Circles, pebbles & gingerbread kisses!

                  The long awaited sharing of the stunning black clamshell beauty is over!

True to form I have shared sneak peeks over at Facebook, sometimes it takes several days or a week or so to show you all of the quilt, this is due to the quilt being returned to it's maker.
This large (85" x 85") stunning quilt was made by Marilyn. Marilyn sure makes some lovely class samples! Marilyn's brief to me was to stitch in the ditches around the clam shells, but no quilting ON the clam shells. Then for the border Marilyn wanted circles and pebbles using a variegated thread. Sadly the photo's don't show up the fabulous thread, but I did take a photo of the spool of thread! From there you will have to trust me that the thread is lovely, it works so well with all the colours in the clam shells.

I worked at getting a variety of circular designs, each slightly different. When you are quilting on a domestic machine ( I used my Bernina 440 for over 6yrs before purchasing my long arm machine) you could easily see what you had already quilted. On a long arm machine you need to roll the quilt back and forth, even then you can only see approximately 26 inches of the quilt at one time, so I took plenty of photo's as my guide.

         Some circle designs took on a life of their own! Like this one, a bit like a face I thought?

In the background of the circles I quilted what felt like to me was 'movement'. Simple back and forth meandering, it feels like slow moving water, or moon light.

Marilyn's Clam shells have an explosion of  fascinating designs, piecing and embroideries..............................

Marilyn decided on a black batting which was a wise choice as we can run the risk that when the quilt front and backing are black, white batting's can 'beard' through. Marilyn pieced a pretty backing from a William Morris fabric framed with a beige then black solid fabrics.

If you would like to take classes with Marilyn please contact her through her website *here*.

By the way, Simon was on hand when the photographing took place.......................................

Next to share with you is Kerryn's delightful 'Christmas Inspirational Stitchery Quilt'. Made using Michelle Ridgway's Gingerbread stitchery booklet, Anni Down's " Under the Mistletoe" fabric,   Cottage Garden and Aurifil threads.

The Country Yard has put together inspirational packs which include fabrics, thread and Michelle's booklet to get you spirited along on the Christmas journey!

Kerryn adores her stitcheries to have cross hatching, to secure, to add extra texture all without taking away from her lovely stitching. For these times I always use a very fine thread.

My collection of Glide threads are growing, I have many threads I love and use often, they work well through my machine, life is too short to be fussing with 'headache' threads!

The sun going down photo, see the textures...................a pretty ribbon border on pretty fabrics!

Thank you for stopping by, enjoy the week to come.