And as much as I hate doing it, this is the only way to go with the background fabric. I could use the walking foot and do lots and starts and stops but I'm freemotioning it all and taking the stitching and taking the thread along the outlines when I need to start a new line.
DH captured this woodpecker this morning on camera. They visit the garden quite often but not normally when there is a camera to hand.
On another note, one of the budget airlines is thinking about charging for using the toilet on flights as these are a discretionary service. Now there's a bit of me that thinks this is just a way of getting more publicity on the grounds 'all publicity is good publicity' so I haven't named them. But just in case it isn't, may I suggested that all passengers wet their seats in protest? (grin).
For those of you interested in such things, I use a blanket stitch on my machine for the appliqué. That's a stitch one to the side and one stitch forward. I mirror imaged it and did all the appliqué of the inside if these circles, then I did the outer edge without the mirror imaging.
This morning I dipped both borders into warm water to remove the glue and pull out the freezer paper. That water isn't dirty, it's just the glue dissolving. I won't wash it out entirely until it's all quilted.
We had a heavy fall of snow again last night. It didn't settle but the weather is too damp to dry it outside so it's on the table with the underfloor heating turned on and a fan.
Today I hope to appliqué the smaller circles to the larger ones and do the first layer of cutting away.
Yet again the camera and reality don't show the right blues, without the camera the pale dot is more the right sort of blue but neither are far off....
I've stitched the swag label onto the backing fabric but might live to regret it if the seams on the back coincide with those on the label. I've not done this before, but I think this is a more secure way of adding a label.
The other thing I've realised is all that careful marking of the parallel lines in the border will probably disappear when I wet the top to remove the freezer paper. Duh!
We're expecting more heavy rain tonight possibly turning to snow again later. When you think what's happening in Australia, more snow is nothing, nothing at all...
And this one is on it's first stem (there is another one coming) and this one was planted a couple of weeks before the first.
Sue Sapsed treated hers entirely differently to great effect. She is a longarm quilter and quilted the whole piece in variegated thread. She over- stitched the motifs to make them stand out more, she handled the grid work by using curvy lines and she filled in the outer border with stippling to make the border stand proud. I think hers has turned out to be a very elegant quilt. I wish now I still had mine as I'd like to see the three of them side by side.
Thank you Sue for your kind permission to publish your photos here.
At Ardingly I couldn't resist buying more of these Lunn dyed panels. (a lot more)
We've had snow. They are saying this is the most for 18 years but I don't think we've had it this deep since the 70's (or at least if we have I've been in a different part of the country whilst it happened). I love it and the excuse to have an open fire burning away in the sitting room.
Yesterday we met Luca Antonio Monaco. I really wasn't prepared for the emotion of holding this little chap. Tears rolled down my face and my body shuddered so much I thought it would wake him up. New people are very special aren't they?
