A Pretty Picture for Sunday - Steely Skies over Avila

Just back from a fortnight in Spain and Portugal with my daughter - our second stop was Avila, where we were treated to some dramatic light in the evening.

Free Motion Mavericks Crosses the Atlantic

While I am away in Spain, the link up will be hosted by 

Linda at Linda's Landscapes

Enjoy the linky everyone!

In the meantime I shall leave you with one of my favourite Youtube videos.  Wouldn't I love to be as skilled as Mustafa!

A Pretty Picture for Sunday - Shop Window

A dummy in the window of a children's clothes shop in Santiago de Compostela.

Free Motion Mavericks Crosses the Atlantic

While I am away in Spain, the link up will be hosted by 

Linda at Linda's Landscapes

Enjoy the linky everyone!

In the meantime I shall leave you with one of my favourite Youtube videos.  Wouldn't I love to meet an old lady like Carmen on my travels!

                                   

A Pretty Picture for Sunday - Whitchurch Silk Mill

A fascinating place to visit if you get the chance.  The river was teeming with trout, and we watched them swimming through the fast water beside the mill wheel.  The ducks are very handsome and contented too.

The mill clock was installed to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo, which was fought on the 18th June 1815.  Anyone who feels so inclined may like to raise a glass on Thursday.  Napoleon fans are excused. 

Welcome to Joyce, the latest follower - thank you for joining!

Free Motion Mavericks - Week 48 - No Quilting to Show...

... Just look at this wall instead.  

I have done no quilting at all this week because I have been getting ready to go away on a trip with my daughter to Spain and Portugal.  By the time this post goes up on automatic pilot we shall already have landed in Madrid.  So please link up as usual, and I shall visit all your blogs when I come home in a fortnight's time.

Linda at Linda's Landscapes has very kindly agreed to host Free Motion Mavericks next week and the week after.  Good luck Linda!  I hope you have no technical hitches... fingers crossed!

So what are these pictures of a wall all about?

Well look at Linda's landscape quilt, View From a Terrace.

Linda has a habit of giving me serious deja vu with her landscapes.  She might think she is depicting Lindaland, but all too often places look strangely familiar.  So I asked her a question about the wall on her quilt in the comments box under the pictures of A View From A Terrace:-  

"Are the coping stones on the wall pitched, flat or shaped?"

Linda answered:-

"... you'll never in real life find a drystone wall  topped with mold-cast capstones!"

Well, perhaps not a drystone wall, there is plenty of mortar in this stone wall...

...and the semi cylindrical moulded clinker coping stones are possibly a little unusual.  But it exists in real life!

This wall is part of the perimeter wall of Ashton Court Estate, a huge area of parkland with its own herd of deer.

The fact that Linda has depicted deer in woodland makes the whole coincidence even more extraordinary.   To my eyes her quilt can only be Ashton Court Estate in Winter. 

Here goes for week 48...

Many thanks to LeeAnna, Cynthia, Maartje, Bernie, Cindy and Linda for linking up last week to show their free motion quilting projects.  

If you love free motion quilting, whether you are a beginner just taking the plunge, or you have reached the stage where you can do ostrich feathers with your eyes shut and still achieve perfect symmetry, then please link up.

Remember, FMQ is FMQ, whether your machine was made last week, or it is older than your granny.

Here are the very easy and slightly elastic rules:-

1.  Link up with any recent post, ideally from the last week but within the last month, which features a free motion quilting project, whether it is a work in progress or a finish.

2.  Link back to this post in your own post and/or grab the linky button for your blog's sidebar.
  
3.  Visit as many of the other participants as possible and say hello in the comments box.

4.  The link up will remain open for four days, from midnight to midnight GMT for the long weekend, Friday to Monday.

So far quilters from the USA, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, France and Macau have taken part.  The first participant from each new country will get a special mention the following week.

Transforming a Skirt

At the moment I am sorting out clothes to pack for a trip away with my daughter.  It was time for a new skirt, so I got this one from a charity shop.  Here it is, still creased after spending days bundled up in a plastic bag.  It is too wide on the waist and six inches too long, but apart from that it is a perfect fit.  Also, it is definitely not my colour. 

But for a penny under a fiver, I'm not complaining.  Somebody spent rather more than that first time round at Marks and Spencer.

It is a medium weight viscose, with 22 (!) narrow panels, and each seam has an inset bias strip.

The first job was to unpick the facing at the back of the waist and make two 8 inch long darts to take in the fullness at the waist.  The easiest way to place the darts was to take in a section at the top of a seam, so the bias strip now appears lower down the back of the skirt.

The overlap at the top of the darts gave a fair amount of bulk at the seam line when I re-stitched the facing.  Some ruthless trimming was called for.

Before I could stitch the facing back to the top of the skirt I had to cut out a section to make it fit the adjusted waist measurement.  The new seam at the centre back of the facing gave even more bulk to contend with.

Time for a quick rant now...  No, it's pointless.  The person or persons responsible for innovating the waistless-low-slung-hanging-on-the-hips-skirts-and-trousers-that-make-it impossible-to-tuck-your-blouse-in-so-you-look-and-feel-like-a-sack-of-spuds look won't be reading.  Suffice it to say that I have no idea whether this skirt was cut to fit on the waist or hang listlessly lower down.  I'm past caring.  Mass produced clothes these days confuse me.  I am still haunted by a rather quirky denim skirt I tried on a few years ago.  Whichever way I pulled or twisted it it seemed to have strange bumps and misplaced darts.  After five minutes of fidgeting in front of the changing room mirror it dawned on me that it was a strapless mini dress.  Definitely not my style.

Anyway, I mention this because I know from bitter experience that it is not always possible to put waist darts into one of those low slung skirts because the manufacturers sabotage your efforts with the zip.  As soon as you reduce the waist measurement you can no longer get in and out of the skirt because the zip is too short.  So before I got too engrossed in this alteration I checked the zip, which looked suspiciously short.  However, on the inside I saw the opening stopped on a level with a piece of ribbon stitched across the zip, below which there was a generous inch more for me to play with.  It was a bit messy, but I managed it.

As for the hem, six inches had to go.  I didn't want the skirt flapping round my ankles.  There was no actual hem on the bottom, just an overlocked raw edge.  Doing a turned hem would be a complete nightmare, with all the seams between the panels adding so much thickness. I decided to try my luck with the zigzagger.  I attached it to the Singer 201K treadle and hoped for a quick whizz around the bottom of the skirt.  Instead it was a rather stressful experience, especially when I heard the sound of unoiled metal parts.  Fortunately it was the zigzagger that was in dire need of oil, not the machine. 

Here is the finished edge, with the excess trimmed away after doing the zigzagging.  It is hard to see the stitching, because by the time I took this photo I had dyed the skirt.  Not my neatest stitching ever, but I was beginning to believe in slapdash by this stage.

All the turquoise synthetic thread still shows up on the inside, as does the zip and the button.  I might get round to doing something about the totally useless button loop, which doesn't even stretch over the zip runner, let alone reach the button.  Quality control in the factory in China missed that one.

And finally, expertly modelled by our home-made dress form, is the transformed skirt, ready to be rammed into my luggage and taken off on holiday.  Just what I wanted - a navy skirt with a bit of flare and enough weight to prevent it blowing up too easily in a brisk sea breeze.

Linking up to Connie's blog Freemotion by the River for Linky Tuesday

A Pretty Picture for Sunday - Mr. Drake

A particularly smart mallard living beside the crystal clear water of the upper reaches of the River Test.

Welcome to Linda McKeen, the latest follower - thank you for joining!

Free Motion Mavericks - Week 47 - Yellow Cradle Quilt

Finished this week - the yellow cradle quilt with rudbeckias. 

The little squares and binding are all from the same fabric, a Japanese cotton which I bought in 2012 at the Quilts UK show at Malvern, from the stall of Euro Japan Links.

Because the main background colour of the Japanese cotton is a rich yellow, rudbeckias seemed to be the obvious choice for the free motion quilting design.  The main fabric in the quilt is a creamy buttermilk colour, to tone in with the yellow.

I kept the quilted leaves a simple shape so the flowers could be the main focus of attention.

The occasional flower popped up in the little squares...

... and because the Japanese cotton had so many vibrant colours, I alternated the squares to try and get an even distribution of the colours.

The binding was fun to attach, changing colour every few inches.  One corner turned out purple and green...

... one has a cluster of blue petals...

... and another one has pink, red and dark green.

The quilting thread is Gutermann's Sulky Cotton 30 in variegated colours, using three different shades altogether - the darkest for the binding, an intermediate pastel shaded thread for the quilting which went into the little squares, and a paler thread for the quilting in the larger areas between the rows of squares.

I wasn't sure how visible the quilting would be on the back, but you can just about see it.

And if you look carefully you will spot a few little pleats.  It is ages since I did any of these. Totally my own fault - I should have used a heavier weight of cotton, so I'm not going to fret over it.  Extra warmth for the baby.

Here goes for week 47...

Many thanks to QuiltMusings, Bernie, Julie, Alison, Maartje, Teresa and Linda for linking up last week to show their free motion quilting projects.  

If you love free motion quilting, whether you are a beginner just taking the plunge, or you have reached the stage where you can do ostrich feathers with your eyes shut and still achieve perfect symmetry, then please link up.

Remember, FMQ is FMQ, whether your machine was made last week, or it is older than your granny.

Here are the very easy and slightly elastic rules:-

1.  Link up with any recent post, ideally from the last week but within the last month, which features a free motion quilting project, whether it is a work in progress or a finish.

2.  Link back to this post in your own post and/or grab the linky button for your blog's sidebar.
  
3.  Visit as many of the other participants as possible and say hello in the comments box.

4.  The link up will remain open for four days, from midnight to midnight GMT for the long weekend, Friday to Monday.

So far quilters from the USA, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, France and Macau have taken part.  The first participant from each new country will get a special mention the following week.

Linking up with Kelly's blog My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday
and Sarah's blog Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop Whoop Friday
and Angie's blog A Quilting Reader's Garden for WIPs Be Gone
and Michelle's Romantic Tangle for Let's Make Baby Quilts
and AmandaJean's blog Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday.

Copying a Dress for my Daughter

This is one of my daughter's favourite dresses.  We shelled out a few quid on it on a trip to Bath a couple of years ago.  Before we actually bought it I had given it a quick inspection and told her "Easy peasy.  I could make you one of those.  Falling off a log."  Fighting talk.

There is nothing complicated about it.  A plain bodice, elasticated at the waist, and the skirt, conveniently enough, is approximately 36 inches wide.  No fastening at all, she just pulls it over her head like a jumper.

Now, with ten days to go before we nip off on a quick trip together, I am finally getting round to making her the promised dress.

She chose this pretty cotton about four years ago when she wanted a dress, but wanted a completely different style.  I kept telling her that the style she wanted wouldn't work with this weight of cotton unless it was fully lined, and I wasn't keen on putting in loads of effort on a fitted dress before she had stopped growing.  The material was stashed and the project shelved - until now.

I got off to a flying start a few days ago by nicking an idea from the inimitable and thrifty HoffiCoffi, who has a knack for using up old duvet covers and buying up several miles of bargain material for making toiles.  Instead of wasting perfectly good calico on a mock up bodice, I used an old duvet cover. 

Thank you Hoffi! 

Rather than draw out the pattern on paper, I drew directly onto the duvet fabric, cut out the front and back, and made the mock-up bodice.  Once I was sure my daughter could get in and out of it without bursting the side seams, I undid the stitching and used the duvet pieces as the pattern for cutting out the real bodice, managing to miss out the paper pattern stage altogether. 

Yesterday I cut out the bodice in the floral fabric and the lining and started sewing.

I managed to assemble the bodice, finish the neck edge...

...and tack the armhole edges together ready to bind them.

Now I have the job I love to hate - making my own bias binding from the dress fabric.

Linking up with Connie's blog Freemotion by the River for Linky Tuesday