A Tree!

Well, you wouldn't want a village without any trees now would you?!

[caption id="attachment_150" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="A liberated, free pieced tree"][/caption]

Lovely, wonky house

I have made my third free pieced house for Waif's quilt and think it's the most liberated yet (possibly aided by a glass of wine or two ;-)).  I pulled out a few random squares and rectangles from my scrap bag for windows and doors and sewed strips of the house fabric around them in a fairly unplanned way, then just fitted them all together at the end.  I particularly like the circular pattern on the downstairs window.  I made the chimney a bit too big, so just sewed another strip of sky on the top to compensate.  Liberated quilting ROCKS :-)

Another House for the Village

Why do I get the feeling that making these little houses might prove a bit addictive?!?



I really like this sky fabric, it reminds me of Van Gogh's Starry Night :-)

A Traditional Log Cabin and a Liberated House!

I have made a start on the boys' quilts and they will be at opposite ends of the quilting spectrum.  Gman's is based on a very traditional quilt block, the log cabin (although I think the dramatic red/black colour scheme makes it modern looking) and Waif's will be a "liberated", free pieced (no measuring, no templates, no perfect quarter inch seams - eek!) village quilt.  Here's pics of each so far:

First four log cabin blocks in various layouts:

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First house for Waif's village:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="First free pieced house for Waif's village quilt"][/caption]

Warm and Fuzzy Morsbags Feelings

I must admit, I haven't been doing much Morsbagging lately, for a few reasons.  Firstly, because I have been so busy with my patchwork/quilting but secondly because I was beginning to feel that I had given one to everyone I could think of, and more than one to some people (!), and that I was too scared to hand them out willynilly on the streets!  My experience with Transition King's Lynn of trying to give things away for free (fresh veg in that instance) wasn't altogether a positive one.  People are very suspicious of free stuff!!

However, this week, I took a Morsbag in to Sara at Nourish Cafe (a local wholefood cooperative cafe) and she loved it and asked if I could let her have some to give to customers in the shop.  First off, she wanted to buy some, but I explained the ethos of Morsbags and the fact that it remained very important that they were given away for free.  She suggested putting a poster with them explaining Morsbags and that she would be happy for the cafe to act as a collection point for people to donate their unwanted curtains, sheets etc for future Morsbags.  Newly inspired, I set to work and made loads of  Morsbags this weekend:







The second warm, fuzzy Morsbagging incident occurred in the local sewing shop.  I was buying some blackout curtain lining for Gman's curtains and had a rummage through the remnants while I was there, looking for morsbaggable material.  The lady at the counter remembered before that I made bags from the bits and asked me about them - I happened to have a couple with me, which she exclaimed over "they're beautiful!" and "look at these, aren't they wonderful?" to passing customers and other staff.  So of course, I had to give her a bag (even though it was one of my personal faves lol) and she was gushingly happy with it :-).  I came away with a lovely glowing feeling of having made her day!

Morsbag tally is now up to 88 so think I will have to make a couple more this week, just to get to a nice round 90.

Latest Sewing Projects

No, I haven't quilted the Jacob's Ladder yet *blush* but have finished piecing sofa throw:



and I think this might be a better size for first quilt!  It's the Army Star I made, surrounded by split nine patches.  As you can see, although it is another "scrap" quilt, I have been much more controlled in my use of colour so that it would blend with the sofa and curtains etc.  I think it has quite an old fashioned feel to it and I rather like it.

In a totally different style, I have been practising quilting on a very small scale with these fun little beach hut coasters and mat I made for mum's caravan:





They are far from perfect but think the wonkiness is "whimsical" (at least that's what I keep telling myself lol).  And it gave me a chance to try out different needles and so on with quilted project.  I used Insul-Brite batting, which is heat proof but does feel quite nasty and crinkly.

This weekend I went with mum to the Spring Quilt Festival.  It was amazing.  The competition quilts were beautiful and I felt very inspired to try new things.  Plus, I have never seen so much beautiful fabric and bargains and quilting books and quilting gadgets and....ooooooooooooooooooooh...it was marvellous!!  I particularly loved the quilts made by Pat Deacon.  And when I got home from the day, Gman had made this to put on the door:



Awwwwwwwww.

My next projects will be quilts for the boys.  Gman has requested a red and black quilt, which I am going to do in a log cabin style (watch this space for pics!) and Waif wants orange and brown.  I saw this picture on Flickr and think Waif's will be a wonky house quilt.