2021 Week 33

 A few Gingers this week : I was asked to do one as a mascot for the local lunch club (they already have one for their coffee morning)

National Photography week came and went so a Ginger supported that under the Craftivism hashtag, along with Read a Book week

and our neighbouring village has a village "Garden Party" (church fayre) coming up soon,  with a theme of HatLand - everyone has been asked to wear a hat - I made this one as a raffle prize - the Ginger who can't decide what hat to wear!!

I made a nappy clutch for a friend's daughter and she asked me to make another one for her niece - my side kick is stuck in Ireland so I had to Make. It. On. My. Own - shock horror!!!  It's not quite straight and the corners are square not rounded and I totally made up the Velcro bit and the number of pockets . . .  but it's made and posted to her anyway!  Let's hope she likes it!

Another friend has commissioned an I-spy quilt for each of her 8 great niblings - I love that word even though no on else seems to use it! (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nibling)

And now one of the nieces has announced another baby is under construction - so here is quilt number 9!  Just waiting for the name

I finally got back to the hairdressers after 12 months - it really was like straw at the ends!  4" hacked off and the very faded pink replaced by a subtle purple!!!

2019 Wk 44 - Irish Retreat

I managed to spend the weekend at my very favourite place - Jackie's!!!  The saga of the flights showed the carrier as so utterly incompetent you wouldn't believe me if I told you! Suffice to say they eventually issued the tickets that I had paid for three weeks earlier, refunded the monies they shouldn't have taken (5 debits totaling > 3 x flight costs), gave me two apologetic chunks of compensation, and I managed to get to Dublin at the planned time!

So what did we do???

We spent a lot of the weekend in this awesome room!!!

We made two nappy clutch bags (we finished the hand sewing on the other one first as it had to be gifted, and it never made the photo session!)

A quilted pocket on the outside (phone?) and a clipped strap so it can be clipped to a buggy or pram

and two zipped mesh pockets on the inside for nappies and wipes.  All machine washable

We also made these sewing tool cases: two big zipped pockets outside, and I think I counted 29 pockets inside - some zipped, some slip, some vinyl, some mesh and some quilted.  We used Annie soft and stable, and in places there are at least three layers plus fabric, vinyl and zip - and now we have to add bias binding.  I really love the design, but we've made a sheet of notes as to how to do it differently next time (it doesn't need quite so many pockets (5 of them are zipped!) or quite so much padding!

We also made some more boxy zip-on-top pouches, trialing different types of stabiliser.  I think my old favourite of fusible fleece was best

Based on the nappy clutch and the tool case, and the Sewing Folio we made from Aneela's book we then designed our own caddy.  ("Design" might imply thinking about it in advance but don't be fooled!)

We used Aneela's rough size, and used another design from the book as inspiration to make one vinyl pocket with zips at both ends, then stitch through the middle to make it two pockets

Two vinyl pockets got added to the other side (one zipped, one not), and a zipped mesh pocket

And it folds into a clutch great for holiday / travel projects.  Mine will be for hexies, and Jackie switched the slip in vinyl pocket to a padded pocket with stitching to create small sections and will use hers for her knitting needle set that has interchangeable needles and circles of different lengths

What else?  While Jackie and her sewing machine were battling the layers in the tool case, I cut a whole load of 6x10" squares from a pack of Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  She's going to make the shadow box quilt ... and I tidied up the remains and cut myself a whole load on 3 inch squares to make something like this 

We did get some fresh air over the weekend.  Jackie's youngest, Paul, plays hurling for the local team.  They were playing against the "two-time All-Ireland club champions" in the quarter finals and beat them!!!!!

It was a very exciting match (and traumatic for other reasons), and I've got a bit closer to understanding the game!  After my first match six years ago I described the rules here

Finally though I had to leave.  On the two flights and some occasional chatting-and-hand-sewing sessions I attached all the hexies I had brought, so I'm now ready to join these to the hexi round