The Long Walk Home

It has given me a great deal of pleasure to take part in this challenge even though it took a while for an idea to take shape.

This quilt was inspired by a photograph of my Granddaughter taken when she was not quite two years old.  Having grown up in Leeds, my lovely daughter and her partner decided  to move to live in the countryside and found a cottage completely surrounded by farmland.. Long walks along extremely muddy paths followed and having been a city girl all her life, my daughter suddenly discovered nature! The countryside where they live is very flat and featureless, but ideal territory for a toddler learning to find her feet. Isobel is now eleven and will be going to high school in September, but to us she is still that little girl starting on a long journey.

I used my own handdyed fabrics and all the quilting and embroidery were done on my sewing machine.

Penny Leonard

Long Walk Home - Irene MacWilliam

I had so many ideas for this but none of them seemed goers when I got down to thinking about them in terms of fabric. I found I had changed the title in my mind to Long Way Home so this is a combination of the titles.

 Bird migration is one of the great wonders. I often think where is home to a bird, they do not all return to the nest area where they were born, though some species do. So where is home?

 I thought of when my children were young and how after a fun day out at the local park they had no energy and wanted to be carried. home. However as soon as they got back into the house they were full of energy where I might just have wanted to sit down with a cup of tea before cooking and the evening routine.

White cotton from the Empress Mills bargain bundles, sun printed and then free machine work. I do not particularly like this piece, it was not challenging and is very mediocre. The one thing that I do feel proud about is that when dye painting the fabric I completely forgot about allowing extra for binding so I had to be careful not to quilt into the narrow edges that were

needed to finish it. I had just a 2 x 1 inch strip left at the end.

help requests and chat

Various postings have been made re needing help.

For new members some of the requests and chat can be found in the comments under people's posts. I have tried to help by responding through the comments. It is difficult to find ones way around the technical bits of posting photos and text.

Wil who set up the group said in one of the comments that she was abroad and could not access the Poll results through her ipad or whatever it is she has, I can not remember that detail.

I also read on another group that she had had a thrombosis and had been taken to hospital.

I hope the above is helpful.

I am working to the theme, LONG WAY HOME to have it up by the end of July. I say working, well just tonight I got out  paper and pencil to see if any of my vague ideas might possibly work. I am planning to do some of the fabric painting for it tomorrow. Sometimes I find it very easy to come up with a few ideas but this to me is very difficult. I have also been working flat out on a piece for an exhibition, see my facebook page (spelling of surname is MacWilliam..... no s at the end of surname). I also am a fanatical vegetable grower so been busy there.

whats it all about?

Hello All, I am not sure I understand this group? I noticed Millie asked for some help on the 30th May, I posted for some help on June 1st and to date seemingly no one has responded. Is this just not a very chatty group, do you simply get together once in a blue moon to set a new task/subject? I have no idea what "title" we should/may be working on at present. PLEASE someone let me know, thanking you in advance for your time. Take care Ann in sunny Brecon.

Long Walk Home

My fabric is all my own dyed fabric. I have used markel for my sky with appropriate shaped cardboard. Then I have stitched with various colours in an endeavour to get the effect of hedges and fields I wanted. I am a 'cat' person, hence the paws bottom right hand corner. I have thoroughly enjoyed this challenge and am looking forward to the next. Thank you for the opportunity to join you.

help needed please

Hello, I downloaded my photograph of my little quilt this afternoon. However it is not now showing! I put it on the blog as I have no knowledge as to how to put it anywhere else. Also I got no information as to the final result of the poll, despite voting ? Have I done something else wrong?

Coast to Coast - Lesley Brankin

I live almost as far from the coast as it is possible to be so when on occasion I find myself by the sea it is most definately a very long walk home. My quilt represents a theoretical coast to coast walk - the backdrop of the hills in the middle (where I live) and seascapes at top and bottom. I say theoretical as although my mind thinks it would be fantastic to undertake such a walk, I know my body would think otherwise!

I had great fun making this quilt - starting off with an old pillowcase which I ripped into strips. Each strip was tied/stitched and then dyed in strong tea. Using the resultant stitch resist patterns to dictate the my hand stitching I let the form of each landscape evolve as I worked.  Finally I made a little print block and printed a trail of footprints to represent the walk.