Tempest

Well, finally - I have finished one of my oldest WIP's. I started this in May 2001 and finished it last night.

So I pulled out Mystical Light to take with me to swimming lessons to work on, but I think I'm going to have to find another one as the lighting made the dark fabric harder to work on than it needed to be. Maybe A Hundred Thousand Welcomes - that should be an easy stitch and is another that's almost a UFO so it would be good to have it finished too.

Long time, no pictures

Sorry about that. I kept meaning to do a couple of updates but just never got there. Though that means that the good news is that I get to share a finish instead of just WIP pictures :)

This is my latest quilting class (well, actually two as we did the piecing and layering in one and the binding was another class). I'm not showing the back as, well, let's put it this way, it's a learning piece, and one thing I learnt was I need to get a walking foot for my machine (or a whole new machine, but that's another debate I'm having with myself *). I'm also thinking a 1/4" foot would be good too as I make my seams too narrow resulting in squares being bigger than they should be and then points get cut off. So having the quarter inch marking above and below might be beneficial. My current machine is metric so has no inch markings at all.

Anyhoo... the pictures, that's what you really want isn't it?

The finished product:


The squares before I sewed them together:


And just because I'm feeling generous - my latest progress on the pirate quilt - not much more than last time, but I have only stitched one more session on it due to various things (including the above quilt), and now that my machine is in the shop for three weeks and the Friday morning quilting bees are having a break it might be a few weeks before it gets any further either.


Now for those of you who think I have stopped stitching - IT'S NOT TRUE :) And here is proof.

I have been working hard on Serpentine, I was hoping to get it finished before the end of September, but I don't think that's quite going to happen. The reason(s) I wanted it done by then is I have a pilot class to stitch and I promised myself I'd start that at the beginning of October, and also because Serpentine is a class and I'd like to hit the assessment window for it (which is early October).


Now I'm also going to give you a little peek at Tempest since I have been slowly plodding away a few stitches at a time during swimming lessons. Suddenly he feels like he's actually getting somewhere.

I've been thinking about taking the squares in the bottom right corner out as I'm not sure I want them right around the border, I think I'd prefer to leave it with just the single line of stitching. However, they have been there so long I'm a bit afraid of what the fabric will look like if I do. So I'm leaving that decision until I really need to make it.


Oh and I mustn't forget St. Petersburg. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I've been taking this piece (and O' Jerusalem but you can't really see any change in that so I'm not bothering with a photo) to the first Friday stitch-ins at my LNS since it (they) are nice and portable. It does make me want to stitch more of it.


And lastly - I'm taking another finishing class on Saturday (before heading straight off to an overnight camp with the kids - I feel exhausted already) on stand-ups with Susan Cluck. I've gone through my finished pieces and there aren't really that many that fit the bill. So I'm going to take Charlie's First Landing and Twas the Night Before Christmas (although I think that would be better with the cube or flat method we did last time. I think Charlie is going to be it).

*I'm not thinking of a new machine just because I want the extra feet or the inch markings. It all started because I was making another dress for DD, this one with button holes down the front, and the button holes came out funky so I showed them to my tutor (who also teaches sewing and some other crafts) and she suggested I take the machine into the shop to get looked at. So I took it in and they went 'hmmm' and are assessing it at the moment. They did tell me the basic service will cost around $90, and if there is something that needs fixing it will be more. So I started wondering what a new machine would cost as mine is also a 220V machine which means that I can't take it to classes (I have to use a transformer) and so have to borrow a machine there. I started out looking at a Brother online for ~$150, but when I went back to the shop I think I now want to spend 10x that amount and get a Bernina lol At least I know I have no interest in machine embroidery so that cuts out a lot of the really expensive all singing, all dancing models.

Finishing class

Yesterday I went to Gingers and took their padded matboard finishing classes. Now I have a nametag (long overdue), and finally Teresa Wentzler's intermediate whitework ornament is finished too.

I took the decoration for the nametag from some of Cherry Parker's NZ patterns, the footprints are kiwi tracks, and I altered the colours on the sheep to suit me.

Progress updates

Since I've been lax in posting my updates recently here's a whole load all at once.

Scissor Pouch - back being stitched on as my swimming project:

Mystical Light - I have stopped doing the UFO nights as I wasn't getting much stitching time and didn't want to waste it on UFO's:

An Open Heart - as you can (hopefully) see I've finished the inside and have (just) started the first border:

And lastly a surprise addition to the roster - Tempest:

I also had an update on O' Jerusalem, but I forgot to take a photo so it will just have to wait until next time.