On My Desk This Week...

This week I've been practicing free motion machine quilting, ready to do Chloe's quilt. I started by practicing on a couple of sandwiches made from left over cotton fabric from previous projects. I've also got a little blanket on the go for Thomas which started as a practice for digitising, so I've quilted that:

My quilting is slowly getting better - hopefully you can see in the bottom 3 images how my attempt at stippling is getting closer together, with less loops. I think it'll take a lot more before I'm confident.

Here are the sites I've found very helpful:

• Sew Inspired - Free Motion Machine Quilting Tutorial
  
• Anyone Can Quilt - Machine Quilting 101
  
• Patsy Thompson Designs - lots of ideas for quilting designs, often beyond my current skill level, but nice to aspire to!
• Dioramarama - Longarm quilting - I don't have a longarm, but some nice examples of patterns
  
• Diane Gaudynski - good close up stippling picture
  
• Crazy Mom Quilts - Free Motion Quilting
  
• Quiltmaker - loads of good tips

I thought I'd also show you my favourite shelf in my study:
On it I have a lot of lovely old books (affectionately termed "Collage fodder") and gorgeous old OS maps - I love looking over them at the place names and contour lines (which my attempt at echo quilting, above, reminds me of).

In front of the books, I have my wind up 'alarm clock' which plays "London Bridge is Falling Down", two tiny conkers, two lovely pebbles smoothed by the sea which I picked up at Black Rock Sands, and a little wobbly headed turtle which always makes me smile.

I had hoped to post some pictures of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, as I swapped my desk for a walk round with the camera this lunch time, but I'm still editing the pics and it is getting late!

More desk posts here.

This Week in Pictures - 13th to 19th October 2008

R1: The moon was beautiful on Monday night when I went to Helen's house. I've been playing with treasury tags at work a lot this week, made them into this pretty star. The current secret knitting project is going well, but I did make a mistake which meant going back about 4 rows, and I wasn't tinking back that far, so I just pulled the needles out - very brave for me! This week's spiffing socks - Helen was wearing this fab stripy socks & tights combo on Chutney Day :)
R2: I've been practicing free motion quilting in preparation for doing Chloe's quilt soon, and it is going OK! Another top secret project this week involved this heap of fluff. Helen made lots of bath gifts while I was prepping the chutney & jam - these are the brown sugar & lavender body scrubs we made - we also made bath teabags & salts.
R3: We got together yesterday & made a lot of jars of chutney; 9 carrot & garlic, 9 apple & also 7 jars of pear & lemon jam, which is wonderful, a really delicate flavour. I had fun taking quite a few photos of the various goings on.

I would have had a couple more pics to share, of nice skies and swishing through leaves in the city centre, but my camera phone (which does take quite nice pics) isn't talking to my PC.

On My Desk This Week...

I've been working on the activities for module 2 of my Creative Sketchbooks course, which has involved playing with watercolour paints and salt:

I've also been working on a birthday quilt for my soon-to-be-4 year old niece, Chloe. It is in lots of bright colours, and tonight I've been appliquéing the flowers on to it. Soon they'll be joined by happy singing birds and butterflies:
I thought I'd also share my work desk with you, so here's a photo of it at lunchtime today, hence the knitting - sadly I don't get to knit during working hours.My knitting bag is the owl one made for me by my friend Daina, and it always makes me smile.

So, that's 2 of my 3 desks! My 3rd one is the PC desk, next to the craft desk, and it's enough of a mess that it is a good thing I have a keyboard shelf, as that means I can write this post!

Go check out Kirsty's post to see more desks!

This Week in Pictures - 6th to 12th October 2008

12-10-08

L-R:
Row 1: My neighbour has painted her front door & the ginnel door, from red to lime green. I snapped this pic when the ginnel door was still red, made me smile. ~ I bought two brushes for my art course, a Cotman 1/2 inch flat and a size 12 round sable, with a handle long enough to be a magic wand! I like using nice tools. ~ It was our second week back at lindy hop. This is our friend Rik, who enjoyed himself. Caught up with many old friends from last year's classes, too. ~ I've been enjoying lots of nice walks on the lawn at work, one of the evergreen bushes has these gorgeous red berries. ~
Row 2: Each week we have a different flower display in Reception at work, and this week was some gorgeous red lilies and blue flowers that kept shedding petals. The contrast of the blue on red was lovely. ~ A sneaky closeup of a top secret Christmas gift, the first one I've finished. ~ Talking of gifts, I'm making a quilt or two, one for Chloe's 4th birthday (in 4 weeks time, eep!) and here's the fabric prewashing in the machine. ~ I liked the swirls of blue paint in the water pot when I was painting.
Row 3: I'm still a very novice quilter, and it took me a while to straighten off the ends of the fabrics I was using, hence this large pile of offcuts. ~ I've had my lovely Clarks winter shoes for a month now, and I love how they show off my socks when I wear nice patterned ones! ~ Another top secret Christmas project, to go with the other one, and for the same person! Lucky lady! ~ Talking of work, with its nice lawn and fresh flowers, this is the building I work in. Makes Monday mornings much nicer.

Fab week in review format nicked from Scrumdillydilly - go read her blog, very cool.