2020 Week 51

 This dotty paper foundation pieced quilt was finally finished this week

The binding was black (with small white dots) onto black fleece - I'm glad that's finished, it was really difficult to see where each stitch was 

The upteenth attempt to start my crochet spiral circle is actually working!  As I cant start a crochet piece I'm in the hands of others as to how it's going top look, but Lisa made a great choice in the style of this one - I'm using the variegated wool and the cream wool together!

My friend Louise had her first baby, Jessica, the same day I had Lisa - that's actually how we met - in adjoining beds.  We used to see a lot of each other but over the last 29 (!) years life has moved on so its less frequent but it's always a joy to see her and her three girls.  Grandchild number 3 has a feeding issue and has to be tube fed . . . could I find a way to add front / belly zips to baby vests so the port can be accessed.  I started with creating a lined opening and trying to add the zip to the front but it was a lot of fiddling ... so for this one I added a second zip put to the zip, stitched it on the outside, then opened the zip and cut away the now unnecessary fabric behind it - took about 5 minutes!  It's gone in the post to them - if it works for them I can easily adapt other vests for baby M

Louise's second daughter, Claudia, is my God Daughter, and she has just become a mum - baby William was born earlier this week.  This EPP quilt seemed a perfect gift - with three big cousins who can use the fussy cut hexies to invent stories for him!

So I've added his name and this has gone in the post too!

The girls and I did another on-line Brush Party painting class - it was great fun but we are not natural painters so would like to do one with a real life person - when ever we are allowed to!!!  Anyway, I don't think these are too shabby!!!

A very good friend of mine is Jewish.  She ordered a few Christmas gingers from me: I added a Hanukkah ginger for her - just mixing my faith and non faith celebrations!!!!

More Gingers - these went to Manchester to my childhood best friend (I love that we've reconnected through Facebook!)

For a quite week there seems to have been a lot happening!  It was mum's birthday last weekend - but we were not allowed to meet in a home so we agreed to meet for a walk and a picnic - come the day it was *pouring*, so we chucked the gazebo into the car too and used the boots of the cars as seats!

A birthday we wont forget in a while!!!  Mum enjoyed it!

Nat used the Elf Ginger costumes

My friend Jane crocheted me an awesome Julenissen

And Barbara made me a mask with a matching zippy - isn't it great!!!!

If I'm not in touch with you before "the" day - I hope it's a great one even if it's not what we hoped for and we cant see the people we want to see, but by doing the right thing this year we can see each other next year.

Lots of love xxxx 

Decisions Decisions

Decisions Decisions - and what I learnt

So having cut my tessellating star blocks, I convinced myself I kind of had to stitch them together, and I pretty soon learnt something that hadn't been obvious from the other sizzix dies I have.    With this die, fabric cut face down is not the same shape as fabric cut face up:

The two different types of stars won't actually tessellate!

So: from the fabric I have I can make two smallish tessellated quilts like this: they would each be about 32"x48", but I could pad them out with some cream border

Or I can make a bigger top using all the blocks (it will come up about 48"x64" - an Ikea fleece is 51x67 so a good fit) but it cant be a full tessellating design

I could use this arrangement (lampshades)

Or this one (cream lava lamp with red zigzag)

Or it's twin, red lava lamp with white zigzag

 

 Or double zigzag

Or double lava lamp

Or, the last one I can think of,  alternating:

Not that I have any problems with decision making since I hit menopause, but please tell me which one you prefer!

The Christmas holidays are now over, and I'm back to school tomorrow, so my sewing time will be cut and I'll be back to blogging every few days or when I've had a chance to sew