Decisions -some good and some undecided!

( sorry about the poor colour quality of the photo)

I am very pleased with the new walking foot for my sewing machine, it made very light work of quilting in the ditch on the William Morris quilt, as well as easily stitching the binding into place. A good buy.

 I hemmed the binding to the back by hand. Took me quite a long time, but I really like the finish it gives to the quilt. A good decision. 

 The hanging sleeve is made, but it needs to be attached to the back of the quilt... more hand stitching. The hands are aching too much today from all the hard work.... another good decision.

 

My cross stitch Cotswold sheep is also well under way, but I am having problems deciding how to present it for the exhibition. Maybe a frame... but with glass or maybe not. Or maybe mounted onto foam board..... decisions..... decisions. What would be best?

All the snow has now disappeared, and we have grey days of rain and wind. Not very pleasant at all. I have been staying at home stitching and have ordered the groceries online to be delivered tomorrow. Another good decision.

Quilting ... at last!

It finally arrived today.. 12 days late. The walking foot I ordered for my machine. The company were very good and sent me another, we are presuming the original was lost in the post.
 As a consequence I have spent the day machine quilting. The new walking foot worked wonderfully well and I'm really pleased. All the quilting is complete and now its time to put the binding on. It might actually be ready for the exhibition.

Even more snow!

  

Well the weather forecasters did not tell us we were going to have another 5 hours of light snow today.  All the snow was to fall in the East of England... not here! It was very icy as they did forecast. I thought with all the clever satellites and stuff they have nowadays the weather forecast could be more accurate.

 

Some of my UK Internet buddies are busy photographing footprints in the snow, and as you can see from the 1st photo, our snow is a bit deep for that. Herr Schnauzer has left lots of foot prints....and so has tried to help me... but the snow is too deep.

 

So instead I have taken this strange 2nd photo of the snow starting to melt on the garden chair and then freezing in this strange curve. It is solid and icy. Very odd.

 

However lots of stitching was done on the Cotswold cross stitch sheep. The light was particulary good today despite the snow.

A bit of snow and working in the studio

 

 It snowed most of the day today and caused a great deal of disruption to town and surrounding countryside where I live. We stayed at home in the warm and admired the views of the garden.

 

I spent the day working in my studio, on my pieces for the forthcoming exhibition by Great Western Embroiderers in Malmesbury next month. 

I used the  cross stitch software from Jane Greenoff to design a Cotswold sheep, Using 28 count linen and 2 strands of embroidery thread ( floss)  and am going to have to work extremely hard to get it finished in time. Nothing like a deadline to get me motivated.

  



Following the Cotswold theme, I have also been making a study of  the Arts and Crafts Movement and William Morris. Kelmscott Manor which is only a few miles up the road has been very inspiring. My sketchbook is developing the ideas on this theme and I have more ideas than time to bring them to fruition

 I have found this theme really fascinating to study... and to this end I have also made a large ( for me) patchwork sampler quilt, using modern fabrics influenced by William Morris. Here is one block.. there are 12 different ones all together. Suspect you will recognise the Strawberry thief fabric.

 

Just waiting for the arrival through the post of a walking foot for my sewing machine to help with the straight quilting I would like to do. If the walking foot does not turn up in the post soon, then I will have to resort to free machine quilting the quilt. I really want to keep the quilting plain and simple and know that If I resort to free machining it will become very fancy, I can never resist .