Finished one in time!

After the furore that was last month I really didn't think I was going to make the august bee blocks in time because I have had so many commitments and have been trundling merrily up and down the m6 again, but in an effort to at least get them constructed by the end of august I started madly scribbling last night and I am pretty pleased with the result this morning.

And ready for their close up...

All packaged up and ready to go in the post after the bank holiday :) yet! ...that's still august right?!


I have to say thank you to Sarah (Miss Queen Bee) this month for the awesome snacks and music that she sent, each month the package gets bigger and I am kind of dreading what will be in it by the time it comes around to my month, in February!

Jx

Hoop Trio

Mum stop reading NOW!!! (just in case!)




I don't think that anybody that I know IRL reads my blog, I tried to keep it quiet; it's kind of like having a secret identity, but you never know what mum's get up to! :)

I worked all weekend on a present for my mum's birthday and I am pretty pleased with the result (isn't it great when that happens, I hate it when you work on something FOREVER and you just can't get it right - that's what work is like at the moment for me)

My dad has recently converted the back bedroom in their house to her new sewing room, but despite it now being filled with all the requisite crafty stuff it didn't seem quite complete... which is where I step in! I decided that what she really needed was some artwork, so I planned and planned and researched and planned and came up with these...

which quickly turned into these...

and not so quickly into this...

which I am little disappointed with as my sketch was so much better, but transferring it to the patchworked fabric was really difficult (I can tell you that it was NOT my best idea, I should have listened to Chris)

So together they read "karen's sewing room"

Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope that she likes it when I give it to her this weekend!

J x

Ooops, is July over already?!

Bee-ing did NOT go very well for me this month afterall (sorry Judith) I was super duper prepared at the beginning of July and did loads of research, settled on a block and even got my sketches sorted right back in the first week of July- all that was left to do was make the damn thing, but my weekends got sucked up with family commitments and I waaaaay misjudged how long that would take, before I knew it, it was the end of the month and I still just had a sketch!

Last friday I was determined to get it done, I sat down to cut and piece block one that evening and did the redwork on saturday morning... and saturday afternoon... evening... all of sunday... and it was all done on monday! How on earth it took me an entire weekend of sewing for that little block is beyond me; at least I managed to get my sky box clear of all those films I had hanging on and I think channel 5 played 'A Secret Garden' especially for me!

so here she is, I hope she was worth the wait!

and I made great time with block 2, I think its the first block ever that I have managed to get done in one sitting, AND it was one evening after work!

So even though this block decided to not let me sleep last week, it turned out alright- i was dreading looking at it the next morning in case there was a huge glaring mistake, but no, except for the customery idiotic mistake (this time sewing all the flying geese to the same side of the pinwheel because I had them lined up on the table so neatly) and subsequent unpicking, it went without a hitch! Yey!

Promise I will have the message block done soon too, but I had to get on with my mum's birthday present this week- pictures to follow next week!

Jx

ps. the second block is a Martha Washington Star, from Modify Tradition

It's on the way!

Exciting News!

I really love to experiment with quilt layouts and colours and have been thinking it would be great to have something quick and cheap that I can take anywhere and play around with. This was the starting point for Quiltography - it is going to be an iPad app that I am having developed for modern quilters that lets you choose from a library of quilt blocks and arrange them on your virtual quilt with colours or images from your photo gallery. This way you can put layouts together quickly and change them as much as you like without having all those bits of coloured paper lying around the house (which is what I usually end up with!) and other secret features that have yet to be announced, by signing up at the website now you can receive updates when more features are revealed :)

It's still in development, so if you have any ideas I would love to hear about them and if something you suggest is included in the final app or subsequent updates I will include your name and a link to your blog (if you have one) in the credits!

Please go over to quiltography.co.uk to register your interest and be one of the first people to know when it goes live on the app store! If you register on the site you will be entered into a prize draw to win one of three FREE copies of Quiltography on launch but for another chance to win a copy of the app all you have to do is write a blog post about it and comment on this post to let me know :)

We all like FREE stuff, right?

Jx