How time flies

Tonight Jenny has her year 13 leavers ball.  Although she is a year 13, she actually stayed down a year and has retaken her AS levels, so next year will be her final year

 I wrote at the time how hard her decision was, but a year on she knows it was the best one.  However, tonight, when she says goodbye to so many of her year, it may just hurt all over again!

I have dropped her and her friends off this evening: friends that she has known since she was 5 when we first moved here, and friends that she has made along the way. Some of them are not going to uni, some of them are going : some near, some far: it really is the end of an era!

Jenny and Beccy

Here we go!

At the retreat in June I had the pleasure of getting to know Di a lot better. We chatted over lunch, with Susan, and Di mentioned that she would love to start a bee.  Count me in I said, and Susan gave some Bee advice.
Thanks to Di's hard work, I am now in her Bee - and I am soooo excited. Look at the company I am in: 

 

1. Tanya - Second Chance Tan - http://sewasecondchance.blogspot.co.uk/
2. Rachel Addison - Mamma Fairy Sews - http://mammafairysews.blogspot.co.uk/
3. Karen  - Lisnaweary Quilts - http://lisnaweary-quilts.blogspot.co.uk/
4. Fiona - Sew Fi - http://go-sewfi.blogspot.co.uk/
5. Collette - Poppie and Poochie - http://poppyandpoochie.blogspot.co.uk/
6. Renee - Nellie's Niceties - http://nelliesniceties.blogspot.co.uk/
7. Lynz - Domestic Light and Magic - http://domesticlightandmagic.blogspot.co.uk/
8. Jan - Isisjem - http://isisjem.blogspot.co.uk/
9. Catherine - Sew Wonderful Life - http://sewonderfulife.blogspot.co.uk/
10. Sarah - Sew Me - http://sewmeblog.blogspot.co.uk/
11. Judith - Just Jude Designs - http://judith-justjude.blogspot.co.uk/
12. Di - Willowbeck Designs - http://willowbeckdesigns.blogspot.co.uk/ 

 And as a 60's baby the bee name is perfectly apt and also I think button that sarah has designed is awesome.

This is my first ever bee and I am excited and nervous, I don't want to let anyone down. I have opted to be Miss November: this is my birthday month ( I share that with Renee) so I figured how wonderful it would be to have blocks made by these wonderful ladies during that month.

So, our first month is August: gulp!!

One complete, one to start

I signed up for a couple of swaps recently: the purse swap and round 3 of the brit quilt swap.  I also have an exam to do on July 11th!

With that in mind I decided to crack on with the purse.  I put my fabric selection on flickr:

and everyone went with the bird fabric (can't tell you if my partner commented or not!)

 I sewed some beads on both sides as well, to perk it up a bit. And I went for a nice floral for the lining

I read on one of the discussions that someone suggested when turning the purse the right side out, to leave the gap to turn through at the top, rather than the bottom, as this is then inserted into the purse frame and never seen. I tried this and worked brilliantly, so can defintely recommend that method!

We were given our brit quilt swap partners today, so now I need to move on to more stalking.  I also have some very exciting news to share tomorrow!!

It's done!

It's finally finished!!  My  stained is all done and dusted

I love how my quilt has turned out and can't thank Sarah enough for putting this together and providing us with fabulous instructions

This quilt is defintely destined for the beach

I made the binding out of some scrap material that I bought when I was in Spalding over half term

  

The lady who owned the little shop was soo lovely and she had a drawer of offcuts : I got quite a few bits for £1.50!!! And I still have enough of this material to bind another quilt

And, if for any reason it doesn't get to the beach, it also looks great in my garden (look.... the sun is shining!!)



This quilt is also 3 out of 4  for the 2nd quarter FAL (mmmm, think I may struggle to make 4 out of 4 now!)

Bad weather makes

The only plus side to this weather is that it is ok to sit inside and sew!  I seem to have finished quite a few things recently and its mostly thanks to the weather

I made this and finished it off last weekend

 This is just a small quilt that I made out of some scraps for the little girl of a work collegue of Jennys (she works in Asda at the weekends)

 Her little one year old daughter has been very poorly, resulting with her ending up in Great Ormond Street

 She was in London for a few weeks, but is now back home. The doctors arn't sure what was wrong with her.  She had meningitis symptons and lots of fits but tests were negative for meningitis

 The quilt is for little Lily.  Jenny is going to go and see them next week.  I have never had so much trouble FMQ'ing as I did with this! The thread kept snapping, I thought I may have been using a duff batch of thread it snapped that often

 Still, I got there in the end!  I bought my binding in my LQS - its a pink paisley and looks great on this quilt.  It was nice to quilt for a purpose.  I would like to do more of these little quilts for the Farleigh ladies, they are quick and easy and hopefully would sell well for them

 And, of course, the weather is good for other makes as well.......

ET rang home

As soon as I saw Lynne's ET phone home block I knew I had to make one

I made half of it on Sunday and then finished it off yesterday and today: I may have got slightly obssesive about it..... tea was late last night, and I havn't started tonights (although to be fair, its only me having tea tonight and omlette is on the menu)

99% of my triangles meet at the points (and the ones that don't only just don't meet) 

  

And it looks lovely with the sun shining behind it (yes.... the sun is shining!!).  This is now destined to become a cushion cover, or maybe a wall hanging, can't decide.  I can definitely recommend making one

Sunshine needed

I have been working on this ever since the retreat - it is all EPP

I was lucky enough to get some Walk in the Woods mini charms in my goodie bag from the retreat and I have been sewing away in the evenings. Its now all ready for some hand quilting and binding

I have also made a start on Lynne's ET phone home block .  This is a fabulous block and I have managed to get half of it done and love it

The colours don't look great in this, but when it's finished I will take closer pics to show the fabrics
The lack of sunshine is delaying my raspberries and strawberries

they really need some sunshine to ripen them up!

Stained quilted

Its taken a while, but my Stained is now quilted

In keeping with the whole beach theme I decided to FMQ it with lots of waves

 And, in keeping with reality, the waves vary in size (wish I could say that this was deliberate but just down to my fmq'ing!!)

 There are points in the quilt were it definitely got very choppy (and some of my waves may look like a reading off the machines that you see in hospital with someones erratic heartbeat

 But I love how the quilt has turned out.  I had been putting together lots of fat quarters of beachy themes whenever I saw them

 lots of flip flops and sunglasses

 nautical themes

 beach huts and sand

Its definitely a quilt that I want to takeaway with me this summer when we go and do this again (are you ready Susan.......)

Summer Sewing

I saw that Jennifer at Ellison Lane is having a summer sewing contest. There are 4 categories,: quilts, bags & accessories, home decor and clothing. And some amazing entries

So, for the taking part, I am putting this in to the home decor category

 This is an appliqued wall hanging that lives in my front room.  I love it the colours and it always reminds me of our surfing holiday in Cornwall because that is where I did a lot of it, in the evenings

 I used the freezer paper method for my applique and blanket stitched around each shape. Its a very satisfying job

 The pattern came from Henry Glass fabrics - they have a page with free projects.  I changed it slightly using the green ric rac rather than fabric for the stems and I think it worked well

Applique is a great project to take away with you - I am busy looking for my next project so that I have some on hand for the summer!

Recycling

When I was away last week, my sister in law and I went to an exhibition in Sleaford. Sometimes these can be a bit random and some of the exhibits were strange, but I thought this one was amazing.

It is made out of dressmaking patterns

there was also a hoover 

I managed to finish off my quilt for the Farleigh Hospice craft ladies yesterday:

I don't think it came out too bad, considering its an old duvet cover and a blue sheet from Asda!



Union flag complete

A week after it was started, my Union Jack pillow is now complete

I started this in Lynne's paper piecing class last Saturday at the retreat (it already seems like longer than a week ago!)  I managed one quarter of it in the class and finished the rest on the Sunday whilst watching the river paegent.  I went for lots of dotty fabric, although the white on the flag is actually stripey

 And in keeping with the stripes on the front, I went with a blue stripey backing fabric (aka an old duvet cover from the charity shop!)

It looks perfectly at home on my settee!