2020 Wk 24 - Hello Blogland People

I cant believe it's June already: we are nearly half way through the year!

I finally received a delivery of white fleece so prepped a whole load of flimsies for quilting:

The Hexi rounds,

A spare I Spy

A spare Children's quilt (probably going to Linus Quilts)

The EPP Elongated Pentagon Plus Quilt

And then I got to quilting!  The children's quilts aren't very exciting, but I'm rather chuffed with the Hexie Rounds: Lizzie did the first 8" of spiral which is the really hard bit, and then I took over and went out to the edges

I used the same Lizzie spiral on the plus quilt.  No need for me to carry on, the 8" was perfect.  

I wondered whether to do every centre and have them overlapping but I halved the work and just did alternate ones.  I need to visit a shop to get the right binding for this one, so it'll be a while!

This quilt found a good home with a colleague's daughter for her 10th birthday

The girls and I attended an on-line painting party, I'm not sure we are made to be painters but it was a great evening!

The Australian hexies and stars quilt top has been quilted, has had borders added and has had the binding finished.  Annoyingly the latest delivery of black isn't the same shade of black as the one I used as the infill border - cant be helped as I cant go to a shop and compare: at least it's finished!

My current hand sewing project is Windsor Castle again.  I didn't like some of the tree designs, so I'm unpicking and replacing with smaller more random stitches

2020 Wk 14 - Finishes!

Some projects have moved from the UFO pile to the Finished pile - yippee!

This jelly roll race was bound, finished, gained a label, and went in the post to Australia

 This lush Kaffe Fassett creation had been bound and finished

And this has made it to flimsy stage, and fleece has been ordered for the backing

 In other news - the garden table has had another coat of varnish and is looking amazing

 And I *LOVE* getting pics of little people using the quilts that I made for them!!!!

2020 Wk 8 - customer, fabric and crochet

Crochet fun - the blanket I started at Jackie’s has grown - I'm on at least the 4th colour (the jury is undecided whether the first few rows are a different colour)

And Lisa’s first Persian tile has been done - isn’t this lush!

Mum has just got back from visiting my brother in Oz.  She picked up a jelly roll of Australian Fabrics . . . I need to clear the decks so I can get stitching!

I was asked to embroider a logo and company name onto some tabbards.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I quoted for one small logo for each one.  That covered the girl, but the writing was bigger, and more annoyingly on a wide pocket stitched down the middle.  I had to unpick the sewing, embroider, and then re-sew the pocket!  Dope!!!  Anyway it’s done , delivered and paid for now!

I went on line shopping for green (grass and trees) fabric for a project , somehow these other colours fell into the basket🤦🏼‍♀️

2019 Wk 13 - weekend with Jackie

Thank you Jackie for a great weekend - two full days of sewing and a day with the family

We made these pods (from here)

And sorted these old EPP Australian Starred hexies that stagnated about 5 years ago

And made these great Hello Pouches (can you see that the top half is vinyl?)

Does that help?

And had a great morning at Stitch - 22 of us altogether including three generations from one family

A video from Stitch

And we made these Charm tote bags (thank you Amo for the charm squares, they went perfectly with this petrol teale)

And these travel purses with credit card slots, a zip pocket, two slip pockets and a velcroed vinyl pocket

We also made a bag for Lisa's necessary essentials

And admired her ferris wheel crochet

We both got rather spoiled by the girls for Mothering Sunday

And they made me a momento frame with tickets and photos from our trip to NY earlier this year

These were from a class I taught last week.  Pincushions with a scissor pocket.

2019 - Wk 2 - so disappointed

I know I'm a bit behind, but I want to make a plus quilt - and I want to make it EPP (I've recently finished piecing one and am close to finishing another so time to look for a new one) and I've fallen in love with this 

I found that Sizzix made a die that is house shaped (or "long pentagon") and tried to find one.  The only one in the world that's available (according to Mr Google) was in Australia, and luckily I have a lovely brother in Australia!  So . . . he did the buying thing and even the posting thing and I did the happy dance

And then I did the sizzix thing - loads of sizzixed long pentagons, and the cutting thing - even more house shaped fabrics

And then I did the tacking thing and though "hold on a cotton picking minute" - what's that gap?

Can you believe - the apex of the 'roof' is not quite 90 degrees, and the width of the 'house' is slightly more than it's height and this is never going to *&^%$£" well work!!!!

I am seriously gutted!

Any suggestions much appreciated

Christmas Crafting

I know some people are really organised, getting gifts made well in advance of each Christmas. My friend Fiona is one of them. She is one of the hosts of  Ho Ho Ho and on We Sew - an annual event to encourage Christmas gift sewing all year.

The following post may have a few elements of cheating, but I have today made a Christmas present!

My brother and his family live in Australia, and in a few days time my mum is on her way to see them. I have bought gifts for my brother and his wife, but my niece and nephew (age 9 and 7) are getting crafty gifts.

India's is a doll for her to make. I bought the panel f(possibly from Spoonflower), and I'm sending a little sewing kit too so she can cut and sew the printed pieces, with a bit of help from mum. Sewing related, but not a stitched present.

Marley's is a dinosaur, but it's a bit more complicated to make, so I have done the cutting, and the main sewing, so he and mum can stuff and add some applique if required. It started as a panel like this

And now looks at bit like this

I know it isn't finished, but for the sake of mum's packing it has to be able to be sent flat, and I'm hoping he will enjoy stuffing and finishing it, and sewing the ruff on where he thinks it belongs.

Although it clearly isn't a "finish", and is late for 2015 rather than early for 2016, I hope Fiona will see it as a linkable finish as its all I'm going to do to it - hopefully he will enjoy finishing it, and next time I'll leave him to make his own pressie!

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Thursday's Thank Yous!

I recently showed a photo of Lisa at the North Point of Australia. She travelled there in one of these 4x4s:

it was well equipped for the outback with a winch and a couple of spare tyres, and built for off-roading, and with a driver who had planned well for all eventualities. However, he decided he wasn't coming back straight away, so she headed south in the *other* 4x4 - with a car and driver that was none of the above! She described the red 4x4 as suitable only for carrying shopping up a bit of a steep hill, driven as bought from a car salesman, with no outback consideration or modifications worth speaking of.

What was even more scary was that he seemed to have no idea of him limitations or that of his vehicle. He wanted to revisit sites when previously the other car had had to winch him out of problems, and Lisa watched him use 10 litres ( 17 pints?) to wash up - obviously water wasn't a valuable asset at all! The red car gained some sort of notoriety on the point. So when they stopped for supplies and Lisa asked a lady if she knew of anywhere Lisa could stay if she left the car, the lady made a few phone calls and saved Lisa from the "moronic tw*t"

So thank you to that lovely lady, and thank you to the incredibly kind people at the Moreton Telegraph Station who took her in and gave her bed and board in exchange for a few hours work a day for six days

They also arranged for her to continue her journey back to Cairns on the mail plane:

Over amazing views, so thank you to the pilots!
(Great Barrier Reef)

(Moreton station and airfield)

(Bush fire)

Another bunch of thanks is to Jackie and Amo who emailed me regularly with reassuring words to keep me this side of sanity while I waited for Lisa to return to civilisation, and Wifi!

(I think Lisa's recovered from the scare - she dived at the Great Barrier Reef today!)

And then today I got an email from Fiona telling me that my link on the HoHoHo be-ready-for-Christmas project was the winner of a gift voucher from the Village Haberdashery, so thank you to Fiona, and to Annie at VH too!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to spend some money!!!! I have long lusted over a Kona colour card, so I think I'll treat myself! I can then match fabrics to some of these zips that just happened to arrive in the post a few days ago!

Thank you for reading this!!!!

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