Amanda's Musings

I've been beavering away with my final City and Guilds quilt, but gave myself some time off at the weekend to catch up with some blocks for the Rainbow Challenge. I hope to find some time before the end of the months to make some half square triangle blocks, I've got enough aqua scraps, but just not enough time.

I've been spending a great deal of time recently on my final quilt for the City & Guilds qualification. The design is based on an exercise we did in class called 'taking a line for a walk'. I've developed the result of the exercise into a quilt.

Today I've made the Coco top, a new pattern from Tilly and the Buttons. It's the first time I've sewed with knit fabric, and this pattern was brilliantly easy to follow, along with the very helpful online tips. I had to do just the tiniest bit of size tweaking, made all the easier by the instructions on how to do so. I'm delighted with the end result and will certainly be making another soon.

My son and his partner moved into their first bought home last year, and have been steadily furnishing it. One of their first purchases was a lovely glass table that seats six and fits into their kitchen. They've chosen an orange colour scheme for the kitchen, so I made them some table mats.

February's colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is pink. Since Christopher is away for a couple of days, so it's just me and the dog, I indulged myself with lots of sewing.

I've made:

Today I've managed to spend a bit of time sewing, despite a nasty cough that won't go away following my chest infection.

I've made some more blue heart blocks and half square triangle variation blocks, like those I made last week.

I've also made four 54-40 or Fight blocks. I've decided to stick with blacks and neutrals for the four patch blocks, as this will tie all the scrappy multi-coloured blocks together. It doesn't work brilliantly with the blue, but I'm sure will work well with other colours.

Back in the very first year of Angela's Rainbow Scrap Challenge - is that three or four years ago now? -  she did a give-away and I was lucky enough to win a special ruler. I've no idea what it was called, but it cuts one blade of a windmill. I was delighted to have this ruler as I'd used that idea for my very first quilt, when I'd cut templates out of paper.

So I started cutting sets of fabric using the ruler every time I had a scrap that was the right size. And when I had enough I started to piece them together.

When I made my first quilt I had my sewing machine in the spare bedroom, so I was able to lay the pieces out on the bed and lift them straight to my machine. Now however, I have a proper sewing room  and at the time had nowhere to lay pieces out. This is the sort of quilt that you have to lay out in advance of starting to sew. So all the pieces went back in the box.

Then, last year, I got a small design wall put up and at last I was able to get started on laying the quilt out.

I finished it last week, in time to give to a very dear friend who has been in hospital for the last two weeks and is likely to be there for a while longer yet. I haven't been able to visit her as I've had such a nasty chest infection, but I was able to send the quilt in via another friend.

So here, after a long time in the making, and almost as long in the telling, is the finished quilt. And I grabbed a rare moment of dry weather and sunshine to take a photograph outside.