The Shawshank Redemption Quilt

All those who wear glasses to read blogs

please take them off now.

All those who don't wear glasses...well, just half close your eyes to look at the following pics.

I've finished my beach quilt!

(thank you; thank you)

It's very far from perfect, which is why I don't want you to look too closely.

Made from charity shop shirts and castoffs from my husband's wardrobe (whether he was aware of it or not. )

The squares had been cut in my life-before-dog and have been waiting patiently to be sewn together for a whole year or more. The centre embroidery was bought at a car boot sale for 50p.

I'm sure I'd worked out a better pattern for the squares, but I'm afraid I just took them as they came out of the pile and sewed them together.

(oh look, a dog toy on the left)

.

The backing is part of a duvet cover also bought from a charity shop.

How the Quilt Got Its Name

It is meant for the beach, oh best beloved, and as British beaches are very often covered in pebbles, I thought it would be a good idea to double the filling, you know, make it more comfy.

Bad idea.

After I had (with great difficulty) quilted it all together, I realised it hadn't been such a good idea and bravely decided to unpick it all. Yes, unpick all the quilting stitches.

I put a DVD on one Sunday afternoon and spent the duration unpicking.

The film was The Shawshank Redemption so that is how the quilt got its name.

The Shawshank Redemption quilt

(and I must say I was very glad to have a visual diversion during some of the more brutal parts of the film.)

Now I have the quilting bug but I want to learn to do it properly.

I'd seen some Japanese quilting which I liked a lot so I ordered this book from Amazon

Not only is it full of beautiful things to make with Japanese fabric it also had a picture and instructions for this beautiful quilt

Quite by chance I then discovered a quilting supply shop not so very far from where I live and today I went there.

An Aladdin's cave of fabric.

I bought this

And I've signed up for quilting classes. I begin at the end of April and the Japanese quilt is the one I'm going to make.

So excited!

Blessings,

Andi xx

Triumph!

Dead may tree where I wanted to plant a lilac shrub.

Three hours,

one spade,

one fork,

one sledgehammer

one saw and

a bit of female muscle later...

A little help from Elsie (not)...




and the may tree was out of the ground.





Am SO looking forward to a nice long bubble bath.

~~~~~

Yesterday Elsie had been part of our family for a whole year. Tomorrow she is meeting up with her mum (Olive) and sister (Doris) for the first time since leaving the nest.

Knowing Elsie it could go either way but I'll take my camera and let you all know how we get on.

Another thing I hope to show you soon is the beach quilt I've been working on. Hope to have that finished this week.

Blessings,

Andi xx

Comfortable?

It's a dog's life.

Elsie having a snooze in her bed under my desk.

We had a nasty meeting with a neighbour on Saturday morning.

Elsie and I were returning from our walk around the reservoir when she stopped to have a good sniff at a garden wall.

The owner of the house came flying out shouting how dare I let my dog foul outside his house?

I told him she was just sniffing but he didn't believe me and came out to check. When he realised I was telling the truth he just turned his back on me and returned to the house shouting 'I'm fed up with you dog owners messing up my property'.

No apology or anything.

I hope he is actually a nice man so that he spent the rest of the weekend feeling guilty about how he behaved because it certainly soured my day.

Ho hum.

Blessings,

Andi xx