Please Miss, I've done my homework ...

... the other weekend Scrappy and I went to a meeting of the Yorkshire Modern Quilt Group.  One member was demonstrating how to do a mock piped binding by machine which looked very effective, and easy, and would be a wonderfully quick way of finishing quilts.  Hmm, not so.  Or at least, not in my case.  I'm not even going to show you a photo of my first attempt.  So I tried again the next day, and I'm not showing you a photo of that effort either.  Anyway, a few days later we got together and had a sewing (and chatting, and eating) day and we'd decided to have another go. I was still not happy with my efforts and we think it was because we were tucking the ends of our binding in to finish it, and that was making for an awfully lumpy, bumpy bit.  So we made another decision.  The next time we get together, we are going to have another go, but this time we will try joining the tails of the binding instead.  So, I've done my homework and have a little mug rug all ready to go, together with the mock-piped binding and I'm actually ready early cos we're not meeting up till next week.  Here's the one that's ready to go

I know I said I'm not showing you my 3rd (or was it 4th) go from last week, but here it is, just for a laugh

By the way, why is it that when you look at something, it's fine, until you look at a photo of it?  Can you spot the deliberate mistake?

A bargain ....

... or was it?

A couple of days ago I was in the supermarket with my father.  Amongst the items on his list was butter and it turned out that the brand he wanted was on special.  Buy 2 for £5.00 the poster shouted.  Only thing is Dad didn't want two.  So he picked them up anyway, and said he'd give the other one to me.  About five minutes later it suddenly dawned on him that his one packet of butter had just cost him £1.40 more than if he'd just bought the single one.  Hmm, maybe not a bargain after all?

And that, Dear Reader, is why you might have seen a middle-aged lady and her father stopped dead in the middle of the bread aisle of a well-known supermarket the other day, laughing their heads off like a pair of fools.

Sylvia's quilt ...

Today I am turning the spotlight on a quilter called Sylvia.  Sylvia is a friend of Gail, and Gail is the sister of Lynn.  It seems that Sylvia fell in love with Gail's version of my pattern, 3D Noughts and Crosses and decided she had to make her own.

Apparently, Sylvia started quilting at about age 9 or 10 in Zimbabwe where she used fabric from old, worn out clothes.  She learned to sew in school and it was all done by hand!  She learned more from the missionaries at the mission hospital in the bush when she was there at about age 17 but didn't have a sewing machine until she came to the US in 1988.  Gail asked Sylvia about her colour choices for her quilt and apparently purple is her favourite colour and if you enlarge the photo you will see that all the fabrics have purple in them to some extent.

I think this is a stunning quilt, thank you Sylvia for making it and also for allowing me to show it on my blog.

I have a question ....

... and I would really like to hear your opinions.  If you are buying a pattern, do you like to see a pretty, "posed" photo of the quilt on the front like this

or would you prefer to see a flat shot such as this

Finally, just because I can, here's a photo of a lovely azalea in our garden.  In real life it is actually a much deeper pink, but I am a useless photographer, and this was the best I could do.

I'm back again ...

... (did you even notice I was missing?)  We had a super holiday, travelling round Britain on one of these

(only kidding, we were on steam trains, but I saw this at one of the stations and thought it was great fun) seeing wonderful scenery and eating wonderful food. We've been from London, down to almost the tip of Cornwall, up through Wales to the top of Scotland, over the sea to Skye, back down the other side of Scotland and then down to London again. We went with our friends from Cornwall again this year, and as an added bonus Scrappy and her husband were there too.

We got home yesterday, and now the diets start and the washing machine and iron are working overtime. Soon I'll get back to pattern writing and then I can get Big Bertha out and start quilting things like Coloured Boxes and Tubix.