The Wool Palace

Rocky road

It's been tough times at The Wool Palace over the last few months.  I have had to watch both my children go through terrible pain, one dealing with emergency surgery and post op complications and the other with some pretty major mental health issues.  Physical injuries heal quickly on young bodies, but the road to mental health is a long one and it's been a dark and scary time for all of us.

Things are by no means back to 'normal', indeed I think we will have to find a new 'normal', but there are signs of recovery and I can allow myself to relax a little.

I found myself wanting to make a quiet quilt, with not too much going on in it. 

I chose Kona solids in 4 main neutral colours - Oyster, Putty, Parchment and Ash.  I cut strips and improv pieced them into various squares and rectangles and added in little bits of a few other neutrals for variety.  I pieced them all together, then put in a couple of lines of flying geese for some extra interest.

I'm very happy with how it turned out - it looks pretty much like the picture I had in my head, which is always good.  I am mulling over quilting and backing options at the moment, so it may be a while before it is completely done.

I'm working on something a little brighter now, which I hope is a sign of good things to come.

 

Orizuru

Yesterday was work, work, work.  Tomorrow will be work, work, work.  So I thought it was fair enough to squeeze in a sewing day today.

I think this may be my quickest ever quilt top.  I started the piecing last Saturday and today I had a whole top done.  I love school holidays for giving me extra sewing time.

I've had Trajectory pinned and favourited on Flickr for a good while.  My initial thought was to do the original layout, but I had seen Judith's version and fell in love with the zig zag layout.  While I was unpacking my stash, I came across leftovers from the Oakshott Sunrise Fat 8ths packs that I had used for my Oakshott and Liberty quilt.  I thought they would look good paired with some linen, so I pulled out various linens, also from stash, together with a little bit of Kei honeycomb dots in grey and got cutting.

I had to order an extra half metre of linen, but other than that, it's all from stash, which is in keeping with my current stash busting mood.

Having said that, I have ordered the backing, but it was 50% off from Fat Quarter Shop, plus I had a 20% off voucher from my FQR goodie bag, so I'm looking at 6 yards of fabric for a steal.

The shapes of the zig zags remind me of origami  cranes, called Orizuru in Japanese, hence the blogpost title.

Linking up with the Brit Sewing Linky party - all my favourite UK bloggers in one place!

 

 

Getting sorted

Well, it's taken some time, but we are finally into our new place and feeling reasonably settled.

I managed very little sewing in the 6 weeks we were staying with relatives.  Unsurprising really, considering that all fabric was packed in boxes.  I sewed up some pincushions for my FQR swap - you may have seen a picture on Instagram if you follow me there.  I vaguely managed to keep up with my Bee committments and made these blocks for Jo in our do.Good stitches circle.

Photographing these on a cream carpet at night wasn't the best idea, but there you go.

6 weeks of fabric in boxes was giving me serious withdrawal symptoms, so I was quick off the mark to get it all unpacked once we'd moved.

It's all unpacked and is living happily, along with my cookbooks, in the little conservatory off our kitchen.  I do plan to get some doors on the shelves to protect it from the light, but that will have to wait for a bit.

Unpacking all of the stash got me in the mood for sorting things out.  I got busy with the unpicker on some blocks that I made up ages ago and won't use, so those pieces have all gone into the scrap bins.  I finished up some more do.Good Stitches bee blocks for Rachael.

I made the front of a cushion from the Pillow Pop book about 4 months ago and then did nothing more with it.  On Saturday night I found some fusible fleece, did a bit of stitch in the ditch quilting and then whipped up a quick envelope back for it.  

Serendipitously, I had the right size insert for it, so now I have a nice shiny new cushion for about an hour's work.

Doesn't it feel good to finish things up?

On the hillside

Moving takes ages doesn't it?  I feel like I've spent weeks either packing or unpacking boxes, in between numerous visits to the tip.  We are currently between houses, so the packing and unpacking hasn't finished yet, but things have calmed down a little bit.

I realised I hadn't blogged about my finished Oakshott and Liberty quilt.  It's packed away in storage at the moment, but I did take some photos of it that I can share.  I am absolutely thrilled in how it turned out - which is a good job as it took bloody ages!

Oakshotts seem very hard to photograph - they seem to come out either too muted or too bright.  In reality they have a wonderful depth to them - the colours shift as you move the fabric.

I quilted the centre with concentric circles, and then the borders with straight lines.

The circles took F O R E V E R.  Especially as I managed to pucker up the back and had to unpick 5 hours worth of quilting.  That wasn't a happy day.

It's backed and bound with some Denyse Schmidt fabrics that I picked up for a song in the Sale section on the Fat Quarter Shop website.  The borders are a Moda Crossweave in Natural and some black and white spotted fabric that I had lying around.

I used a selection of 9 colours from a Sunrise Fat 8ths pack of Oakshott, but I had 2 packs - so that probably comes to about a fat quarter of each of the colours.  The Liberty was a mix of various 5 in squares I had bought from a number of suppliers.

For the batting I used Quilters Dream Cotton for the first time.  None of my local shops sell 100% cotton batting, so in the past I've used the prepacked Hobbs stuff, but I far prefer Quilters Dream now.  I ordered the Request weight by mistake, which was a bit lighter than I would have chosen, but I decided to stick with it and it actually worked well for this quilt.  I'm keen to try out the Select weight on my next quilt.

All in all I'm very happy with this one.  I'm looking forward to getting it unpacked and out on the sofa in our new house!

 

Exciting email news today - the class list for FQR is up.  I have a good mix, including some of my top choices.

Only 8 weeks to go peeps!

Joining in

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Joining in

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/2269306/?claim=fqqm2f8x79y">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Can't see anyone else wanting to claim my blog, but there you go...

Still avoiding the cupboards

How nice was the weekend?  It was here at least, hope everyone else had some sunshine too.

We got out and about and enjoyed the sun but I also put aside plenty of time to catch up with sewing.

I was a bit behind with Bee blocks, so it felt good to get up to date.

Charlotte's block for April in the Kinky Bee.

Two blocks for Fiona for the first month in the new UK circle in do.Good Stitches.

I felt pretty happy dropping these two packages off at the Post Office this morning.  Both Bees have nice blocks for May too - even more excuses to ignore the packing!

Liberated

Time is flying by these days.  Changes are afoot at work and we've just thrown a house move into the mix, so it's a bit busy round here.

Last weekend I had the house to myself.  I should probably have been clearing out cupboards but I decided to do a bit of sewing.

A good while back I made lots of little Liberty and Oakshott improv blocks.  I kept going until I ran out of Liberty and then I interspersed them with solid blocks of Oakshott.  Then I folded it up and put it away for 6 months.

I knew I wanted to put a border on it.  My first thought was some Moda Crossweave in Natural.

But it looked a little flat to me.  So I thought I'd use the Crossweave for an outer mitred border and put a narrow inner border in with some cornerstones.

I auditioned various fabrics but settled on this little black and white dot.  You can't see the cornerstones there, but they were just some little 2.5in squares of an black and white Lecien stripe that I had in my scrap bin.

I would show you a photo of the whole thing but by the time I was done it was quite windy outside and I was on my own, so you'll have to settle for a shot of it on the ironing board.

I'm really happy with how it turned out.   I have a backing picked out and I'm waiting on some batting and then I will be ready to baste.  Then on to the next dilemma, how to quilt it?

All work and no play

I am still around, just buried under work.

I have lovely stuff like this

and this

calling to me.

Unfortunately, before I can get to them, I have to get past this.

More news when I have conquered the paperwork and can switch on my machine!