Different Skills

Robyn Z

Continuing with my list of things to learn. My freemotion is improving but don’t look too close. Still have moments of losing the plot. One thing I have learnt  - don’t lose concentrations, or you may find your freemotion all over the place. With this one I drew the picture, coloured it in using water pencils, painted with a mixture of medium & water. Then ironed dry. Painting is one of my favourite things I like doing, not really sure about freemotion.   

I took up the challenge set by Glo to do the Laundry basket Quilt. However I would be doing it purely using my stash. One block was posted each day. Of course I could not keep up but after a break of a few days went back to it as I hate leaving things half done.  This challenge has been completed by Glo and Annie and they are featured in an earlier blog.

Using scraps was a challenge in itself. Often I didn't have enough of the colour I wanted. I chose the pink and blue shades to find my pink was mostly red.

The other challenge was finding fabric of the same quality. My stash goes back many years, some very thin cottons and some were they even cottons?Putting them together meant a lot of unpicking. 
I use a quarter inch foot so they should be accurate. NO. Don't ask what happened. You had to cut each block down to six and a half inches. What to do when some were a six and three eighths or even less!

The pattern was very intricate and it was a challenge to put it together, with the blocks the right order and the right way round. Again Jack the Ripper got a work out. I was amazed that it went together as well as it did, little bit of pulling and tugging but generally OK. Now do I bother to quilt it?

I think I am retiring from patchworking. This top took quite a toll on my health. I think too many hours spent cutting, squillions of pieces left my hand in agony. Once over that too many hours over the machine has left me unable to walk due to inflammation in my spine. I should have known but will it stop me! Throughout the process there was moaning and groaning and utterances I won't repeat.

However today when it is all complete and I laid it on the bed there was a wonderful sense of fulfillment, surprise, and joy. So yes I will continue but maybe a different format.