Now what does keith get up to while I'm playing at quilting? Well he rock climbs, mountain bikes and his new hobby is dry-stone walling. So he disappears into fields , regardless of the weather and builds walls-not bad for an old fellow! I'll post more photos when I find them on this pesky PC.

Then we tried out various methods for making stencils. Here you'll see experimentation with positive and negative stencilling. I used acryllic paints and cut away plastic with a soldering iron to make the stencils.

Then  I stencilled the pattern onto silk dupion using a nine patch block layout. Each block was quilted using outline quilting.

Ciity and Guilds Shape Module

 This was the the beginning of the Shape Module.

At  the end of the module all my work and samples were presented in this folder.

 This was the beginning of the art work on stencilling. We used jewellery as the source.

Mea Culpa!!!

 Oh dear, I've been a proper shocker with my blog. I just seem to have been so busy and you know what it's like- you keep saying, "I'll do it tomorrow" and something else crops up! So I now have a load of stuff I need to get on here or people will abandon me.

Putting it all together

Surprise! Surprise!

So...the next seagull challenge was to make a block with points. I decided to do prairie points -quite pleased with the result. I love it when the parcels arrive in the post and I see everyone else's work. The colours for this block were lovely to work with.

The Amazing Royal Wedding

Well... I enjoyed every minute of it. What a fabulous day watching Kate and William getting married. The pageantry, the splendour, the sense of occasion, the dress...I loved the Maid of Honour -what a stunner she is! Hope everyone who watched , wherever in the world, enjoyed it. Made me REALLY PROUD TO BE BRITISH!!  Now back to my prairie points block.

Two weeks in US

Spending 2 weeks in US visiting my gorgeous grandson and his mum and dad. I'm sure I'll make time to search out some quilting shops - planning a quilt for my newly decorated bedroom in England. It's really tough having to do this on my hols...

Wedding Anniversary

Today marks 39 years of married bliss. So I now have to log out and be whisked off to a lovely Indian restaurant. Back to the blog later.

Circular Seagulls still Flying Along

The Fourth Block

Number 4-whoever started this one has chosen some lovely colours. It was a pleasure to make and I think one of the joys of P & Q is selecting the colours and fabrics. I've just finished Block 5 but forgot to photograph it before I posted it to the Chief seagull!

Grace's Playmat

I've enjoyed making these blocks for a friend's brand new grand-daughter. One of these things that's good to sit and stitch while watching telly.  Hoping to do a monkey but drawing it is proving a challenge!

Back to the Blog!

This is going to be a present for my lovely dughter-in-law



Might frame this one...my husband says it's artistic!

 I've been a bit remiss in keeping my blog up-to-date. I've been so busy sewing! So what have I produced and why. Well, I was so inspired by Ineke Berlyn's workshop that I just had to finish two projects and not add them to my UFO's. The first is the stitch 'n flip landscape inspired by the artwork of the Dutch artist, Tom Schulten. The second was because of the workshop on Lutrador. Thought you might like to see them! 

Sea Life Quilt

I made this for my first grandchild, Ezra (called Ez or Ezzie). He was born at the end of December 2010 and of course he's beautiful. I took this quilt across the Atlantic to Virginia for him. It's been very well used as a playmat and has survived numerous washes-thank goodness!

Knotted and Tied Quilting

Last but not least in this unit we produced a piece of work which was really bias strip patchwork and tied quilting.

Hand Hooking to Create a Textured Surface


The idea was to re-create in collage and fabric, man-made items or structures. I used a stone wall. I really enjoyed this, especially the hand hooking. Keith wasn't too pleased when I used one of his tee shirts because it was just the right colour for my stones!

Free Motion Quilting



Hand Hooking

Tesselated Patchwork

 Tesselated patterns in tiles we had to experiment with shapes which fit together. The art work was using paper shapes and paper manipulation techniques.

The curled and rolled paper has got a bit squashed!

Folded Star Patchwork

Now this looked really complicated but was quite straightforward once the experts showed me how! By this time on the course, I'm really enjoying being much more conscious of colour.

Stained Glass Patchwork

Mono printing, sponging and many other ways of producing a textured effect were the order of the day for this module. Using different papers and paper manipulation techniques too. We also made paper including silk paper. I must admit that I didn't enjoy this but using corrugated, tissue, metallic, newspaper etc. to make collages was ok.

The Third Unit - Texture - Architecture

Time to start the next unit. Looks interesting. Thought I'd start with the cover of my portfolio.

This was the first time I'd tried paper piecing and I was delighted with the result. The course was proving to be very challenging, especially the amount of work we had to do at home.

Fabulous Workshops

Just spent two days attending workshops presesnted by Ineke Berlyn, a Dutch textile artist. Her work is mostly about landscapes. On day one, we produced mini landscapes using stitch and flip and lots of scraps of materials. They were very effective and I'll post a picture of mine when it's finished. On the second day, we used Lutrador - a new medium for me, and made landscapes with acrylics, soldering irons, bondaweb etc. I always love looking at everyone else's work and wasn't disappointed at the end of these two days...photos to follow. You might like to look at Ineke's web page.
http://www.inekeberlyn.com/

Resolved Piece-Humming Birds



1. Source

 At the end of each unit we had to do a piece of work which would be assessed. This was starting with a source and developing the ideas, colours and design to produce a body of work based on the theme. I chose humming birds because I'd seen some really beautiful ones on a visit to the Cascades near Seattle.

3. Some ideas about portraying quick flight

4.The finished quilt design

5. A second design idea using feathers

6. A very 'male' quilt design

2. First ideas

Can't seem to get the hang of placing photographs just wher I want them...I'll keep working on it!

Wild Goose Chase Block

But the colours were fine!

A quick visit to American blocks loosely linked to animals and living things!

Not my best artwork!