Quilts in nature

It's been a while since I've posted - life has been conspiring to keep me off of the computer and even worse out of the sewing room!  I have however been collecting inspiration however - here are some of my recent photos...

Munro quilt

My last post showed my friend's Andrei and Gill finishing their round of the Munros, and also the start of a quilt I'd been working on.  What I didn't say (just in case they happened to stumble on the blog) was that this was for them, to mark their birthdays this year and to celebrate their Munro achievement.  It has now been finished and presented to them...

 

By machine I embroidered the names of all 283 munros on to the four borders - I did them in height order, 50 at a time, a different colour for each 50 (the top 50 were white for snow).  This took a long time as I had to enter each letter one by one.  At first I thought I'd just do 50, then I thought 100 would be nice and so on.... until all 283 were done! :)  I was pleased with the end look, quite textural.

 

You might just about spot two little pink pigs appliqued on to the quilt - this is because they love pigs and have a huge collection of every sort of pig thing in their house (toys, ornamental etc)

 

The central panel of the quilt had actually been on the walk with us, and all of the group who had been on the hill had signed it in secret with messages for Andrei and Gill.

  

It was the ideal opportunity to present them with the quilt when they visited Sheila's open day last month, especially as it was the same week as Andrei's birthday.

They both seemed very pleased with the present and we hope it will remind them of all those fantastic days in the hills!

Disappearing - people and nine patch!

Two things have happened in the past week or so.  I have been up at the Cairngorms climbing my friends 'last munro' with them.  For those not in to Scottish hill walking a munro is a Scottish hill higher than 3000ft, there are 283 of them, and so my friends have now climbed every one!  The weather at the top of their number 283 was quite cold (we had snow on the way up) and visibility was such that people were disappearing in and out of sight as we went.  There were a dozen of us did the walk in total and champagne was carried up and drunk at the top to mark the occasion.  Here are my friends reaching the summit...

And cracking out the champagne, which given the weather was well chilled!

The other thing which I can share is my latest quilt efforts - a disappearing nine patch kindly held up by my husband below, which kind of shows the size of it as well.  The blocks are big and each one was originally 5 blue squares and 4 plaid squares before being quartered and rearranged.

I'm working on some borders for it this weekend - also blue - and have set myself the rather overambitious target of getting it all done and turned in to a quillo by this time next week!  I'll let you know how I get on....

Sunset

 We had some beautiful sunsets here during the good weather last week - here is one I caught on camera...

Finished quilt!

 After many months in the making I finally managed to finish the quilt at the last class on Wednesday night!  Here it is....

Liebster award!

Thank you to Di @ Willowbeck Designs for awarding me the Liebster Award! 

So, what is the Liebster Blog Award? The Liebster award (German for favourite) is for bloggers with 200 followers or less. As a recipient of the award, you have the chance to thank and link back to the blogger who gave it to you as well as pass it along to five other deserving blogs.

I would like to pass the Liebster Award onto...

Sheila at Bluepatch Quilter
Catherine at Sew Wonderful Life
David at Lost Threads
Sarah at Narcoleptic in a cupboard 
a quilt, maybe 

Now, I know at least some of you on that list have had this before, and some of you may have more than 200 followers but I just can't work it our from your blog, and at least one of you I have no idea how to email you to tell you, but I'm hoping it's the thought that counts!  I think all your blogs are great!

Sunny days

The sun has been out this weekend so hubby and I made sure we got out in it- we are very lucky to have all this pretty much on our doorstep...

I have also been getting down to some quilting too.  This weekend's achievement is that the big quilt is now all quilted, and the binding is machined on, just need to hand stitch round it all on the back and the job is done!