This is the quilt that I sent to my October partner, Terry, for the Doll Quilters' Monthly swap. The theme for the month was to show where you live, so I decided to base the quilt on the coloured houses seen in Bristol - we live just seven miles outside.
I shall cheerfully own up that I had a few tussles with this quilt, with the surprise pleat on the back and the skipped stitches on corners.
I was in a bit of a quandary over the free motion quilting, thinking the meander design on the front of the houses might look like cracked rendering. In the end it doesn't look too bad, and I varied it with a pebbly design for the ground.
Also there was great frustration with right angles. I chose the materials for the colours rather the weight. They were a touch too lightweight, and I just don't do starch, so I had to live with the shifting angles.
But in real life many of these houses have slipped here and there. Doors can be slightly out of line...
... or well and truly crooked...
...and as for chimneys, they can be all over the place.
My husband and I had a brief discussion about the windows. He said I had put Georgian windows on Victorian houses. I said they were early Victorian, so there is hardly any difference.
All told, I was pleased with how it turned out. Someone might look at the bright colours and off angles and think it is badly executed Toytown. My answer to that would be that this quilt is the nearest I have got to photorealism. People here who have seen the quilt instantly start debating which part of Bristol it is and which street it shows. The photos on this Flickr group show the scenes we see every day...
http://www.flickr.com/groups/colouredhousesofbristol/pool/with/9035260579/#photo_9035260579
The house my husband was born in - and still lived in when we met - is in this picture...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/261049/8234408515/in/pool-colouredhousesofbristol/
... fourth house on the right in the long terrace that goes right the way across the picture, and here is a picture actually taken on the street a few doors down from the house...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/crabchick/9324205864/in/pool-colouredhousesofbristol
Up until about twenty years ago most of these houses were grey or very pale colours. It is only recently that all these bold colours have appeared. They took some getting used to, but now I rather like them.
Linking up again today with Sarah's blog Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop Whoop Friday
and Leah Day's blog for Free Motion Friday.
What a wonderful tea party it has been! All your comments have been such great entertainment, so before announcing the winner of the tea cosy, thank you to everybody who took part, and it is time for a few special mentions:-
Esther for being so sporting. Even though she opted out of the draw (it just wasn't going to fit her teapot) she left a comment in Dutch. Thanks to Esther and Translate Google my daughter and I no longer say "on the settee" but "op de bank."
Leo in Germany for her little snippet of German followed by her unrestrained enthusiasm for tea.
Mystica from Ceylon (I'm far too old to say Sri Lanka), who gave the cosy a chance to go and live where tea is grown and cricket is played.
Reb Thack for telling me you can get PG Tips in San Francisco.
Pippirose for making me want to try Formosa Oolong.
Melissa for her rather esoteric taste - eggnog chai latte.
Tina A. likewise, for Read My Lips - black tea with vanilla, mint, chocolate, peppercorns and little red candy lips. It will never catch on in transport caffs.
Anyway, no prizes for spotting that our regular everyday and all day tea is Yorkshire tea, blended by Taylor's of Harrogate. Available in our local supermarkets, and occasionally it comes with a caddy with Yorkshire scenes on it.
I particularly love this side of the caddy - dry stone walls, sheep, cricket. All very Yorkshire.
Now, on to the prize draw...
... and because we have a spare caddy, all 72 names went in, carefully folded and all mixed together. Entrants near to home (Gloucester and Nottingham), from all corners of the USA and Canada, one each from Spain, Norway, Germany, Israel, Ceylon, the Philippines and Malaysia, and from as far away as Australia. And some from I didn't know where.
It was all too exciting for me. I needed help from my totally detached coffee-drinking son.
So in the interests of cricket, tea and fair play, here is the video of the draw. It's gripping stuff.
We are thrilled to announce that the winner of the tea cosy is Carla!
Update - Carla is in Holland! I now have her address so I can post the tea cosy to her, and she sends everybody her greetings... see her comment at the end of the tea party.
Of course after the draw I was so exhausted I needed a big mug of tea.
Welcome to the latest followers, Prairie Stitcher and Nicole Sender - thank you for joining!
Have you ever turned a corner, hoping for a nice sharp turn,
but the machine misses a stitch on the turn so the corner is chopped off?
This is what was happening on my last but one project when I was doing a bit of quilting with the Singer 15K hand machine. I knew there had to be a way of avoiding it, and I have finally worked out how...
When the needle goes into the fabric, before lifting the foot and turning the work, make sure that the needle is still on the way down. Then once the work is turned and the foot is back down, let the needle complete its downward journey and form the stitch. So far as I can fathom it out, if the needle is so far down that it is already in the process of forming the stitch when the work is turned, the threads can slip out of place underneath the bobbin plate and the stitch fail.
I won't tell you how long it has taken me to solve that problem. Too embarrassing.
Welcome to new followers Pippirose, Anna McCurdy, Debbie, Hueisei Ong, Beth, and Alida P - thank you for joining!
Thanks again to everyone who has commented on the Tea Time Give Away. Time is running out... midnight tonight GMT... so if you live in the Western hemisphere, don't get caught out!
A beautiful rooftop at the monastery at Czestochowa, taken on 17th August.
Welcome to lots of new followers today - including those whose avatars have popped up... Luanne Pang, Debra Kay Neiman, Sowing Stitches, A. Shipley, Tami C, Lee, Catskill Quilter, Nanbon44, Og19quilt, Dorian, Ytsmom, Kathy H, Debbie Sauer, Gill Watson, Donna Besnahan... and all the followers who have left comments on the Tea Time Give Away.
Thank you to everyone who has left comments and for making it such an entertaining tea party!
If you saw the post last week showing a free motion quilting practice piece, this little tea cosy will look familiar. The sewing project I had in mind all went to plan, and I am pleased to be joining in the Quilting Gallery Quilters' Blog Hop Party by giving away this tea cosy, made entirely on two of my favourite machines. All the free motion quilting was done on the 1945 Singer 15K treadle, and all the rest of the stitching, including the straight line quilting, was done on the 1949 Singer 15K hand machine.
The cosy fits a small teapot. The photos show a one pint teapot.
Here it is with a large mug, strictly for serious tea drinkers, as it holds three quarters of a pint.
More genteel tea drinkers will prefer a cup and saucer. In this photo the teapot is out of sight hiding under the tea cosy.
So, if you love tea and would like the chance to win this little cosy to brighten up your tea time, all you have to do is leave a comment before midnight GMT Tuesday 26th November. The winner's name will be announced on Wednesday 27th. I will post to anywhere in the world...!
If English isn't your first language, feel free to leave your comment in your own language. Let's make this truly an international tea party!
When you leave your comment, tell me how you like your tea, how many gallons a day, with biscuits or sandwiches... or, if you don't like tea, who you would give this tea cosy to as a present.
And there is a bonus...
... if you are already a follower of this blog, or if you join as a follower before leaving your comment, you qualify for an extra little present. Although I recognise many followers' names straight away, just help me out please by mentioning that you are a follower.
These three scraps and two strips of bonus triangles will be yours to use in any project you want. So if you think the tea cosy needs a matching table mat, you have a head start.
Because this blog hop is called Giving Thanks something tells me it might have something to do with Thanksgiving. Well, even though we don't have Thanksgiving here, it doesn't mean we don't say thank you, so here goes...
A big thank you everyone who visits, follows, and comments on this blog. I am truly grateful to you all!
And another big thank you to Michele for hosting this blog hop. I will have to hop around and enter a give away myself!
To give you even more blogs to visit, this post is being linked with:-
Kelly's blog My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday
Sarah's blog Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop Whoop Friday
Leah Day's blog for Free Motion Friday
Sometimes, when you finish a piece of free motion quilting and turn the work over, there is a little surprise to jump out at you from the back. For instance, this little pleat in the border of a doll quilt. This is not quite so annoying as an unplanned fold - there is no unpicking involved if the pleat isn't too drastic.
On close inspection there was also another tiny little fold further away from the edge.
All it needed was a few stitches to make it lie flat. Once the binding was on it was barely noticeable. At least, that is what I told myself. Whether my swap partner agrees is another matter. Now that this quilt has crossed the Atlantic and is with its new owner, she has my full permission to show it to her friends as an example of quilter's fudging.
Welcome to Capi, the latest follower - thank you for joining!
This is the state of my Singer 15K treadle after a free motion quilting session. Every time I change a bobbin I check for fluff, and pull or blow out what I can see. I also have a pair of pointed tweezers which I use for pulling out the miniature hearth rugs that form under the feed dog teeth.
These little clouds of fibres around the needlebar and hopping foot are easy to get rid of.
It is interesting how the fluff works its way upwards...
... and inside the machine. The other day I took off the face plate, the first time for months, for a quick defluffing session. I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't worse.
Welcome to Alessandra, the latest follower - thank you for joining!
