To market, to market ...

We are heading off to visit friends next week, so naturally I decided at the last minute that a quilt would be the ideal present to bring with us!

Here's the progress so far

The pattern is called Floating in the Air and is from the Aug/Sept 2013 issue of Quilt magazine. The pattern calls for 63 charm squares for the block centres, but I have reduced it to 49 as the full size quilt would take up all of the baggage allowance :)

I am using up the text charm squares that I received in the Texty Charm Swap, which I discovered when looking for the link that I received two years ago!

No progress will be made on the piecing for the next two days though as I won this in a giveaway run by Bernina a couple of weeks ago.

I have never visited the Festival of Quilts before, so I am really looking forward to it.

Fortunately, the show coincides with the first day of the next Test match in the Ashes cricket series, so whilst I am browsing the eye candy at the Quilt show my other half will be soaking up the sun at Trent Bridge. Win-win all round :)

Linking up to WIP Wednesday

Celebrating the New - A colourful canvas

Welcome to another New to Me Link Party!

It's that time of the month where we celebrate the trying, if not the succeeding at trying something new in the month.

My New to Me activities were very thin on the ground this month, I have only one to report!

The June meeting of my local Embroiderers Guild was a full-day workshop with the very talented Beryl Frank. Beryl is a quilter but our project for the workshop was a counted canvas piece based upon a swatch of Kaffe Fassett fabric, it sounded like fun!

This is one of the examples that Beryl brought along to demonstrate what she planned for us, the photo does not do the intensity of the colours justice at all.

Having never attempted counted canvaswork before there was a steep learning curve involved for me :) Needless to say the stitching was nowhere near finished by the end of the workshop!

However, I can happily report that I have now finished the canvas centre for my piece, as you can see below.

I was lucky enough to find the perfect beads lurking in a nearly hidden basket at my local quilt shop, as I was struggling to work out the sizes that I needed when I tried to order them online. Bead sizes in millimetres mean nothing to a girl raised in feet and inches :)

There were some definitely New to Me stitches in this, Woven Rice Stitch (the centre and corners) and Mosaic Stitch (the orange border) being ones I had never even heard of before, never mind stitched :)

Next up, I have to take a deep breath and make the fabric mount for the canvas centre with the fabric you can see above. An iron and Bondaweb is involved so it could all go pear-shaped from here on in!


So, that's my New to Me activities this month, now it is your turn.

As ever please help to spread the word by linking back to this post in your post and/or adding the blog button to your sidebar.

Check out the other links too and, maybe, leave an encouraging comment along the way. The emphasis of this link party is to celebrate the trying of something new, whether it works out exactly as planned or not, so a little encouragement here and there would not go amiss! 

The link will remain open until 23.59GMT on July 31st, so you have some time to try something new and link up and join the party :) If your New to Me involves a Christmas in July project then don't forget to link up to this month's Ho, Ho, Ho and on We Sew Link Party too, you could just win a mini charm pack for your efforts :)

You will find the Ho, Ho, Ho and On We Sew Link Party this month at Weekend Doings and Patch the Giraffe

Looking forward to seeing what you have been up to this month!

An InLinkz Link-up

Linking up to

A Russian feast for the eyes

When we travelled around the Baltics during our stint there one of my favourite occupations was visiting the Russian Orthodox Church in any town we visited. They were always so colourful inside and out.  On a sunny day the golden-domed churches were especially dazzling!

So, as you can imagine, I was really looking forward to having the opportunity to see some particularly stunning examples on our recent trip to Russia. I wasn't disappointed!

Here are some of the highlights :

This rather sombre, black-domed church is in a town called Uglich, which was our first port of call after leaving Moscow.

This much more flamboyant blue-domed church, the splendidly named Church of Dimitry of the Spilled Blood, is, however, the main reason for visiting Uglich. The Dimitry in question was the son of Czar Ivan the Terrible, who didn't have the best of luck with his offspring. He killed his eldest son and heir himself during an argument by hitting him over the head with a staff, Dimitry's throat was cut when he was ten and another child fell in the river and drowned whilst very young. Mind you Ivan had six wives so he was doing his best to keep the line going despite the misfortune befalling several of his children :) It didn't work though, as his eventual heir wasn't up to the task and was the last of the line!

The Churches in Uglich both had the most common onion-style dome but this church overlooking Moscow has the older, less common helmet shaped dome.

These fabulous, golden domes are on one of the three Churches situated within  the grounds of the Kremlin in Moscow. Each church was apparently either for hatching, matching or dispatching the Czars!

These silver domes are actually wooden and apparently can also look green or gold depending upon the way that the light is hitting them. They are the top of a beautiful wooden church that is currently being restored on the island of Kizhi.

You can see where the Church is being restored better here. The island is now an open-air ethnographic museum and other wooden structures have now been brought there for preservation.

Of course I couldn't finish this post without including a mention for the most outrageously over the top Churches of them all :)

The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg, a riot of blue, yellow and green tiles

and St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.

Aren't they just the most riotous collection of colours you will ever see, and a feast of quilting inspiration to boot :)

Linking up to