Daisy stitches – Kickback Friday

Well my Quilty Friends, it's still hot, hot, hot in Wales.

So I was up, dressed and down the beach nice and early this morning before the day had a chance to heat up.

And it was glorious down there this morning.

I wanted to introduce Daisy to the beach.

At first she was afraid.

She was pretrified

And after ten minutes of trying, I had to pick her up and carry her onto the beach.

At first she stuck by me like glue.
But then she thought the wet sand was pretty cool to lay in.

What, me roll around in the wet sand.

No it wasn't me - I'm not sure I like the beach.

Stay with me this does involve stitching - eventually.

Now she's getting into it - ears all akimbo -

She looks a bit like a gremlin - maybe that's what happens to her for ten minutes every evening when she goes wild. Um.. must remember not to get her wet.

Ah yes, this is the life - just call me
Daisy Digger or Digger Daisy










Using camera timer now - quick Daisy, we have 10 seconds to strike a pose.
The eagle eyed among you may have noticed the railings in the sand. - yes the sand has completely covered the steps and most of the railings too!

After her first visit to the beach this morning Daisy has spent the rest of the day like this - with occasional re-positioning for comfort.

I think it's what you call 'Dog Tired'.

Here are some shells we collected this morning for future inspiration.

And finally, here comes the stitching bit.
Do you remember in my last post I showed you my work in progress.

Well, here it is all finished, except for the edging - not sure what I'm going to do there.
Any suggestions?

Above the original picture with my interpratation.

And this is a close up of Daisy all finished.

I'm absolutely thrilled with it - I had a few wobbles along the way, wasn't sure it was going to turn out how I envisaged it.
But the finished piece is just how I wanted it to look. Yippy!

Might try another one soon - watch this space....

Meanwhile, you might enjoy browsing my other Social Media Links

So, that's it from me today,

Yours in Stitches, Joy

Getting the paints out - Monday Group

Well my Quilty Friends as this hot weather continues here in Wales my stitching has almost ground to a halt.

It's just too hot to be indoors sewing. So it's hand stitching in the garden for me.

Mind you even that's not easy with Daisy (my new puppy) wanting to help all the time.

Once the weather cools down the and normal sewing resumes, the next part on my log cabin is the binding.

Meanwhile,
 I'm going to show you a little piece I'm currently working on.

As a backdrop to this story. Me and a few of my quilty friends have recently joined the Contemporary Section of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles.

I've been a 'Guild' member for years, but this May decided to join the Contemporary Section.

Well, we all went to a Guild Area Day last month and the speaker was Gillian Travis. She is also a member of the Contemporary section. And she was showing amongst other things, some of the pieces she had made for the Contemporary challenge this year, Journal Quilts.

We would have like to join in, with the Journal Quilts challenge, but as we joined in May we were too late to join in this challenge.

 So between us we devised a quilty plan.

We would have our own little contemporary challenge. We choose memories of each month, so our first month would be Memories of June which we would each have to bring along and show at our monthly Swansea Quilters meeting.

Sew, this is mine, a work in progress at the moment. But it has to be finished for Saturday so I'd better get a move on.  

 I have chosen a picture of Daisy take just a few days after we had her.

I took lots of photos that day and as she raced around the house and garden,

most of my pictures were of a blur of black, a black tail or even some with no Daisy in at all.

This was one of my better ones - she's almost all in it - it's just her head disappeared as I took the photo.

Anyways, I had the photo printed out. Then I took a piece of thinish calico, laid it on the top of the photo

the simply traced the outlines of the photo onto the calico.

Next - very brave of me

I got out some of the fabric paints I'd bought over the last few years.

You know,

The kind of quilty thing you buy intending to try straight away

Which then sits in a draw for the foreseeable future

mainly due to your being too scared/not having the confidence to try whatever it is out.

Sew

Feeling enthused and fearless after Gillian Travis talk - 'just do it' she said.

'Use these little quilts to try out different ideas', she said

'Don't procrastinate', she said  

SEW

I got out my paints, sat out the garden and painted the photo  

And you can see the result in the picture above, above the actual picture.

And I'm very pleased with it for a first attempt.

Now even I can see that the wall is a bit wonky

That's where I didn't follow the lines and added some of my own

Leason learnt there.

This picture has some machine stitching on it.

You can probably make out the stands of cotton that need to be cut off

These are from where I've 'jumped' from one section of stitching to another.

Next I plan to start hand stitching Daisy in.

It's no masterpiece - but I'm quite thrilled with my first attempt

I particularly like the cartoon feel to it - it wasn't something I was aiming for but I like it.

Well that's me done for today,

remember you can click on the 'pink links' to find out more. 

Speak to you all again soon,

Yours in Stitches, Joy