FNWF and FMQ challenge...

Thanks Cheryll for letting us use your place for FNWF whilst you are away sitting by the seaside!!!  Tough gig for you!  I see you still got lots of sewing done...

This is how I started the evening.... with a quilt on my lap (cos its a bit chilly here) and binding clips into the green binding... and little Miss T needs her Teacup stitched....

Now we go back a few days....

As you know I am doing the Free Motion Quilting Challenge hosted by Darlene at QuiltShopGal...

and THIS MONTH our guest tutor is Diane Gaudynski. (who's quilting adventures I have followed for some time)

I chose to do Option 3 which is from her book Quilt Savvy ... which I duly ordered and had to wait for it's arrival.

In the meantime I knew that I wanted to use one of my recently purchased Hungarian embroidered doilies so I made my quilt sandwich and sewed the doily on carefully around the edges of the embroidery

There are just amazing colours and work in this doily... my background is a pale sage green which just disappears in a picture with those colours in the embroidery

... once the book arrived I sewed the spines for my feathers leaving Diane's little earbud shape at the end... I did draw out a basic shape with the dissolvable blue pen for guidelines

.. this is the picture from the book which I was using as my inspiration... love the feathers and her Diane-shiko stitch at the base.

... after quite a few hours this is the stitching I had.... feathers, echo quilting, diane-shiko and mini-stippling in the centre

doing the feathers this way with a space inbetween and echo around the outside was new to me... they are not all symmetrical by any means but close enough

.. as you saw I did the binding last night and this morning I stuffed the cushion and ta-da....

(the colour is still not right)

... just a simple envelope back with a pale green polka dot ...

... looks good on the recliner...

I love upcycling old doilies ..

Thank you Diane for your tutorial and thank you to Darlene for these challenges... it's lucky you left June open for a bit longer as I really battled with time this month getting the book here... now onto July's challenge...

These challenges can be joined anytime and for people of any level so if anyone else wants to practice, practice, practice this is the way to do it.  I am getting a nice selection of cushions made... I may have Christmas sorted?????

It was still reasonably early in the night when I had finished the binding - so Miss T got her duck egg blue polca dot teacup sewn...

... and I still had time for a bit of red thread....

Righto, Gotto Go... I love weekends... and a cold frosty start means an amazing sunny day and I've got some blog visits to make..... 

“Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.” 
― Albert Schweitzer