Buzzing and Quacking

My mind is racing and I wake up so early with a rush of ideas that I'm always up by 6am. This has been further stimulated by visiting the NEC Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. I went two days running and only saw half of what was there. The variety of work was stunning and there were so many textile stalls with inspirational bits and bobs and new products.


I ended up parting with serious money for an embellishing machine made by Babylock which has just come on the market and is basically a 12 needle felting machine. I opened it yesterday and straight away made these flowers and have roughly placed them here on a background that I have made this week of silk waste which I have embroidered together through disolvable film. The piece is inspired by the multitude of hollyhocks which were the regional plant in the area of France we stayed in this month. I'm working on the stems and more flowers today and then I can stitch it all together...



This is one of my favourite quilts at the NEC

It's very peaceful.






...and this one was in a winning category made by a group and was really vibrant.









A quick update on the mallard ducklings:

All seven remaining have been storming our house recently and I have often felt as if I'm in some kind of Alfred Hitchcock movie. They are nearly full grown and have eaten every slug and snail in the garden and have started to strip the plants. Yesterday we lured them into the rabbit carrier with seed and I transported them to a big lake nearby where they swam off together happily. They will have more food there and space to learn to fly without going through my greenhouse window!
The picture here shows marauding birds tapping incessantly on our window. One got through the cat flap!!