Spring is here....

Spring has finally arrived, I think.  We have had a really mild winter this year, too much rain but very little snow....trouble is this kind of warmer spring weather, (hard frosts in the morning and bright sunshine days), makes you a little complacent, next week could be back to cold sharp winds....

The sheep are lambing thick and fast, cows are calving and although there are always problems all seems right with the world outside.

Primroses

In my little bubble of a sewing room pantographs seemed to be the order of the month.  Well, I'm a little late to post these as some were quilted up last month.
Quilt Path has been quilting up a storm, it's good to be able to change up the density of the designs to suit my customers likes and needs.

This is a fun quilt for Carols Grandson, it was difficult to catch the quilting design against the busy fabrics, I used Dave Hudson's 'dinosaurs' pattern, lovely fabrics for a child's quilt.

Not to be left out this quilt is for Carol's DH, love this piecing design. Carol sent the tops and backing to me in the post, left me to choose the quilting and was very happy with Buzz by Hermione Agee as my choice, it's a buzz saw type design, great for men. This quilt had a very dark backing fabric (Chocolat by Three Sisters), and was also a little difficult to capture the quilting but the circular design against the geometric lines was just striking...

I seem to be having a bit of a run on these 'trip around the world' type quilts....it's amazing how different they all look but strangely I don't seem to have taken a full photo of this one (note to self... when things settle down a bit time wise, I must remember to spend more time taking photos for reference). Jane chose 'feathered leaves' by One Song Needle Arts, it was a great match, this is a big quilt...

Next in line, a raffle quilt for one the local quilt groups. Souter Quilters in Selkirk, will be having their exhibition in June, some of the ladies pieced up this quilt to raise money for funds. again I was left to choose a design, this is Florance by Anne Bright, I quilted it with an open density for a softly draping quilt

This one is now off to the binder and will be finished very soon.

The Clock is ticking.....

The clock has been counting down since June 2013, the official start of the Common Riding which is the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Hornshole is 5th June but Rideouts start 4/5 weeks before that on 10th May...not long at all.....

Tick Tock....

Samples...

I've been away, well only away from the Internet, no connection for six days, not even for emails, so sorry if you had to wait for a reply. I've had exasperating conversations with Call Centre staff in India, I know they needed to ascertain whether the problem was with my equipment or the telephone company's line but given the fact that next door and  most of the town had an internet problem then it seemed kind of clear cut to me, (of course the towns problem was fixed within a day). After numerous phone calls I was totally shocked when one staff member told me to take a screw driver and open up the telephone socket....that was the last straw.  I think they have me flagged as a nuisance caller but if they got there act together and upgraded our line I am sure the problem would clear. I've been told we will have fibre optic broadband here in the valley in 2015, I'll believe that when it happens.

In between customer quilts I've been quilting up a few new samples to help show customers all of the different pantograph designs available out there in quilt land. I would never ever be able to show all of the different designs but hope that I can at least enable other quilters and piecers to know that there are thousands available and that they could even look out some designs for themselves if they wanted something different....

So, I don't need fancy quilt tops to distract or confuse just plain easily pieced tops....here are a couple of tops made from around half of a left over Layer Cake, it's Falalalala by French General for Moda with some additional yardage added.....I realised that this easily made top could be split into two different samples by pulling out most of the plainer blocks and leaving the red/green blocks.

I think this is called the 'double cut layer cake' block, I used Glide thread and Simply Cotton wadding, these are digitised designs quilted with Quilt Path....I intend to quilt 'all over designs' with my computerised system but still do custom work freehand as that is my passion.

For the green quilt I chose Green Tea Leaves by One Song Needle Arts

For the red quilt I chose Feathered Leaves also by One Song Needle Arts

We've had some wonderfully colourful morning skies lately.....