Snow day! (or possibly week)

It's snowed heavily here for 4 days so far which means that I can't work on my research project. In hindsight doing a project on soil treatment over the winter in the North of England may not have been the best plan.

It's left me with a lot of time on my hands which has been spent on my laptop in the college bar. I check the Daily Deal on the Missouri Star Quilt Company's site regularly and the other day they had an offer I couldn't turn down:

It's a Jelly roll of It's a Hoot fabrics by MoMo for Moda. The colours are so fun, they really cheered up my grey miserable snow day so I had a play around with my coloured pencils...

...and ordered it, along with a solid white jelly roll. I think it will make a really great quilt! My coloured scribbles attracted a bit of attention in the bar (the American Football players were particularly nosy) and when I explained what I was doing they all wanted a go. This was Ryan's design

Apparently the red block at the bottom has to have pictures of all of us. Not sure he's quite got the hang of quilt design.

Rural Jardin coming together

I finally got a chance to squeeze in a bit of sewing between lectures and coursework and have managed to get all my bear paw blocks stitched together in rows. Here are 4 out of the 5 rows pinned up on my notice board (the fifth didn't fit)

I really like the neutral plain in the background, it goes a long way to offset the busyness of some of the prints. These strips will be sashed together with the same width sashing as the separate blocks and then bordered with a double width strip.

I think the "paws" themselves have come out quite well. They look a little disjointed with the large prints:

But I think they work really well with the smaller, more even prints:

I'm going to leave these up on the board so that I see them constantly, Hopefully that will encourage me to get them finished sooner!

Cramped sewing

One of the problems of living in college accommodation has always been that you have very little space. You have to live, sleep, work and have fun in one tiny little room. It gets a whole lot worse when you try to sew in there as well!

Please excuse the picture quality - mum took the camera on holiday with her to ..... Houston quilt market! I am so incredibly jealous but I couldn't take the time out during term to make the trip with her. At least I'm starting to be able to squeeze some sewing in finally.

To make up for my lack of quilting output, I thought I would start to share some pictures of Durham. This is my view on the way to lectures this morning. I'm studying civil engineering and I think that it's a real shame that I won't ever get to work on a building as beautiful as this:

Durham Cathedral in the Autumn light

Finally... I can sew again!

The move to university is done and the first week of lectures is done. I haven't been able to do any sewing since the move because as I was packing I realised that all my equipment is actually my mothers. I have my own sewing machine but that's pretty much it. So I hit the internet and this pile was delivered to me recently:

A starter pack from creative grids which includes an industrial strength cutting mat, an Olfa rotary cutter and a Creative Grids non-slip ruler. I couldn't let it sit around so I ran to the market and picked up some supplies to decorate or flat for an Alice in Wonderland themed birthday party.

A pile of felt and bias binding was quickly chopped up with my new board into....

...neat pile of bunting triangles. A little more snipping and an hour at the sewing machine gave me 8 metres of "Queen of hearts" bunting. I had a whole load more little flags but didn't buy enough binding so I'll have to think of something to do with them.

A quick way to liven up a dull student corridor!

Decisions, decisions...

I think I may have been a little too optimistic in thinking that I could get this top finished in 2 days. The sashing is taking a lot longer than I expected.

I've been stitching away like a maniac but have completely neglected to do any laundry, organizing or packing for my move this weekend.  Now the question is do I carry on sewing and throw all my dirty washing into bin bags to move or do I do the sensible thing and pack up the machine?

But I love my little machine so much .....

The last leg of a sewing marathon

I'm determined to get this quilt layered up before I have to move back into the university accommodation on Saturday.  I won't have the space to do any layering there unless I sweet talk the staff into letting me use the dining room tables.

So, marathon sewing sessions it is.  I've been sewing non stop every night after work and I've turned my lovely pile of dog eared strips into 80 beautiful bear paws.  Here's a selection of them:

Whites and reds

Reds

Blues

Light blues

I'm not sure which group I like best but they've all exceeded my expectations. The background colour is Moda's Bella Solid in Stone and it seems to be doing a fantastic job of setting off the Rural Jardin fabrics.  Sashing tomorrow night and then I'm getting close to the finish line.