must try harder!!!

I was reminded of it again by the Loch Lomond visit some days ago as this quiltie is for a joint project of all Quilters' Guild members located in Scotland.

We're all meant to make a 12" block finished in black binding for a Wall of Friendship that will be on display during the Loch Lomond Quilt Show in May. After that all the blocks will be put together to form larger quilts which will be donated to various good causes yet to be determined.

My quiltie was made using a background from a long ago discarded quilt top, which I layered with wadding (batting) and backing fabric (featuring butterflies in my case) and machine quilted. As you can see some of the seams are on the outside and have been quilted in different directions. I added a vintage fabric of a loving couple (from VintageImageMadness) that I printed out onto self-adhesive cotten sheet (from Crafty Computer Paper). This was layered with a batik heart fabric and sewn down as shown. I then used Bondaweb (or Wonder-Under) to cut out separate hearts from the heart fabric and sewed these on in a diagonal direction leading to the text: Love makes the world go round! that was printed directly onto calico (muslin) using my Epson printer.

I added size 11 seed beads around the image, the text, the hearts and also around the black binding. as you can see on this detailed picture above.