Raining sunshine

Gosh, the responses to that last post have been WONDERFUL!  I now have sixteen blocks on my design wall, waiting to be assembled into a quilt top.  It's my birthday on Tuesday and I think since I have so many blocks already it's the perfect excuse for a whole day of sewing.  Who knows, I may even get it quilted now that I've discovered the joy of spray-basting.  (Did you know?  I did not know.  Spray basting!  It's so quick, and so flat, and so much better for my knees!)

I tried it for the first time on a quilt I've just finished as a commission for a lady called Claire - or rather, for her young daughter.  She'd already bought a beautiful felted mobile of fluffy clouds with falling rainbow raindrops from my very talented friend Peppercorn Crafts, so when she wanted a quilt too, I immediately thought of Dashwood's new Rain or Shine collection designed by Stephanie Thannhauser and raced off to Simply Solids with an excuse to buy it at last.

I think it's worked, don't you?  Nice and simple, to show off those lovely jolly prints.  I mixed in some new mini pearl bracelets and some of my very precious hoarded Aneela Hooey cats from her Hello Petal collection, since I noticed some of the clouds in the Rain or Shine fabrics had text that said "raining cats and dogs" and I knew Claire liked kittens.  What kind of person doesn't like kittens, after all?

I bound it in some navy stripes to keep it from getting too sugary, and may I say I'm getting quite good at this machine binding malarky.  Look at that corner, eh?  A lot better than they used to be!

I found 2 yards of a pretty blue blender called "Stonehenge" at good old Abakhans and decided it looked a bit like a slightly cloudy blue sky, which worked with the theme.  Then I got carried away and added a few squares to the front too, so that I almost didn't leave enough to cover the back...

I love the smiley sunshine and the little rainbows of Rain or Shine, but honestly my favourite fabric in this one is still those little white cats.  This square is my favourite - I always thought "Tiddles" was the traditional cat name, but "Tibbles" is much better.  It makes me think of Tybalt, the King of Cats from Romeo and Juliet.

By the way, I'm calling this quilt "Raining Sunshine" after the theme song of a rather wonderful film called Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  Trainboy was OBSESSED with that song for months, and remarkably enough I can still stand to listen to it.  Occasionally.

S'nice where we live.

Trainboy is off school sick (as you can see - they have a rule that you have to keep them off school for 48 hours if they puke, even if they are right as rain the very next morning) so we put on our sunhats and walked down the canal from Marsden to Slaithwaite.

And very lovely it was too.

Friday night block party. We know good times, around here.

via Instagram http://ift.tt/15egWJU

Plan for today...

A Fairy Door!  My son and I are big fans of our local toyshop, The Magic Box, who recently started stocking Fairy Doors from the Irish Fairy Door company.

Now, I am all about supporting local business, and I would always buy Trainboy's endless stash of Brio from the Magic Box, but these fairy doors cost £20 and I was pretty sure I could make one myself.  So when Trainboy stated categorically that he wanted one, I got on Google and eBay and sourced the items above for £6.05, including postage.  Now I just have to get on with painting enough coats of enamel paint to make an MDF door glossy, and hopefully Trainboy won't have lost interest by the time I'm finished...  

Fantastic birthday card designed by Trainboy for his cousin!

...there's even the right number of knobbles on each brick for both rows to fit together.  Genius boy. 

TWO finished quilts. Yes, two.

Hurrah for finished objects!  

Fired up by my quilting success last Saturday, the past two evenings have been spent putting bindings on those two unfinished quilts.  I was so buoyed up with success that I even thought it might be a good idea to emulate one of those lovely, aspirational quilt blogs, full of wonderfully artistic photos of quilts as held up by members of their family.  Sadly I didn't have any antique barns or wildflower meadows to hand, but it was reasonably sunny so I popped into the garden with Trainboy and a camera.

...BRILLIANT.  Stay like that, just keep still so I can get it in focus.

Er... please could you hold it up again?  No?  Okay, let's try spreading it out on the bench... 

Better.  How about a smile?  ...is that a smile?  It is?  OKAY THEN.

This one was machine bound with zig-zag stitch, which I seem to be getting a bit better at.  It has certainly used up a big stack of repurposed and vintage fabric scraps, and I was genuinely surprised at how pleasing I found the light/dark contrast in the blocks.  A point to remember for my next kaleidescope quilt, I think.

The second one was the pink quilt of 5" scrap squares that I backed with a woolly blanket.  I am delighted to report it stood up to washing and tumble-drying on low heat excellently well - look:

Another machine binding, too!  Straight stitch this time, visible on the back inside the binding line which seemed to suit the quilting pattern I'd used - 1/4" lines either side of every seam.  To my surprise, although the zig-zag method is probably more forgiving, I much preferred using straight-stitch.  Here's how the binding looks on the front:

It really is beautifully thick and snuggly, this one.  I'm very pleased with it - look how pretty it is!

And speaking of pretty, here's Trainboy again, insisting that this time he will "smile properly"...

Hum.  Yes.  Ah, bless him.

I shall probably put both of these in the Slaithwaite Emporium and list them in my Etsy shop fairly shortly.  Who knows, I may even sell one of 'em.  See you soon!

I am the worst blogger!

To be honest I shall probably continue to be the worst blogger, so let's just keep moving forward, eh.

Things have been MADE, and blog posts written (in my head, where it doesn't really count of course...) and the odd photo has been taken.  So today I should like to show you a cushion, which was begun last week and given to its recipient today.  It is a very special cushion nonetheless.


I have teacher friends and relatives and I know there is a wild proliferation of chocolates and mugs at the end of each school year, so I wanted to make something, but really I wanted to make something with Trainboy.  Trainboy, who got a perfect score of "A" for effort in every subject this year... except Design & Technology.  Trainboy had no ideas.  Nor did I.

But then I scored some super-cheap fabric marker pens in TK Maxx and brought them home with a sudden brilliant idea.  I ironed a bit of white cotton, handed the pens to my son, and asked him to draw a train.  Then I suggested we went and chose some fabrics to use for the cushion.  My idea was to put the drawing on one side and a bit of pretty patchwork on the other, so his teacher could use it either way, depending which she preferred.  I mean a teacher probably collects an awful lot of other people's children's artwork...

What co-ordinates with a blue, red and green train?  Why, delicate shades of lime and sage green, and perhaps a bit of neon orange, of course!  And yes, that is some of my precious, precious Denyse Schmidt there.  He's got some taste, at least.  The block is basically "Scots Plaid" from the marvellous 500 Quilt Blocks by Kerry and Lynne.

It was a bit of a challenge but it worked, I think?  I ironed some lightweight stabiliser over the back of each panel, overlocked the inside edges, and put a reasonable zip in the side.  We gave it to Mrs K this morning and she seemed to like it.  She is a really marvellous teacher - I think Wilf and I will both miss her next year!

When children dress themselves...

...I'm assuming that's green in honour of the Sprint Jersey for this weekend's Tour de France Grand Depart.  WHO KNOWS though.