Safety pin down the toilet conundrum

At the bottom of our toilet there seems to be an open safety pin.  I must have dropped it there by mistake.  This leads to a dilemma.  Do I just leave it there and hope for the best?  Or will I just spend the day worrying about it making a hole in the pipe further down the system?  Do I pretend it is not there and when DH notices it, I blame it on one of the little monsters and let him be the one to fish it out?  Or do I just do the right thing, roll up my sleeve, take a deep breath and remove it?  I'm not sure - what should I do?

No 8

I'm losing track of time, but as I think today is the 13th, it means I'm still five behind where I wanted to be.  I'm trying to make them with what I have in the studio, as I really don't have time to go and look for appropriate materials in shops.  This is helped by the fact I hand dyed lots of cotton and silk and felt in approximately the right colours whilst I was up in Dundee.  I knew I would want to do something like this at some point.  However, the grey for these cobblestones had me stumped.  I ended up using a shot cotton (black and white) from Oakshott and then used a midnight blue fabric paint over the top.
Number nine is under way, but I need to try and climb over the mess on my studio floor to reach my cupboard to see if I have any silver foil.  That may take a few days!  Maybe I should make a resolution to tidy up my studio once I have finished this project.  However, I'm not sure that it will happen as I am sure to get distracted by something more interesting instead.

No 7

Obviously I'm on a bit of a role at the moment!  Here is the next one.  It is from a photo of part of a door and lino in the background.  The door was very worn and had lots of scratches and marks on it.

Nos. 5 and 6

No I haven't given up (yet) on my goal of 37 pieces by the 6th of February.  Here are numbers 5 and 6.  They were finished on Sunday, but too late to photograph in decent light and with tidying, washing and swimming lessons yesterday, I forgot to do them then.

This one has all over stitching apart from on the white, using my lovely Pfaff machine which arrived back on Friday.  Hurrah!  Sad to say, but I had really been missing it.  The built in walking foot makes sewing layers much easier.

Number six is much simpler.  I'm glad I'm putting these on the blog, because it is helping me keep count.  Lots more in progress, between photo, drawing and stitching.

Today - number 4

Today's effort.  These first four have been relatively straight forward for me to make.  However, part of me is a little worried that is because the ideas for making them in fabric have been with me for a while.  So it may get harder.. Only three behind on the first week.  I'm hoping to make it up at the weekend, but the children may make it a bit harder.

Number 3 of 37

This one was finished yesterday and I've just realised it is upside down.  However, in the gallery you will be walking around them, so which way up they are meant to be is irrelevant.

37 steps to madness

When I was asked to do a solo exhibition at The Changing Room in Stirling, I was delighted.  It is a lovely gallery with two rooms.  However, my 37 steps piece only fills one of them.  I do have other work I could show, but I wanted something to tie in.  It has been on my mind ever since Emma asked me in November, but mentally I was thinking I would start on it in the new year.  The 1st of January arrived and I had a brainwave.  I would make 37 small pieces to be placed on the floor like the snapshots I took every 37 steps.  Each of these pieces would be based on one of the snapshots.  Rather than make them photo shaped, I decided to make them 6 x 12in, roughly a large foot size (not my foot size as I take a tiny size 3!).  I calculated there were exactly 37 days until 6 February, which is when I would need to have everything ready to be installed, so that means I have to make one a day.  Oh.  What a challenge to set myself, as of course, I have nothing better to do, except look after the monsters, enjoy the snow, do my normal subbing for Popular Patchwork, write those articles that need to be written, write and give a talk to Helensburgh Quilters.... so I decided in my normal madness to go for it.  Will I make it?  Who knows.  Here are the first two, made on the 4th - yes I'm already behind!

Final 2009 Journal Quilts

I fell a bit behind on the journal quilts from the Popular Patchwork Challenge as this academic year I have 8 hours a week less child free, so it is a harder juggle at the moment. However, I wanted to finish and get actually achieve a new year's resolution for once, so I had one last push to get the remaining four done. I decided to make them of the same image to make it quicker and I liked my image of coral. It was, of course, too complicated to translate easily into an A4 sized quilt and I got two finished. I think I am going to have to admit defeat on the other two, which were appliqué and hand quilting.  The hand quilting one is underway, but I decided to use a thick thread, which made tiny stitches impossible (for me anyway) and so the design is not really showing up: it just looks like a jumble of stitches.  This is the image I was working from.  I spent quite a while manipulating it on the computer.

In the two I finished, the techniques were machine quilting and layering sheers.  I used an embellisher to layer the sheers over a painted background.

New exhibitions coming up

A few weeks ago I was feeling a bit despondent, which is why I wasn't writing my blog.  I don't have much time to make new work and what was the point anyway if it was never going to get shown.  Perhaps that is why I have been making so much simple patchwork as it is pleasurable and generally appreciated, whereas with my artwork it sometimes seems a bit of a slog. 
Well, enough of feeling sorry for myself as amazingly I was contacted by the Changing Room in Stirling about my 37 steps piece and it is going to be shown there, as my first proper solo exhibition from 12 February to the end of March. In the same week, Duncan of Jordanstone got in touch about which pieces of my work are to be included in its Crafts Festival next year.  So my work does get shown.  I just need to spend more time promoting it and making it and less time feeling sorry for myself!

Cushion covers

Having made the flying geese blocks for the mystery quilt in the normal wasteful way, I had a collection of 128 yellow/red half square triangles just begging to be used.  So I made cushion covers with them.  I still have some left and I am thinking of making a box to hold finished blocks in rather than just leaving them around my studio getting creased and dusty.