December 2025

 Hi.  Hope you had a great Christmas, and wish you all the very best for 2026

Chertsey Ladies made angel and bell tree decorations in December (instructions here)

In November we had made vinyl pouches (see the blue ones below).  But I found that if the poppers / snaps weren't 100% perfect we had to pull against the vinyl to open the pouch and that was a definite weak point.   The yellow versions are the next evolution: a fabric band at the top of the vinyl rather than just bias binding, so the popper goes through fabric not just vinyl

I got a lovely dove kit for Christmas (thank you Plum)

And a Christmassy dish set that probably thought it was for foods but was perfect for the threads, sequins and beads etc for the dove!!!

A lot of Christmas Pudding Gingers were made and distributed

And of course one joined the other Gingers on my tree

We had a lovely evening making Christingles - 12 people, 6kg sweets and 56 minutes to make 106 Christingles!

   

This jumper was bought 18 months ago, with a black Peace sign knitted into it.  Removing the sign was more complicated than it should have been, and left a lot of dropped stitches so I ironed stabiliser on and tried to match the colours thinking some EPP might cover the mess.  I still don't like it!  It was threatened with textile recycling bin but Tara has taken it to give it some love - lets see what she does with it!!!

We had a lovely Studio session making candle and foliage centre pieces, thank you Lucy

Jackie send me a photo of her and the 3 older grandchildren last summer: with the help of ChatGPT I managed to create a recognisable likeness in embroidery so I made her this.  

I had a go at making a wedding image for her youngest who got married just before Christmas, but this doesn't look like them at all

So I gave up and sent them this instead with Ginger bride and groom

I've done some work on the Mandelightful quilt.  Each line takes about 20 minutes, and there are 134 lines left to go (please don't tell me how many hours that equals!!!)

So far I've done the section below the snips (on the right)!  It'll take a while!

I have also hand quilted this brick i-Spy quilt

And now we are in 2026!

Gorgeous Boy has been using his quilt and has been growing!

July 2025

 I'm still not sure where my times goes, but here is a glimpse of my July in photos:

Twp taggies for a friend's twin granddaughters

My lovely niece, India, arrived from Australia, and was immediately put to work helping Niki and George pack up their flat - they exchanged contracts at 3pm on Thursday and needed to move at noon on Friday - who needs more than 21 hours notice eh?

A lovely session with the Chertsey team, Show and Tell showcased some quilt as you go hexies

and we made positive and negative applique

India had a play with Lizzie and made an ID handle wrap for her backpack handle (she's off to 10 countries before coming back late September)

I made a ginger to celebrate the anniversary of the Moon Landing

And cross stitched a new needle case from a kit gifted by the lovely Vicki

Another brick I-Spy quilt in progress

And a ginger for national beer lover's day

and read a book day

Oh and two to celebrate the lionesses football win!

Last time I spring cleaned the dolls house was, shockingly, 2016!!!

So I put that right

And finally I made gingers for our GodDaughter's upcoming wedding - she asked for one for each person in the main wedding party.  Happy to oblige!

2025 April

Hello to the April furtle in my little corner of blog world

At the beginning of the month I taught the Fun With fabric session at Chertsey Museum - we created  lots of felt birds

I (or rather Lizzie) made lots of gingers for a customer

Jackie came over for a few lovely days - we made pouches for crochet and knitting markers

We made pouches for knitting needles and crochet hooks

We (or rather Lizzie) added stitched dresden plates to Jackie's fab Dresden plate quilt - not sure if you can see the stitching but it is there!!!

And we made craft bags with a lovely big opening

And we went to Creative Quilting and chose backing for the mandala quilt.

(She's gone off to the longarm quilter and is being quilted)

I made some samples of slouch bags ready for the May FWF session at Chertsey (instructions here if you want a go) I used the template from https://sewcanshe.com/easy-sling-bag-free-sewing-pattern/ but simplified it for hand sewing and the short lesson time.  The daisy bag was made with SewCanShe's template, and the others were made shallower (blue) and smaller (red)

The New Hive quilt has been quilted and bound and is now finished.  I had just ONE yellow bee hexie remaining 😳 Nothing like cutting it fine!

And finally a few uniform zippies for the Chertsey Museum staff:

There are a few other things ongoing but not ready for photos yet.  The to-do list is currently at 44 items and I know there are still a few more projects to go on the list but at least a few things have been transferred to the "done" clip