The Orchard

Ok so it is four long weeks since my last blog. But May has been a really busy month. The Queen came to Ireland, Obama came to Ireland, Bin Laden got killed and I turned 50.

It also means that I have been working on something and here it is. My very first quilt to be sent to the Festival of Quilts. (I hope you are proud of me Teresa?). All that remains now is for me to fill out the registration form and post it when the forms arrive back. There is one downer to all of this, I will not get to see my own quilt hanging in Birmingham, so I hope those of you who are lucky to attend this year will stop by and have a look for me.

 These are the hand dyed fabrics from the workshop at the IPS.



 I bleached out the shapes and filled them in again with oil sticks. I used free motion quilting all over with some hand stitching for the leaves.

Same process for the pear. With lots of french knots



 and red sparkly  thread for the free motion quilting.

  Hand stitches creates the shading at the bottom of the Apple, and variegated thread used in the free motion quilting shows up really well.

And finally the pear with free motion circles gives more interest to the skin.