A lot has happened since my last post.

I celebrated my diamond jubilee - if the queen can do it so can I! I had a great party with all my family and friends at a local hotel. We had a ceilidh band and everyone had great fun. The only down point was that I had distributed 60 sky lanterns and had great visions of them gently floating up in to the night sky. Unfortunately it was blowing a gale and they were getting blown on to cars and the hotel roof so we had to abandon it.

The day after the party we had a family get together and bbq. It was a beautiful calm evening and we managed to release a lot of the lanterns that had been leftover from the night before. We had lovely food and great fun - thank you to my wonderful children who organised it.

On the quilting front I have done absolutely nothing but I am hoping to get some done during the holidays when I am confined to quarters because there is no bridge to go to. With bridge in mind it has been a busy month with various competitions followed by the Christmas parties. We will finish the year with a league match tomorrow evening followed by the final Christmas party on Thursday and another club night on Friday. Then we stop until the new year except for a charity festive fun day between Christmas and New Year.

I have managed to finish a couple of ornaments for my grandchildren. When I say finish that is exactly what I mean - they are cross stitched and I did that years ago so all I did was finish them - big effort!!!

Only 6 days to go until the big day........

Going Home

This picture is part of the inspiration for my piece. It hangs in our “good room”: so called because when our children were young we had 2 rooms, a living room and a “good room”.  As the names suggest we lived in the living room but when the children were in the good room they had to be really really good J. Anyway back to the picture – it is a print by a local artist, Charles Kelly,  and is coincidentally called “Coming Home“. I love the picture because I see it as the A77 - my road home. When I come down this road, whether I have been away for a few hours or for a few weeks I love my first glimpse of the sea and this picture mimics that view. To me there are two sides to Ayrshire – farming and the sea. I like the way this picture shows both aspects and I am going to use it as my basic layout. There are other elements I would like to include but they will come into at the design stage.  I am also considering including the road in my picture but that too will be decided later.

Yay I am on my way!

I attend bluepatchquilter Sheila’s quilting class. This year our project  is “Home is where the Heart is”.  We have to design and make a small quilt that is inspired by a place that we love.  I got really excited when Sheila told us about it because I have always wanted to do an art quilt. The finished quilt will be in vertical panels with each panel representing a feature of our chosen place – lots of chances to do some design work..

We have had basic lessons in colour and texture and now we are ready to think about the design of our piece. I have been mulling over my subject matter for weeks. I lived in Calgary in Canada for a wee while and thought of basing it on that,  I also considered a little holiday town that we used to go to when I was a wee girl and my husband and I have visited Africa a few times and we just love it so I considered it because it is so beautiful and I would be spoilt for choice as far as subject matter is concerned. I just haven’t been able to decide. Then on Thursday I was driving down our beautiful coast when  I decided that the best subject matter was right on my doorstep so  I have decided to use my home county, Ayrshire, as my topic.

Last night I drew out a spider diagram on the back of an envelope; it was the only thing I had to hand when inspiration hit!

 It looks huge but I just wrote everything that came to mind and I can eliminate as I go along.  I have a very rough layout planned now too so now I can work on the detailed design.

Yay I am on my way! 

Diamond Jubilee celebrations

I had a great weekend last weekend. It was my big Diamond birthday and I celebrated with a ceilidh  in a local hotel. Many of my friends and family came along and we all had great fun. On Sunday my family organised a bbq and we had a great day. I had planned to set off 60 sky lanterns at the party on Saturday but unfortunately it was blowing a gale and they were being buffeted by the wind and it was all a bit of a disappointment. However Sunday was beautifully calm so we managed to release about 20 and they floated off gracefully in to the night sky.

I got loads of beautiful presents and I had to open them in three sessions because I was getting so emotional. Now I will have to get the thank you letters written.

Life is back to normal this week and with no party to organise and think about I have managed to fill my time though I am not sure what I achieved. This evening we are off to the ice hockey with my friend, my son and his family

Sunday - my day of rest.

Firstly I took my lovely wee dog to the obedience and agility class. It is in a field at the bottom of a field and because of the recent rain the access was liquid mud. My wee dog is white and about 6 inches off the ground so by the time we were finished she was a muddy pup. As soon as we got home she was popped in the tub by my husband and then handed to me to dry and groom.

This afternoon I machine quilted the baby quilt and prepared the binding. This evening I finished off a wee Christmas mitten for my grandson. However when I turned it inside out it started to fray so I have now blanket stitched it and I am going to run round it with the machine just to make sure it is secure.

Now that I have written everything down it doesn't sound like much but I seemed to be very busy and productive all day.

Yes I know my blogs are intermittent but I am going to be the queen of blogging from now on - I promise.

At the moment quilting wise I am finishing a quilt that I started in July for my second cousin's baby. It is a crazy nine patch playmat and I foolishly decided to hand quilt a motif in the negative squares. Thankfully I have finished all 45 motifs. Most of them are different but I have multiple hearts and stars. It was a challenge for me to design the motifs because the squares are very small so the motifs had to be fairly simple. Tomorrow I will bind it and then it will be ready to be handed over when I see the baby's grandma in a few weeks. I will post a photo tomorrow when it is finished.

Apart from that I have been organising my diamond jubilee party. Well I thought if it is good enough for the queen it is good enough for me. I sent eh invitations out at the beginning of October and asked everyone to reply by today. Did they? Oh no they didn't. Now do I assume they are not coming, assume they are coming or try to contact them to find out what they are doing. For a few of them I can text, email or fb them. Others I would have to write to but having said that I am not sure that I even have the right postal address. What to do.....

Today we went birthday present shopping and then instead of watching the fireworks we went to the ice hockey. I enjoyed the game because it was tense and exciting with lots of goals. Unfortuantely there weren't enough goals for our team and they lost 7-5 :-(

Here I am again almost a year after my last post. I just don't seem to have time to post here. it is not that I don't have anything to say it is just a time issue. I am quite a prolific poster on Facebook but I think I avoid posting here because I feel that I have to write a reasonable length of narrative and that takes so long.

This week the weather was superb and I have made the most of it. I have rediscovered the joys of wandering round the lovely gift shops in my home town and have enjoyed sitting on the wall on the prom and watching the sea when the tide is not too far out. I also enjoy watching the daytrippers on the beach and having coffee out side and just watching the world go by.

I had some good news too - I won the UFO zapper prize on the Popular Patchwork forum. I managed to finish a wee cuddle quilt and gave it to my grandson to take on holiday

and inspired by the holiday theme and I dug out a bag and finished it for my daughter to take on her holiday.

When my prize came it was gorgeous - I just love Clarice Cliff designs. I will have to decided on something beautiful to make with it - I am really looking forward to it.

I have already started on my next UFO. I am finishing it to give to my Cousin for her new baby but for some reason I have decided to quilt a wee motif on each of the plain squares and there are 45 of them. I think I have done about half.

I do hope that someone reads this but I have the feeling that it falls on deaf ears.