You can't beat an ihop!

I do love the International House of Pancakes, as you can see... This has been breakfast for the last couple of days.

We also took a tour of the Daytona racetrack today, very informative as I have never watched a NASCAR race (only in Days of Thunder :) ) I think my two nephews will be very jealous.

In love with Boston

After a very busy week at Quilts UK, feeling very guilty I left the Doughty crew to packdown, and flew off to spend two whole weeks in the US!! Me and hubby are doing a mini- tour of Boston, then down to Florida - Daytona, then Tampa, then back up to Boston to spend a couple of days in Plymouth and Provincetown.
So in the first couple of days, I think we have managed to see the whole of the city of Boston on foot, and man, do they hurt!
Boston is truly a beautiful city, we walked the Freedom Trail, which takes you all along historic points of the city - the Patriots' fight for independence against the English. The city's architecture is a wonderful mix if the old and the new, including some very nice clapboard houses up in the area of Charlestown. Yet another place to add to the long list of places we would like to live!

On our second day, we decided to hunt down a diner we had seen on Guy Fieri's TV show - Mike's City Diner, which took us to yet another part of the city, great place, I had the largest eggs benedict known to man, while Jus had his first corn beef hash which went down very well.

  

We then went for a walk around the Back Bay Area, again, beautiful red bricks adorning tree-lined streets and a very peaceful lagoon onto the Charles River.


Today we're in Daytona Beach, just planning to sit today, and that's about it! Oh, and maybe a trip to ihop!

Quilts UK 2013 at Malvern

I'm busy with Doughty's on our two busy stands full to the brim with fabrics and waddings, 

happily surrounded by some truly beautiful quilts...

Sarah and Jo preparing for a busy day

Our stand in the marquee

The following quilts are made by various very talented people...

 

 

 

Absolutely love this quilt!

Swooning complete!

Yeah! I've finished my quilt, with plenty of time to spare! And I love this swoon block more than ever! So once I'd pieced the nine blocks, I decided to go back to quilt-as-you-go to make it easier to quilt each block quite intensively - this meant I could use a large square for the backing of each block, making this a reversible quilt!

 

  

 

                     

To join each of the blocks I used a very dark navy to bring out the navy in Denyse's fabrics. I have to say, sewing dark fabric with dark thread is a bit of a strain on the eyes! The hand-sewing on the back was slightly easier.

I did ponder about doing a large border, but didn't think I had the time or the patience, so decided on a wider binding. I'm not completely happy with it, as there's no wadding inside the larger fold, its a bit baggy and doesn't hang as straight as a narrower binding would. But never mind, it still borders the quilt nicely.

This quilt will hopefully be hanging on the end of Doughty's stand at this year's Quilt's UK at Malvern - 16th-19th May at the Three Counties Showground - come and say hello!

Swooning over Denyse

Having fallen in love with the Swoon block, I've decided to make a quilt from Denyse Schmidt's lovely Shelburne Falls, in the blue and green colourway.

I've used the Sizzix bigshot die-cutting machine to cut lots of squares and triangles for my hsts.

As the blocks are quite large at 16inches, you really don't need many to make a good-sized quilt. I've made nine, and have decided to quilt-as-you-go so I can do some intense machine quilting. As you can see, I'm quilting in half-inch parallel lines. I'm planning on sewing the blocks together with a slim strip of plain navy which I think will frame the blocks nicely.

I am aiming to get it finished for Quilts UK at Malvern in a couple of weeks, so I best get on with it, good job its a bank holiday weekend!