A close-up of a long stole, (approx 2 m x 60cm, from memory) one of the girls in the class bought from Dorothy Caldwell, the teacher, which had been made by one of the Bihar women Dorothy and her team regularly visit in India.
Of apricot coloured silk, it was stitched all over in mostly an orange-red thread giving a wonderful shot sheen to it, and the border triangles were heavily stitched in tan and gold thread.

Lois fell in love with it and it really suits her well, I hope she wears it often…. yesterday I sent her a pic I took her of it draped around her while I was thinking of it. Then just showing underneath the orange one is part of a lovely navy scarf stitched with green which Dorothy wore quite a bit of the time – it was really cold. (You might not think so , Bunbury, 1st week in october, but it was – omg how time flies.)

Anyway, this week i found myself having a bit of sitting around waiting time in a medical environment with a family member, and that gave me the shove to start work on a hand dyed silk scarf which a student in the natural dyes workshop did for me ( I swapped one of my little kantha stitched things for two of them) – and in a few days I will put up a progress pic – but I have made a start. The current work on the quilt proved to be too heavy to cart around under these circs.

Reading has been mostly National Geographic , The Economist and the latest Down Under Quilts and The NZ Quilter, dipping-into kind of stuff rather than any sustained gripping reading – but the background is returning to normal, and I am set for a good read with several good new books sitting on the nightstand awaiting my attention. 

Bullions did not do it at all but are a great idea for some other time – I have put some on my doodle cloth.

The combination of running stitches with a french knot or a stemmed french knot every few is growing on me, coming from something that came to me in The Expressive Stitch workshop.

The groups of stitches (creamy white) I have used before ,and like the cobbled effect; so I’m going with it for this piece (as yet untitled)
From block to block the colour of the stitchery will vary, in yet another way enhancing the relationship of the design to the tradition of repeat block designs which my work typically explores.

PS december 9th well, eventually I did something even different to the above, and am still not happy, so I have put it away, as in “right away/cupboard” and will look at it again in the new year – it’s not grabbing me and is causing too much procrastination in other areas where ideas are lining up. While sorting them, I am hand stitching another scarf this time not hiding the threads from joins – the knots are large and on the outside – and also putting time into a bright cheery kiddy design quilt for grandson #3, who now he is three, gets one. Machine pieced and quilted and designed to be well used and NOT put up on the wall as seome kind of precious decorative object. The mothers have been told that when these first ones wear out, there will be another made to replace it.

Quite often I do several different bits of quilting at the beginning of quilting stage, since I find that often what I have had in mind during the lengthy construction stage just isn’t “it” when I actually put it into effect.

This is such a quilt. As pledged, I did make a start on the quilting on tuesday, but let it sit in this state yesterday while I darted out to book group and the following book selection meeting.
I have just re-read Michener’s Chesapeake, first read maybe 25 years ago in a Michener phase, but I have been intrigued with how much I had forgotten of it, and how much it seemed almost a different book – surprising too, since one family of offsprings have lived on the Eastern Shore for the last 7 or 8 years, and we are regular visitors to the area. A fabulous part of the US, and I just love it.

But I digress. Since I am using #8 and #12 perle, and have several gradations of those sandy neutral shades and some black, I ‘ve decided to vary the quilting colour for each block but use the same kind of reasonably large stitch treatment, as above, all over. The bit done in the fine (ie ‘normal’ quilting thread) is just too delicate for the subject matter of this quilt, which is developing an almost masculine, certainly rugged character; and today I will pull that fine stuff out.

Detail of the two quilting treatments I am mulling over. I am even considering french knots, but it is a 1.5m x 1m approx size piece, and I dunno …

This one is so elegant, IMHO.

While fiddling with this pic before putting it up I noticed a very tiny bit of stitching on the far left hand leaf, left hand side – OMG – a microscopic mend, to cover an inadvertent slip of the scissors, I imagine. Absolutely sharp scissors are needed to cut away the fbric behind the stitchery after it is done, but you also need to hold your breath, or get your facial expression right while doing it. Accidents are easy to have if you are weary or interrupted in this kind of work, and if this was a little slip of a snip, I can imagine the maker being very pissed off, especially if she was being paid piecework rates. She may have held her breath and hoped the supervisor didn’t notice. Or perhaps this piece was a reject, for this reason.

So then I went back and looked at the others I bought the same day – but couldn’t find mends on any of them.

Today I will be starting quilting on a piece which has a lot of leather applique, and will post a pic tomorrow. There, that’s commitment. A house guest for a few days arrived yesterday declaring that while her husband has business today, she herself would love the chance to just curl up with a book and have a quiet day … bewdie, Marilyn.