Fabric and beads stash

I have been clearing out and managing to spend a lot more time creating in my little Boxoftrix studio, however all the lovely pieces I'm working on are for Christmas gifts and so I can't post pictures just yet. however I want to show my lovely shelves. Old video shelves retrieved from the attic cleaned up and painted white.

Hung up on their side they make great storage for my collection of smaller pieces of fabric. These have all been stashed in drawers until now, out of sight they do not inspire at all but here on my little shelves they speak to me and I have now so many projects filling my sketchbook waiting to be made!

The little shelf in the middle is one that has been in the family for quite some time, I think my older brother made it in woodwork class at school ...it has been painted every colour under the sun, I painted it pale blue when it was in my boys room, I like the colour so just kept it blue. Now its being used to house my little button jars (Asda herb & spice jars) and my seed  bead stack pots.

The little jars along the top are baby food jars............I knew they would come in handy for something eventually! it was fun stuffing all the little pieces of ribbons, lace, cords and dyed yarns in a colourful fashion and I couldn't believe that I emptied a fair sized storage tub in the process.......now I can see so much at a glance and all of this is right above my newly aquired cutting and ironing table. (our old dining table)

28 squares No 6 and 7

 No 6 on the 28 squares sampler ~ Little bucket and spade.

Bianca like most children loved the beach, liked to build sand castles, and dig huge holes.

No 7 ~ Easter Eggs, surrounded by chocolate drops.

She liked to celebrate Easter and the last gifts she bought for her Son Dylan and her Mum and Dad were Easter eggs.

Another patchwork UFO

I've ordered a panel for the back of the hexagon quilt, meanwhile determined to stick to the plan, I have pulled the second quilt from the UFO drawer.
This one was a quilt I started for my firstborn David, it was begun around the same time as the hexagon one and was intended as a long term slow project. I was aiming for a quilt big enough to cover a single bed. I realise now that for David who has now left home, working and gone back to college and now entered 3rd year at Uni, to enjoy and use this quilt it should have been a much smaller project.

I'll probable make it about 50inch square.

So how far had I got with it?.....it's a lovely little centerpiece with all the patches that I had cut being sewn together with no spare fabric or patches, this is probably the reason it was put aside, waiting for more of the dark blue chintz fabric to be cut into shapes.

I decided to remove and rearrange the dark blue pieces, I couldn't believe that when I counted them up I had the exact amount to finish evenly.

I worked on this today, lots of mess involved........

I had forgotten how the folds at the points get in the way of the thread all the time and it takes twice as long to stitch these little babies together than the hexagons. Each diamond shape measures only 2.5 inches from the widest points. What an ambitious attempt I was undertaking 12 yrs ago to get this to a single bed size quilt! You can see how the pieces in the hexagon quilt went together much quicker when they measure 4 inches across they are not so fiddly!

With all the tacking threads and papers removed, it now looks like this 

I didn't follow any pattern with this piece I just decided as a went along with what fabric I had available.

I think it looks quite pretty now. I cant believe there are 306 pieces in this!

 I plan to machine stitch this on top of a larger piece of fabric.

Needle books & patchwork revisited

I'm still working my way through all the half finished projects using up drawer space in my studio.

Here are two needle books I just finished.

Both have silk backgrounds with machine embroidered embellishment.

The flowers on the pink one were an experiment with fabric scraps trapped in crystal organza and machine stitched. They look much more sparkly in real life than the camera can capture.

Both are now available from my folksy store.

Also,

 I decided the next step along the way with the hexagon patchwork quilt.

I wanted to use a woollen blanket, or rather half of one that I have left over from another quilt. I like the weighty feeling that proper woollen blankets give to a quilt, especially one this size, not too big, to be used as a lap quilt it measures 53 inches x 50 inches almost a square. I machine stitched a folded edge of cream sheeting fabric under the patches. This way the shape of the hexagons are not compromised.

This is how it looks now.

.......... and a closer view

The piece is still slightly bigger than the blanket but I'm going to make the edge like an Oxford style pillow case if you know what I mean. I'm not sure how it will look I might not like it and then, if so I'll think again.

OK here is a question for all you quilters out there.

Should I baste this top piece to the blanket now or wait until I have the back piece done?

I'm thinking I might get a panel piece for the back.

Any advice here at this stage?