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.

Busy!

No. I've not been busy sewing (although today I have). It's been manic at work and we've had loads of people off sick so I seem to be living there at the minute. Unfortunately being there that much and starting at 4am most days means I get home and just want to go to bed and not sew because I'm so tired.
Today my sister woke me from my sleep to help her make a costume for our book themed guide meeting next week. She going as the cat in a hat (my suggestion) so bought some felt, found a tutorial and expected me to make it magically turn into a hat! I left her to do the cutting and measuring and I just did the sewing and between us we ended up with a snazzy looking hat.
My sewing machine wasn't too happy with all that felt under the needle but then I remembered it had a built in duel feed so I got that started and off I went again with the sewing machine much happier with life. Yay.
Hopefully I can get some quilt sewing done soon now that things have calmed down a bit more at work.

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.

Cup of tea anyone?

I've managed to achieve something already in 2012. A finished quilt! Granted its actually a tiny coaster (or mug rug to Americans) but its made and quilted none the same so counts as a quilt in my world.
It was actually an experiment. I just got a Dresden ruler and I'm rather keen on making a full Dresden plate quilt so this was a good trial of using that and it was also a chance to test out the new sewing machine at appliqué! I think the tiny blanket stitch I used looks rather fab and much better then when I made cushions for my grandparents on my old sewing machine. Being able to limit the speed and keep the needle down really helps.

In use

yes, my sewing area is that dark!

I've also finally received all the fabric I need for my friends quilt so I can finally start making it. Just need to pluck up the courage to cut into the nice fabric. Oh dear.

Don't worry - I actually have rather a lot more of the cream since it's the background colour

Let's see how far I get in the next few days.

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!!!

The friendship braid quilt is getting there!

Finally, after rather a long time I've managed to get all the braids for my friendship braid quilt sewn.
There is a problem though. Half way through sewing them I switched to my new machine and I've managed to sew the majority of them with a bigger seem allowance then they should have. It's hit the point it's easier to unpick the 2 old ones and re-sew them then the new ones.
The morale of this story? Always check what you're doing. *sigh*

Here's a picture of half of it anyway

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!