Elettaria

These little things are addictive. My mother's just had eye surgery, and while attempting to cheer her up and get us off the topic of painkillers, I started talking about quilting. Turns out she'd like a needle case too, please. Here it is in all its glory.

( And a pincushion too! )

I'll do separate posts for the methods later, but meanwhile here are most of the pictures for my earlier work.

( Cushion covers )

( Carpenter's Square )

( Fish baby quilt )

( Coffee cosies )

( Purple peacock quilt )

( Rachel's Star )

I finally finished my 89" x 87" bedspread, and you may see it below the cut and also here, here and here. The design was based on this quilt, only I used 30 degree angles where hers are sharper, and batiks in autumnal tones. The diamonds have sides 6" long and were initially sewn in strips of 7, which is half the length of the completed quilt and was a more manageable length to deal with at this stage. Finally I sewed the strips into full-length ones fourteen pieces long, added triangles at each end, and sewed those strips together to make the final quilt. The quilting design can be seen here (well, I added another little spiral in the end), and it's based on Klimt's Stoclet Frieze (the Tree of Life). Since the quilting lines were as far apart as I could get away with, it was surprisingly quick to quilt. Everything was sewn by hand as usual. The worst jobs were laying all the half-strips out to decide which ones should go next to each other, and crawling around on the floor for two hours to do the pin-basting, which had to be done for half the quilt at one time since the floor wasn't big enough.

( Picture time )

elfbystarlight has just been up here for a visit, which involved lots of henna and was concluded by a shameless photo shoot in the Meadows. Here are a couple of picture. I'm not actually blonde, my hair's a medium brown with a fair amount of gold in it, nor do I have roots and ends, it's all the light. Her hair is not only fabulous, it's two and a half inches longer than mine, which I would get most competitive about were I not deeply in love with her hair and unable to insult it in such a fashion.

( Whaddya mean, we look like sisters? )