Behind the scenes

Maybe because I'm such a slow worker I occasionally feel hesitant to show too much of a work in progress, like I don't want to reveal it until it's done!  But I thought I should give a little peak of some of the stuff that's going on behind the scenes.  Do you ever sometimes think that the back of your piecing is strangely beautiful, however roughly finished?

The finished quilt will be made almost entirely of half-inch squares; four thousand, six hundred and eight of them to be precise.   I'm getting there.

Town and country

So I've finally caught up on all my favourite blogs.  In fact I spent so long reading through them that my foot, which was tucked underneath me, went to sleep.  When I stood up it was like having an uncooked sausage for a leg with the result that I just fell over sideways and my husband had to run downstairs and pick me up off the floor.

I've also edited the holiday pics and thought I would show a bit of what North East England is like.  I really love the little glimpses of round the world that you get from blogs, so hope you won't mind lots of pics which of course you will skip if you do, so that's okay too.

Anyway, first we had some culture. An English museum in the French style:

This is the Bowes Museum, built by the illegitimate son of an English aristocrat, and his wife, a French actress.   They spent their life together making a wonderfully idiosyncratic collection of objects and paintings, possibly as a kind of 'up yours' to the society which wouldn't accept him, and had this built to house them.  Tragically neither of them lived to see it finished.

The building below, also in the town of Barnard Castle, served a variety of functions, including butter market, fire station and court house.  It also had two bullet holes in the golden weather vane as a souvenir of a target shooting competition between two chaps in the early 1800s.

This sign was high up on the wall, so I had to look up Corn Returns on the internet.  Apparently each town had to declare the amount of grains sold in the local market, and the selling price.

In total contrast this was a typical local stone barn with slit windows and dovecot in the eves.  Although it has a corrugated iron roof some of them were tiled with massive split stone slabs (rather than slate). I think they are beautiful.

Being Britain the weather was variable. We walked to the waterfall with the longest uninterrupted drop in England on a very cold and wet day: photo taken in the two seconds we took to make the most of waterfall before turning back and does not show grumpy children. It was worth it though!

There was a lot of lovely sunshine however and the countryside was full of blossom.

How can anything as energetic and characterful as a lamb turn into something as stolid as a sheep?

I was so excited to see a hare - they are not a common sight in urban Scotland:-):

This is the kind of scenery lower in the valleys.

Higher up, it's much wilder.

Lots of beautiful walls.  I think I have a bit of a trainspottery nature, but I think the variety of styles of dry-stone dyke work is totally fascinating.

There's also something completely awe-inspiring about a dam - I suppose it's partly to do with controlling the natural environment, but there's also something surreal about them.  We walked across one:

and drove across another to reach one of the houses we stayed in.  That drop to the left was quite hair-raising.

A lapwing.  Love the fascinator.

Back to reality, and school, after Easter.  Then perhaps some quilting!

Toads amazeballs

A picture, a moment

Work has picked up as it does at this time of year, but I am making creeping progress with Leaves, little by little.  I wasn't sure how which colour thread to quilt the leaves before the obvious occurred to me (duh) - these are Oakshott cottons from the Rubies range, and all shot with red.  So I am using the same red Aurifil 28 I used on Big Red Triangles and Walk Don't Walk and didn't have to buy any thread.  Aesthetics with economy, yay!  That spool is going a long way.

It's often quite difficult to catch the iridescent quality of Oakshotts in a photograph, but I like this one.

Linking up with Martha!

City life

Could anyone not love robins?  

Linking up with Martha:

Ups and Downs

Up

Down

A small WIP/distraction, and some pics from the weekend.

Ta da! Adventures in quilt photography

Big red triangle quilt is done! It began at the Stitch Gathering where Fiona of Poppy Makes gave a class on this quilt and is the largest quilt I have made which is why it is sideways here...

The triangles section is made from a jelly roll of Joel Dewberry's Knotting Hill combined with triangles of natural seeded Klona cotton.  I decided to add sashing in more Klona in red - I absolutely love this colour, completely outside my normal comfort zone and can't wait to use it again.

It is hand quilted using Gutermann quilting thread in the neutral triangles and red Aurifil 28 weight in the red sashing.  I can big up Aurifil with a clear conscience because it was very kindly sent to me by Alex Veronelli in response to a joke I posted, and is indeed a lovely thread to use, never knotting or tangling. As well as hand quilting the sashing, I used it in my machine to sew some ties in between the rows.  You can see them as little dots on the back of the quilt in this pic.

I wondered how the red quilting would look against the trusty Ikea backing and I like the effect although you can see how the quality of my stitching varied, most wildly when I was watching The Bridge at the same time. You can see the acqua binding too - I loved the red/acqua combination so much I decided to go for an unashamedly hand sewn look on the back in the same red Aurifil. 

The family helped try to get a good photo - see my noble husband leaning into the arctic blast while Thing 2 takes the shot.

Thing 1 also acted as photographer while I balanced precariously on a rock trying to unfurl the quilt in the wind.

We spotted this lovely matching red boat down by the harbour.

The shots I took down there were only made possible by my little helper who hid in the folds and held on tight so that it didn't blow in.

It is her quilt and was such a labour of love that if it had blown in I probably would have had to go in after it!

Linking up with:

Really Random Thursday - Reasons to be Cheerful

My daughter designed and sewed this while I wasn't paying attention. I don't take any credit for it at all - it just makes me really happy that she did this all by herself!

Other reasons to be cheerful this week: sunny weather!  The flowers are coming out,

and so are the creatures.  I really love stripey snails.

Things are always interesting close up and I love that my camera can show the flowers on this tiny grass/sedge(?).

This satellite picture of a strange planet is actually a huge lichen.

Of course things aren't always sweetness and light and we are not the Walton family!  This always cheers me up though.