Tuesday 29 April 2014

My week so far.

Sunday evening turned into a jellied fruit and ice-cream sort of night. 
Sugar free jelly, low fat ice-cream and a glass full of berries makes for a reasonably satisfying pud, it's not chocolate cake but it's still sweet enough to kill a craving! :)


The Hexie quilt is taking shape nicely too, if I'm being honest the thing that takes the longest is picking the fabrics and cutting them. I haven't pulled a stack of fabrics for this one, it's just sort of growing as I go, I'm pulling a print from here and raiding my scrap pile for a hexie to go there. 


Then last night I needed some hand work to do while watching a few episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.LD. totally getting my geek on. 


Hopefully I should have some finishes to share very soon, they would be finished a lot sooner if I didn't have to go to that pesky time stealing place called work :) 



Sunday 27 April 2014

Sunday Sewing

Well I went and did it, I joined the 4x5 modern quilt bee again :) I'm in hive 6 with Shanna of fiber of all sorts as our caretaker. 
I decided to go with a Weathervane block for my hive mates and got the final one finished off this afternoon.









I enjoyed playing with the fabric placement to get different effects from the block, I hope my hive mates like them! 

Once the bee blocks were taken care of I thought about tackling some more of my herringbone quilt
so with the help of Him in doors managed to get the rest of the wadding stripes cut and marked up.


I Can Not wait to get this one done and on my bed! 

Lastly today I've stars cutting some hexagons. 


I've machine stitched a few together and I'm really enjoying the process! 


Sunday 20 April 2014

Sunday sewing

Earlier in the week this little lot was weighing my postman down and making my day :)


16 days to get from hawthorne threads in NY to Northumberland England, with a small hostage situation at UK customs, is not a bad wait at all!
After completing the Color intensive class with Rachel I realised my stash is seriously lacking in monochromatic prints, so I went off in search of some "Stash-gap-fillers" some more Lizzy house pearl bracelets and waterfront park domino dots came to live with me, but I will say I'm at a little bit of a loss as a lot of other prints that in theory should've ticked all the boxes just didn't appeal to me. I like bright overly saturated, high contrast fabric combinations! I think this is partly why I love low volume prints so much - they make the colours POP!


With that in mind I headed off to my stash to find the Queen of brights Anna Maria Horner :D I pulled out All of the fabrics! (I will admit to wanting to roll around in them, however I contented myself with patting the prints...a lot!) Cotton, flannel and voile - Just so Yummy!

Long hoarded prints were stacked and cut until I had nearly 400 strips and by the time I went to bed last night my design wall was looking something like this.


Totally inspired by Maureen's beautiful quilt 
Mine is going to be larger to cover our bed and have a good drop on all sides. 
I hope to get a few of the panels sewn up today, while surrounded by madams Easter eggs and Him in doors is cooking roast lamb for dinner. I'm thinking a walk down to the beach maybe in order too :D 
I hope you have a lovely Easter sunday and get to spend some time doing the things you love with the people you love.

Tuesday 15 April 2014

A Spring quilt finish


Its sunny and cold here in Northumberland, just the right sort of weather for beach photos! 


I love this old pink building, it was painted this colour when it was in use during World War II 
It makes an interesting backdrop for a quilt! 


Backed in my favourite backing fabric (I promise I will used something else soon!) I think it looks lovely and fresh against the coastal colours.


With all of its soft minty colours and floral fabrics I thought it could do with a little zing in the binding and went for a scrappy binding with quite a few shades of coral. 


It is now listed in my shop ready to go to a new home! 

Monday 14 April 2014

Quilt blocks and a winner!


Hexies, farmers wives and their ponies, bee blocks just a little part of my busyness this Easter holidays :) 


I will admit to having some doozies with the pony club, Y seams and I need to get reacquainted and back on speaking terms soon! 

Our fall out came about thanks to this block - Cowboys Star 


I am paper piecing my way through the book and for sanities sake I've blown the blocks up to 10.5" because if I'm being super honest, while I love the look of many tiny patterns-I hate sewing fiddly small blocks en masse. 1 or two aren't a bother but ask me to sew up 90 or so and I might be sick.


We started off well and I managed 1 quadrant without too any referrals to youtube tutorials.



Then this happened. 


Thankfully I had my seam ripper handy and managed to unpick and resew without the fabric folds.

Then just as I thought I was home free...



I have bott all idea even how this happened as when I've checked my points on the back it all looks to be spot on. So this block is now sitting in the corner waiting for me to get my sewjo back in gear and work out what on Earth went wrong with it.

The other thing I have managed to do this morning was pick a winner for my little giveaway Sorry if you've been waiting a whole week  while for this! 
1-6 comments gave me a fun dice roll on random.org :D



The winner is comment number 6, congratulations jednoiglec! I will email you and we can put together a fab crochet edged pillowcase for you! 

Hope everyones easter week is a good one and you get loads os sewing time to play! 




Tuesday 1 April 2014

Fresh Sewing day

Lily's Quilts

I'm Linking up with Lilys quits fresh sewing day for the first time in an absolute age and taking a quick look back over March's makes.


I'm surprisingly happy with the mix this month, a little hand sewing, some bee blocks, a nice crochet trim here & there and a colourful large lap quilt :) 

I still have this one needing it's rows sewn up, my Spring quilt with it's pretty florals has been waiting for me to feel better so that I can pop into town and pick up some wadding. I always seem to feel less drive to get the individual steps of a project completed if I don't have all of the supplies to hand.


What do you have planned for April?