If You Can Keep Your Head and Party On

Ooops, my last blog post was 24 July. Not an intentional holiday from blogging, just the way life has panned out. The last few weeks, indeed the whole summer has been very busy. We had my daughter in law's graduation in England, she is now a Master of all sorts of clever projects. And she is a girl who loves her projects, crafty or otherwise. Next up we had our at home celebration of my son and new daughter in law's wedding. When I say at home, we had the celebration in our local castle, not our home, but our home country. The following weekend was the first birthday celebration of our grandson, our favourite grandson, our only grandchild, this was in England. So, lots of running about and celebrating and getting exhausted. I did go to blog, but I had nothing to blog about!

So .... Where am I? I have moved along with my Plus Playtime quilt, or my Sandra's Scraps quilt. I have been free machine - ing when I get a chance.

I have most of the pluses all completed. The background blue plus, the shadow plus was my first foray in fmq. Sort of loopy loops coming off from bigger loopy loops. Happy enough with that.

Next up were the smaller pluses. I decided to quilt backwards and forwards loops, sort of a hang back to my straight line quilting I suppose but more unstructured. I have tried to match the pluses as much as I can with my meagre supply of quilting threads, and have bought a few more.  This morning I bought some black and some navy. I was looking for a plummy pink but it proved impossible to get locally. I have bought some that is more of a wine colour and am hoping for the best. So that leaves three or maybe four small pluses to finish.

I moved on then to the off white background. I wanted to do sort of half moon, slices of melon shapes. It is sort of how I wanted it. I wanted the quilting to be fairly loose, not to intense, so instead of breaking up into small sections, I tried to sweep across the whole background. And am I happy? Am I ever happy? I like how it is in the smaller sections of the background. In the bigger sections I think it is a bit too loose, too sweeping. I could try and infill the looser parts, they are quite crinkly, but I will probably leave it be. Don't overegg the pudding so to speak. This fmq is a learning curve, no pun intended here.

This just leaves the binding, after of course, I finish the remaining pluses. No prizes for guessing the binding will be spotty, and scrappy. I can't wait for this bit. I really feel it will just set the quilt off. Hand sewing the binding down is actually my favourite bit. Not because it is the end, well, just not that, but because I find it so relaxing. I try to do this on a Saturday night, with a glass of wine, and the tv on. Living the high life!

 Now all the "family" commitments are finished, including an unexpected funeral, I am hoping my sewing mojo will return. It always disappears slightly in the summer. It is only right that when the good weather is here, it is spent out in the garden, in the gardens of stately homes, in the beach, wherever, and not in front of a sewing machine. It has been a fun summer.

 

 Even the unexpectedness of the Castle post Wedding Celebration was fun. Unfortunately our son, the groom, was unable to attend! His travel documents are somewhere in the black hole that administrative governmental documents occasionally fall into. Thus - we had the unusual situation of a post wedding party with no groom! As the bride's father said, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade! We had a life size cardboard model of a former Chelsea football  manager in our loft, as you do. A bit of printing and cutting and he turned into a cardboard groom. Rather like Flat Stanley in the children's novels. Well, Flat Groom had a ball, he danced with everybody, kept his speech rather brief and didn't get too drunk. The perfect groom! And all our American and English guests, and not forgetting our local family and friends, seemed to enjoy themselves. With that I will leave you with this thought, when it all seems disastrous, just party on. I am sure Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about that sometime!

"If you can meet Triumph with Disaster,
and treat those two imposters just the same .."

Helen x
linking with Beth, Main Crush Monday, Cooking Up Quilts
linking with Lorna, Lets Bee Social, Sew Fresh Quilts