Someone has a huge amount of patience:

Sqeze drew my attention to it. He found it on boingboing. I don’t spend as much time as him at the computer so I don’t find these things. You can even insert a sheet of paper around the roller. How’s that for attention to detail?

I prefer to spend my time at the sewing machine. I’ve currently rediscovered how much faster you can make clothes than quilts. So I’m making things for the wardrobe rather than the wall just now

We’ve just noticed that the menu bar across the top of the Gallery pages doesn’t display correctly in Microsoft Internet Explorer V6. The login on the right side pushes the rest of the menu bar down. While Sqeze is scratching his head on how to fix it, we’ve be interested to hear from anyone using MS IE V7 - does the menu bar look OK?? If you can leave a comment, we’d appreciate it, as we don’t have a system with the latest version of Internet Explorer to check it ourselves. Thanks.

Update: 2008-08-29
We’ve fixed the problem for now, by removing the login from the menu bar.

Over the weekend we have been working on a new release of my gallery. It is now up and running. Lots of the old albums are still there but a little reorganised and there are some new photos and albums too.

The other thing we did was to hang Black and white and red all over. Here it is in the space left for it after the decorating.

That’s the name of my latest quilt. I first heard this as a conundrum from my Granny when I was a little girl. It was: What’s black and white and read all over? It’s one of those phrases which pop into your head and wants to be made into a quilt. It’s been lurking there in my brain and been pushed to the back of the queue by other projects, but it finally made it to the top of the stack and here it is.

It is the third quilt I’ve made using structured fabrics. Like the first one I made the design is based on an Amish design. This time it was the Center Diamond. The free motion machine quilting has improved again on this quilt. The stitching is quite even in most places. It got a bit jaggy when the quilt caught on the edge of the extension table to the machine. So now I’m seriously thinking about how to set up the machine so that it has a flat bed.

The latest issue of Quilting Arts arrived in time for me to try out the idea of doing a round of stitching just inside the binding. I was thinking of adding a thin piping of red fabric, but I liked the idea of the stitching even better - more subtle. I added just a few beads and buttons to some of the squares in the center tilted diamond. And I finally got around to ticking off another thing on my list of ideas to try and did some hand embroidery as embellishment on the outer border of black and white stripes. Not too much as I was using red embroidery thread and I’m a great believer in less is more.

There will shortly be a new album in my gallery with more photos of the quilt, including one of the back where you can admire my machine quilting

P.S. The answer to the conundrum is a newspaper. Well I never said it was a difficult one, I was quite young at the time!

Although I enjoyed making my last quilt and think it turned out better than ever (photos coming soon) I also asked myself why I was doing all this. Having too much time on my hands causes me to think too much and then those doubts as to the whys and wherefores of life start creeping in.

Having tormented Sqeze with the products of my over active brain, he pointed me at this article. Nothing really mind bendingly new in there, but still worth reading. If only to be reassured that staying motivated is a problem for all creative type bods.

At the weekend I spent some time browsing through back copies of Quilting Arts magazine and various other quilting books for inspiration as to how to quilt my latest WIP. In the end the real inspiration for the design came from this book:

I first learnt about this book in a QU class (Quilting Designs by Susan Purney-Mark) and keep going back to it for inspiration. A book I can highly recommend.

The other book, which I find useful just to keep your mind open to how the quilting can really change the quilt, is this one:

I have used ideas from this book too, although I tend to use it to waken up the ol’ brain cells to the different quilting effects possible and then turn to other sources for the ideas.

Today I also went into town to buy some machine embroidery thread. I’m trying out a new brand. It’s Gütermann VICI 40 100% Rayon-Viscose. I bought it from a haberdasher’s that I recently discovered on a chat forum. It’s TOKO Kurzwaren. It’s the best one I’ve found so far in Frankfurt. They also sell online. I’ve been using Madiera thread up to now so I shall be interested to see how this compares. I hope it’s good because the shop carries a huge range of colours.

So now I really have no more excuses for not getting started on the quilting.

I wasn’t working 2 days last week so I made lots of progress on my black and white quilt top. It is finished in the sense that it’s not going to grow any more in size, but I am still thinking about doing some extra embellishment. Not much as there is obviously a lot going on as it is, but I have a few ideas.

The next thing to do is to get the quilt sandwich together and think about how to quilt it. I have to admit to not having the vaguest idea at the moment. I don’t want to overdo it as I want to leave room for the embellishing. I shall have to play around with pencil and paper and browse around a bit to get some inspiration.

Here’s how it looks so far:

Observant readers will notice that my website has a new look and feel. Having seen my website on various PCs and screens now, I came to the conclusion that although I still liked the blue background, it looked quite dark on badly adjusted Windows PCs. It always looked great on our Macs at home, but then most of my readers are probably not Mac users.

I just innocently asked my Personal Administrator how easy it would be to change the colour and Schwuppdiwupp (lovely German expression meaning quick as a flash) I have a new skin for my site. Isn’t it nice to have a PAdmin who likes having these little technical projects?

I like my new look very much. I think it’s nice and clean. The colours go well with my latest quilt in progress too! What more can a girl want?

I’ve made some more progress on my black and white quilt. I did some work in the evenings this week and them some today. It has been a lovely weekend here, so we spent most of yesterday in the garden cutting back the abundant growth that rain combined with warmth has brought forth. We took 3 big tip bags of greenery down to the local collection point for composting. We take all our garden rubbish there and in theory we could then collect compost twice a year, but we never get organised enough for that.

Due to the lovely weather I’ve not been so keen to spend time in my studio in the cellar. I did retreat from the heat of the day there though and this is the result:

Aren’t digital cameras and Photoshop wonderful things? We were able to flip the photo though 90 degrees to see which orientation appealed the most. I could have done that on my design wall too of course, but somehow you get a feeling of more distance on the computer screen, probably because the image is smaller. With the background stripes going vertically (my original plan) the darker grey stripes made it look like a child’s drawing of a table Not exactly what I had in mind.

I’ve had enough for today, but it’s been good progress made. Lots of “what if” questions asked and answered. Myrna would be proud.