Slacker!

I've been pretty slack on the blogging front these last few weeks.  I told myself I'd get back to it after our October half-term break and practically didn't turn the computer on after we got back!  We went away for the week, down to my in-laws' in France and it was just wonderful!

There was no TV, no computer and not even any phone signal as me and Ben both forgot to tell our new providers that we wanted any!

We read our books, walked in the gorgeous quiet countryside, visited nearby towns and had fun working out exactly what we could cook using the log burner with built in 'oven'.

I also spent a lot of time covered in a quilt, as it was just starting to get frosty down there, and even though we had the fires burning nice and hot and I was toasty warm, I still somehow seem to feel cozier with a quilt on my lap...

 That quilt was made by my mother-in-law as a sofa throw for the house, and there was another one there that she made for the main bedroom.  This was her first ever quilt, and she designed it herself a few years ago.  Now she's gone from a sewing expert but quilting novice to being pretty damn good at it (I'm really jealous of all the time that she gets to spend on it - it was only because I and a friend of mine joined our local quilting group that Val even decided to try it!!)

 This is her latest quilt top (the photo's not great as it's taken in a very dark cozy living room while we were over there for dinner).  It's a convergence quilt that she's not that fond of, so has decided to liven it up by appliqueing some lovely butterflies onto it.  I think there will be a couple more on there when she finishes it!

And on to what I've been doing now...  Still doing my scrap quilt, but I've taken to calling it my jigsaw quilt, because the pieces I make are not really easy to fit together.  I stand there trying to match one edge to another by the relative length and angle of the edges, but often end up sewing one edge to another and trimming down the straightest edge I can find. This often leaves large bits from the cut end as another bit to put on another troublesome area.  But that doesn't matter!  It all adds to the crazy directionless patternless look I'm going for.  It probably won't be a really cozy cuddly quilt because of all the seams that are in there, and the quite close together quilting I'm going to do to ensure it doesn't fall apart, but I'm SO looking forward to what it's going to look like at the end!  I'm not sure I've got enough for the size I want, so I'm off to find some more scraps to put another couple of 'blocks' together now! I love that all of this fabric would have been going in the bin if I hadn't started saving it for this purpose.  No-one else I know is crazy enough to keep 1 inch random shaped scraps!!!

And last but definitely not least, this is what I did this morning.  It's such a gorgeous day I just had to take a photo while I was walking the dog....