Tidy Up Tuesday

I actually left work on time today, and that gave me an afternoon of empty house, and therefore sewing.

I wanted to start a new quick project, so I made myself get a bit further along with two that needed a bit of tidying up:

I trimmed and machine stitched the binding to a basic I-Spy Quilt: a very good friend of Lisa's has just become an Auntie, so Lisa wanted to give the baby a quilt

And one of six Horrible Hexi tops has finally been hand quilted in front of the TV

And so was ready to be trimmed and have its binding stitched too

Having done those I gave myself permission to start something new.  There is an I Spy Brick top that I pieced by hand last summer.  The brick arrangement takes a bit more time and fabric than the one above, but is a lovely effect, so I decided to make one for a teacher at school who will be going on maternity leave soon: The bricks and the vertical 'mortar' have been pieced and pressed

I also had a go at blocking the Northern Lights Project, as the stitching had caused the bottom section to pull in and it was now about an inch narrower than the top.

I washed it and hung it out sideways to dry: I wanted to weight the bottom to stretch it:  It's a bit Heath Robinson, but with the aid of some curtain hooks, some mini bungee clips, a wooden stick and some mugs, I think it is being pulled!

A little bit of random

I'm not getting much sewing done, but thought I'd share this photo of my favourite niece wearing her new ski jacket (such a shame she lives in Australia!) - At least it's patchwork so it sort of belongs here

And this doesn't belong at all, but I warned you this was a random post!

This a photo I took when I popped in to see Niki at work - not often you get to see round the back of a bowling alley - this is where the pins end up either after you've knocked them down, (or in my case failed to knock them down) and they are getting ready to drop into place for the next go: it's much more fun watching the process from this side than being rubbish from the other side!

Simply Super Solids

I LOVE that Justine adds a sticker to each piece with the range and the colour name - ready for when I run out. Really helpful for me, and a really good marketing tool for her

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Northern Lights Project

Thank you Plum and Nicky for the applique suggestion, the missing blocks have now been sorted and anchored with the FMQ that has been added to all the northern lights

I'm quite pleased with the result (left grey is original, right grey is appliqued)

I wanted to add the railings of the boat, as we saw the lights from the deck.  I tried piecing using the dark grey and black, but couldn't get the railings dark enough, after all we saw them late at night.  Brian suggested using black stitches, and I think it has worked

I also wanted to show a couple viewing the lights: my FMQ is certainly not up to creating this, but I am capable of creating a machine embroidery design to represent them, and although it took 39 minutes to stitch (probably my longest design) I'm really please with how this has come out

So it's not finished yet, but its starting to look as if it may actually be finished by the deadline of Fiona's Mini Quilt competition

So there is Bargello, FMQ, machine satin stitch, and embroidery machine features!

Pretty Patti Post

After a few really busy days at work, and interrupted sleep at night, I came home tonight just wanting to collapse, but I soon perked up when I saw what was waiting on the mat for me. Patti sent me this gorgeous zipped case as a thank you for a few bits I sent her with her Star of Africa block

What a lovely gift, from a lovely lady: a really useful size, fab fabric and a sweet little sewing machine on the zipper! Thank you, Patti, a lovely surprise, and a much appreciated gift! Xxx

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To unsew? Or not to unsew?

At the end of last month the Northern Lights Project was unpicked and sent to the Thinking Step in disgrace.  It was to sit there and think about what it had done and not to comeback until it was sorry.

Well it did come back and apologise, and so I pressed and stitched and pressed and stitched, and I was happier about it this time, its still not as curved as it should be, but with quilting I think it will be OK

This is the original photo, the finished wallhanging will be much wider, but at the moment I'm just working on that curve

 

I was wondering whether to FMQ around the swoop, to enhance that, and that maybe would blur the harsh angles, or should I FMQ vertically to enhance that effect instead?

I thought I'd zap a photo to Jackie to see what she thought, the flash was on auto, and THIS is what I see

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I'd been working on this in artificial light - you know, one of those light bulb that takes ages to glow bright, and it had looked fine, but under the flash see that I'd forgotten to continue with the very dark grey in the middle of the two sections of lights

Any suggestions appreciated

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Happy Hexagonning

Is there such a word as Hexagonning?  Maybe not, but that's what I've been doing anyway!

A pack of these

And a pack of these

And an evening at Richmond & Kew quilters followed by an evening too tired to do much more than veg out in front of a TV leads to this

Yummy yummy yummy! 

No I don't know what I'm going to do with these, but yes, I did get a second pack so there will be two rainbow hexi quilts in my future!!!!

Fifteen Minutes of Fun

Even when there isn't really time to sew, sometimes there is a need to sew,  maybe it's a bit of therapy, maybe it's physiotherapy, maybe it's just as excuse, but whatever, I do try and sew whenever I can

The very lovely Fiona who blogs at Celtic Thistle, is making a lovely scrappy quilt.  Using 2.5inch squares and scrappy triangles (saved from joining binding strips) she is joining them like this

She has plenty of strips made up (!) but needs plenty more

(She has about 270 squares, but needs 589!!!)

Back in June I was involved in making charity quilts with the Richmond & Kew Quilters.  The group I was working with was making a Jelly Roll Race quilt: I sat all evening joining 2.5" strips into one long ribbon, while one member of the group sorted the strips, another snipped the triangles and a third pressed all the seams: similar things were happening at other tables around the room.

I brought home lots of of JRRs in various stages of finish and have been working on them on and off over the months since.  Last weekend I remembered we were meeting again soon, so one day last week I started gathering my stuff to take, (flimsies and quilt tops) and discovered a batch of strips that hadn't been started.

So my daily fifteen minutes of fun over the last week involved chain piecing strips together

Snipping triangles (all coming your way Fiona)

And then joining and joining and joining until I had another flimsy

So I've got three flimsies looking for volunteers at the meeting to press / baste / quilt / bind, and I've found one that just needs binding, and I'm fairly sure there is another one downstairs either finished or at least part bound.

Added with all the others we should soon have a great collection of quilts ready to go to a deserving charity

A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, a mummy and daddy with two little girl employed an Au Pair, Slavka, to look after the children as they both had to go to work.  For the girls it was like having an amazing big sister, and for the mummy and daddy it was a great arrangement.  Even after the Au Pair left 18 months later the family kept on touch: by letter, then by email, then by Facebook.

14 years later the oldest daughter turned 18.  She arranged a party in a nightclub and invited everyone she knew on Facebook.  The Au Pair was due to take a study weekend that weekend so choose London for her study centre, and came to the party.

The oldest daughter also invited her two cousins (who happened to be of a similar age to the Au Pair), and as a result, oldest cousin and almost-big-sister fell in love.

Last year they had a baby, and this year moved house . . . and as if there wasn't enough happening at the time, they also decided to get married . . . six week later

I'm going to guess that you've guessed that the daddy and mummy are Brian and I, the two little girls are now all grown up

And we spent yesterday with the families at the loveliest wedding we've been to for a very long time

 

Congratulations Scott and Slakva, and thank you for a fab day: wishing you the very best of Happy Ever Afters

xxxxx

Liberty Love

A while ago Jackie gave me a pack of yummy Liberty fabrics

And that gave me the excuse to buy some more

(I'm sure you understand)
Well these pieces were 6 inches by roughly 10 inches. I had a lovely time chopping them into 6 x 3 pieces

and sewing them back together, and quilting them to a piece of fleece

And then sewing them into a bag shape

It's too late now to continue, so I'm putting it away, and closing down the sewing machine and the computer, but next time I get an urge to do some bag making I'm halfway there :-)

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Take Time to Play

Ikea sell the best clock *ever* but I think they should advertise it in quilt magazines!

You get clock hands, and lots of connectable shapes . . .  HEXI shapes! You can clip the hexies together however you want, but I think their idea leaves a lot to be desired

In the hands of a patchworker.  . . .

I've had great fun!  I only got three each of the reds, the yellows and the greens, (come on Ikea, what are you thinking of?) so not enough to make a full flower - but when you know that someone else (waves, hello Jackie) got one at the same time, a little hexi swap may be on the cards!

BC and AC

For a long time I've referred to my "BC years" (Before Children), but I am thinking of the next 17 weeks or so (after this six weeks off school) as the "AC weeks" - After Calm.

The school hols have been lovely: no alarm clocks, sewing pretty much what I fancied, when I fancied, not many places to go to for specific times, seeing people I love to see . . . you get the picture.

Today school starts back, just teachers, but certainly alarm clock and lots of "can you just ..." and "where is the .." and what on earth happened to ... ". 

There will be 30 new four year olds start on Wednesday, which also means about 20 new families that I need to get to know; we are starting a new lunch ordering system (that I was trained on 7 weeks ago, guess how much I remember) and I have a new Head Teacher who is new to being a Head Teacher as well as being new to the school.

I love my job, but given the choice I'd choose permanent summer holidays!

So there will be less sewing and less blogging.  I hope you enjoyed your summer as much as I enjoyed mine

Decision Dilemma

Ok, so I ordered some Kona Hexies (that I didn't need) from Simply Solids, and they have now arrived

I welcome you to drool

But what shall I do with them?

The two plans are either to copy Jackie's gorgeous colour popping spiral

Or to chop into my charms from the recent rainbow charm swap, mix up the two collections and make a rainbow hexie top

Decisions Decisions!

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Ball Bag Please

What are you supposed to do? Your oldest daughter is home for the weekend and asks if you can make her a ball bag

You find a metre of funky retro cassettes fabric

You make a FQ bag, but using a metre not a FQ (see Slik and Quick tab on the web homepage)

You retrieve a draw string from a pair of track suit bottoms. And you make a ball bag

 

For her balls of wool of course!

Ten minutes, done!

 

Happy child :-)

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