quilt textile artist, stitching by hand, thread, embroidery, stitch journal

Quietly productive

It was supposed to be down time, and it very nearly/probably was. The trouble is, I don’t like piles of half-finished things all over the place and I can’t sit down and relax if things need doing. And things always need doing, right?

I finished the simple quilt for the reading chair (you can see the making of the seaside-Mondrian cushion/pillow here):

reading chair looking a bit more inviting

I made a planner for 2025, using up some 150 gsm cheap drawing paper that I had on the shelf. Usually I buy a diary for planning the year, and usually I’m too busy to use it effectively. I figured if I invest time in making the thing myself then surely I will make the effort to actually plan things in it.

I made a start:

I made a start on forming some resolutions for 2025:

Yes, 2025 will be the Year of Less. I work too many hours. No real time off this year, no holiday – too busy doing essential improvement works on the house. My choice, and not complaining. But next year has to be different. I probably say this every year. Let’s see what happens.

Of course I made a cover for the new planner:

I made a cover for my 2025 order book too:

order book cover, map fabric by Tim Holtz

It has pockets on the inner covers because who doesn’t like pockets?

inside front cover, space for notes. Needs ironing!

I used a bit of an old window envelope as a pocket too:

I hemmed my 2025 stitch journal fabric:

the last of the vintage linen, hemmed and ready for 2025

I didn’t quite get round to finishing the little landscapes:

I am not Superwoman.

This is my last post before Christmas week, and I really will be having some proper time off over the next week and a bit. I’ll be back here on New Year’s Eve with (I hope) my finished 2024 daily stitching.

For now I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has supported my work this year, especially to everyone who has bought courses, thread, fabric, and PDFs – you make it possible for me to do what I love, and I’m always grateful for that – and to everyone who takes the time to leave kind comments here and elsewhere. I wish you all the joy and peace of the season.

A quick quilt

This has been the week of New Kitchen, which I anticipated (correctly, as it happens) would be Quite Stressful.

I needed a little quilting/stitching task that wouldn’t take too much space, effort, or concentration, because of all the noise and disruption. Something that would keep me busy enough to be distracted but available enough to make regular cups of tea for the workers and be prevailed upon to make decisions etc.

This little chair has been in the conservatory over the summer. It’s pretty basic and uninspiring but has the advantage of folding out into an emergency bed should we ever need one. The conservatory is currently 2°C so we brought it into the house to prevent it getting too cold or damp. Due to lack of space it’s ended up in my work room, where it makes a very acceptable little reading chair. I may well keep it here.

This seemed like the week to make a more colourful covering for it. You can see I’ve started on the arms, just by wrapping some padded patchwork strips around them. They need the ends gathering and stitching to secure them better.

I was never going to completely reupholster the chair; it just needed something a bit more colourful as a throw.

I’d bought a few cotton fat quarters a while ago. I very rarely buy new fabric, but this was my consolation purchase for the disappointment of not being able to go to the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate this year because it was Kitchen Week. Somewhat incredibly, all nine fat quarters ended up sitting together quite happily. The fabrics are mostly Moda and Marcia Derse quilting cottons. The map fabric is Tim Holtz.

I didn’t paper-piece this one, of course, and you can see some little mis-matches here and there where my quarter-inch seams went a bit awry. Slightly imperfect, but it was just what I needed to see me through a fairly turbulent week.

Here’s how our kitchen looked on Monday, by the way:

It will be really lovely when it’s done. The upside is that there were a few meals out, so no cooking and no washing up. The kitchen should be finished next week, if all goes well, then it will need redecorating and new flooring. In the meantime it’s a case of keep calm and quilt.

Quilts

I’m finding all sorts of treasure as I unpack the boxes in my work room.

These are quilts I made around 15 years ago, mostly with commercial cotton fabric scraps.

All are hand-pieced and hand-quilted, made using the quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) method. This is where you piece, layer and quilt each block separately and then join all the blocks together. There are lots of QAYG tutorials online if you’re not familiar with it.

This block made me smile:

Made in the first house I owned and rediscovered during the second week in our new house, the number of which happens to be… 24. Not only that, but the little yellow flowers next to it suggest spring. Maybe I was seeing my own future. Spooky!

Quilt-as-you-go gives you the opportunity to use up larger scraps for the back of the blocks, rather than having to wrestle with a large piece of backing fabric. I never have enough floor space for that, so I prefer this more portable method. The backs of these 7″ quilt blocks are all different: