We sewed!

Usually when Scrappy and I get together for the day, we seem to do a lot of talking and quite a bit of eating (all healthy foods, of course) but precious little sewing.  Well today was different. Within an hour of me arriving at hers, we had both made a block for a charity quilt that Simply Solids are organising (to make quilts for the children of the MP Jo Cox who was murdered a few days ago).

Then Scrappy test drove my instructions for a block for Yorkshire Modern Quilt Group's BOM. No picture of that yet, but I'm glad she tested it cos I had managed to make a real pigs-ear of some of the cutting instructions.

As if that wasn't enough, she went on to try out a block for her next charity quilt and we discussed her idea for a block for the BOM too.

Don't worry though, despite all our hard work, we still managed to eat and chat and generally have a lovely day.

A beginning, a middle and a finish ...

... except I'll show them in reverse order I think.

A Finish: this is the charity quilt that Scrappy and I made together.  I love this (yes, even though it's scrappy) and have suggested to Scrappy that it should stay with me, but she doesn't seem to have heard my hints.  Anyway, here it is:

A Middle: this is to be another charity  quilt.  I used some of the leftovers from the quilt above, and made this very quick and simple quilt.  It's all pieced as you can see, but not quilted yet. I like how it's turned out though. 

A Beginning:  Remember those yummy fabrics I showed you here?  Well, now they've turned into lots of dots.  Don't they just look gorgeous together.  The next bit of this quilt will be the tricky bit. It involves machine applique for a start, which I've never done before.  I've had a practice though, and played around with stitch length, tension etc, and found that I can get quite a good result using invisible thread and a small zig-zag stitch.  I'd have liked to use a blanket stitch, but my machine doesn't feel that I should, so that is not a stitch option that's offered!  Wish me luck with this quilt, it's a challenge on a number of different levels.

As you can tell, I'm having fun again and I really think my quilting mojo, which went AWOL for a few months, has returned.

Now I remember ...

why I use a long-arm machine.  This week I had the "clever" idea of quilting a lap quilt with my domestic machine.  Well, my knees definitely do not think that's a good idea.  I've spent the afternoon on my knees (or so it seems) pin basting the thing. First I took it outside (and it was c-c-cold out there) to spray baste it.  That was no good, firstly cos it was windy, and secondly cos I ran out of spray. So back indoors and onto my knees I went.  Me and my knees, (and my back), hated that. Anyway, finally it was done, so then I started to quilt it, and guess what?  I hated what I was doing, so after 3 rows I stopped. This evening will be spent unsewing it and tomorrow Mr Fixit is going to set up Big Bertha.

I am wondering though (and so is Scrappy, I'm sure) why I've been playing around with this, when I have homework I should be getting on with.  This week we had a fun day together and started making blocks for a charity quilt we are making together.  This is a picture of the blocks we've made so far,

We saw the pattern in a magazine and both loved it so we decided to try and make a dent in Scrappy's stash of, yep, you guessed it, scraps, by making it together. This is my homework. Scrappy has a similar pile to play with, and we want to finish all the blocks before we get together again in a couple of weeks to put them together into a top.

While we were making the blocks, we were thinking that we'd both like one of these for ourselves, so quilts no 2 and 3 will probably follow on.  We were discussing colour schemes, and Scrappy wants an autumn one, I want a Christmas one, we also though a neutral one would look good.  Do you think we like this design?