Are you sitting comfortably?

Then we can begin! Begin burning our multi-fuel stove that is. This is the first day we've lighted it for the coming winter, spurred on by an electricity cut this morning which has now been fixed.

But as soon as the stove was up and running, guess who firmly placed herself in the best spot to catch the heat! Troi, the greyhound, of course! And she was followed immediately by Sweep, the black cat, who had to be contented with the rug in front of the fire!

Another rozette

This month has proved very fruitful as far as rozettes are concerned! My quilt Circles, Spots and Dots won the 1st Prize in the Large Wallhanging category at the Scottish Quilt Championships, in Edinburgh this weekend. That's my fourth rozette this month, I can barely believe my luck!

Here is the picture showing the quilt and rozette. It's not the best picture of the quilt as it was in quite a dark corner which forced me to use my flash which seems to have bleached some of the vibrant colour out of the quilt. Doesn't that yellow rozette go well with it, though??!!

Autumn

You can really tell it's autumn now (or Fall if you are in the US!). The colours of all the leaves are changing rapidly although so far not many leaves are actually falling yet. But I know from past years that as soon as one starts the rest also come down in rapid succession. I love birches, they are so slender and elegant and the yellow tones in these leaves are breathtaking! I love the fact that in summer they give a lovely dappled shade and in winter they look beautiful silhouetted against the sky.
The echinops flowers have turned brown and look sort of rusty. I actually like them better in this state than in their summer blues. There was a little bit of sun today, just enough to warm up the day enough to walk the dogs without a coat but I can feel that the end of coatless days is in sight!

Three Fabrics ATC Swap

I'm hosting an ATC swap on the ATCsforAll site, called Three Fabrics ATC Swap. Yes, I know I would give up for awhile but it felt so strange not to be hosting anything that I gave in to myself and posted a new one but with a restricted number of participants. The swap is now full and the due date not till the beginning of November. The only requirement is to use three fabrics on every ATC.

I made a start very early because I was reading Helga Strauss's blog (she is the owner of Artchix Studio) and she set us the challenge of making a kit for yourself and only use the materials in that. By chance I had bought just such a pack at a quilt show recently so I got that out and started to work away with it. I used a gorgeous batik fabric from the kit which was ironed onto Fast2Fuse and I cut a strip from the mauve suede like fabric in the kit which I stitched on top of this. This piece was then cut (using a rotary cutter) into ATC size. To each ATC I added a small bit of the pink lame fabric (from the kit again) which proved quite temperamental!

I did add gorgeous fabric images from the Pastel Princess sheet by Alphastamps, designed by Altered by Design and surrounded it with a couched fancy fiber (kit again!). I beaded around the lame fabric which remained visible using a seed bead mix called Tropicana from Whimbeads.

Finally I ironed on a backing fabric (the same as on the front background) and couched the same fancy yarn around all the edges. The three cards at the top are for the swap but I also made one for me to keep which you can see above. I just love that image!

Christmas Tree Ornament

I reckoned I might as well keep on the Christmas trail while the going was good and spend today making a Christmas Tree Ornament with my Alphastamps goodies.

To start with I made a rough drawing of an evergreen tree shape till I was happy with it and this was transferred with a Sharpie to both green and red felt (available from Alphastamps) and cut out. I also cut out a triangular shape with a rounded bottom edge from the green tree (make a template first if you're nervous about cutting out a rough shape). I looked for an image of Santa carrying gifts and found a really lovely one on Alphastamps Christmas Gnomes collage sheet. This was sandwiched between the two felt trees. I first straight stitched and zigzagged around the outside edges of the tree with gold thread and also added straight gold stitching around the cut out opening, thereby holding the image in place. Make a hole (I used my Crop-a-Dile) and set an eyelet in both top and bottom of the tree as shown.

I then used one of the Memory Making frames from the Alphastamps Santa Ornament Kit and found a lovely image of sleeping children on the Square Santas collage sheet. They are definitely dreaming of the wonderful gifts Santa will bring them! On top of that image I put a frame of leaves (to go with the tree!), which comes from the Alphastamps 2 Inch Borders Sticker sheet. On the back I used another image from the Square Santas sheet, with Best Wishes for Christmas. These were put into the frame with glass on both sides, following the manufacturers' instructions.

I used a bendable ribbon from the Santa Ornament Kit and laced this through the square ornament, then through the bottom hole on the tree, leading it up the back of the tree (see picture above) and back out through the top bottom. There is enough left to hang it in a tree with.

Here is a picture of it hanging in one of the evergreens in our garden and I'm glad to say there is no snow in sight yet!!!

Madonna ATC

Hallelujah!! I've actually finished my very first Christmas themed item for this year!! Would you believe it. Normally I try very hard not to think about Christmas till it is the day before but in my capacity of Design Team Member for Alphastamps I'm being forced to confront the day 4 months before it will actually take place. Brrrrrrrr, it sends shivers down my spine!

Having said that, the new Chrismassy items from Alphastamps are gorgeous and would make anyone's fingers itch!

I've started gently with an ATC because I loved the Round Madonna stamp that was included in our Christmas kit and could not wait to give it a try!

I used a fabric/paper Christmas collage but instead of using the actual collage I choose to scan it into my computer and print it out onto watercolour paper (suitable for inkjet printers and available from Crafty Computer Paper). I fuzzy cut the background for the ATC so that I had a bell, a small piece of Christmas carol text and the word December on it. This was layered with felt and stitched together. Watercolour paper is really thick and substantial and is easy to stitch through on your machine.

I stamped the Round Madonna with blue Staz-On onto a transparency, cut it out and stitched it onto the background. I then embellished it with copper size 11 seed beads.

The whole card was then layered onto an ATC card blank and the edges were satin stitched with copper coloured thread and also beaded, this time with turquoise beads, using the holes made by the satin stitching (otherwise it would be too much like hard work, stitching through 2 layers of paper!)

Queen of Hearts ATC

I joined an ATC swap on the ATCsforAll site with the title Fabric Mixed Media ATC Swap. I mean, how could I resist making a mix of my favourite medium, fabric, with another medium. I choose to use stamping and also beading and other embellishment.

As my background I used a copper lame fabric with black stripes in it (very temperamental but worth it!). This was machine quilted on felt with copper thread. I stamped the image of the Queen of Hearts (Alphastamps) onto calico (muslin in US) with blue Fabrico ink and heat set it. Then cut it out and coloured in the roses with a pink colouring pencil. It was stitched onto the background with blue thread. I also added size 11 seed beads in the centre of the roses and sewed on a heart shaped pink button as shown.

The piece was layered up with backing fabric and the edges were finished with blue satin stitching.

Journal Quilt 2008 September

It seems like ages since I last uploaded a Journal Quilt for the Contemporary Quilt Group (a subdivision of the British Quilters' Guild) and it has indeed been a long time as I'm very late with my September one, or maybe I was early with the August JQ. Whatever it was, I have managed to squeeze it in before the end of September.

As most of you will be aware by now, this year my JQs for the Contemporary Group are dedicated to Venice, a city very close to my heart. I did have a long think about this JQ before I started to actually make it. Maybe that was what cause the delay mentioned above.

I played with various options till I finally settled on this one. The background is a deep, rich, delicious purple velvet. I bought what was left on the bolt from Cabbage Patch Fabrics as it was simply irrisistible! This was free machine quilted with a variegated metallic thread in circles.

To this I added the vintage image of an alley in Venice (printed out onto self-adhesive cotton sheet from Crafty Computer Paper). The stairs come from a stamp available from Stamp Francisco, which I stamped onto paper. This was scanned into my computer at a very high resolution and then printed out onto Extravaganza at a much larger size than the original stamp. Both the image and the stairs were stitched down with the same thread I used for quilting and a small zig-zag stitch. I then also hand stitched the stairs with a brown and gold thread and beaded along the edges of the stairs with size 11 seed beads. The image of the gondola came from a scarf bought on Ebay. I used Bondaweb (Wonderunder) to attach it and also stitched it down. I added a bit of gold stitching to this as well.

I added a haiku I wrote about Venice some time ago that reads as follows:

Golden, glittering light

Majestically sinking

A sense of doom

The final touch (to go with the first line of the haiku) was to add the purple real shell buttons and the vintage gold ones which were rubbed with purple metallic rub-on.

The edges were finished with swirling gold and purple cotton fabric and purple size 11 seed beeds.

Another prize for Tod und Leben

I can hardly believe it but I have won the prize for Best Hand Workmanship (Innovative Section) again! This is in the World Quilt and Textile Show which opens this weekend in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA. I won the same prize last year for Waves of Anger and this year it is the time for Tod und Leben which also won the 3rd Prize in the Advanced section in the European Quilt Championships earlier this year.

I am never entirely satisfied with my own quilts, always thinking I could have done this or that better or different so I'm really delighted that judges don't seem to share these thoughts! It's good to be critical of your own work as this spurs me on to try and do even better on each quilt I make but this is certainly a very much appreciated endorsement of my work.

Tea Time Gothic Arch

I'm quite late with my contribution to this weeks's theme at the Gothic Arches Challenge site but better late than never!! The theme is Time and I've chosen to interpret this as Tea Time, despite the fact that coffee is my preferred tipple! But I had such a great fabric/paper collage background all ready and waiting featuring tea cups and it seemed just the thing for the theme.

I cut it to arch shape and layered it with white felt by stitching around the edges.

I then added the fabric image of the tea drinking lady (from Alphastamps Tea #2 collage sheet), which was partially glued and partially stitched. I outline stitched the tea cup with blue running stitch and added a stamped spoon (from Alphastamps Teaspoons Clear Stamp Set).

I added the tea pot charm (from Collage Stuff) to make it look as if it was pouring tea into her cup and added the clock charm (7Gypsies) to go with the title which was added with my Dymo writer and stitched on. Finally I added a fabric as backing and satin-stitched around the edges to which I added blue size 11 seed beads by hand.

Another bracelet

I also finished the other bracelet I started during Laura McCabe's classes last weekend. This is the Crystal Starburst one which is in her book Creating Crystal Jewellery with Swarowski. It was a bit more work than the other one and it's far from perfectly done but when I'm wearing it, it does look pretty good to me. I played with the colours a bit and used previously acquired Swarowski crystals in addition to those in the kit and I also had to make the tab a bit longer as Laura is minute in statue and has the most amazing thin and elegant wrists! The scan does not do it justice at all as sparkles really confuse the scanner! Underneath is a photograph (not much better!) of me wearing it.

I feel like a naughty girl, skipping school, while working on these fun projects when what I should be doing is stitching and working on that To Do list and I have promised myself that I will leave it for a bit before I tackle one of the other kits I bought from Laura (oh yes, I was so very, very bad!!! but it does feel so good!!!!!)

Blue Waves and Waves of Anger

First of all I was really taken aback to discover on my sitecounter that there have now been more than 25.000 visitors to this blog. I would not have believed it if I had been told this would happen when I first started. It's so amazing specially as blogging has also provided me with a great outlet for my art, my life and my occasionally wandering mind!

Thanks to everyone for visiting, you're simply the best!!!

I've done an article for the online magazine Quiltwow, edited by Maggie Grey. You have to be a subscriber to read the article but this is another great publication by Maggie, and everything else in it is well worth the read so I would urge you to subscribe if you are interested in quilting. I particularly enjoyed reading the interview in this latest September issue, with Alicia Merrett, a fellow "British" quilter. We were both born elsewhere but have landed and stayed here in the U.K.

In my article I describe how I've used Electric Quilt to design my stolen quilt Blue Waves as well as the replacement quilt I made entitled: Waves of Anger. It gave me quite a sense of deja vu, describing once again how Blue Waves disappeared from a town hall near Turin. It really seemed such a planned theft and you don't expect such a thing at all. Well I didn't at the time!! I'm pretty well ready for any unexpected surprises and/or shocks by now!!!

Looking at both quilts I will readily acknowledge that Waves of Anger is technically a better made quilt (just goes to prove that you do get more expert at things by practising!!) but Blue Waves has more soul and will to me at least remain the better one, and the one I prefer.

No idea if life and the universe will bring it back to me one day but I've not given up hope completely!!

Black and Beige ATCs

Our colour combination at the select Colour Groupies Yahoo Group for September is Black and Beige and although I did think at first this was a bit sombre, once I got going (quite some time ago now!) I discovered this combination was great for adding that touch of vintage. I used a black velvet, machine stitched background for these ATCs to which I added a torn square of fabric in various tints and shades of beige. I choose a variety of images to add to the ATCs, according to the tastes of Tristan, Lenna, Debby and Caryl. All these are from Bmuse and are in the shape of their wonderful fabrik-paper. Suitable text was found for each card and covered in sepia Accent. I added a vintage trim on the bottom, which was painted with gold Glimmer spray. Beige size 11 seed beads were added and the front was layered up with the same beige fabric as backing. The edges were finished with buttonhole hand stitching.

Of course I had to make one for my 100 ATC project too. It's no. 83, entitled: The thoughtful Face

Cherry Blossom Bracelet

I just could not resist! Despite a long To Do list for this week, I simply ignored everything else and worked away on the Cherry Blossom Bracelet which I started during Laura McCabe's workshop in Haddington this past weekend. I had struggled a bit with the flowers during the workshop but as soon as I was home and quietly by myself in my studio, I carefully read and followed Laura's instructions and things just came together. Apart from breaking and bending a few beading needles (they really are so fragile! or maybe my hands are too strong!) I loved making this lovely bracelet and I did stock up on more of Laura's kits so there is more to come although tomorrow I will be stitching away on my quilt!!

Pink Gothic Arch

The Gothic Arch Challenge has found a new home as Wordpress insisted on considering most of us as Spam posters, specially those who use Blogger. The new home is most impressive and I'm still discovering all its possibilities. I will change the link at the right hand side of this blog too so that you can easily find your way there if you fancy joining us in this challenge.

The new theme is posted every Sunday and for this week it is Pink.

I could not resist and used a fabric image from one of the new Alphastamps sheets. This one is called Over the Garden Wall!

The background is a piece of hand painted and stamped calico which I made quite some time ago. I also added some silver sparklies which really catch the eye (although not on the scan!). I ironed it onto Fast2Fuse and used one of my decorative stitches with pink thread to machine quilt it. The image was also stitched on (isn't she lovely?) as well as a piece of a ribbon featuring pink flowers (also available from Alphastamps). I added a quotation in paper: The very pink of perfection, which was stitched on.

Additional decoration is provided by pink flowers held down with size 11 seed beads which were also added to the border of the arch, after it was satin-stitched with pink thread.

Witch Hazel in Craft Stamper

Just a quick blog tonight as I've spend the past 2 days on 2 gorgeous workshops with the American beader Laura McCabe, starting to make the Crystal Burst Bracelet yesterday and the Cherry Blossom one today. There is still a long way to go on both but they are so gorgeous that I just know I will work away on them so that in due course I can wear them! These workshops were organized by Jo from the Bead Shop in Haddington and I'm already looking forward to future ones!

Yesterday my latest issue of the Craft Stamper Magazine arrived (October 2008 issue) and they published my Halloween card Witch Hazel. You can read all about how I made the card here. The image as well as the stamp are from Alphastamps.

Harrogate Quilt Show

The Great Northern Quilt Show is on at the moment and will last till Sunday. It takes place in Harrogate and normally I would be there but this weekend I''m doing 2 beading classes with Laura McCabe in Haddington, as well as having people coming over for a meal on Saturday night. No idea how this example of bad planning came about but I'm leaving John in charge!!

I had some great news from the show. My cushion Intimations of Immortality won the 1st Prize in the cushion section. This is the only UK quilt show which exhibits cushions and I try to take part every year as much as possible as I really enjoy making them, despite not being able to have them out on my own furniture at home as they would soon be covered completely in dog and cat hair!

This cushion travelled with the Riches of Stitches show last year when I also showed a picture ono this blog so this one is just a reminder.

My quilt Foxfires which won the European Quilt Championships back in 2006, also won a prize, this time the 2nd one in the theme section. The theme this year was A Hint of Sparkle, and was really the reason I entered the quilt as it was coming to the end of its exhibition life. It was so appropriate to the theme that I could not resist entering it into this show too.

All this made for a wonderful end to a week which began with a lot of worry about my Journal Quilt which got waylaid on its way to Houston and spend a week in a Parcelforce depot. Fortunately I was tracking it all the time and managed to contact Parcelforce and get things back on track. It arrived in Houston last Tuesday, taking 12 days for what should have been a 3 day trip. It's at times such as these that I realize just how much I'm attached to my work and how awful it would be to loose yet another quilt after the stolen Blue Waves one!!

Autumn Leaves in ATCquarterly

My ATC Autumn Leaves has been published in the ATCquarterly magazine issue 12. The challenge had the theme Fall Leaves and you can read all about the ATC I made here.

The transparency I used on the ATC is from Alphastamps!

End of Summer Gothic Arch

End of Summer is the theme for the Gothic Arches Challenge this week and indeed it really feels like that here in the Scottish Borders, with lots of showers and it's also getting dark so much earlier already.

As I also needed to make another arch for Linda K, who loves all things French, I concentrated my arch on that place and cut the background from a fabric/paper collage made quite some time ago which uses paper napkins featuring Paris cafes etc. I thought about holiday romances and how the end of the summer usually means the end of the romance too, so I added a paper image of a couple in each other's arms (European Papers) as well as a transparency of a kissing couple (Divasdeste). The text: The end of a summer love affair was added with my Dymo writer. I'm not sure any longer where I got the clock charm but it also says Paris and seemed to go with the theme of End of Summer

To illustrate the story even more I made the above back for the arch, with a paper background overlaid with a French text transparency. The image of the adoring couple is from Altered by Design and the Bonjour text comes from an old calendar with vintage French images. The front and back were adhered to each other by gold zigzag stitching around the edges.