Completely mad and bonkers...

...but I completely love it.

It will return for a full reveal when it's been quilted and it stops blowing a hoolie and pouring with rain.

Spinning plates

So if you may remember, my latest hand-piecing project had got thus far and you can read  the whys and wherefores here plus a hand-piecing post in general here.

I've added a couple more rounds to it and it now looks like this.

My aim was to make the centre honeycomb shapes darken out to the edges in a random, smudgy kind of way. I then added a Flying Geese border on.

I do like the points on my Flying Geese blocks to be as perfect as is possible. Leanne wrote a very informative and interesting post about the various ways of constructing and trimming them here. For trimming, I went with one of the options she mentioned: the Bloc-Loc.

As you can see, it only takes millimetres off but if left untrimmed, those millimetres have a pesky habit of multiplying into centimetres and so on which, on a long row of Flying Geese blocks is going to really be noticeable. For ease of cutting, I've been using a rotating cutting mat. I think without one, the task of trimming would be quite cumbersome.

If, like me, you're making up your medallion quilt as you go along, there are always ways to make your borders fit. My Flying Geese blocks had to be 2.5" x 5" finished because I'd bought the Bloc Loc and wanted to try it out. However, the maths wasn't working out for that sized block to fit along the edges.

I therefore decided to break the rows of Flying Geese blocks in the middle with a different piece of feature fabric in each row and added cornerstone squares in too, in another different piece of fabric.

To my eye it all works because the larger pieces of fabric have already appeared in the honeycomb centre and the Flying Geese blocks going different ways adds another element of interest.

So that's where I am so far.  I'm going to have a ponder and work out what the next row should be.

In the meantime, it swapped from being a hand-piecing project to a machine piecing one when I started to assemble the Flying Geese blocks. All it took was one restless evening of having nothing to do with my hands and I was back upstairs cutting my next hand-piecing project which involved these.

And this (the large size template)...

...which so far has become this.

I was going to crop my trainers out but I'm going to leave them there in all their triumphant matching glory because whenever I go out in them the children cry 'Oh no mum, not those trainers. They're just toooo bright.'

And finally, I felt my Accuquilt had been gathering dust for too long so I cranked out these...

...which are well on their way to becoming this.

I think I have enough plates spinning at the moment.

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Autumn 2013

In the Scrappy section I am entering this quilt:

I previously blogged about it here, here and here.

For those new,  it is entirely hand-pieced: not EEP, just shapes cut out and sewn together with a regular small running stitch.

I found the block on Quiltivate, printed it out to make a 10" block, made plastic templates from the print out , individually cut out each piece (and tried to fussy cut for most of the centres) and off I went.

It was my portable,hand-piecing project for most of the summer.

I hand quilted the majority of the quilt with perle cotton, just adding in some machine quilting in the dark triangles.

It gave it a really lovely texture.

It was one of those quilts that I was really sad to see the finish of. I could have gone on and on, hand-piecing a monstrosity of a quilt, such is my enjoyment of calm hand-piecing.

Thank you once again to Amy for putting on the Blogger's Quilt Festival - I'm off to see what everyone else has been up to now.

Drumroll please...

...and the winner of the fantabulous bag is:

 Which was:

Well done - I shall email you in a mo for address.

I'm sure you'll love your new bag as much as I love mine.

And thank you to everyone who entered and of course Anne-Marie for bag-making skills extraordinaire.

A Fantabulous Bag Giveaway

The giveaway is now closed

I bought a bag.

Not just any old bag.

A bag made especially for me with the Harris Tweed picked by me.

A bag made all the way on the Northern tip of the British Isles

The Isle of Lewis off the north west coast of Scotland

Sent all the way to me in the Southern most part of the British Isles

I definitely have an affinity for other island dwellers.

Anne Marie would love to make one of you a bag too. To enter, please visit her website and in your comment mention the name of the tweed you would like your bag made out of. It will be the smaller version of mine and you have an option of dark or light leather straps - I went for dark and I chose Cerise Check for the tweed fabric.

Followers leave a second comment mentioning what they ate for breakfast today.

I shall leave the giveaway open for one week and a winner will be picked by Random Number Generator next Wednesday about 8pm my time. Posting anywhere.

Good luck.

I think it's a fantabulous giveaway and I have to say - my bag is absolutely the bees knees.

Nutscene winners

And the two winners of the Nutscene twine packs are:

which was

And

which was

Enjoy - am looking forward to seeing what you make.

Lucky me. Lucky you?

Look what I got in the post.

It's my PIF (Pay It Forward) from the Queen of Rainbows, Kelly.
I'd already taken part in a PIF before so had mentally ticked it off the 'been there, done that' list. But when Kelly posted she was looking for three people to make something for, I was back in there quicker than a rat up a drainpipe.

And I'm so glad I did.

I saw it coming together on her blog but never thought it was for me.
And she even very, very kindly included the cushion form too.

So you know what's coming next?

I have to make something for three people and I have the next twelve months in which to do it.
In return, when I have made that 'something', those three people then have to make something for three people themselves and so on.

So is this going to be a tumbleweed post or does someone want me to make them something?

Speak now or forever hold your peace!

Edited to add: Now closed thank you.