Here are the base ingredients: (I made the woven ribbon block)

I added lots more of the log cabin variation 6″ squares and some Kona solid sashing, FMQ-ed the centre, then added two borders the last of which was an homage to Katherine Guerrier’s stars.

I had a piece of, admittedly, non-Batik backing fabric and added some corner stars and red batik border to the back

and finally (although I do have a few threads to sew in!),  the label, naming all the generous contributors!

I am really looking forward to seeing what has happened to the blocks I contributed to the others!

I do work on through – I become such a sociophobe that there are no interruptions! (life always offers an upside!) A neighbour has become a grandmother and I made a cot quilt.  I wanted to focus on some lettering outlined in tight meander FMQing, so I simply bordered some charm squares  from The Cottonpatch in Kona Solids biscuit, and framed the whole in some more of the green, (what I like to call (as Miranda’s mother would also say) a KISS quilt).  The fabric is Amy Butler’s Soul Blossoms.

Terrible pic alert!!

I also had a play with some of the pre-felt I bought at Wonderwool this year

First stage – cut shapes, layer, and wet,

Add some soap to the top bubble-wrap NOT the wool, then rub over the shapes gently until they are lightly fixed in place, then roll up and roll back and forth until the felt is of the density you like!

Cut it into bits – and make a bag!

I have to admit to feeling slightly exposed in posting these pictures of my first ever attempt at an art quilt.  Artist’s Way not withstanding, I still have trouble applying the word ‘art’ to anything I do.  I come from a family in which artists were perceived as non contributary dilettantes, and nothing I ever created ever met with more that an “um” of a reaction.  I am more than aware of the dismissive reaction to art that is not immediate and ‘pretty’, but there is an intellectual content to this!  Does that sound high falutin?

I made it anyway.

The idea came from samples made at an Ario workshop.  We used a block that when heated can be pressed onto objects to make a stamp.  I used my keys as they were to hand.  From te pile of random samples came the idea of a quilt about the keys to happiness that I have and that I search for.  My favourite bit shows Ygdrassil, as part of a section on faith, and is transfer printed, machine embroidered, and seed stitched in a random dyed thread.  Other sections, including Music, Nature and Love, as well as the if….. of less weight and more money,  use Tyvek (not keen), Stewart Gill paints, paintsticks, foiling (especially liked it used on the ‘dots’ of self adhesive interfacing), and loads of beading, (tribute to Frieda) and some Swarovski crystalling, plus a little book with printed Tyvek pages. It measures 20″ x 30″. If you click on the pics you can see them superduper clear and detailed!

A wonderful gift from Hazel

I built it many years ago, almost all by myself, originally as a Wendy house for the children, but with the hope that one day it would be my room of one’s own. It tilts, it leaks, and it hosts a variety of pests from mice to fruit flies from the nearby apple tree, but it also looks out onto the rose garden, is as peaceful as a place can be, and houses all my creative supplies (apart from textile based stuff which is in the house).

The corrugated iron base (how attractive!) is a later addition (do I sound like Dan Cruickshank?) and was necessary after utter vandalisation by a badger who threw planks and rocks seven or eight feet away, in a seemingly frenzied night’s work.

I come down here every morning to do a few pages (morning pages a la Julia Cameron), and read some inspiring text.  I try to sketch, but I am full of the fear and loathing that often overcomes hope and desire when a skill has been lost through neglect.

Main headline – we have water!  As of Thursday I could brush my teeth with the tap running if I should be so devil-may-care! A bit like when pain stops, the joy of the mundane is unconfined and simple tasks like turning the washing machine on become occasions worthy of champagne.

However – just so that the Lord High Universal Lord Over  All Foolish Ego’s is not forgotten, the Rayburn has had a melt down so whilst we await a call from our engineer Hughey Lewis (I know!!!!), cold food is the order of the day!  Luckily he/she also provided a heat wave so salad will do.

Once I do get around to picture taking, I will show you my lovely gift from Hazel over at Knityoga and take you through the highs (few) and lows (many), of my first attempt at an art quilt.  I am one of the few who have completed The Artist’s Way, and thoroughly recommend it to all budding artits with demons to wrestle, but I remain, nevertheless, a person who finds it hard to quiet the intellect, and listen to  intuition and imagination.  I overthink and thereby sit sometimes like a rabbit in a beam of light.  Nevertheless – I have also learned to carry on regardless and, soon, all will be revealed!

The boy has finished Uni – 2:1 – Well Done Son!  He is at Glastonbury – his pet, Roger Moore, is here.  Roger Moore is a Bearded Dragon.

Actually, stealing from his Facebook photos  - here is a picture

He eats live crickets.  For a vegetarian (moral reasons) with an insect phobia, I have shifted the perimeter of my comfort zone this week! He is quite fascinating, but not as strokeable as Biddy! Once the boy is home (for a while) I will feel otherwise challenged as we return to the random sock placement, and empty fridge, that living with a young man entails!

This is serious now.  Brilliant as we are at water conservation, and prepared as we now are with four rain tubs, which are all full, the tank that the spring feeds is way, way down.  The WFV brings two 5lt bottles home, refilled at  work each day.  Yesterday, I bought two 9 gallon containers and the neighbour with a new bore hole, (hmmmm…….. I wonder……….) has said we can fill them whenever.  I filled them yesterday and nearly gave myself a hernia getting them into the car.  I told myself that the first time would be the worst and that my muscles will build from this point onwards, but goodness me they were heavy.  We are tipping them into the garden tank.  18 gallons/approx 70 litres, each day is more than we use at present, when we flush the loo with buckets from the raintubs, the WFV showers at work, I limit my showering to twice a week and use a bucket of heated rain water on the other days.  We are using about 11lts per day each. Apparently the average person uses 160 litres every day.  No wonder there is a world water crisis.

Using only 11lts per day is depressing though.  Nothing feels as wonderful as a long hot bath, but as our bathroom has been out of service for at least two years, the water shortage can’t be  blamed.  We reached deadlock in our renovations when we couldn’t work out how to fix plasterboard to a very, very uneven (horizontally and vertically), wall.  We ponder.

 A daily shower seems like a 21C necessity, but like all our 21C necessities it is, in fact, a luxury.  A dilettante Westerner like me can say – everybody needs a little luxury don’t they – knowing that the majority of the world knows no such ease, but Oh! how I long to stand under a hotter-than-it-should-be stream of water, then paint my toenails and slaver myself in body lotion, to hang about in my cleaner than clean shower room, dawdling – because I can.  I say cleaner than clean, because, of course, the housework is on short rations too.  I have started using various ‘wipes’ which totally go against my eco-philosophy.  Gawd, it’s depressing.

I investigated getting 600 gallons of water delivered to fill the tank right up and thus dwell in a fool’s paradise, (but a sociable one – who can invite visitors to a fill-your-own-bucket house?) for a while.  £600 for 600 gallons.  Everyone says that petrol costs are extortionate!!

A bore hole of our own (and goodness knows whose supply we would then disrupt), would cost £7000 minimum. Don’t have it.  Gawd it’s even more depressing.

Our whole county is threatened at the moment by the prospect of being covered in wind-turbines.  The Welsh Assembly came up with flawed legislation over 10 years ago that mean that the beautiful hills of Mid Wales are fair game to any speculator who wants to cash in on the myth of on-shore wind as the only way forward for renewables in the UK.  I say the myth because the drawbacks to on-shore wind are manifold, not least being the best kept secret, (especially from those who, as I once did, see the turbines as having a certain elegance about them) of such factories – that they require miles of pylons and acres of substations to transport the energy in proportionately decreasing amounts, along miles and miles of cable, from the dark-at-night and uncommercialised greenery of Wales to the 24/7 urban world where overheated stores keep their doors open all winter on lit streets. Gawd, it’s depressing.

I want to make my own green energy, and with the wind we have, I could make some for you too.  Sadly I haven’t got £20,000.  Shame the government won’t subsidise individuals.  It prefers to fund foreign corporations. Gawd, it’s depressing.

 The spring that always dries for a couple of weeks in late summer, dried in April. The novelty of the launderette has worn off (yes I realise I am priveleged in it ever being a novelty), I long for a very leisurely shower,  (we have an underground tank but must eke it out – and no the bathroom isn’t finished!! What do you mean it’s been two years since we started work on it?) and whilst me choosing to let the washing up accumulate is one thing, having to is another.

And the poor garden.  This is a time of thinking ahead, our big splitting and moving season, but without water it’s a sorry affair. The rain butts were emptied by mid month, (we have just fitted two more this morning) so the new roses were verging on suffering. This year we thought we had (amazingly because it is a toughie) lost a Great Maiden’s Blush, but I have found two teeny tiny shoots below ground so she has survived! She lives in the wildish  garden, (the truly wild, natives-only, garden is the meadow) along with Alba Semi-plena, Fantin Latour, Mme Hardy, and what I think is R. forrestiana, as well as an unknown seedling from a hip I gathered in town just for fun!  They have been added to this year by the very handsome Charles de Mills. We look forward to June!

I fell in love with a weirdly coloured David Austin rose last year and bought another this year – Summer Song – is it red? Orange? Coral?

This was inspired by a velvet patchwork quilt in the Quilt Association collection.   The exhibition of the Association’s collection opened today and we hope lots of quilters will be inspired to donate A4 sized inspirations to raise funds.

I decided to go back to an old stalwart – Turmeric – first used in this family one easter when the faithful (and yellow) Mini-Egg laying chick had gone AWOL, and a white chick had to be hastily disguised as an understudy! Anyone who has spilt curry will know of Turmeric’s staying power.

Determined to have some Highly-E-numbered-American-Poison presence, a few dashes of Walmart’s finest Value Fruit Punch, gives a lovely red – tomatoey, not pinky  – and a tiny drip-drop of some teal Procion I had already mixed up – Voila!

All I have to now is choose a pattern and beads – Yawn!!!!!