Measuring Time

The conventional way to measure time is, of course minutes and hours, but sometimes . . .

A wait for a hospital appointment . . .

51 basted hexies

The drive to Portsmouth:

34 hexies

but I don't mind these waits . . . Look how they are going together:

And one final photo - it was pointed out that you couldn't really see the Red Linen quilt as child and cat had obliterated most of the view, so here it is in (most) of it's glory:

Posted with Blogsy

Binding Bother, and Bags

My Red Linens quilt is now assembled onto a really soft fleece, but I've run out of red linen so I cant bind it :-(

 Fingers crossed I can get something suitable soon.

 I seem to have been on a bit of a bag run recently.  Lisa has a rucksack for her travels.  It's already been to Norway, Amsterdam and Arizona, now New York, and soon Australia.  She's been buying patches of the places she visits and has stitched them on

She wanted contact details on the bag, so I stitched a luggage tag that I make quite often, but stitched it on rather than  tying it on.  For those who know her there is a delicious irony that it's next to the Lost badge!  (message on day one in NY regarding how she found her way back to the apartment "I did try three different directions before accidentally stumbling across the right road")

I've used up a lot of donated furnishing fabrics, and made 5 tote bags to be sold at the church stall 

And I've made one VW Combi bag for a customer, and another just to use up the rest of the fabric (both reversible, with one small and one large pocket, sub-divided into 3, plus a key/wallet strap )

New to Me

Fiona, at Celtic Thistle runs a 'New to Me' linky each month.


I don't often have anything to contribute, but this week I've had a go at lacemaking!

It was originally offered as a children's holiday class at Chertsey museum: only three kids signed up, but several adults (including me) said they were interested, so we were allowed to join the kids!

It was very basic lace making, and using different types of threads for the passive threads (warp) and embroidery threads for the weaver (the weft), but we used the pins and the bobbins - all proper stuff!

Its a bit like weaving - in fact the initial result was weaving, but we then started adding twists which you couldn't easily do with weaving

The design was a sort of zigzag, but I do feel it looks more wonky than zigzagged, but her samples were pretty much the same!  Id like to try again, but I think I'd go for something straighter

I then came home in the mood to progress something that had stalled, so I dug out the red linen quilt which was last worked on about six weeks ago.  I trimmed all the blocks to the right size

And joined them in strips

Serious Speed Dating

A friend popped round a few days ago and was surprised when I invited her in to help mum and I speed dating.

I suppose for non-patch workers it has a different meaning, but she picked it up quickly and we have speed dated these blocks and reckon they are all happy in their place

Annoyingly they haven't all been trimmed to size, so it will be a while before I can sew this one and snuggle under it, but at least it's one stage closer to being done!