2022 August

Is it an age thing?  Every time I go to write a blog post I want to start with a reference to how quicklty that month went! 

Anyway here is August in Crafty photos!

Hexi flowers received from a Facebook swap

Oldest daughters other half's Birthday pressie (deliberatly not symetrical!)

A fun afternoon at Chertsey Museum mark making of fabric

and mark making on hands (oops, it was gone after two days!)

I borrowed a pattern for a wrap around craft apron.  I made the lined version but it was warmer that I needed so I had another go using half the fabric and a load of bias binding - it worked great!

Mum requested a small quilt for the top of her sewing table: 

The village library was officially opened with a visit from Peppa Pig - so I had to get a cuddle!

Lots of people attend the combine coffee morning and library

A quilt for a friend's 60th - and I gave her matching fabric pens so everyone could write on it

It will probably live at their new beach hut!

I even braved the sea for a swim!

Jackie came for a visit and we did some long overdue touristy things . . .  Windsor Castle was great - we visited the Moat Garden which in 35 years of living within 5 miles of I have never been to!

Loved it!!!

We did of course do some sewing too!

And we had a family dad for Jim's birthday: we hired a boat and had a day trip on the Thames

Miss you Jackie - when are you coming back???

2021 Week 22

As mentioned in my last post: a long time ago a lovely lady called Iris,  from the Chertsey Museum class, asked me to be executor of her craft room when she passed.  Sadly she passed early this year and I was called by her neighbour to come and help empty the room.  To be honest it was not so much a craft room as a craft 4 bedroomed house!  There was every craft imaginable in every room of the house! 

So not much making to report this week - mostly sorting the goodies from Iris's, and categorising them as to where they go next: To give you an idea, I filled my car three times and Emma from the museum filled hers once (she took a lot of beads in case they can be used on the replica costumes and most of the paper based craft stuff as her sister Claire teaches that kind of craft there) 

So far the list of crafts I now have kits and / or resources for (or have passed them on to someone else) are at least:

Macrame

Needle punch 

Glass painting 

clay

leatherwork

beads

wire craft

EPP, 

cricut, 

leather 

scrap booking 

sizzix 

card making 

weaving 

painting 

stamping 

embroidery 

rug making 

Viking knitting 

tie dying 

patchwork 

dress making 

jewellery making 

crochet 

French knitting

circle cutting

ordinary knitting

Please, much as I loved her, DONT be like Iris - some of the resources she has two or three unopened packets of, some where bought from Woolworths or even pre-decimalisation (50+ years ago).  So there are now bags and boxes of craft stuff all over the house as I sort out the final bags of stuff from hers and at least have all the associated stuff together.

What I have done in breaks is finish piecing this little EPP hexi rainbow trip around the world

Made this for my God Daughters who works for the ambulance service as a 999 ambulance handler and recently delivers her first baby by phone

And I'm rather chuffed with myself in that (with Lisa's help) I actually cast one for a crochet poncho

And I made this - in anticipation of the day, surely coming soon, that we can all hug!!!

2020 Wk 40 - One thing at a time???

 I really should work on one thing at a time . . .  but that's no challenge!!!

I've got a delivery of 80 sweatshirts due next week to embroider for my friend's pre-school so anything 'fun' that needs embroidering needs to be done now . . .

The Halloween quilt has been finished and delivered to a very happy aunty

There was febric left over, so now I've got a few Happy Halloween banners / flags on the go: so far I've forgotten to trim the ginger off the bottom half of one before adding the lettering, forgotten to change to orange thread for the pumpkin, put the black and the orange felt in the wrong place so there are missing bits, and run out of glow in the dark thread (the one I bought last week!) - that's going well LOL

Because they aren't stressful enough I'm also making a baby quilt from a hoard of fab brights (which only had 40 in the back not the 42 promised so I've added from stash)

And I ordered some Alison Glass sun prints fabric and spent ages auditioning them before I stitched them all together . . . wrong!  I have unpicked and re-sewn the dodgy blocks 

And I am now cutting them up to make a square dance / Lil twister quilt (like these) but forgot that I should add the border first (doh!) so am trying to that at the same time AND cope with questionable spatial awareness!

(just whisper it, but so far so good!)

Anyway, on the positive front, this insipid Trip Around the World (honest) is finished and in the Linus Quilt pile

The EPP triangles flimsy is growing

Lisa and Jim finally moved into their house (this was the stuff we couldn't find room for elsewhere!  I think this will be my favourite room when it's all cleared)

The Plus Quilt is also finished.  As it's hand pieced it's probably a bit fragile for a Linus Quilt, so it's waiting for a good home

I finally finished some little bowls that Jackie and I started years ago - they were possibly meant to have zipped tops but finished was better than perfect so no zip

And finally I've changed my Google profile picture . . . this sticker came with a McDonald's Happy Meal, and the whole family said it looks like me!!!!

2010 July (from original blog)

 

Another Tick on the To-Do List

Another tick on the to-do List... Littlest God Daughter has gone into Guides, and wanted a camp blanket to sew her badges onto. They still sell the same camp blanket as the Big Girls (Lisa and Niki) had - actually still have - (photographed here at camp, 2004), so I ordered one, and a few extra standard guide badges.




I've cut a hole for her head to go through, and appliqued 

her name on, and added some badges, and then I'll sew on her earned badges after her birthday (next week)

Hope she likes it

Happy Birthday Alice :-)

T Shirts and Quilts

Blisteringly hot yesterday - and I spent the day at the school fair, on the hook a duck stall, in the sunshine, as my shoulders will testify! Still before I went I did manage to finish the Hug Radio sample for Gary, so that's another tick on the list. However I did also remember another 4 items to go onto the list, so still it gets longer rather than shorter!

Today I finished a quilt for Sue's new grandson, Charlie. I had already made him a subtle Around The World using Mum's and Granny's choice of colours: creams, pale blues, greens and yellows, which has been much admired

It matches the nursery which is neutral colours, but mum then mentioned that she needed a bit of colour in there too.

Which is how this colourful quilt came to be.

Lots of scraps from I Spy quilts and displaying all the technical skills expected of a 10 year old, this quilt does have colours by the bucketful! I hope he likes it!!!


I especially like the border: a print featuring rulers that I picked up in WalMart last time I went to see dad - wish I'd bought more of it!!!

Got Distracted (!)

I've been working on Debbie's 9 patch and also Debbie's Blue Patrick quilt, as well as trying to think of a name for Charlie's I spy. Yesterday I had 4 school uniforms delivered which aren't on the to-do list ... so I spent today making a bag - go figure!

I've also been working on some cat paw prints for Sophie at Clip 'n' Groom - she wants them stitched on her car seat covers! She wants silver fill stitch, but I am hoping I can persuade her to have applique - the thought of doing 7 and then have number 8 go wrong makes me shudder!

I've brought the big embroidery machine up from the shed and am going to put it back together and see if it's in a better mood, and I'm going to go back to working from my list!!!

A Short Holiday

I haven't posted for a week as we've been away in Norway. We went to my Cousin's cottage south of Bergen and met up with a dozen or so friends and family. We swam (well Niki & cousins did) in the sea, we climbed up to a glacial lake, and had coffee and cake up there, looking at the awesome scenery.


At the cottages, we played cards, read, sewed, and we chatted, and ate and ate and ate and had a great time!

These photos are from Brian's phone: more to follow when the cameras get downloaded

Astonishingly I found more patchwork magazines in the small newsagents at the airport that I have ever before seen in one place, and have picked up hundreds of new ideas that I want to try, but need to finish at least Marilyn's birthday quilt first!!!

Log Cabin Christmas Tree

This morning I woke up at 3am with a start - I knew exactly what I wanted to make!

A bit of background - my uncle Geoff died in January this year, of Prostrate Cancer. He died at home, but spent the previous 6 weeks in a fantastic unit at the Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford where the staff were just awesome. Being in hospital over Christmas is gloomy for patient and visitors and I wanted to do something for them for next year.

I woke up thinking of a log cabin Christmas tree: each block made roughly 10x8, then trimmed to a wonky 8inches tall, by about 6 inches wide, where the centre of the block is either a bauble (snowball block) or a lighted candle (coloured centre strip, topped with a small elongated yellow snowball?) and all the strips are shades of medium to dark green. These would be arranged in a triangle to represent the tree. This would be too narrow at the top to hang, so dark blue blocks (for the sky, maybe some with yellow stars in the centre?) at the top and then white blocks at the bottom for snow would form the sides to keep a rectangular shape so the whole quilt could be hung up.

I started today to look at the greens I've got in my stash - hum, not many! I can buy some, but I dreamt this in loads of different greens as a tree has so many different hues.

So I wondered if I could change this to an appeal - an appeal for either fabrics or donated blocks. Then it occurred to me that other people might like to do the same thing, so maybe it would work to swap blocks - you send me a few, and I'll send you a few back: that way we get some variety

I haven't thought it all the way through, but I am so excited by the idea that I have ignored my to-do list (again!!!) to make the first block, and here it is - just a hundred or so more to go!




EDITED 3rd August

Here is the quilt that inspired me, by Nadine Leroy Bohy, seen in the May/June Magic Patch (should be rotated clockwise -ooops!)

Another Tick on the To-Do List

I've finally finished Marilyn's 60th birthday quilt - a bit late, but at least I haven't seen her since her birthday in June so I don't feel to bad. We're meeting up, with Lainey and Lisa, for lunch on on Thursday so I had to have it finished by then. I have learned that hand sewing a border on a fleece lined quilt when it's 25 degrees isn't a great idea!

My mother taught me that orange, red and pinks and purples don't go, but I think this quilt shows that rules are made to be broken!

I love it, and I hope Marilyn does too!

Happy customers & recipients!

I'm disheartened about the Christmas quilt, [Kandy pointed out that hospitals have specific requirements for items in the wards] but can fully see Kandy's point of view. maybe I'll make myself one to remember Uncle Geoff

I gave Marilyn her quilt today and she loved the colours, and Gary came and collected the Hug Radio sample, and I packaged Tyler's blanket for posting, so that's three projects finished. An enquiry arrived by email about some t-shirts for "Be puppy farm aware" and Sophie's Clip and Groom t-shirts are on their way to me.

In the meantime I've been working on Patrick's pale blue quilt and Debbie's cream quilt, and having a play with a few journal quilt ideas:

This is one of the rocks from Halsnøy beach - the stitched version took ages (and isn't quite finished) but I love the effect

Why do I avoid what I SHOULD do???

I've not finished much sewing this week, but I have had two embroidery order deliveries in the last 24 hours - two PE kits to be named, and 16 T-shirts to be embroidered by Thursday ... so instead I choose today to decide to get on with finishing Debbie's cream 9 patch!!! (the photo doesn't show the cream fabrics too well, but the quilting on the border shows quite well, I was really please with that)





After that was finished, I dug Sally's Pink Brick Road out of a stack and added the border, and, as I had black thread in the machine, I got out the red and black jigsaw quilt (the one pieced by Rosemary) and added the border to that too!!!

As Louise has cancelled lunch tomorrow I shall be good and get on with the embroidery before I get back to any more UFOs or hand finishing the black borders!!!




Ooooh, and I sold another design on ETSY, so the seagull has been emailed to Megan in USA :-)

I've been a good girl today

I've been a good girl today, and I got on with the Hug Radio t-shirts - and have finished all 10.

They were more fun to do that I expected because Gary gave me free rein with the colours, so I kept changing colour for a bit of fun :-)

Invoice emailed today and T-shirts being collected on Thursday

Sally's Pink Brick Road finished :-)

Had a good day today taking Niki and Becca and my special boy to Legoland. Thank to R's condition we got exit stamps so we went on loads of rides without having to queue much. We have just heard it may be one of the last times we care for him, so I'm especially glad we were able to finish on a good day.

This quilt was finished this morning - just a small lap quilt for my friend Sally to keep her lap from getting too hairy when she knits! The fabric was given to me at Christmas as part of a Secret Santa swap arranged through the BQL yahoo group (British Quilt List). Thank you to my Secret Santa - lovely fabrics :-)