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!

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!

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 :-)

quick update

Bee blocks ended up as the focus for this weekends sewing. Two for the Euro Bee and one for my first quilting bee. I took these pictures just as the light was fading hence their poor quality but I was too impatient to leave photos for another day! The dogs and robots quilt is pinned and ready to quilt and the birthday girl quilt ready to start sewing. A productive weekend all round. Happy Solstice to everyone!

bee blocks

For the Euro Bee and 1st Quilting Bee I am part of.

a perfect weekend

My weekend was lovely and calm, spent sewing, digging on the allotment, playing with my boys and being spoilt on mothering sunday with a lie in, roast dinner and a bubble bath! For the first time in a good while I did not have any job work to do so I could get on with more fun stuff. As well as digging over five beds ready for potatoes I started on a quilt for a boy, using some funky dog prints and lots of orange. I think this one will be a keeper - I am loving the fabric too much to give it away!

I also completed the March block for the Euro Bee. The brief was no angles, curves or wonkiness. I love the soothing nature of the colours Concha has chosen. All in all it was a perfect weekend!

puppy dogs tails

There has not been a lot of sewing going on round here at the moment due to work getting in the way, but I did manage to have a go making string blocks for the Euro Bee. It was my first time using paper and it was not half as scary as I thought it would be! Here is the tutorial I used.


I also got a start on a wall hanging I have been wanting to make my little one for ages. The background fabric is made by comfortstitching and is based on the rhyme 'slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails - that's what little boys are made of! Isn't it adorable! I hope everyone is having a good week so far - bye for now!

snow and sewing

The midlands finally got to see some snow and I had a snow day! There was sledging, snowball fights and a fire to keep us warm in the evening. I have had a little play on my new machine but have yet to try FMQ - I am saving that for when I have a couple of quiet hours free from child interruptions!

I completed my Euro Bee blocks and played around with the blocks I have already received for my month of the My First Quilting Bee I am part of.


My plan is to make a wall hanging to brighten up this very dull part of my upstairs landing:


Finally I will leave you with a couple of photos of the wonkiest icicle I have ever seen, growing on the edge of a drainpipe. It reminded me of a stalactite. I hope my fellow UK readers are enjoying the snow as well!

a big disaster

Well at first glance it might not look so bad, but look closer..... see the big, glaring mistakes? Four of them? Yep it all went pear shaped. I cut it all out, happily sewed it together, ironed it and prepared to sew the quarters together before noticing that the sides of the spotty triangle were not even. Much cursing and sewing later I managed to just about save the square. In amongst all blue language flying about I was struck by how unimaginative our swear words are, so decided to look to the Bard for inspiration via the Shakespeare Insults Generator. 'Thou creeping shag-haired measle' was a much more satisfying way of letting that block know what I thought of it!


My wonky star Christmas quilt is slowly taking shape - a bit too slowly at the moment, I need to speed up!

Gnomes and Spiders

My sewing machine is poorly. I don't think it is terminal but a short stay at the Singer shop for some treatment may be in order. My lovely other half spent an hour trying to make it run again but something somewhere inside keeps sticking as the needle rises. Luckily a friend has a sewing machine that she only uses once or twice a year so I have borrowed hers on a long loan until I can get mine fixed. After faffing about for a while getting to know the new machine I managed to complete my mini gnome quilt. I was lucky enough to be sent some squares of Heather Ross by this lovely lady and when I saw the gnomes I just had to make something with them.



I am so pleased with how this turned out. I only had a small square of the gnome fabric, but it went a long way! I have no one in mind for this quilt - I made it on a whim and I really enjoyed not having a deadline to meet or a person to make for. I am going to hang it on my wall for a while before deciding what to do with it.


The backing fabric is from the children's section of IKEA.


I also completed my spider web block for the Euro Bee. If you fancy having a go making one here is the tutorial.

euro bee stash

I could not resist showing you my growing stash of aqua, red and white fabric ready for my month of the Euro Bee.

My month is not until August, but I really want to get as wide a variety of fabrics as possible so have been slowly collecting bits as I have found them.

I think my biggest problem will be resisting the temptation to start using them before next summer!

lovely stuff

I am having a really productive week spurred on by the fact that I have two quilts to finish by next week! They are a pair of cot sized quilts for twins. The first one is orange and brown and is being quilted at the moment:

The second is green and blue and here is the binding ready for folding and ironing:

I also made my block for the Euro Bee, but please excuse the terrible photo:

I am starting to feel like my sewing groove is coming back!

euro bee

Well these are my first ever squares for a quilting bee. I was invited by Hanies to join one based in Europe and jumped at the chance. There are twelve of us from Germany, the UK, Denmark and Portugal. It was a bit nerve wracking cutting into fabric belonging to someone else but once I got going I loved the challenge.

These blocks are made using Lizzy Dish fabric and are for Isa. My round is not until August next year which is fine by me. I would prefer to have the chance to make a few blocks first and get a feel for how much fabric to send out to people before I have to organise a round (and choose and idea for a quilt!) Our progress is being recorded on our Flickr group. I also decided to post a photo of the back of one of my squares..... I don't know any 'real life' quilters so have no idea what a good back should look like! I am guessing mine is messier than some and tidier than others! I am sure it will get neater with practice.

Finally, have a look at this new fabric line designed by Jessica over at Juicy Bits. It looks wonderful and I hope some of it ends up in the UK!