London Calling!!

Just arrived in London UK.
We are here on a "working" vacation.  My family has archive (national archive and the royal geological society) work to do and I will be checking out quilt and bead shops as well as the London textile museum, royal school of needlework at Hampton Court Palace and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Portabello market and the garment district as well as a trip to Wiltshire to see family and Stonehenge (finally) and the I will be shopping and  writing reviews and posting photos.
Hope everyone enjoys them.
Time for bed now (10:14 England time) we have been up for more than 24hours wearing the same cloths so a good night sleep will really help.
Off bright and early to the Victoria and Albert Museum tomorrow to check out the fashion,  tapestry, embroidery and textiles galleries.  Will be posting photos tomorrow. As always there will be photos of floors, doors and ceilings.  If you don't look up and down you will miss a lot of design ideas.

Cheers
Elaine

Dear Jane update

Another two weeks of Dear Jane blocks are done.  I am still behind but am catching up slowly

Week 17

Week 18

Many weeks left to go!!!

Upcycle Thursday

Today I have found an idea to use up all those seams that get cut from jeans when making a denim quilt.  Instead of sending them to the landfill why not try this.

make coasters or hot mats from them!!! 

you can find the instructions at the link below

coasters

This morning I thought that I would try this.  So I pulled out a pair of jeans from my fabric pile and was just about to cut them up when I realized that there was nothing wrong with the jeans and they looked pretty new.  Oops!!  They were my dh jeans just waiting for a new button.  Oh well,  I will have to find some other jeans to use.

Another link that has great recycled denim ideas here .

Happy recycling!!

 

Dear Jane

Finally got back to doing some of the Dear Jane blocks.  We should be working on week 27 this week but we are falling a bit behind - Sometimes life just gets in the way!!

 week 15

week 16

Design wall Monday!

I have had these 4 squares on the wall for a couple of weeks and I will finally getting around to working on it this week.  It is one more of the quilts that I am making for birthdays this year.  It is made from the leftover shirt fabric from another quilt I finished in April.  It is an interesting "arrow" block that has a white space in the middle that would be great for a signatures.  It is quite simple to do but cutting old clothing is quite time consuming.

 

Upcycle Thursday!!

I was cruising around the internet the other day (ok most days) and I found this amazing wedding dress that was just up my recycling alley.  The dress is made of ......

This dress is made of plastic bread bag ties sewn onto a fabric backing.

You can read about the project here .

Have a great day recycling!!

UFO #3

I have finally got around to finishing another UFO.  This dresden plate quilt is done with english paper pieced plates appliqued to a background fabric.  It was put together in a quilt as you go method,which allowed the backing to be different colour blocks and then the binding added.  It is going to my mother-in-law for her birthday this weekend.

 front

 block joining sashing

 close-up of dresden plate

back of quilt