They did the Mash ..........

It's Halloween again.  If you've been with me for a year or more, you'll know that I love to hear the Monster Mash at this time of year, and here is this year's version.
Warning: it's not very scary just quite funny.

Happy Halloween

Blogger's Quilt Festival 2015 - Original Design entry

This is my entry into the Original Design section of the Blogger's Quilt Festival being organised by Amy Ellis from AmysCreativeSide. You can read more about the Festival here, but in summary, this is an event that Amy organises twice a year and it is open to anybody in the whole wide world (or further!) It is not a juried event, so if you have a quilt you would like to share, then just go here to read all about how to do it. In about a week, viewers can vote for their favourite quilt in each section, and there are prizes involved. To see all the entries in the Original Design section, just go here.

So, here is my entry into the Original Design category of the Festival.  This quilt is called Charming Columns, cos it's made from Charm packs and is asssembled into columns (aren't I clever at naming my quilts?) and measures 54" x 60".

 

This was started when I went to a class (which was run by my friend QuiltHaze) with Scrappy. I didn't want to make the quilt that everyone else was doing (yes I know, typical stroppy student, me) so asked if it would be OK to do my own thing and QuiltHaze was fine about it, so this is the result.  Just because I can, here are some more pictures of the quilt.

When it came to the backing, I found I had miscalculated somehow on the amount of fabric I would need, so I had to get creative, and here is the result

This quilt has been published in November's issue of British Patchwork & Quilting, and all of the photos have been taken from the magazine, with their perrmission.

Blogger's Quilt Festival 2015 - Modern Quilts entry

... for the past few years I've managed to forget to enter this event organised by Amy Ellis from AmysCreativeSide, so this time I made a big effort to remember.  The festival is open to anyone to enter a quilt and there are loads of different categories, there will be voting in each category for the Viewer's Favourites, and there are some great prizes too.  To read more about it all, you can go here.

This quilt, called Colour Boxes is my entry into the Modern Quilts section of the festival and you can see all the quilts in this section, here.

Colour Boxes measures approximately 50" x 50" and I designed it specially to use fairly large pieces of some fabrics that I loved and didn't want to cut up. Here is a flat shot of it

It was fun to make, and also to quilt.

I chose to do an allover quilting pattern that almost looks like great big flowers bursting out of the boxes and as luck would have it, I had some variegated quilting thread that has all the colours of the fabrics in it.

The pattern for this quilt was published in Make Modern last month.

Because ...

.... I'm a spoilt little princess, (OK, strictly speaking, I'm not little and I'm not a princess) but look what my lovely Daddy bought me recently.

By the way, I've had a few emails recently from people who are having trouble leaving me comments, so if you have a problem, would you mind emailing me at sue(dot)abrey (at) gmail(dot)com and let me know if you're using Chrome or something else and also what problem you encountered, so I can try and find out what's going on?  Thank you.

Handy Household hint ...

Here's another in my occasional series of Handy Household Hints.  This one is brought to you courtesy of Mr and Mrs Nomad.

1.     Break your tumble dryer

2.     Wait for a rainy day

3.     Decide to wash every towel you possess

4.     Take them to mother, who has a washer/dryer

5.     Make sure you don't work too hard while your washing and drying is being done.

Ooohh, look ...

... I'm a cover girl!

That quilt, called Charming Columns (cos it's made using charm packs, and they are in columns) is one of mine.  I couldn't show it on here until the magazine was published, but it's out today, and I've just seen the cover. I've never been on the cover of a magazine before, so I'm chuffed to bits about it. I will show some more photos of the quilt soon. This was started when I went to a class (which was run by my friend QuiltHaze) with Scrappy. I didn't want to make the quilt that everyone else was doing (yes I know, typical stroppy student, me) so asked if it would be OK to do my own thing and QuiltHaze was fine about it, so this is the result.

I'd like to thank the editor of the magazine, Joanna from British P&Q for making me famous, QuiltHaze for being happy for me to be a revolting student, Scrappy for suggesting we went to the class in the first place, my family for all their support, the local supermarket for the food they supply that keeps me going, Honda for my car that gets me to these workshops, and, sob, sniffle, I'm getting so emotional, anyone else who knows me. There, how's that for an acceptance of an honour speech? Worthy of the Oscars, or do I have some work to do on it?

I must admit that I have "borrowed" the cover photo from the magazine's website without their permission. I hope they don't mind.

If at first ...

... you don't succeed, keep trying. And that's just what I've been doing as you can see from my waste basket and pile of "stuff" next to it. I've had to stop now cos my sewing machine is refusing to work. I did think to check that it's plugged in and switched on, and it is, so it's just gone on strike. I'm hoping it's only going to be a short strike and it'll work again tomorrow.

Moving on to something else, do you remember our apple harvest from last year?

Well this year it's  a bit better, look.

DOHH!!

I am an idiot.

Official.

Why?

Yesterday I was at the local station to buy train tickets into the city for a hospital appointment today.  It was much, much later in the day that I realised my appointment is next Thursday, not today.  See, I told you I was an idiot.

Not to worry though.  I went back to the station today, explained what I'd done and asked to change the tickets.  They couldn't do that, but were quite happy to issue a full refund of the £2.50 cost of the tickets.  Great, thought I.

Then I was told there would be a £10 fee.

I decided not to go ahead.