Last week was half term and the Southbank festival.
This art installation appeared to liven my walk to and from work.
Southbank Festival
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Author Archives: whatkatydidlondon
Choices choices
I’ve finished my latest quilt top after declaring last weekend a stress busting sewing weekend.
It is a modabakeshop pattern from their flashback Friday series called windy days. It was nice and easy to out together and I’m really pleased that the pinwheels a re markedly better than those on my first ever quilt!
Now I’m swithering about colours for the binding and background. It is Christmas fabric but not overtly so. I’m contemplating mirroring the bright green or bright blue? It is destined for a home with small children so I fear grey may be too pale!
My quilt is famous!
Or so it seems.
I sent my big rainbow quilt off to the lovely Kay Bell (who trades as borderlinequilter) and she has blogged about it on her lovely blog.
I am delighted with her quilting and massively chuffed to see my work on her site.
Crazy street art
On way home from work tonight this modification of the tiled artwork on the south bank caught my eye.
I walk this way regularly but I’ve not noticed it before. Isn’t it great?
Quilt 3 is finished…
…and I’m ridiculously proud of it.
Today I sewed a rainbow
This quilt really started 2 years ago when I went to the lovely but crazily mad wedding celebration for two of my friends. They were moving abroad and didn’t want gifts. I always Thoth I would craft them something but didn’t really decide what.
Fast forward two years – I’ve stared quilting, they are on their way back from he sunny antipodes to cold old Scotland and I chanced upon a very sunny jelly roll pack of batik fabric in a quilt shop. The rainbow quilt was conceived.
It is a very simple stacked coin design with white sashing and I’m just putting the finishing touches to the pieced back before I send it off to be quilted – it is much too big to do myself.
If you want to replicate this it was fairly straightforward. I stitched 17 jelly roll strips together to form a square (I could have stitched all 34 together but it was starting to get unwieldy). My strips irritatingly were not a uniform length so I had to be careful not to a stretch them.
I then chopped the strip fabric into 7″ wide columns. I got 12 in total. I then stitched the columns together to make a continuous loop of fabric.
Deciding where to unpick to form each column for the quilt was fun but slightly daunting.
Once I had 6 columns made up of 34 coins I joined the white sashing. Each strip is 5.5″ wide (so the visible width is 5″ once the top was assembled).
The borders were cut to 12″.
tgi
Quilt 3
An unusual weekend with no work and no social commitments beckoned. So I whipped out my sewing machine, some of the fabric I’ve been collecting and perused the Moda Bake Shop website and settled on a design for another baby quilt. The one I used is called Story book star. It was a simple design to make and in less than 6 hours (remember I’m still learning how to do this) with only a little bit of ripping I had a quilt top.
The came the fun bit choosing the backing fabric and binding. After my last disastrous attempt at making bias binding (the non bias bias binding affair) I opted to have a second attempt in order to perfect the skill.
My backing, batting and binding fabric have now arrived. I just need to find the time to use them. Maybe next weekend…
Day trip to Bath
A lot of crafty folk have already made this journey! Or are planning to.
The reason? A retrospective of kaffe fassett’s work at the American museum just outside the city.
It was a bit of a hike to get to on public transport (sworn non car user that I am…. But I got there in eventfully via national express coach and back again via the train (latter was better and an hour faster but cost three times as much. If I hadn’t had an early work start the next day I’d have done both legs by coach).
The museum is a bit out of town. They run a shuttle bus but annoyingly a group of 14 (it seats 14) pitched up to get the scheduled departure I wanted just before me so there was no room for me, I then wandered off to get the local bus (no. 18 in the direction of the university) and discovered that this is a crazily frequent service. The museum is a brisk 10minute walk from the nearest bus stop. However, people with small children might want to think about this option carefully as you have to walk along a short stretch if rural road with no footpath.
Once inside the museum I met up with my lovely friend who lives locally(ish) and her boy. We had yummy but meagre lunch in the cafe, having just come back from the good old US of A I can firmly state that the museum is NOT Emulating the portion sizes found in the country it celebrates. On the upside we managed pudding! Something that only happened once in my week long trip to Louisiana.
However, I am digressing. The exhibition itself was smaller than I expected but a total riot of colour and there were some truly inspiring pieces. I was especially drawn to the quilted items. I’m not sure if this was because quilting is my new thing or because his knitting designs have not aged as well? Regardless I loved some of the pieces especially the blue star quilt.
An added bonus was the welcoming collection of yarn bombing that had taken place around the museum grounds. Decorated lamps, pom Pom trees and amazing handcrafted “windowbox” displays in reception.
After the museum I headed back into town and the local quilt/fabric shop, Country Threads.. It was amazing. So much fabric and very reasonably priced to my London eyes. The lady who was working (? Owner) was also welcoming, knowledgable by happy to allow uninterrupted browsing. I succumbed to some charm packs…
Rather conveniently there is also a fab knitting shop, Wool, just across the street. It had a great selection of yarns, perhaps slightly light on the artisanal dyed stuff that I love so much. In keeping with my yarn diet/ stash down I managed to keep my purse in my bag there!
All in all a very pleasant day out.
Art of the Brick
An exhibition of art made entirely of Lego bricks. I’m still not entirely sure whether the work displayed was art – there were some copies of famous art works, some replicas of objects and some other things. You should probably go to make up your own mind.
It was interesting though and the flexibility of Lego never ceases to amaze although admittedly it is probably much easier to build stuff with an unlimited supply in colour coded bins stuffed full of pieces!
I went with some borrowed children (5&7) and the seemed to enjoy themselves although the build your own section at the end may have been the highlight of their trip.
Whatever you do don’t buy Lego souvenirs there the mark up was outrageous and disappointing.
Quilt 1.5
I started this quilt top before I did my quilting class. Consequently it is full of mistakes but the overall effect is still pleasing (I think). It is made from a moda charm pack (rainy day) and some solid white quilting cotton. I was then scared to sandwich or quilt it ’till after my quilting class so here it is!
I also attempted to make my own bias binding using several online tutorials…unfortunately I got muddled up and cut the fabric not on the bias. Annoyingly I realised too late and did not have enough fabric left to redo this so I have used it defiantly. The quilt of errors! Quilting was pretty scary as I’m still a novice and didn’t feel up to attempting free motion on my machine so I did some simple straight lines but after completing it I realised I should have googled more enthusiastically for inspiration. All in all this was a learning experience.
whatkatydidLONDON 