Slow Bloggers Unite

Hey fellow Slow Bloggers!  

You might have had a quiet month, or an amazingly productive one, but don't forget you can join this month's Slow Blog linky - being hosted tomorrow by the lovely Moira at Kettle Boiler - to show off your month of creativity against the odds, celebrate one great make, or just tell us about the obstacles life put in the way.

Siblings Together Quilt 3 - Through the window

 I had hoped to finish this up on Friday, but it's done, Hooray!, and I'm linking up to Plum and June's Let's Get Acquainted linky, hosted today by Alyce at the lovely Blossom Heart Quilts.  If you are visiting - hello!  This quilt is for the charity Siblings Together (find out more  here).

 It is made using a bundle of Joel Dewberry's Aviary I won in a giveaway at Red Pepper Quilts, and I struggled to think how to use such large prints before settling on a window-pane design.  I like the thought of looking out at the little birds.

I bound it in the same white as the body of the quilt (Klona cotton), but I added in scraps of the patterned fabric on each side.

It is backed with Ikea Nummer...

and you can just make out the little cross stitches hand-tying it together in the patterned blocks where I didn't want to machine quilt.  I unpicked and redid my first attempt after Karen very kindly wrote to say how she did it here.  These stitches took me a whole afternoon - there were 80 of them!

I also unpicked the lines of hand-quilting I tried in the wider white sashing when my daughter, who had been watching me work, said in a very kindly voice "well, it's not what I would have chosen to do, but it looks very nice"!

I hope the teenage girl who will receive this quilt through the charity Siblings Together likes it.  Someone does. These fabrics have really grown on me and I'd rather like to keep it too!

I just have to wash it and post another pic (or ten) of it looking crinkly.

You can see some of the great quilts people are making for Siblings Together in the Flickr Group.

WIP Wednesday

[edited: managed to post with a para and photo missing. Trying again.]

Thank you very much to everybody who commented on my last post and made such helpful suggestions for quilting this Siblings Together quilt - I really appreciate it.

I'm back with an update!    I was supposed to be working yesterday but was stuck in with an ill child so, I spent the day tenderly ministering seized the chance and went ahead and did some machine quilting.  I pretty much stuck to my original plan and started by shadow quilting the patterned rectangles.

I then went twice round each block of four.

And then once round the outside of the whole thing.

I'm a bit concerned by the puffy central cross (possibly I just should have ironed it before photographing. And photographed it in the sun.).  Some hand quilting would definitely help knock it down, but at the moment I really like the unfussy simplicity and quiet plain-ness of it.

The final decision still to be made though is what to do with the patterned blocks. I didn't want to quilt them and Marit and Sandra had suggested hand tying them, which is the perfect solution.  I tried a couple of things and unpicked it, then I tried some cross stitches.

Something along these lines is definitely the way to go but I am worried it looks a bit crap and have to do a bit more experimentation!

After that I just have a bit of snagging to do.  It's my mission to have this done, dusted and washed by Friday since I only seem to be capable of working on one thing at a time (thanks for your tolerance:-)) and am itching to start a new project.  I'm linking up with the awe-inspiring lists of WIPs at:

Reasons to be Cheerful....

Having exactly enough (no more, no less) basting spray in the tin!

I like how the tin matches the quilt!

 This is my quilt for the charity Siblings Together - it's intended for a teenage girl.  I have plans for a bit of hand quilting...

combined with some straight line machine quilting, but don't know how to do it.

I was wondering about boxes inside boxes.  I don't want to quilt across the patterned fabric but these rectangles are approximately 7x9 inches.  Probably best to sleep on it (again).

I'm linking up, for the first time in ages to:

WIP Wednesday

I have a work in progress (happy singing).  Do you remember that ages ago I won a whole bundle of Joel Dewberry Aviary from Rita at Red Pepper Quilts?

I decided to make this into a quilt for Siblings Together but have really been struggling to think how to use these big directional prints. I wanted to do something really clever but dithering over it was getting in the way of other stuff so I decided just to make a very simple quilt that makes me think of a large window pane.

This is my design floor (haha)...

I have to lay everything out while I'm working or else I lose track of what I'm doing so I take each piece in order from the living room through to the dining room where the sewing machine is, then back to the living room again.

It's perhaps not very exciting, but with a wide white border, and maybe some hand quilting, it should be okay!

Linking up today!

Slow Blog Linky Party

It's the 15th of the month - where has the time gone?! Actually, for me, a lot of it went into the school holidays. A good time was had by all, although there were moments ....

Success of the month - I ran two miles and suddenly realised that if I go upstairs to fetch something, forget to bring it down with me and have to go up again (which happens a lot), I'm not out of breath by the time I've got to the top of the stairs for the second time. Result!   I'm mentioning it really because if I can do it so can anyone. Getting fit was one of my New Year's resolutions, and at that point I couldn't run for more than a minute or so at a time.   I'm doing the Couch to 5K programme, using podcasts from here.

Sadly I have completely failed in one of my other resolutions which was to do something creative every day.  I haven't been doing anything creative at all this month but c'est la vie.  On my immediate to-do list are yellow and grey Siblings Together quilt, my leaf quilt - think I can get it done in time to enter it here?! - and three very belated Pay it Forward gifts which I haven't forgotten.

What about you?  Have you been wildly creative (not envious at all...) or been doing other things?  I would love to hear about it, so do link up - you can grab a linky button from my sidebar - and visit other Slow Bloggers too, to show your support.

(PS, if you would like to host, just let me know.)

Slow Blog Linky

Just a little reminder Slow Bloggers, temporary or permanent, can join the Slow Blog Linky party here tomorrow.  I've been having a veeerrrrry slow month myself!

PS, if you were the person who offered to host an upcoming linky, please could you get in touch again - I can't find your comment/email - so sorry!