Mid month review

Time for a mid month review of what I've been upto. I had planned on posting this last week but I got busy and never managed to post it.

I've been out a couple more times geocaching but the darker nights are drawing in now up here and it's been cold so I suspect we'll not be heading out to do much more geocaching this year unless we get a really nice autumn day when I'm off work.

A wander at about 7.30pm gave us this wonderful looking sunset over St Mary's lighthouse. Pity we live on the east coast so don't get really good sunsets.

I also got some really exciting things in the post this past fortnight!

A box of goodies and some post from Australia!

Here's what I got from Australia! Dasha who blogs over at Patching Pixies read about my charm hexagon quilt and very kindly sent me a load of squares over from her stash to turn into hexagons! I am so grateful for them and they will keep me busy for a while.

The box contained some new Guide uniform just in time for the start of the new year of Guides over here. I've lost weight so I decided to treat myself to some new uniform that fits a bit better. I'm lucky that it turned up on the Tuesday right before Guides started!

The friend I helped with the giant green quilt gave me my reward for helping out too. It's a jelly roll of glamping fabric. Just what every Guide leader needs. This fabric will be to make something for me!

Pretty fabric and it's all mine!

Wedding quilt number 2 is coming on nicely. Not as fast as I'd like but I'm making progress. All the rows have been sewn together so I just need to get the long white strips sorted to join them up. That giant gap is where the pictures will go once I have them sorted.

It's been ironed since this photo. I promise!

I have managed to get some more hexagons made even though I've not managed to get any photos of them. I promise them next time.

In other news for those who have regularly read my blog I've had more disturbing spider experiences. But fear not this time it's me that came out on top. In August my sister and I came across a very large (by UK standards) spider in our hallway. Neither of us are big spider fans so by the time we'd argued over who had to get it with the hoover it was on the move. I chased it into our dining room (or my sewing room as I like to think of it) and lost it in there because it was so fast.

Fast forward to last week when I was sat minding my own business and putting together some strips fro the wedding quilt. My sister walked in, looked at the wall behind me and ran out the room screaming. Apparently the spider had taken up residence behind me to watch me sew. This time I wasted no time in getting the hoover and sucking him up. No more need to worry every time I go to sew about spider attacks now. Phew.

Tomorrow (or Friday for those of you in different time zones so who are already there!) we're taking th dog for her checks at the vets so she can start her chemo. Hope all goes well and my sister doesn't faint when the vet takes blood from the dog. 

...and finally

Apparently Christmas is coming. I know this because in the first week of September I walked into our local ASDA supermarket and was greeted with this selection in the bakery. I've also seen a chocolate advent calander in a shop today.

This is what ruins Christmas for me. In my head it should not even be considered until December. We should at least be allowed to enjoy autumn and bonfire night first!

Mince pie or Christmas pudding anyone?

P.s.. for a change this post actually shows no fabric that I have bought. My bank account is very happy with me at the minute!

Planning and sun

I'm linking this blog post to the Let's get acquainted link up by Beth at Plum and June. Hey a girl could always use a few more visitors! So anyone who is joining me from there feel free to look around and tell me how you guys have great looking blogs. I just can't seem to get it right.

Well it was my last week at my old job this week and I now have a week off before starting my new job on a Friday. What an odd day to start work!

Everyone was sad to see me go but we all went out for drinks after work on Thursday so that was fun. Not so much for the people who were in work at 5am the next day I suspect since we hit the pub at 12 after work and spent the afternoon in the beer garden. I left at 9pm after we'd relocated to a different pub and back inside. I'll miss the people but I'll not miss the place. Hopefully we'll keep in touch.

After leaving work you'd think that would leave me with a week I could sew until my heart was content - you'd be wrong. Apparently my life is busier when I'm not at work then when I'm there. This isn't helped by British summer time finally putting in an appearance.

On Saturday (yesterday) enjoying my first Saturday off for a while I dragged my sister out for a walk. She took her Camera and I took my GPS (hey, I'm not passing up a geocaching opportunity!). The sun was lovely although there was a rather nasty cold wind.

First up was a walk around a lake to do a spot of geocaching and for my sister to take pictures of flowers and stalk damsel flies.

Sister taking pictures

Jack Sparrow? They had a film costume exhibition on.

QE2 lake - looks lovely doesn't it?

After that it was a trip to some local woods for a wander around. Sis wanted to see the wild flower meadow. I wanted to do the geocaches. A match made in heaven.

We both wanted Ice cream!

Bluebell woods

And that is all the excitement of this past week I'm afraid. I have bought a bike but I don't get that until Thursday and even then I suspect I'll have to spend some time learning to ride a bike again if my demos at the shop were anything to go by. I'll pop a picture up when I get it next week. In the mean time I have to go shopping for bike locks, and bags for it, and a helmet etc...

So onto the planning mentioned in the title. I want to make a quilt this week like this one

Film in the Fridge - Rectangle Squared

I love the colour grey so it seems like a good choice of background but which colours to use with it? (this is Kona mid grey in the background because it looks slightly odd in these pictures)

My plan had originally been for a green and grey quilt but I'm just not certain

I LOVE the bright colours and randomness of this selection but I worry it's slightly too purple?

The batik collection. It would certainly make for a bright and random coloured quilt  but I'm just not certain. Most of these batiks came from the US when a friend visited.

I think these all have good points but I just don't know which to choose. It looks like a nice quilt to make and I'd love something bright I can snuggle under after a hard day at work. I have no quilts for myself after all.

I'm off now to sort out a birthday pressie for a friend. Gotta get that done soon as her birthday is creeping up. It's getting harder and harder and we try and out personalise each other. She got me a mug last year with pictures on of us, I made her a jewellery roll (the first thing I'd made that wasn't a quilt from a pattern!), this year she got me a photo frame with pictures of us so I need to work on something epic! She's just got out of hospital too so I best go find a get well soon card.

Speaking of cards - it's my dad's birthday tomorrow and I haven't got him a card of present yet. Oops. Told you I was busy!

Back again and inspired by great British sewing bee

Well yet again I'm back. I'm awful at this blogging thing. I suspect this is because I only have 1 follower and so I doubt that anyone actually reads these! Although who knows. Maybe if I posted more I would get more followers?

Well onto a catch up of what I've been doing.

Remember those hexagons I was hoping to turn into a tablemat for Christmas? Here they are all finished.

Yay! I do like them and I think they work well with the linen.

That starry quilt I was making for my friend? That's been free motion quilted too. I finally plucked up the courage to do it and managed to do the whole thing in a day. It isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but for a 1st attempt it's OK  It looks really good from afar. The quilt just needs binding now and I've cheated and bought some binding to do that.

Since my last post I've also gained more fabric (oops) including some very funky tube map fabric that I got for my birthday, rather a lot of Amy butler fabric that was on sale in hobby craft for £6 a meter (silly to pass up that chance) and some home dec fabric from ikea to make a bag. I would to to make Amy butler's weekend bag but I suspect that's a little beyond my skill level so I'm going to limit myself to something from the bag making bible instead.

I've also for some reason agreed to make a quilt for my friends wedding which is in October. Plenty of time right? The theme for the wedding is a vintage tea party and so I've had to buy a lot of fabric to match this theme. I had nothing in my funky stash that would work. It's a basic quilt with lots of squares for people to sign and we ate hoping to transfer some photos on too. I've put my friend who is one of the bridesmaids in charge of gaining photos. It's all a secret from the bride and groom so I'm having to be very careful what I say on Facebook.

my newly gained fabric. lots of flowers

I'm not alone in making this quilt though. I have help! The friend who is a bridesmaid is helping me make it. She's never used a sewing machine before which is just a tiny problem so last weekend I spent a Sunday afternoon letting her loose sewing straight lines and we got a few blocks made. She loved her time using the sewing machine and is really looking forward to our next sewing get together in a few weeks.

7 of 66...

And then we get to the great British sewing bee TV show. For those who don't know what it is... If you've ever seen great British bake off its the same thing but sewing. Lol. Basically a group of very talented people complete challenges to make items every week with people being knocked out every week until the finale. I have no idea how they are making those things in that time. I mean seriously I takes me months to make anything. Never mind making an evening dress of a tailored jacket in 8 hours from start to finish! Utter madness.
I was given the book for my birthday last week and I also magically at the same time managed to gain a dress pattern from as magazine. It's a sign I tell you! I've always quite liked slightly vintage dresses (not so much the flowers. Kath kidston flowers make me cry so you can imagine how I'm feeling about that wedding quilt) and with my recent (and hopefully continuing weight loss) I've decided now is the time to try and make a dress! You never know. Summer may appear yet. I'm also aware that making a dress may be a stupid and expensive thing to so when I'm still loosing weight and planning on starting the insanity workout DVDs so I've opted to just have a trial run and see how it goes since its the first item of clothing I will ever of made and will be only the 2nd zip I've put in (everyone has to start somewhere right).
The fabric has been ordered, the invisible zippers and zipper foot for my sewing machine have been ordered, the book will give me hints, and the pattern gives me basic instructions. How wrong can it go? I'm hoping to blog the lot so you (dear reader who has done very well to get this far) can see. If I can make a dress anyone can.

The pattern. Can I do it?

Coincidently the woman who won the sewing bee had never made a quilt before. At least I've done that even if I've never worn anything I've made! lol. Hopefully next time I post I'll have started making that dress. Or have more of the quilt made... I'm rather excited about the dress option tbh...

I'm back and I"ve been busy!

Well it's been a while since I've posted (I know I'm such a bad blogger) but it's been crazy busy at work and I've been a busy bee in General! I've been on holiday to Devon (where I'm fairly certain the country's population of VW camper vans are!). On a sad note I've also been to Southampton to visit my gran who isn't very well. She had a few stokes and is now very ill. I was hoping to show her some pictures of my sewing but she was asleep the whole time we were there.

So onto what I've been doing! I started making the bag from 'make'and just have the button holes left to put on the straps so I can use the bag. It was nice to make the bag but it's a little smaller than I'd like. Can't fit much in there!

The next thing I made was actually another project from 'make' and it was the jewellery roll. I made this for a friend's birthday and just dug some fabric out of my stash to make it. I think she liked it but I'm always a worrier when I give people gifts that I've made. I did rather like it though and may get around to making myself one at some point. I was so proud of myself because this is the first time I've sewn a zip into anything!

And then the olympics started. I was persuaded by my sister to go see a football match at St James' park in Newcastle and we saw the New Zealand and USA woman's quarter final. It was the first football game I've been to but it was actually good fun and the crowd were all in a good mood. Not what I imagine from a normal football match!

After the Olympics and hours spent glued to the TV and computer when not at work it was the turn of the paralympics. I'd spotted some Christmas fabric in a sale (the Blitzen by basic grey charm pack infact) and had bougt that. I'd also been rather taken by a table mat I'd seen somewhere and so decided to make that. Back to my dreaded nemesis of hexagons! I had no idea where I saw the pattern or what size hexagon to make so I just cut my charms into 4 and made my hexagons from there (They turned out to be 1 inch hexagon). A few days after I started I saw a review of a book called hex-a-go-go and lo and behold there was the pattern I'd seen! I bought the book and luckily for me I've made the right size hexagons. I say 'made' because all I've done so far it cut out hundreds of hexagon shaped bits of paper, and basted about half of them so far. Will it be done by this xmas? Only time will tell!

Carrying on with my hexagon obsession I decided to make a case for my new phone - an iPhone5! This case was made out of small scraps of fabric I had left over from the 2nd quilt I ever made and they are 1/2 inch hexagons. How tiny! I lined the case with a microfible cloth which was a bit of a faff to sew. It's a little shorter than I wanted but the phone fits in so long as it's not in another cover.

So with that we move onto this week. We are getting people in to do our windows and doors so my lovely stash of fabric has to move to a new home as I'm no longer allowed to store it in boxes on the dining room table. We bought a Beno cd holder from Ikea to store it all in our spare room/office. The family had joked would it hold all my fabric and I've given them evil glares. I don't have that much you know...

Well as you can see from these pictures above and below I actually do have rather a lot of fabric. Oops. I see a lot of fabric from my stash having to be used in quilts in the future. It's all just too pretty to cut though. You may also be able to tell that I spent the time to organise it by colour with all the xmas ones together, the batiks together, the novelty prints together.... Me obsessive? never...

  

Looking at it I also feel like some colours are missing. I hardly have any blender type fabrics. most of them are bold and bright prints.

  

And look at the extra space that has no fabric in it. That means I'm allowed to buy more right?

Hopefully I'll post another update soon. I'm currently trying to persuade myself that I don't REALLY need to but the oh deer jelly roll that's on sale at Simply solids...it sure is pretty though

   

Productive week!

Well my week off work was rather productive as far as sewing goes! Pity that the weather was awful so i didn't get a change to go out for a wander in Northumberland somewhere and go geocaching but I did manage to get all this sewing done - a lot for me!

The first thing I work on was this cute bag that came with Patch! by Cath Kidston that I got at Christmas. Making it revealed to me that I have NO patience whatsoever for paper piecing things. i hated having to cut out fabric with scissors and then loads of paper templates then having to baste it all and then sew it together. What a faff! I much prefer using my Dresden ruler I have which cuts half these steps out and means I can rotary cut it all. Another leader from our Guide unit also had the book and made her bag about the same time as me on her new cheap sewing machine. We both had hours of fun making the puff for the middle. She managed to make her's too small and I made mine too big and as you can see had to pop an extra bit of fabric in the middle because the fabric supplied only had the print on 1 side. Oh well...

I also made myself chuckle as I sewed all the seams inside and I blindly followed the book which said to do a zig zag stitch on the seam to make it stronger. just as I turned the bag the right way around I realised not only do I have a hemming foot with my sewing machine (doh!) but it also has a pre set stitch for it! (double doh!). I'll have to remember that for my next project which is the bag fro the Make! book that I was given for my birthday by a friend.

My bag

Project number 2 was the starry quilt (yes, the one I started earlier this year that is a birthday pressie for someone who's birthday was in feb). I FINALLY got all the stars made and spent a good hour with my twin sister working out the best layout so we didn't have groups of colours or collections of the same type of star together. I guess a lot could be said for planning and not being spontaneous but where's the fun in that! My sister is  huge fan of the grey/pink/yellow star that's in the middle column 2nd down. She's requested a whole quilt of it (not demanding at all!). I on the other hand am a fan of the purple and green one in the top left corner and the green and grey one in the bottom centre. I love the idea of making a quilt with a grey background and using bright colours to really add some 'wow' to it.

As much as I love this quilt and will be proud of it when I've finished I still would have preferred it on a black background but the recipient wanted it on a creamy one. I think black would of looked fab. This quilt is all pinned now and just needs to be quilted which leads me to project number 3...

Starry Quilt - top all pieced!

Project 3 - learn to fmq on my new(ish...) sewing machine so i can quilt this quilt with stars - it seems only right for it. I sat myself down one afternoon with a couple of large quilt sandwiches and just sat playing with the tension and everything to try and get it right. It would appear that changing the stitch length to 0 has a huge impact and once I managed to get the tension right for a straight line (I have to loosen the bobbin tension every time I put a new bobbin in because my sewing machine hates me lol) I was whizzing around and actually getting rather good results fro my first attempt. The tension was perfect even around corners although my stitch length was a tad dodgy in places - all in all i think I could get the hang of it easily because it just seemed like such a natural thing to do. I bought a couple of star templates and some air vanishing pens to mark the quilt so hopefully if i get a chance this weekend I may get the quilt done. I'm so excited!

As for my other project of the week - Herman - he worked OK but not brilliantly. I blame it on the instructions I was given being in American (I have no idea what a cup is when baking - obv in real life it's what holds my tea). This time around I used a recipe that had English measurements and he looks a lot happier. I'm due to cook him this weekend so we'll see how he goes!

hopefully next time I write I'll have a quilt that just needs binding (or is finished!)

Birthday

It's been a rather odd month - especially these past few weeks. We heard on Easter Sunday that my dad's mum had a stroke and was in hospital down south. Dad spent the week worrying before receiving a phone call from his brother and deciding to drive all the way to the hospital (about 5 hours drive!) to see her. On the Tuesday my dad found out he was diabetic (My sister and I are refusing to move all the sugary goodness from the house. How mean are we?) and then on the Wed I found out that my other gran who lives nearby is having problems with her blood pressure and was onto her 3rd trip to the doctor/nurse in a week on Friday to get a heart monitor. I'm fairly certain my family are falling to bits.

Despite all this we've also managed to squash in 2 Ranger meetings this week (my big Aqua Guides - the 14-26yr olds) where we had a wii and movie night and then yesterday went geocaching in a local country park. We had the full age range of 15-22 there and despite what some people say about there being such differences in age range and life experience they really do all get on so well and encourage each other. At one point we discovered we were following other geocachers around and we started running and missing caches out to leave message for each other. So much fun. Unfortunately it's me who now has to sit here and log the lot on the website.

In other news, it's my birthday today and my sister very kindly decided to buy me some fabric as a pressie! It's a rather random selection because after her sitting next to me and looking through fabric on-line we very quickly discovered that although we are identical twins we have completely opposite ideas about what is pretty fabric.

In the end I sent her away with a website and told her to add stuff she liked (or thought I would like) to the shopping basket then i was called through to whittle it down to an acceptable price. lol. I picked a selection of fabrics - some in colours that I don't have many of in my stash (look no purple or light pink!) and some fabrics that I just loved. Who shouldn't have fabric with owls?!?!? I do love the expressions on the faces of the foxes on the walk in the woods fabric.

The pretty birthday fabric!

Of course that's not the only fabric I've gained... I wish people would stop pointing out sales to me. I finally gave in and bought myself a selection of fabric from the innocent crush range which I fell in love with when I saw This quilt. I'm not totally certain what I'll do with it. I want to do a quilt with the pattern I originally saw it used in but can't use the same colours.

Innocent Crush

The other fabric I bought purely based on the fact I liked the colours (as usual). Again, I have no project in mind for it but I love it all the same. it's from the Camelot Range by Jason Yenter. The colours are just so bright and vibrant and I even discovered I already had some of his fabric from my post xmas buying spree! Now I just need to think of a way to use it.

Camelot fabric

I have promised myself I won't start any new projects though until I get this star quilt finished for my friend. I'm ashamed to say very little has been done on it since last time I posted pictures. I think I need a week off work to get it done.

It was on a starry night...

I've just returned from a weekend away with my Guides in the middle of Northumberland with no phone signal or Internet or anything and it was fun!
We did activities based on traditional guiding, we did some archery with the village archery club (and I won the line contest although I didn't count according to the guides. Lol) and we had a campfire outside.
I think one of the things that amazed my guides the most all weekend though was when they went outside on the first night to look for cardboard rabbits and bats which we'd scattered around and stuck reflective 'eyes' on and my sister told then to look up. The girls are all from in a city and we've never really taken them anywhere that it's so dark and remote (at least while there's been clear skies) so they were all amazed at the number of stars up there, and the shooting stars they could see, and being able to see the milky way (even if faintly). I suspect if we'd still been up there this week we would have been able to see the northern lights and that would blow their minds! Every night some of them took their hot chocolates and just went outside to look at the stars in wonder.
I guess we often forget to take pleasure in the simple things like seeing the stars (or for me the peace and quiet and being cut off from everything, well once the girls finally went to sleep anyway).


But on the topic of different stars I've made some progress with the bright starry quilt for my friend. I'm about half way there with the big blocks but still have a few small ones to get started on.

My favourite blocks are the pink and purple and the green and grey. My sister is very drawn to the blue and blue block.

An Update - and a resolution

Well It's been a while since I last posted on here.
Since then I've finished my sister's quilt

Finished my Queen's Guide award

Bought a kindle and made a funky cover for it

 ... and made my gran a scrappy quilt for Christmas this year which used leftovers from my 1st quilt!

I've just saved enough money up to buy a new sewing machine so hopefully I can have a go at free motion quilting or at least now it has duel feed and posher stitches than the last one at least make some funky quilts!

Plan for the year...
Make the quilt I promised my friend. She wants it starry and colourful
Finish the friendship braid quilt I started last year
Make a Dresden plate quilt of some sort
Make a sampler quilt using funky fabric (yes, I'm a newbie who didn't start with the traditional making a sampler quilt thing lol)
and finally make the sparking gems quilt from the jelly roll book because it just looks fab.

I think I'll be a busy bee this year if I get all that done and manage to fit in going to work and running a Guide and Ranger unit too!

At a standstill (and not just becasue of the weather!)

I've managed to get the centre block of my sister's xmas quilt made but have now come to a standstill. I don't have enough fabric to make the border and until I get paid from my new job can't afford to buy any (the curse of car mot and insurance both due in December!). I think it looks rather good so far though. Here's a pic I took before I finished sewing it all together.

It's a pity it's so wintery outside now - it was very sutumnal when I started this quilt. Sis likes it though so far :)

I did have a bit of luck too when I won from fabric from sew me happy in a givaway. It's a lovely collection of xmas fabric and because I can't do any more work with my sis's quilt it means I can make something with that instead :)

I'll have to keep the blue one seperate I think as I love it so much and it's a different colour that I think I'll do a mostly blue and white 'snow' quilt for that one.

Any ideas for patterns for a christmas quilt anyone?