Block of the month!
This is my first block from Leanne’s ‘Down in the Garden’. I still need to stitch the embroidery patterns but it looks okay! It is an experience and a learning curve not my own choice of fabrics but it is pretty!
My challenge is to learn how to design and by doing this quilt with a variety of stitching and quilting designs involved I am putting my ideas to paper for mine.
This post was done from my fabulous brand new iPod touch I love it!
These photos aren’t so good because the new ipod touch has a .7 mega pixel camera. How silly is that!
However, the other features and potential fun I get from my gadget will make up for that issue.
New Beginnings
I was inspired to do this through @barbs1 one of my tweeps from twitter. Thanks Barb! I had actually heard about it from a few other tweeps when Ewan McIntosh was in New Zealand. But it was @barbs1 who has inspired people from her cluster to blog and pursue their own challenge. I really enjoyed reading about her challenge with photography and another about an electric purple guitar being purchased for a challenge of learning how to play! Wow! How cool is that! My first thoughts were I must participate because I have started challenging myself with a craft I loved doing years ago and lost touch with it because of my busy work life and a personal situation!
I want to learn how to design my own quilts!
This is how and when my journey began and now I start to blog about it!
Three months ago I decided to go on a retreat. A stitching retreat in a beautiful resort not far from my home. I didn’t know one person but it was an opportunity to decide if I wanted to connect with quilting and stitching again.
I decided it was time to start doing something for me. Stitching is a craft that I have enjoyed immensely in the past. For many personal reasons I had put my craft aside and not touched it for about 2 maybe 3 years.
My attraction to this retreat was that Leanne Beasley a favorite quilt designer of mine was going to teach design. As I am a very practical person what I created needed to have a purpose and a use. I am not really into dust collectors! So designing sounded like fun, purposeful, meaningful and time-consuming.
I came up with a theme for my quilt and it was to do with camping, sea and new beginnings. I haven’t found the fabric to be the focus fabric for that quilt yet. Watch this space!
I had purchased some fabrics for the weekend to start a quilt but decided that the one I designed from the weekend would be my memory quilt for the start of my designs. A practice run really!
In the meantime I have also finished a fun colourful quilt top for my daughter Hannah who is in university at the moment and wanted one for her flat for 2011. I also finished stitching bee’s to a quilt top I had started years ago. It looks nice and I can’t wait to stitch that together into a quilt top.
I have also started a quilt top from Leanne’s design ‘Down in the Garden’ the block of the month arrived on my doorstep, on my birthday. I don’t remember saying I wanted to do it but after fondling the fabric and looking at the pattern I decided it would help me with my own designs! What a good excuse!
My gift to me!
Mel's 'Design and Stitch it' Challenge 