Still quilting!

Up to 6 rows on one side, and five on the other!

Quilting Question

H's birthday quilt is nearly done, which is good timing as his first birthday is only days away now. It's looking really good if I do say so myself - certainly the best quilt I've done so far, and the biggest!


I've embroidered a big "H" on one corner, as A had her whole name on her quilt and it would be rude not to do something similar on this one.


Lots of scrappy binding! Hoping I'd added it up properly, it was hard to figure out due to the number of different scrappy bits which I used.


The quilting has started quite well, I'm using a tutorial from Bijou Lovely on the suggestion of Kelly. I've decided to cross over my wavy lines, but apart from that I've followed the tutorial closely.


After one line of quilting:

After two :

This is where I'm up to so far, and I'm not sure what to do yet - keep adding overlapping rows in the sashing? Add some more non-crossing lines in the blocks? So far I've only done horizontal lines in the sashing, but maybe a few vertical ones would look good too?


Pondering...............

Shopping at the Knitting and Stitching Show

That's all it seems like I did today at Ally Pally judging from the bags!

Here's my loot, which I'm sure you're all dying to see - they're now hidden away a bit so that Hubs doesn't need to worry about how much I spent - only my own money, the joint card stayed at home ;-)

I got:

Mollie Makes subscription (4 issues for £1!)
Gorgeous silk and merino wool for my bessie's birthday present - I can't knit so she's just getting the wool!
Various notions - new embroidery scissors and hoop, some "cute as a button" ribbon (which I think NEEDS to go on a new zippy pouch!) and other boring stuff like 505 spray and pins which aren't pretty enough to go in the pic
Essex Linen from the Eternal Maker in a nice Ivory colour for some cushions (10% off voucher too!)
and from the lovely ladies at Village Haberdashery, I got a charm pack of Sew Stitchy, other pretty print which I can't remember the name of, and the best of all - my first ever bit of Heather Ross!!!!
(and hello Kelly, it was lovely to be able to put a name to a face)

 I went to two workshops, one making dresses for charity and another very challenging but extremely well run workshop with a lovely lady called Celia. We did darts, easing sleeves, understitching and bound buttonholes, all in an hour :O

I forgot to take pictures until the very end, and many of the stalls and displays explicitly asked you not to take photos. Here are two that I did manage to snap:

The Knitted Village - spot the Scouts!

 and the stunning view from the top of the hill after we left:

Finally a Finish...

... nearly in time for Friday!



If you see me on Saturday at the Knit and Stitch show at Ally Pally, I'll be wearing my new scarf, made using the pattern from Rebecca at http://www.makingrebeccalynne.com/

I used some gorgeous fabric from M is Make (in the sale of course!) - it's Autumn Trees, a Navy Voile and some amazingly lushious Nano Iro - honestly, it feels so soft! I wish I could afford to make myself a dress in this....

So if you see someone in a patchy-soft-slightly clashy but cuddly scarf - come say hi!

Ohhh - I also got a ticket for the Retreat! I was at my brother in laws wedding, hence the total lack of sewing/blogging/contact with the outer world, but my lovely mum bought it for me!

Copycat

Well, I saw this post of Lucy's and decided that I needed a scarf too (in a slightly teenage "must have the exact same thing as someone else NOW" kind of way...)

So, the pattern has been bought.....

Etsy


And the fabric arrived super quick from M is for Make.....

 

Shame I haven't got time to make it this week!

Sewing in September

Yet again, another month dominated by sewing a quilt for my little niece/nephew! It's H's turn this time, and I've been seriously working to churn out blocks for his first birthday quilt. The first 40 blocks took me four months, the next 40 took me a week! Now to piece them and decide on quilting - I'm thinking diagonal lines through the centre of each block.

Here's the blocks

And the completed rows so far, from both sides of the door!:

The rows are coming together quickly, and I'm hoping to have it all pieced by the end of next week, as we've got a huge number of commitments this week, especially my brother in laws wedding (speaking of, I gave up on embroidering their cushions, I found a good phrase but my embroidery skills just aren't up to it!)

Here's their cushions:

I've also been making the odd little bit like this fabric basket and toy tidy:

Hopefully this will be finished by the end of October so that it can go up North at half term, and so that I can finally crack on with other things!

Linking up with Lily's Quilts Small Blog meet - hopefully I can top 50 followers this month!

Also linking with Catherine's Slow Bloggers Linky

Slow and steady wins the race...

... or that's what I keep telling myself about my pathetically slow rate of completion on my projects!

I've been working on a number of little-ish projects recently.

First is a little basket for my Gran to cheer up her walker, which she also uses as a tea tray:

Nothing too difficult, but hopefully she'll like it! 

I've also made a little present for a colleague's little boy. I can't for the life of me remember what these things are called, I saw a tutorial for one a while ago and I thought "that's such an unusual name, I won't forget that." Well....... It all worked in the end, but there was a lot of headscratching required in order to get all the layers in the right order. And sewing circles is difficult!

As you can see, I've been playing with the filters on Flickr. After this post, Jenelle from Echinops and Aster very kindly helped me out. It's still not brilliant but at least I can use Flickr now!

The big project of the moment is H's quilt. A's reached her home yesterday, and I think it went down well, so time to crack on with her little cousin's.

I sent a very cheeky progress shot to his lovely Mummy, just showing a big pile of scraps which I'd trimmed off, but you guys can see what it really looks like at the minute:

This is 22 of the 40 blocks in this style, the other 18 are just missing one side strip of sashing as I ran out of solids, or so I thought. As it turns out, I had restocked but I forgot all about this until I bought more!! As soon as I've finished these, I need to start the 40 blocks with solid centres and white sashing.

But that's not going to happen tonight, I've got better plans!

/geek!