A Productive Couple of Weeks

Another long absence from my blog :( but I have actually managed to get out into my work room and accomplish something.
I have just been checking back through my posts, looking for this, thinking it was only a few months ago and it was a WHOLE YEAR!! where does the time go?
Anyway the Shall I - Shan't I has become a shall, mainly because a couple of ladies want to make this pattern at a weekend retreat next month so it HAD to be made.
I must admit, I haven't made a quilt for a long time and I really enjoyed it, so much so, I have the colours picked out for the next one, with a little help from my colour expert Jenny S.

I have called this quilt Hatley Garden, as it reminds me of  - yes - the garden we had in the first house I can remember which was at number 1 Hatley Garden.

Not a great picture but I've got nowhere to hang a quilt to photograph, especially one this big!!

 close up

I am really happy with the way it has turned out, particularly getting the colours so close to the ones in the original design. I couldn't dye that piece of blue again, must have been a random dye colour I picked up somewhere, so used a piece of batik fabric Mum sent over in her Surprise Parcel.  Now I just have to sit and write up all the direction so it can be added to the projects over at Main Creek.

I have another group coming up to Main Creek at the beginning of May. They will be dyeing on the first day, then using their fabrics to make a satchel type bag and / or a book sleeve on the second day. So using my hand dyes again I have finally got around to covering my diary and making another bag, this time noting down what I was actually doing so it can be taught at the workshop. 

I love making these book sleeves, I get to use all those functions on my machine that I usually forget about. I love the braiding foot to couch down threads and actually use some of those decorative stitches. This time I used my alphabet card and the program function to put the days of the week along the inside cover and the months of the year on the spine. This one also has some stamping and fabric weaving. The embellishment on the front is an ugly piece of lace stuff that I bought at the quilt show a few weeks ago which I have then covered in layers of paint, gel medium and garnet granules, looks so much better than the black and gold it was originally.

 Front

Back

Bit blurry but they are the days of the week.

During all this productivity I also managed to wash up another hundred meters of fabric, here is half of it.

Thankfully no dust storms to contend with, just the occasional shower. It is now all neatly piled in 8 meter lengths or rolled back onto its tubes ready to be dyed, thanks to the help of Jenny S and Kim this morning.

I have also been re-vamping the Main Creek Blog. Now that blogger has pages, I can organise the site much better and have all the brochures available to download, another time consuming job, but it's getting there. - so back to it :)