Two Quilts - Nearly Finished

Well the two quilts are very nearly ready - just the last touches to make - I guess I'm not the only one to be doing that this week! They have to be posted off next week to arrive by the 29th.

Here is the large sawtooth diamond. It is a large quilt at over 90 inches square. There is just a last check to make for unquilted areas (I know there are a few left) and then to "defur" it, pack it and send it off.

Here is my "helper" Snowy - sitting on top of the sewing machine where I will have to shoo her off.

And here is the bell quilt. I had tried to make a central panel using the photo of the bells amongst the ruins. I enlarged the photo several times - pieces were still very small!and the colours were very dark ... and the bells didn't stand out too well - the harder I worked, the worse it looked ...so with a deadline looming I went over to "Plan B", a simpler centre where there was a circle of bell blocks. Of course the block made by Sue Spiegel had to go into the centre - she is the Cathedral artist in residence who had to be extricated, wounded, through a window of the collapsed cathedral. I think this centre looks good. The rest of the blocks were placed fairly randomly as in a scrap quilt.

This quilt is good proof that there is no such thing as a standard 1/4 inch seam allowance. Fortunately the blocks were not difficult to sew together as I had used my sandboard to mark the 6 inch seam line on the reverse of each block, having folded them in half first. I sewed them into blocks of nine -leaving some extra blocks to go along the bottom.

The finished top before the extra blocks and borders were attached. At the moment I am busy machine quilting the borders. More photos to follow once that is finished! This quilt will have a binding!!

Fianally, the bunch of beautiful flowers that Mike gave me for my birthday. There are roses plus some lovely Protea flowers from South Africa.

On Saturday I taught hand quilting at Quilters Haven in the morning - then we rang quarter peals on the bells at Wenhaston and Reydon. You could hear the Latitude music festival thumping along in the background - not a good year as there have been heavy downpours all weekend! To finish we all went to Southwold Pier and the others (not me - wimp) went swimming in the sea before having fish and chips. We admired the view of rain clouds departing and a beautiful sunset. A nice day.