This Moment

Here's a link to Soulemama's moment and here's mine...

{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

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Dreams Of Gold Quilt

The quilt is finally finished, and after taking it with us for a photo shoot on a beautiful, sunset beach trip, it feels like it's become more of a 'Dreams of Gold' quilt than an 'Elephant Quilt'. The light was just so gorgeous and golden and dreamy. So lots of photos!

The 'Sogni d'Oro' block - 'Dreams of Gold'

And the back...

I added a small border to my elephant-in-a-tea-cup-hot-air-balloon section, along with a few stars scattered and another patchwork strip. You can maybe see my binding more clearly from the back too - I went for scrappy binding, but just in my torquoise and yellow colours.

I machine embroidered the 'Sogni D'Oro' again on the back, as well as a (long!) name.

I did the photos just as we were leaving, but the children sneaked off to take advantage of a little more time there to get completely soaking wet all over again, only this time fully dressed.

It was a lovely evening.

Linking up with Lets Bee Social, Linky Tuesday and, if I remember, quite possibly WIP Wednesday and Needle and Thread Thursday later in the week!

Sally.

This Moment

I really should have titled this post 'These Moments'. Summer seems to be racing past so quickly at the moment. There's a definite chill in the air (and also in the water!) and we're trying to make the most of these last few weeks, but it's feeling like Summer is impossible to hold onto, and it's slipping through our fingers. So no apologies for cheating big time here, this is my record of our fleeting Summer Moments.

Anyway, here's a link to Soulemama's non cheating moment, which made me smile. And here are mine!

A lovely sunset evening at the beach, followed by...

Walking in the woods, and damming the stream...

Discovering a new talent there...

Another sunset beach evening...

And another walk in the woods with a beautiful river at the end...

Beautiful, but cold!

And these woods also have the advantage of one of our favourite trees.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Elephant Quilt Back

You're going to get bored with this quilt soon! Hopefully this might be my last post on it before I have the finished product to show you. Today I've been working on the back. I had a little bowl of scraps left over from the front. Scraps that were surprisingly small really.

Now obviously I wouldn't have thrown these out regardless, but I did think it would be lovely to use them in some way on the back of this quilt. I had a browse through my Mini Quilts Board on Pinterest to try and find some inspiration, and came across this Pin, originally from Syko.

Something about an elephant in a tea cup - hot air balloon really appealed to me, and seemed perfect for the back of the quilt. I did a quick, rough sketch on some muslin...

And arranged some of the scraps over the 'balloon'.

I sewed them into strips...

And then on to the 'balloon'...

My second strip went on right sides together on top of the first, before ironing it over and then carrying on with the other strips...

The other parts of the picture I drew on bondaweb and ironed on to fabric. I wanted a different kind of elephant in my tea cup, one gazing up at a star above.

Here it is starting to come together...

And then sewn down, with more detail...

I'm going to 'quilt' the hot air balloon part, and possibly the rest of it too, and I've still got to embroider some words and a name on it.This is just a smallish section to go on the back of the quilt. The rest of the back will be very simple, in fact almost certainly a single piece of fabric from the stripy sheet I've used as the backing here.

And as for the front, my last unfinished block from yesterday? I've made a bit of progress. I found out late last night that the final recipient of this quilt has a very strong connection with this lovely short film, Sogni D'Oro. An Italian phrase that's the equivalent of our 'Sweet Dreams', but that literally means 'Dreams of Gold'. It seemed a beautiful phrase to put on a child's quilt, so that's what went along the bottom, with a couple of stars up the sides. I'm thinking the phrase might go quite well with my star gazing elephant on the back too.

Off to bed now for my own 'sogni d'oro', back tomorrow with a photo from the week, can't believe it will be Friday again. Goodnight,

Sally.

Quilting Inspiration

I've been having a big push this week on trying to get this quilt done. I've so nearly finished the top...

My jumble of completed blocks.

Ten out of my eleven pieces are completed, but I have quilters block on the last one and need some inspiration. One of the things I really like about 'quilt as you go' is that you can play around lots with the quilting and it's easy to make each block as individual as you like. And I've been doing lots of playing around with the quilting. It mostly started with straight line quilting in various ways...

But there's only so much straight line quilting I can do before I get a bit bored, and it starts to become a little bit more fancy...

 And then the straight lines start to morph into more interesting shapes...

 Patterns...

Words...

And of course pictures...

My own, and picking out detail in the fabric...

 

You see, this is why it's been taking so much time, lots of detail in this one! And it's all been going well, until I got to this block...



Can you see my 3 elephants walking along the top, tail to trunk? I quilted these on there, and then couldn't think how to quilt the other 3 torquoisey sides of this little patch. It's only a small area of the quilt as a whole and it really won't stand out at all, so I ought not to worry too much about what I finish it with here. But I just can't quite think of anything I'm happy with sewing round these other sides. I've slept on it for a couple of days, while I've finished all the other blocks, hoping that inspiration would appear from somewhere. But it hasn't and all my other blocks are now done. My only thought is maybe to quilt a word along the bottom, perhaps 'family'? And no ideas for down the sides really. Any suggestions to help?

Sally.