Full time work. How do you fit it in?

I'm now 2 weeks into the new job and still adjusting to this working 40 hours a week thing. It's a big difference to what I was doing in my last job where I was contracted to 32 hours over 4 days but was lucky if I worked 20 recently.

I feel like I've not done any sewing for ages and I just wander past the room and stare at my sewing machine wishing I could be using it.

I bought my bike that I'll use to cycle to work if

a) the weather ever improves. I'm insanely jealous of those of you who get nice warm summers with that funny yellow thing in the sky. Sadly this whole concept appears to be lost on the weather we are having in the North east of England.

Shiny new bike. Not the most expensive ever but it does the job

b)I actually plucked up the courage to go cycle my bike! I haven't owned a bike for well over 10 years and it was very obvious to the guy in the shop when I bought it that this was the case. I need to go out and practise but I have no one to go with which I think is what is putting me off. That and my sister panicking at the concept of me cycling anywhere because I haven't got a helmet yet.

Amazingly we ended up picking the bike up in my fiesta and we managed to fit in in 1 piece. I was impressed and my dad was rather astounded! It's amazing what you can fit in a Fiesta.

Can you fit a bike in a fiesta? Yes you can!

I mentioned in my last blog (I think?) that it was a friend's birthday last weekend and we were meant to be heading to her's for a nice girly catch up. Sadly this didn't happen because she ended up back in hospital due to this mystery illness that the doctors are baffled by. So far she's lost 2 stone since Christmas and she is not someone who needs to loose any weight! I wish mine would go that fast. They've done lots of tests and have ruled things out but she's still a medical mystery... So on Saturday I went for a trip to visit her in hospital instead and took some cupcakes that my sister had made.

Butter beer cupcakes based on harry Potter ones. they tasted fab!

Quilting wise I've not got much done. I spent ages with my ill fiend working on a layout for the wedding quilt (this was the weekend before she was in hospital). It looks good and we spend ages balancing colours and different values and scales of prints. I got home and 2 days later looked at next to my computer and it's dawned don me we have the layout wrong. We should actually have 2 rows on 1 side of it not just 1. I think it'll work if I just shuffle the row over but I'm now going to have to take over our floor again to see. Oops

See that single row on the right? Should be 2 rows there now 1. Oops

I did a bit more fabric shopping (Pay day and sales = bad) This rather fab (and upside down. I'm sorry I have no idea how to make it right) how to build a fire fabric is going to be cut in 2. I'm keeping half and giving the other half to a friend for her birthday. She'll love it.

Upside down how to make a campfire fabric

The other ones are just rather fab fabric prints. Apparently my dad was home when these arrived and just groaned at the idea of more fabric arriving. Id best not spot anything else pretty this month!

Prettiness

More prettiness

I did manage to sneak in making that cathedral window pin cushion that I've been talking about making for ages but that's about it.

now do I want to put pins in this or just admire it?

In the next few weeks I'm expecting a quilt to quilt for a friend. She's making it for her friend's wedding and has asked me to quilt in on my machine because it's bigger and I have a walking foot which makes straight line quilting so much easier. In return I'm getting fabric. Oops

So that leads me to the question in the title. How on earth do you all fit in sewing around working and having a life? I feel like I get home at 5.30-6pm and by the time I've cooked and eaten I have no time left for much else. Any tips?

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

   

What have I become?

I promised a friend a quilt for her birthday and it's just dawned on me that I actually have become everything I thought I'd never be with regards to quilting. I always thought those people with vast quantities of pretty fabric at home and several sewing machines were crazy. I've become one of them!!!

Even more worryingly even though I have a slightly large stash of fabric now I'm struggling to find fabric for her quilt (well, she would want bright and plain ish when I seem to have mostly purple, aqua and pink patterns) I'll have to buy more fabric. Oops.

Ive also, although not totally my fault, become one of those people with several sewing machines. How??
I have my old singer one that belonged to my gran then mum, a brother embroidery machine that kinda appeared when my other gran upgraded her stuff and just randomly sent it with my dad for me from the opposite end of the country, and I have my new sewing machine that I bought just after Xmas and am still trying to work out (in -all fairness I got it because the singer has lost most the fashion disks and accessories that came with it so all I can do is sew in straight lines and zig zags).

Oh well. I'd probably best make like the quilter and sewing addict I've become and make something!!!