A Quilt vs Credit Card update plus Free Motion Quilting

Thanks to those that have donated to my credit card battle on Go Fund Me so far. There’s still a long way to go, currently I’ve raised 0.13% of the target £7500. I really would like to take donations of less than £5 a time as I think sometimes that can be too much, so I’ve set up a new page HERE (and up top!) that has an new donation link via Paypal so you can just give £1 if you want. Although I will need to manually update the fundraising page, this will still get you a raffle ticket into the draw for your own custom pet quilt and also links to the document which shows the numbers you have been allocated so you can make sure I have definitely entered you into the draw!

If you would still like to go for the chocolates or the quilt pattern gifts, then please use the fundraising page as normal, I have copied the original post so all of the information you need is on that page. Please tell your friends, every £1 is a little bit closer to my financial freedom. I know it’s for selfish reasons, it’s not for a charity, but I will be working Christmas Day and Boxing Day this year for Crisis the homeless charity (hopefully doing clothing repairs but it’s not all finalised yet) AND I will have some spare money in which to donate to charity fundraisers once this burden is gone, so in a way you are helping good causes!

ANYWAY onto more stitchy stuff….

Have you ever wanted to free motion quilt (FMQ) like this…

Image by Tula Pink, taken from Quilting is my Therapy

or like this…

Image by Julie Herman, taken from Quilting is my Therapy

Well Julia at Gone to Earth has decided to set up a group over on Facebook for those of us that do, following the guidance from Angela Walter’s new book, “Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters”. If you want to join in, make sure you grab a copy- Amazon is out of stock as I write this but I got mine pretty quickly from The Book Depository on payday.

My free motion quilting is getting better, but for now it has been limited to stippling, loops, a bit of bad handwriting and sketching, I am looking forward to getting the hang of feathers!

So grab the book and get over there and then we can make a start! I have my orphan blocks ready to make into mini quilts and cushion fronts at the ready!

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Oh No Quilt

I’m secretly working on a quilt for my partner’s birthday on Monday because he’s been admiring the ones I have made so far and hinting at wanting one for himself for the winter months curled up in front of the TV. He likes boy things still despite turning 28- shooting, hunting, pirates, dinosaurs, etc and his favourite colours are reds and browns. I have tried to put a collection of these things together and it is looking a bit splodgy and unco-ordinated. I’m not too worried about this.

However the worst thing has got to be my quilt design. When I drew it based on the Quilts I had seen from the Turning Twenty pattern, it didn’t look like a swastika. In fabric it does and I’m a bit worried about this. Is it really really awful? Maybe that one particular block style with the green blocks and the brown rectangles that looks the worst needs unpicking and one of the browns replacing with something else instead? Can you tell so much when the pieces are together? I’m having a crisis of confidence!

A re-encounter with resin

I’ve not felt particularly like playing with resin recently as you will have noticed. My time has been consumed with artworking the Crafteroo digital magazine, chocolate making, baking, crochet, papercraft, quilting and patchwork (let alone computer games) so there’s not really been time and it’s been nice to take a step back for a while.

I have casted these white tea and coffee motifs though and now I’m a bit stumped. I don’t really know what to do with them. I’d imagined making a series of pendants but I don’t know if that’s too boring, and also I think I need to add some colour or something to these because they’re a little bit plain in just white.

Some ideas I have had: putting in chatons in key areas (maybe eyes if it doesn’t look too scary), painting on small amounts of black paint to fill the eyes and mouths and possibly the outlines and totally starting again but with different colours or with patterned paper backgrounds.

Anyone got any creative ideas because my mojo hasn’t quite recovered enough for this yet?!

What to do with these?

I made some little resin Love Hearts and dipped them in red paint. Was hopnig the coverage would have been a little more regular, but never mind. However, I can’t think what to do with them? They are actual size (as I casted from real sweeties), so I’m thinking rings, but I just aren’t that into them when I play about. There’s also pendants… or maybe a charm bracelet? Help!

Advice and opinions please!

As part of my Thursday Night Project (a weekly thing over at Crafteroo) I had a play about trying to create a new technique to imitate dew and verdigris using copper cut outs. I’m not convinced that it has worked particularly successfully. I think I like the leaf, which has got a textured amber finish, but not sure if the bird is right. It wasn’t intended to have an all over teal/green coating anyway, but it’s almost as if something is missing- any help/opinions greatly appreciated!