Bothering to Blog

I followed a link to another blog the other day, and what I read really made me stop and thing . . . Why do I blog?  It started for me as a record of what I've made, and somewhere to record HOW I made something, so I don't have to re-invent it if I decide to make it again.

My best friend, Jackie, (a flight away) and my mum (90 minute drive away) would visit regularly to see what I'd been up to, and then a few more people joined - and now I have 62 followers.  While this is a huge boost to my ego, it was never the point.  Sometimes I blog when I don't really feel like it, sometimes I acknowledge people's comments only because it's polite to do so, and sometimes I comment on other people's blogs because I feel I ought to . .  but is that really the point?

I found one blog where the writer had TURNED OFF THE COMMENTS facility!  How brave is that?  I'm not sure that I can do that, as I do love to get comments  (down, ego, down) but I have decided to join the Blogging Without Obligation movement.  If you click on the logo (to the right, and below) you can go to Tiffini's explanation.

So - I will still be making stuff, and  I will still be blogging about it, and about other stuff, but I have released myself from . . .

• Feeling I should make something just to blog about it
• Feeling I should apologise if I haven't blogged for a while
• Feeling I should comment on someone else's blog just because they blogged about something
• Feeling despondent if no-one comments on a post

And released myself to enjoy blogging when I have the time and the inclination, and to enjoy reading other people's posts, and to comment when I get the urge, and respect that others do the same

Phew :-)

Kids Creating Cushions

I was at Chertsey Museum today, running two children's sessions where they were creating their own cushion.  I made the basic cushion cover, and bought the inserts from Ikea.  I provided fabric pens, buttons, lace, denim pockets, ribbon fleece scraps, scrap booking and sticky felt letters, bling, and several glue guns, and let them do what they liked (the only rule was that an adult had to do the glue gun, luckily 4 mums statyed at each session)

Once they had fully decorated their cushion, we stuffed the insert in and they got to use the old hand crank Singer sewing machine to stitch up the opening

I've picked out a few to show you here, but all the ones I managed to photograph are on the Fun With Fabric blog 

 

   

The museum has also asked me to do another adult class -  make a patchwork quilt in a weekend!  This is really exciting - we are going to do it as a real beginner's course, with 8" squares onto an Ikea fleece, and it will probably happen in October :-)

I am, of course, in the meantime available for birthday parties, baby showers, hen nights and Bar Mitzvahs!!!

Giving something back

Like many other quilters, I make (or certainly start) more quilts than I can find homes for. My mum, my children, my nephews and nieces all have at least two, and there are a fair number on a shelf in my sewing room waiting for a good home.  They aren't easy to sell for a price that even covers the cost of the fabric, let alone the hours of work.

So I have been looking for a charity that clicked with me. There are many that ask for quilts, and I have donated a fair few, but until yesterday I hadn't found one that felt right. Lily, at Lily's Quilts, introduced me to a charity in the UK called Siblings Together - an initiative dedicated towards promoting positive contact between siblings separated by care.

The charity arranges holiday camps for 40-50 children at a time - all siblings separated by the care system. The siblings get time to play and just be together which is so important for their short and long term well being. The organisers would love to be able to give something to these kids - something to comfort them, keep them warm, take away from camp as a reminder of the time they've had with their siblings, something homemade, just for them, to keep. Children moved from pillar to post in the care system often won't have something special like that, homemade just for them, to bring them warmth and a little comfort and maybe a few happy memories. [click here for Lily's post]

I think this is the charity for my spare quilts. As childminders we worked with a foster carer, trying to keep family groups together, we wanted to be foster carers ourselves, and both our nephew and friends have been through the red tape that is the adoption system.

More yellow, and lots of lego

Two more yellow blocks arrived in the post: Thank you Susan and Mahala

 And I have been planning my kitchen.  I know there are computer aided design packages, and there are pieces of paper that you can move around on larger sheets of paper with the room drawn to scale, and there are probably other methods too, but nothing quite beats the fun of making it all to scale . . . in Lego!!!!

And just because he's cute and I'm so pleased to see him on his feet again - here is Twiglet :-)

A finish, and a farewell

Yay, the scrappy diamond quilt has been finished

The front . . . 

 and the back . . .

and the bodge, where the back strip (needed because the fleece wasn't long enough) wasn't long enough!!!!!

And a sad farewell.  This is Lisa, looking deceptively happy (holding back the tears) as she took her car to the scrap yard this morning.  We had to push start it as there was no life in the battery, but she did get £96 in scrap value, which she then spent on an external hard drive for her computer to cheer herself up! Bought for £1000 4 years ago almost to the day,  I reckon depreciation of 62p a day was pretty good value!!!!!

More Yummy Yellow

The Chertsey Museum ladies have been busy again - and these three fab blocks came through my letter box

dreadful photos - but fab blocks towards the baby quilt, thanks Kay and  Deborah - wish I'd got further than part way through mine!!!

M I A (without the A)

Missing In Action - but practically no action!  I wish I could claim to have been too busy sewing to blog, but I've hardly picked up a needle for two weeks.  So what are my excuses?

. . . We have been to the Cruise Show at Olympia, and we have decided on our treat for having put up with each other for 25 years next spring - and are off to cruise the fjords of Norway, hopefully with light displays from the Northern Lights

. . . and thanks to serendipity and technology we met the lovely Scott and Slavka in Covent Garden.  Scott was working on the developing of Lattitude for phones (locating your friends by smart phone maps) in the late 1990s, and this was the first time he had used it to meet friends or family without planning in advance.  Hope you had a fab birthday Slavka!

 . . .and we have spoon fed anti-biotics laced meal worms to a poorly hedgehog who now seems to be on the mend

. . . and I have machine embroidered Grace's name onto this buggy seat lining

. . . and I have discovered that the backing fabric on the Diamond Quilt is just too short in one place so I'm having to flaff around, post quilting, to add on a strip so I have something to stitch the binding too.  No, no photos, not that will stop some of you being entertained by it (H, K, J, R - you know who you are!!!)

Mellow Yellow

Once a month I host a class at a local (ish) museum, and it was arranged by the assistant curator, Sally.  Sally has just gone on maternity leave, and the group decided we would make some yellow and white blocks to create a quilt for the baby.

I got photos of a few under construction last Friday

(it is coincidence that these are both foundation pieced flying geese)

And the first finished block arrived in the post yesterday - it's lovely Deborah, I'm so glad you felt you could part with it!

Did it myself

While I was window shopping at Creative Grids a few days ago (possibly really shopping too, oops) I saw these "Row Marking Safety Pins"

Advertised as "Perfect way to keep your rows in order as you sew" they came with instructions to . . .
1. Place letter beads on safety pin
2. Pin into rows in alphabetical order to keep in sequence
3. Sew rows together in alphabetical order

For a Price of £4.96 I thought they were a really good idea, far better than the scraps of paper I usually use, but I was worried that the beads would fall off when I opened the pins again. Eventually I had a Eureka moment . . .

Do I have alphabet beads?   Yes, loads  . . . Do I have safety pins?  Yes, loads

And I even have mini split rings, so look what I made

(Not that I think I'll ever made a quilt with 26 rows!)