Happy New Year!

I have been trying to get round to posting for the last few days but never seemed to get there. It is a funny time of year between Christmas and New Year, I have been socialising, watching movies, eating chocolate and drinking wine, pastimes I don't do of much of these days! If you need a funny movie to cheer you up in this post Christmas gloom I can recommend 'The Hangover'. I have done some sewing - more about that later.

The main purpose of this post is to wish a Happy New Year to everyone who visits this blog. Hello to Nia in Australia - I keep thinking about you in the sunshine as we freeze here in the uk! Hello to Mary - it was lovely to hear from you and I am so glad you keep checking up on me on my blog! Hello to all my fellow City & Guilds students - hope you had a good break from college work over the holidays - I know I did. And hello to everyone else reading this - I do appreciate your visits.

As for the snow - we did have a White Christmas - more of a cold icy one actually - no snow on Christmas day but quite a heavy burst on Christmas Eve. Probably only about 4 inches deep at any time but that is enough to cause quite a lot of disruption here in the uk! There is more snow forecast but it may not ever arrive. However the weather is extremely COLD which just makes you want to stay inside and QUILT!

So onto the sewing. At College in December we did loads of dyeing techniques, the results of which I will show soon. One of them was 'over dyeing' which I have been wanting to try for a while. I bought some striped fabric for £1 per yard to have a go with.
These are the results.


This is the original fabric - it is 100% cotton but it is a bit thinner than proper quilting cotton and has some open weave areas as part of the pattern which has made it quite challenging to sew with.

I have been wanting to work with stripes after seeing the quilt Kaffe Fassett did where he made striped fabric into squares. So when I was in America, Indiana to be precise, I bought this ruler which I have been using to cut the triangles to make the squares.

In case you were in doubt about how much cheaper quilting equipment is in America here is a photo of the receipt I found in the bag! It is actually for another ruler but you get the idea!

I have been playing with this striped fabric over the Christmas holidays and have learnt a lot about what works and what doesn't. I have nearly put together a small quilt top and am now working on another using all the reject blocks and leftovers. Photos to follow soon.