The grand unveiling <.....trumpet fanfare please.....>

After a rather jam packed week of stitching and various school events I have managed to finish my quilt of the Century! Whoo hooo for me!!

I think I've had an out of body experience with it all. Setting such a huge challenge, arranging with a very patient Head of the school and All of the staff, fitting in with numerous special days and school trips, I have not had time to think about it too much.

I started this on the 22nd of May with Yr6's dyeing the yards of fabric and it had to be finished by  the 13th of July for the school Parade.

This is the final layout of panels, before stitching the long lengths and binding.

 Mr Webster wanted the children's memories of New Bradwell incorporated onto the quilt somewhere, so we decided that each class would have a panel of the squares to draw on. These 16 panels were then stitched together to make the final quilt.

Some of the detail was amazing and each year group have certainly had a full and inspiring year of activities!

F1 - these are 3-4 year olds: lots of gardens and butterflies a hot cross bun and some frogs.

A year 1 class: a visit to the church, a visit to a Safari Park and the lifecycle of butterflies.

A year 5 class: a visit to the RAF museum and the theatre and the O2 arena for the young voices concert.

So here I stand rather warm and exhausted with  the finished quilt. Overall the colours and details work well I think. There will always be bits I would have done differently given time to think and the benefit of hind site, but it's up and every child in the school took part in the project.

Detail of the 435 squares:

There were no great trauma's and every child took great pride in their work, what a pleasure this was to make this with them - honest! 

Thank you New Bradwell children and staff for letting me loose in your school.

Jane x

(Mrs Charles)

I've had a busy week!

Living so close to London, about 45 miles, you would think it was easy to 'pop' down for the day to see an Exhibition or do a 'bit of shopping', sadly or probably sensibly it does not happen very often.

But with some child care shuffling and a friend who wanted to go to, I was able to escape and venture to the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington to the Vintage Quilt Exhibition. We were not disappointed. For those in the Quilting world, you may have seen reports in the press about the collection and projects inspired by this amazing collection. It's going on tour after London, look out for it in a City near you!!

I knew there would be danger in the air of course, a spending mine field of temptation, I would have to be restrained. So I didn't buy a guide. Will probably regret this and have to back to get one, a false economy if ever I saw one. The V&A in an inspired merchandising ploy have got together with Liberty and produced a range of Reproduction cotton lawns and this is where I tripped up. Oh and the 2011 pocket diary, with a good selection of photo's from the exhibition and textiles collection. It could have been worse, believe me.

My other problem is that it was very dark and dimly lit to enhance the beauty of the quilts, and preserve their colours, so I could not take photos. mmmm, you will just have to go and look for yourselves, sorry :-)

However, in the courtyard cafe we found some lovely lemon trees with real lemons. Yes, lemons in London in May!

I know!

And then on the outside, there were a couple of Elephants. A London wide parade celebrating these endangered magnificent creatures and bringing colour and fun to the streets of London. A great idea, the children would love to spot them and it probably means we will be popping down with them soon to do such a thing.

Just encase you cannot get there yourself, have a look at the website and donate here :-)
So we had a great day, thanks for coming with me Sophie, I will probably have to go again it would be a shame not to......

The summer project is finnished!

Last summer (2009) I set myself a stitching project for high days and holidays, I NEEDED to be able to stitch all the time. I spend so much time sitting in the park on play schemes with the children and just general being outside, chatting and having the odd picnic. It just seemed logical to have a project to work on when I had a moment.

So:

I found some large pieces in my stash - this was not a difficult task I have the 2010 base fabrics there too. I then started to collect bits to add the patchwork hearts. Again, more scraps from my stash and then the odd gem from a charity shop.

I worked on each strip individually, so it was portable and less conspicuous.

Each heart was interfaced and then machined on, I now wish of course I had used bond-a-web, would have cut down the hastle no end, mmmm.

Once I had planned the fabrics, I then arranged the hearts, left to right:

A-B-C-A-B-C-A.

The space between each heart was the width of a heart, does that make sense?

Sitting in the park, or the tent or on the beech, I worked feather stitch over each heart. Then started machining the strips together and continued feather stitching over the seams.

The quilt then lay dormant for 3 months, school, work and christmas took over. :-(

Then as if my magic, the time came again when I needed to stitch and keep warm in a small cottage in Norfolk, so out came the fabric, a blanked I had been saving to line it with and some lovely navy hand quilting thread. Hey bingo, in one chilly day and night, I had quilted round each heart in the navy.

And then to bind, mm, never done that properly before. Had a surf and found this article really useful and the binding went on like a dream.

Hurray! Snugly warm and lovely in this grey, grey month of February.

In my head I am now planning this years summer project, Purple and Green will be the scheme - roll on the summer :-)