Holiday Happenings (part 1)

We've had the May half term break in England this week, which is all very bizarre as it was in June, not May, and we longer have three school terms (where this break would be half way through term 3, hence its name of half term holidays) but we now have 6 terms, so this is just a break between terms 5 and 6 - go figure, answers on a postcard please!

Anyway, whatever we call it, and whenever it is, I have managed some sewing, in amongst everything else I've tried to squeeze in!

This I spy quilt has been made for baby Amelie, and I'm trying to get her name embroidered before I go and see Grandma this afternoon

These two 'Endless Ribbon' quilts have been finished for the Siblings Together Charity, and need a final 'haircut' before being sent off

This has been finished for Laura's 18th . . .

and I actually remembered to add a label too

Apart from that I have taught the final Windsor A to Z class (these are the blocks that have either been finished, or were snapped under construction)

Had a lovely (albeit wet) day with Lisa in London (!)

and I have thoroughly enjoyed all the pomp and ceremony that celebrated the Diamond Jubilee.

To follow: a felting day with Jacqui and Sarah, a kid's activity afternoon at Chertsey Museum, creating junk weaving wall art, Crafty Church afternoon, socialising with two groups of friends, and a day with mum . . . followed by going back to work for a rest!!!

Binding and Boats

(Last time I blogged about binding, when I used the word bondage in my post, I got more hits than ever before - what are people like?)

Anyway today, in the cold and the rain, and that amazing Diamond Jubilee pageant, I was curled up on my sofa, hand sewing binding

 

 onto not one . . .

 (love, love LOVE this newspaper print fabric, 

brought it back from Amsterdam years ago, 

and knew it was prefect for this binding)

not two . . .

 

but three quilts :-)

Number 4 didn't get started as the cat looked far too cosy!

Hope you had a good weekeknd

Birthdays and Bondage

So - how many of you are here for the title? 

Bondage is defined as the practice of being bound . . . and the current tense of bound is bind . . . and that's what I've been doing! [smirk]

The binding still needs to be hand stitched to the front of the quilts, but that can wait until slightly cooler weather.

I have pieced, basted, quilted and machine bound Laura's Black and White and Green Quilt . . .

and what is being called the Green Twin Sibling Quilt  . . .

And the Blue Twin Sibling Quilt

 (The spotty  fabric behind the twins is the yummy fleece backing for Laura's quilt)



 And the birthday . . .   Well, somehow this gorgeous newborn baby . . .

 

  became this amazing adult

Mistakes don't matter

Do you remember the quilt I made where I embroidered Henry instead of Harry?  Well I made a replacement for Harry, but still had a Henry quilt that was more or less homeless.  There have been several comments since when I have embroidered a name on anything, and to be fair they were justified, but I am very happy to say that  a really good friend of mine became a grandma yesterday - and the baby is being named after grandad . . . and while we all call grandad 'Harry', he is really Henry, as is the baby, so the quilt now has a home to go to!

I spent most of the weekend getting stressed about my impending Adult Education OFSTED inspection (which didn't happen today, grrrr) but I did manage a bit of therapeutic sewing.

One of the Sibling Twins has been quilted

And the quilt for Niki's friend Laura's 18th had been assembled and quilted (my QAYG method) onto this seriously yummy green-and-white-spot fleece

And I was delighted to see this quilt in my issue of Popular Patchwork which came out today. 

I tell the students that mistakes don't matter, and this shows that even professionals make mistakes

The square outlined in yellow is twisted the wrong way!

Scrappy Sewing (Take 2)

Darn iPad - since blogger changed, I cant see posts to edit them on the iPad.  I assumed they were just not showing - until I tried to publish a draft post from the iPad, and there it was gone!

So here I go again

Niki has asked for a green and black and white quilt for her friend Laura's 18th in a month's time.  I bought the blacks and whites at Lady Sew and Sew's a few weeks ago, and Niki was inspired by [this one] I'd pinned on Pinterest ages ago for another project.  So I cut and stitched, and stitched and stitched, until I had 11.5m of striped blacks / whites / green fabric

 but then it needed pressing, so I looked around for something else to do

I have a drawer full of 2.5 inch strips left over from the last 5 years or so of projects.  On the rare occasion I rootle in there for a particular fabric or colour , I usually cant find it, so I decided the time had come to reduce it.

I really enjoyed the Jelly Roll Race I made a few weeks ago, so decided to join all the scraps into one almost endless ribbon  (Does anyone else remember 'Endless Grey Ribbon' from Nick Lowe in the 80s?  I loved that album)

So this . . .

 Got reduced to these . . . a 55m endless multicoloured ribbon, and a few scraps in a box

But then the endless ribbon needed pressing too, which is why I wrote the blog post . . . the one that the iPad ate