The Patchwork Cat

We have a new book in our house. It's called the Patchwork Cat by Nicola Bayley & William Mayne. It's a great book and it arrived today and we've already read it 3 times. I was looking for patchwork books and just stumbled across it.

I love the illustrations...

And of course who wouldn't love a cat who loves its quilt

Have sick baby, can't sew!

My littlest one is quite sick with a virus. Unfortunately that means he has been in clingy-limpet mode for over 2 days now. My heart goes out to him and hope he'll get better soon. In the meantime it means that I've not been up to much AT ALL. I can't seem to be able to put him down for long so no sewing or blogging going on in this house.

UFO of the week/WIP of the day

Apologies, I got the link to Birgit's blog wrong, but I have subsequently corrected it. Birgit's second blog entry shows a rose designed by Ula Lenz available in Birgit’s shop. It's beautiful BUT it's my UFO of the week. It was my WIP while I was in South Africa, but I forgot to take the 'put-it-together' page so I got a bit disillusioned and this is all I came back with after my 3 and a half month stay! However seeing Birgit's rose again, I had to dig it out just to see how much I had left to do.

Although by working on it again, it technically becomes a Work in Progress (WIP). Even if finished, it will go back to being a UFO as I still have to decide what I'm going to do with it.... I have loads of ideas, don't I always? LOL.
Here's what I managed tonight...another leaf or two and some putting together of some of the bits. (excuse the messy worktop...although it's a good resemblance to the state of my mind at the moment)

Not sure I'll finish it this week, but it was nice to get the sewing machine fired up again.

Home on the farm

It was such a beautiful day here today and such a busy one. I got NO sewing done at all. Nothing. But I took advantage of the weather to take a few pictures of where we live. This is the house with garden in progress...

These are the wild poppies growing against the front wall.

And just for Jack.... he had left his little digger in the garden where he had been playing with some stones and I thought it looked so sweet.

I made him tractor cushions for his room a while back because he is obsessed with anything digger/tractor-ish. This pattern is from Four Twin Sisters



Oh, and welcome to my good friend Birgit who has just started blogging too. If you want to brush up on your German click on the link or go see her beautiful paper-pieced rose (I still haven't finished mine yet! - funny that LOL)

Slow going

Well, I am still trying to get over this pesky cold so I've not been up to much except the hand quilting on Toby's(?) heart quilt. Started to wonder if it will be for Toby because what will a teenager want with a baby quilt LOL!

Not sure if you noticed, but I can finally link to other blogs and sites all thanks to Kate! Thanks Kate. This is such fun. I doubt I'll go back and link my old posts, but there's no stopping me now.

The race is on...

I've been laid up in bed (as much as possible with 2 small kids) the last few days with flu. Feel dreadful, can't remember when last I had such a bad cold so besides barely managing to make it to the post office to post my 'Bag o' Stuff' I've not done much except a bit of hand quilting on Toby's heart quilt.

I would have featured this as my UFO of the week except that it's really a WIP of the week... And I thought I would set myself the challenge of trying to finish it before I get my quilts back from being longarmed. I reckon I have about 3-4 weeks. Surely, I can manage that? We'll see. It's slow going as I'm making up the quilting designs as I go along (hope the pink pencil comes out!)

The hearts are from the BlockBuddySwaps heart swap which sadly is no longer running and in this quilt there are hearts from, Cobi, Ila, Teresa and Amanda (hope I haven't forgotten anyone) and of course lots from me.

Bag O' Stuff

Finally decided what I was going to put in my 'Bag o' stuff'. Here it is...

I seem to have collected several sheep prints and wanted to use them for wallhangings around the house (here in the Yorkshire Dales....fitting, eh?)

Basically you send it off, it gets swapped, you get someone else's bag with who knows what is in it and you make them a small quilt (18 x 18). Send it back, get yours back... Sounded like fun so I decided to join in. Not been feeling very well so didn't manage to post it today, but will definitely try tomorrow. Just so bunged up with flu at the moment.

Met Chris on Sunday and am now looking forward to seeing Toby's quilt done, ready for binding and my Ostrich basted. Looking forward to soon being able to tick a UFO of my list. (And this was my first attempt at linking to someone else - hope it works)

UFO of the week

I have so many unfinished projects, I thought I would feature one a week LOL. Not with the intention of completing any of them neccessarily, especially not in a week!, but more that I potentially revive interest in them for myself.

As I'm off to meet Chris at Fathers Heart tomorrow (right weekend this time - I hope) and will be taking both my Ostrich to baste and Toby's top to quilt, so I thought I would 'feature' one of those. Unbelievably (well not for me) both backing fabrics are too small!! So tonight I will be trying to sort that out as well as de-threading and ironing. I have already 'featured' Toby's Quilt in previous posts so I thought this week's UFO is my BQL Ostrich. For those who don't know about this project it's a sort of nesting robin and each month we had to add to it as per the instructions. I really enjoyed it, met some very nice people and did 90% of it while pregnant with Toby. I only as Ostriches do, stuck my head in the sand in October when I gave birth to Toby.

We had to choose our own starting block. I chose a heart block I had made for swapping, but had kept this one from the set.

Then we had to do some sort of piecing. I found this pattern on Quilterscache.

And then promptly chopped them in half the next month when we had to do some applique. The applique pattern is also from Quilterscache, but this time I quartered it LOL.

The next month I fluffed it a bit and made HST's instead of QST's by mistake, but tried to resurecct myself by adding a few QST's on the corners of the borders later.

Then it was stars. these are from Ula Lenz and they were great to do....

Then it was squares, I think....

Then, if I recall correctly it was flying things... I did my first ever Flying Geese.

And finally, here it is waiting to be basted, quilted, bound and finished hahaha


ps When Toby was a bump, the bump was called Harry. I thought when I manage to finish this with lots of hand quilting, I might call it 'A heart for Harry'.

Been tagged for 7 things

Well, I'm responding to Kate's tagging so here are 7 things about me that I imagine most people possibly wouldn't know...

1. I failed my driver’s licence twice before finally passing at 25. I lived in Germany for 3 years in my early 20’s and refused to drive there because they drive on the wrong side of the road LOL. I had 4 driving instructors in all. The first one said I didn’t stand a chance in hell of passing. The second and third said I drove well and couldn’t understand why I didn’t pass (or get out of the parking lot) and the fourth was a man who taught a friend of mine to drive and as she said: “if he can teach me to drive, he can teach anybody”. He gave me the final bit of confidence to add to the technique and now I actually quite enjoy driving.

2. I had braces and glasses in my teens, but now I have straight teeth and when I can be bothered I wear contact lenses.

3. My dad died when I was 12 and when I returned to school after the funeral, one of the girls in the group that I was in at school said: “we don’t want to hear about it, ok?” I never spoke about my father’s passing again to anyone for at least 10 years.

4. When I was at school I used to spend my train fare at the tuck shop and then walk home. It was miles (4 stations worth of a walk!) I was really skinny then! I miss walking for a purpose. Even though we live in a beautiful part of the world that people travel to for miles to go walking, I don’t go walking. It’s just not the same as ‘having’ to walk.

Gee, this is hard…

5. I don’t eat wheat. I stopped eating it after visiting a very ‘different’ dietician/doctor type guy. I had been to normal doctors for years and had been told, I had ‘IBS’, but that there was nothing to be done. In desperation, I visited this guy who made me cut out certain food types from my diet for a month and then re-introduce them the next month. It became clear I had a wheat-intolerance. It’s been about 4 years now and I have never felt better even though I do miss Yorkshire puddings, biscuits, pancakes, white bread…the list is endless.

6. I’ve just had cosmetic surgery. On my ear! When I had my ears pierced as a child, I moved when the second ear was being pierced and it made a long hole. I could never wear any earrings other than studs that hid the length of the hole. It has always bugged me even though people claim they’d never noticed (probably because of the stud, duh! And the fact that I used to wear my hair over that ear.) I also had my pixie ear point removed at the same time (in for a penny…) I feel so much happier now. Crazy, I know, but it really did bother me a lot.

7. And finally, when I lived in Germany, I had a bicycle accident that broke my femur and changed my life forever. I had to have 2 bouts of corrective surgery and still have a plate in my leg, a slight limp and discomfort when lying on my left side. That was the bad part. The good part is it meant I stayed in Germany longer than planned, met some great people and realised how short life can be and so I try to make the most of it.

Could this be the answer?

I have often said how bad I am at Quilt maths and hoped that Quilt pro would be the answer for me. So I asked Hubby for it for Christmas. I got it in April for my birthday after being asked at least 15 times if I was really sure I wanted it... I really wanted it. I never seem to have much time to sit and try my hand at it, but tonight was the night and I am really impressed with it so far.

I want to make a Log Cabin in browns and creams and was going to cut strips tonight, but NO! for a change I was going to work out the pattern first (a real first!). One of my first quilts was a Log Cabin which I made while I lived in Germany. I had attended a one-day workshop/course held by Magda Goldbach and made my quilt in blues and pinks (a bit old-fashioned now, but I thought it was great at the time). I can't remember how many blocks we made in the day, but we had to finish the quilt at home. I remember sitting at my machine and working out how many blocks I needed so I went "6 x 4 = 20, ok so I need 'x' more". Later I laid them out. I was 4 short (obviously!) this was the first a series of ridiculous mathematical quilting errors.

So I put all the measurements in for a King size quilt x the size of the block (22 inches) which worked out at 5 x 5. I went wow, that's not much, I can make 2! But then I remembered that 5 x 5 is 25 not 10... what is wrong with me!!!
Anyway here's a picture of that 'old' first Log cabin and the fabrics for the new one just laid out, not stitched.

African Time

All I managed today was this block, or at least 2 of them for my African block swap with Kate. I'm not sure if it works, I may have to sleep on it (well not literally of course!), but it's very experimental as in I've tried a few new techniques that I've never done before so that at least is something and most of the time I think I like it, then I'm not sure as it's quite wild, but then so are lots of the fabrics we're using. My quilting critic a.k.a. Hubby says he's not sure about the blue circle - thanks Hubby for the vote of confidence! Won't trade him in just yet though because at least he lets me sew, doesn't nag too much about the housework and hoards tools like I hoard fabric. Oh and he's quite good at quilt maths too.

New York Beauties

I managed to start the Quilters Corner Club BOM this afternoon as Hubby kindly took Jack to the park and Toby very kindly slept (for a bit). I had to finish the second one this evening which meant venturing out in the cold as Toby didn't manage 2 blocks worth of sleeping. Now I'm done until July on these blocks unless the others come early too.

They were quite tricky to start and I may remake the first block as I used the wrong thread colour on the big curve and you can see some stitching. I like both colours schemes, but I think block 2 is more the colours I was aiming for, but we'll see what the next blocks bring. Once I got the hang of them, I really enjoyed making them and it's only wall hanging size so I think the plan will be to quilt it myself.

Thanks again to Birgit for the gorgeous fabrics as most of them are from her and they are just scrummy!

Have a heart, it's cold outside

It was far too cold and rainy to go to my outside sewing room (which I share with the washing machine and tumble dryer) so I decided to work on another of my (many) UFO's while watching TV and listening to the rain falling on the roof. It's a baby quilt that was meant to be ready for Toby's arrival and I'm hand quilting it so with all the distractions it's a few (7!) months late. I used swap blocks from the Blockbuddies Heart swap that I joined in on and enjoyed for many months. I have a box full of heart blocks in a variety of colours and themes. I hope to use up more of these blocks soon (watch this space LOL!)
I'm enjoying the hand quilting on this and hope that the pink pencil rubs out.... Some blocks I'm just outlining, but others I'm trying to come up with my own (heart) quilting patterns and designs. Painstaking, but therapeutic.

Fabric and Friends (and the odd fluff up!)

I was out all day with the children (playgroup, shopping etc), but stopped in at a Quilting friend (Vicky) who was babysitting her 2 grandsons on the way home. Jack had a ball and I had a great time too except Vicky shamed me with her pile of UFO's which are UFO's no longer!!! Way to go Vicky!


When I came home there was a great parcel from Birgit. Absolutely superb fabrics some of which I will use for the New York Beauty project and others for bags (and other UFO's LOL). They are all so lovely. I have now had a thrilling fabric rush and will be ok for another few days.
Vicky's husband very kindly printed out the NYB blocks for me and I have the fabric so now I'm ready... except Vicky lent me a patchwork magazine so I've been reading that (honestly too tired to sew tonight).
Not going Longarming tomorrow for 2 reasons: 1) I must have misunderstood which Saturday and Chris is away this one and 2) My backing fabric is too dang small/narrow. What is the matter with me? I am so bad at Quilt maths. Absolutely no excuse this time as I followed a pattern.

Boomerang scraps

I felt very virtuous last week when I gave a big bag of scraps to Jack's nursery.... corners from snowball blocks and lots and lots of little strips. And today I felt warm and fuzzy to see lots of little toddlers sticking bits of fabric to paper. Here is Jack's creation. I wanted to clear out (especially after watching a programme on TV last week about hoarders who all had Obesssive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) - I have OCD for fabric definitely! -) so I was in turmoil about taking his artwork home. Would that be adding my scraps back to my stash?

The exciting art of pinning and de-threading

Not much sewing here I'm afraid, I forgot how long it takes to de-thread the back of a top to get it ready for basting. Besides getting covered in threads, I also pinned some scrapbuster blocks and will post a photo soon, but the day was more a kiddy one as I had to pay the doctor yet another visit. Toby has a 'non-specific viral rash' meaning he has a rash and they don't know what it is...but he also has the signs of his first tooth!!! So I guess that could explain it. The Doc also looked at my bruise again, she thinks I may have broken a vein as it's very lumpy (sorry-sounds yuk) which is why the bruise was so big. The pain should ease soon, but apparently the blood clot caused could take up to 6 months! Is this a sign I'm getting old? Blood clots? Broken veins...?
Back to sewing... I did manage to cut some fabric for an African block, can't post a picture as it's a suprise for Kate. It's also still in the design stages LOL. I'm 'free' designing this, but think I better start learning how to use my birthday present of QuiltPro... next birthday though I want pins (Boy, am I easy to please), I ran out after only a few scrapbuster blocks, I guess most of them are probably in other UFO's!!!!

Free sunglasses with every view

I should be offering the above because I'm posting a photo of a quilt I made for one of Jack's little friend's (Bright yellow and bright red - what was I thinking!!!). His mother told me, he won't go to bed without it which I thought was really sweet. The reason I'm posting it is because that's what I sort of worked on today, cutting and deciding on borders for 3 more of these little quilts, although they are not going to be quite so BRIGHT. Not sure what I'll do with them or who they are for, but thought I might try get them longarmed and then they're there if I need them... I also sewed together some pairs of my scrapbuster swap not many though because I got distracted and started thinking about an African block for Kate and my fabrics for Christina's New York beauties.. so I just faffed really, but then I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that I have this terrible addiction which makes me start projects (and not finish them), buy fabric (and never have enough)... the list goes on.

Purple Haze

Just so you don't think I'm a big baby, I am posting a picture of my bruise as it looks today. I really did fall hard over that pesky sewing machine cable and my leg is still quite sore. Not quite like sewing through your finger, but a sewing-related injury nonetheless!

Patterns arrived in my inbox this week for the New York Beauty challenge I signed up for with Quilters Corner Club. Our printer is not working at present, but then I'm not quite ready to get going on it yet so maybe that's just as well. Eases the guilt a bit, but I can't wait to giive it a go and it's only 2 blocks a month - I can do that, surely? Well as soon as I decide on my fabrics...

Also looking forward to making another African block, but only after I get my stuff ready for longarming so maybe next week(?), luckily this is a no-pressure swap!!!

Gee, it's good to be back home

We've been away for the weekend so not much sewing although I did manage to finish 'the' bag. I followed the pattern, but it's a bit small. Anyway hopefully it's recipient will like it... I won't be making it again, but I've learnt a lot from it and will use it to make myself another bag pattern and hopefully a more useful bag.
I'm planning to meet Chris at Father's Heart (not sure how to link to people yet... so here's her website: www.fathers-heart.co.uk) this Saturday so hope to get a few tops out of my to-do box this week.

Hello Africa

I got a brilliant block in the post yesterday from Kate - thank's Kate. It's a great way to use those big African prints and it's in return for a block I sent her in our one-on-one block swap. (Mine has the funny bird in the centre)

I also have started washing my fabrics for my Log Cabin blocks.( I was tempted not to wash them, but when I'm mixing creams and dark browns I could be asking for trouble.)

Still feeling a bit bruised and battered, but will get working on that dratted birthday bag shortly...

May day!

I haven't had time to take a photo of the great block I got from Kate in the post today or anything else for that matter as I've been trying out a new bag pattern for my niece's birthday on Monday. It's quite fiddly so I was just about to check the instructions when I tripped over my sewing machine cable and landed smack bang on the floor with the sewing machine next to me!(It's all because DH has gone to London for a conference and I didn't want to go to my outdoor sewing room so I brought in my spare machine so that I could hear the kids...) I have a very blue bruise on my leg (see yukky pic!) and a sore hip, but even more importantly a busted machine *sob*. This bag better be a good one! Especially as DH asked if I'd damaged the new wooden floor when I told him of my misfortune.