The Next Quilt

This quilt is called "Spittal of Glenshee." When I put the top together at the retreat, Margaret my workspace mate, took one look and said "I know where that is; that's the Spittal of Glenshee." Given that it is from a photograph we took on holiday one year, it very well could be. Spittal is an east Perthshire hamlet at the head of Glen Shee which sits at the point where two burns come together. Might this be one of the burns in the foreground?

I have decided to mount this quilt (which is about 15" x 13") on black fabric which I shall then staple (from the back, of course) to a canvas stretcher. It is a scene that needs to be put on a page in an old fashioned photo album with black pages.

This sort of landscape quilt is a style I love to make. It comes quite easy to me and I find that fascinating, because if I tried to draw or paint the scene, it wouldn't turn out the way I would want it to, but with fabric it almost "paints" itself. Don has been asking for another Scottish scene quilt saying "You haven't made one in a long time." So I resolved to do one of these on retreat.

The secret is to have lots of fabrics that give the impression of clouds and sky, faraway hills, the play of light on hills, mixed forground impressions, stones, rocks, water, and of course, black and white fabrics for the blackface sheep. The flower hanging out of the larger sheep's mouth is one of my favorite sights in the countryside. It isn't all that common a sight but they usually have some sort of vegetation on its way into the mouth. Once in a while, there will be a flower dangling off the end of it. This always makes me laugh. When I see a flower dangling, I think the sheep should be doing a tango step.

This morning Ally, the superjoiner, and his assistant (one of his two sons) installed the last of the new kitchen worktops, screwed the Perspex (Plexiglass) backsplash into place behind the kitchen sink, and caulked with silicon in both areas. He also screwed down a brass faceplate in the kitchen to replace the white plastic one that had been there and just didn't look all that great. Once the caulking has dried and we get things put back on the countertops, the kitchen will be finished!

Next we're expecting Barclay to come by sometime this morning to draw us a picture of the kind of finishing he proposes for the bottoms of the 3 poles that prop up our overhangs (verandah and entryway). As I understand it, the joiners build boxes that the brickies then fill with concrete and then the boxes are taken away once the concrete has set. It will be an improvement over the raw metal fixings that we see now coming out of the bottom of the poles.

This is definitely a gardening day. Don is playing golf this morning in St Fillans with David Sutcliffe. As there are some overgrown shrubs that had been inaccessible when the scaffolding was up, I think Don is going to come home and find quite a mess to clear up this afternoon. He always says if I do the work, he's happy to come along and clean up behind me. Fair enough. Time to put on sunscreen, a long-sleeved shirt, and my hat and conquer the overgrowth.