A busy year

So I have been busy with work, children, allotments and life since I last posted. Here are some of the things I have been doing:

1. Making masses of bunting, throws for hay bales and other crafty bits for a dear friends wedding this summer. This took up most of my sewing time last winter and spring. The day was perfect - decent weather, good company and happiness all round. The reception was in a beautiful old barn. My quilts decorated the walls and friends brought flowers from their gardens and baked cakes to share. Other friends in a band provided the music and we all camped in the farmers field. A perfect time was had by all.

 

 

2. Making a picnic quilt - made from The Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric - perfect for a picnic blanket!

 

 

 

3. Entering my very first ever quilt competition. I decided that I wanted to challenge myself this year so took the plunge and entered the Festival of Quilts contemporary quilt category. Even though my quilt was nowhere near perfect and got slated by the judges I am still proud of myself for entering!

 



 

4. Completing a quilt made from Bee blocks collected in 2011. My inspiration was springtime in England and my finished quilt fits the description perfectly! I was made some stunning blocks by people from all over the world.

 

 

 

5. Making a few squares to contribute to a group over on flickr - Siblings Together

 

 

 

 

I now have to make two quilts between now and Christmas for my children. Eek! I better make the most of this afternoon then whilst my children are out. Bye for now xx



 



yet more pink....

......with a hint of green. Made in 24 hours for a new baby girl. I have never made a quilt so fast before. It is full of the most yummy fabric and I had real trouble giving this one away!

Pink Pink Pink

Wow - 5 months since my last blog post. Ho hum, such is life I suppose! As you can see I have a finished quilt to show you - my Quilt of Ultimate Pinkness thanks to the lovely ladies of the Tag Square Bee I was in on Flickr. In fact, this is the first of hopefully a lot of finishes. I was in a number of Bees during 2011 and now have enough blocks to make at least two more complete quilts. As my sewing time is very limited I decided to stop any bees this year and concentrate on using the blocks I already have. I also have a project on the go for a dear friend who is getting married in the summer. She is having a shabby chic style wedding on a real budget and has asked for help from all her crafty freinds. I am therefore going to be making flowery bunting and throws to cover the hay bales she is going to use as seating. They are going to be very simple quilts - just a piece of fabric with  backing (no batting), some simple straight line quilting and binding. I have been searching charity shops for floral sheets and duvet covers and am gathering a pile ready to be transformed. I will keep you posted on how I get on!

ABC

So the summer is rushing past in a haze of paddling in the sea, swimming, allotmenting, pottering and playing! We are squeezing a lot into our last week and a half until school starts again, but I wanted to share with you a completed project. Gasp - I know, I amazed myself as it seems that all I have done recently is show bee blocks! These quilts are for twins and were made from a fabric swap over on Flickr. They are ABC quilts so 26 of the blocks are showing letters of the alphabet. I had to make a couple of changes as the swaps were US based so the fabric reflected that. For example, the kitten fabric you can see came as Y for yarn. I swapped a plain piece of purple that was sent as 'eggplant' colour and a couple more like that. I am really pleased with them - different enough to be unique to each twin but alike enough to stop fights I hope!

busy doing nothing

Well nothing blog related that is! I always knew I would be a sporadic and occasional blogger but only three posts this year? Oops! I am very busy with work, family and the allotment so sewing has come last place of late. Bee blocks are still being made, which will result in enough blocks to make at least two if not three quilts in the winter when outdoor demands are a lot less.

Here are a few blocks - all bee ones apart from the scrappy 2 inch square block. This is a very long term project to try and bring control to my stash and use up all those scraps!

Well I am not sure when I will be back - I might try to manage two posts in July but no promises :-)

Easter

Easter has been lovely - weather perfect, time to relax, family visited, allotment planted and of course some sewing done. All the above are bee blocks made using this tutorial. I am back at work tomorrow for just three days before a four day weekend. Hurrah for Kate and William getting married and giving us the day off! The bunting is going up tomorrow :-)

Happiness is.....

An Orla bag from TESCO:



Potatoes chitting on windowsills all over the house:



A Tag Square Bee block made and posted:



My first Project Linus quilt of the year complete:

time flies

So it would appear that I haven't posted since just before Christmas! What can I say? Time goes way too fast. Apart from over the last two weeks when both my boys came down with chicken pox. Then it went a bit slower. Especially at night. Poor old Itchy and Scratchy, they had a rough time of it! Sewing has been limited - I think I burnt out after my crazy quiltathon just before Christmas. The quilts were well recieved by both the boys and are in use every day, which makes me feel very happy! Here is my only offering from the past month and a half - blocks for the 3x6 quilting bee:



Hopefully things will speed up a bit and I will have something else to show you soon!

and relax.....

It is done. The Christmas quilt making marathon is complete. The Star Wars quilt for my eldest son is ready to be wrapped and I can now relax! Many of the blocks are from the Euro Bee girls - thank you so much ladies.



There is just some time for a little baking this afternoon before we light the fire and snuggle down for the next few days.



Happy Christmas to you and yours - see you next year!

Christmas finish

Phew! One down, one to go! Here is my finished eye spy quilt for youngest son. Twenty six different quilters contributed blocks to this quilt via the 3x6 bee. I love the fact that this quilt has had so many hands working on it. Not only does it make the quilt perfect in terms of wonderful block and fabric variety, but it represents everything great about online bees and quilters in general. I used lots of scraps for the binding and used a plain blue sheet for the backing. The second quilt for eldest son is also nearing completion - a good job too as there are only three sleeps until Christmas!

time flies

I cannot quite believe it has been a month since I last posted - where does the time go? November was a very busy month - four family birthdays, report writing, mock exams to mark, sewing to do..... the list goes on. To top it all my work was given an inspection last week so I have been beyond busy. All that is done now thank goodness, so I am hoping that I can now finally concentrate on some serious sewing in the run up to Christmas.
I have got a fair bit done already though - have a look and see what I have been up to!
Bee blocks:






A quilt for a birthday boy:



and a quilt top in progress:



Right - I better get back to it! Happy sewing to you all this weekend!

Thunder flower girls and flags!

I am really pleased with how this cushion turned out - my first Christmas present sorted! It was made using some vintage bunting I found at a car boot sale this summer. I chopped out all the mildewy bits to make a rather abstract union flag design. I off centered it on blue and gave it a red cushion back. It will hopefully suit my sister and brother in law - they have a very funky modern kitchen and a red leather chair it should work perfectly in.


My second result of the week is this quilt for my goddaughter - she has just had her 13th birthday. The main fabric is Thunder Flower by Alexander Henry and I just LOVE it! It is too nice to cut up, so decided to just go with a big piece and show off those funky anime girls to to max.


Sorry about the poor quality of the photos - I am now going to work in the dark and coming home in it - boo! Both the cushion and quilt are being delivered this weekend so I snapped these just before they were wrapped up. Next I need to complete a bee block, make a dolls quilt and start on a Christmas table runner. That is before I tackle the monsters that are the two quilts for my sons! Have fun this weekend whatever you are doing.

Halloween and harvest

So I have finally gathered in all the pumpkin and squash from the allotment - don't they look pretty?



I made a table runner for Halloween. I am not a huge fan of orange and black, but adding the purple works really well! We don't go trick or treating but always light a fire, have a lantern and a special meal. (usually a Chinese - not very traditional I know but our favourite!) When I was growing up the lantern was always a swede picked from the field next to the house (my dad was a farmer). Boy oh boy they were hard to carve! I always kept the swede carving tradition going when I left home, but when I got an allotment I did decide that as long as I had grown the pumpkin myself I could use one! So the last couple of years we have had pumpkin lanterns, much to my relief :-)



Finally here is some vintage bunting I was lucky enough to find at a car boot sale in the summer. The youngest it can be is from the 1950's as one of the flags is an Australian flag with a red background instead of the blue we see today. Apparently the red background was used in Australia a fair bit during the first world war but by the 1950's the blue one had become the main flag. Fascinating stuff! I love to think that those little flags might have been used in a village hall to celebrate the end of the war, summer fairs, Christmas, the coronation.... the list goes on! The bunting was damp and covered in mildew when I got it, but after a very gentle hand wash it came up good. I am going to turn a number of the flags (some of them are damaged) into a patchwork cushion for my sister and brother in law. Watch this space!

progress

Six blocks made for my hive peeps in the 3x6 mini bee:

Two more rows added to my ever growing eye spy quilt:

Yipeeee! I nearly have a quilt top! I am on a bit of a roll at the moment - I hope your sewing is going as well!

Shhhhh - top secret!

No sewing from me alas, but look at the pretties sent to me by my Bee peeps. These six fabulous blocks are to be added to the eye spy quilt I am making for my two year old, courtesy of the 3x6 mini bee:


These beauties are the start of the top secret star wars quilt I am making for my soon to be seven year old and are from the Euro Bee:

I am very excited about making these two quilts. The eye spy quilt isn't so top secret, but the eldest has no idea I am making him a star wars quilt - I will be doing some late night sewing when he is abed to get it completed for Christmas. Oops, sorry - I said the C word :-)

Tag Square Bee

A quick update:

The Bee is now full! Yipeeee!

Tag Square Bee

Hello everyone! Thanks for your comments about the bee - I have a had a look at what people thought and have come up with a plan. Here we go:

The name of this bee will be 'Tag Square Bee' and the idea is that we 'tag' different people each month and make a block for them so all bee members end up with enough blocks to make a quilt. Over the year we will make 12 blocks (one a month) for each bee member, using our own fabric and block design but their colour choices. So once a month you will recieve a lovley block that someone else has made for you! The square bit comes in because I thought we could base the blocks on squares. There are so many block designs out there that include squares everyone should be able to find a block that they like making and that is suited to their ability level. It also means that the finished quilt will have an overall theme running through it. You could choose to make the same block each month or use different block designs each month to practice trying new techniques - the choice would be yours.

To summarise:

• the bee will be made up of 13 quilters
• start date - November 2010 (this will allow us to finish in November 2011 with enough time to make up our quilts for Christmas 2011! December 2010 however would be missed out - so we would make blocks Nov '10, Jan 11', Feb 11' etc)
• block design - something including squares, size 12 1/2 inches
• you use your own stash to make a block each month for a different bee member
• each month someone makes a block for you using their stash
• choose the same block to make each month (so just varying the colours and fabrics) or try a new block each month
• you will need to be a member of Flickr as that is where all photos, instructions, addresses and information will be based. (If you are not a member, don't worry - it is very easy to join!)
• international quilters and beginners welcome
• you request a colour combination for your blocks but the design chosen is up to the quilter
  
  

If you are interested please send me an email and I will reserve you a place. If we don't have a full bee after a week or so I will then advertise it on Flickr for more members. Phew! I hope I have explained that alright - if you have any questions just ask! Finally here is a gallery I put together of square based blocks for inspiration. I will set up the official Tag Square Bee Flickr group in the next few days.