First ever quilt

 This is the 1st quilt that I ever made.  It was my lovely sister-in-law Ellen who introduced me to the world of quilting.  She had a stint of living out in America, where there is loads of quilting going on.  I went on a visit, back in 2001 and 2003 and she was quilting.  I bought a magazine out there and she bought me a rotary cutter and mat, both of which I still have - and the rest is history.  It took me a long time to do this and I don't really like using such small triangles, but I didn't know that then!

My only regret is that I used a cheap polyester wadding and it hasn't done too well with time.  But it also took me ages to hand quilt this so I won't be changing the wadding any time soon!
I have recently done another quilt with lots of little trianges and I hated doing it.  Pictures of that one will be up early summer.
Ellen is a very talented sewer and next time I am visiting her I will (with her permission) get some pictures of her quilts to showcase.  She is sewing her own clothes at the moment, skirts, jackets etc and they look fabulous.
And some good news, Alison, my cousin and baby Daniel are back home today - she has been in hospital for a week, so was desperate to get home.  Hopefully I will  be allowed to put his pictures on the blog next week, after our visit.
More quilts tomorrow

Daniel Albert

On Tuesday 25th January at aprox 21.20, Daniel Albert Memmott arrived in to the world.  Now, I havn't seen him yet, but I am hoping to go to London on Saturday to meet the little fellow.  He is the first baby of my cousin Alison and her husband Ben.  When we had the fantastic news that Alison was pregnant, I got out the knitting needles and started to knit.  The pattern (above!) was so easy: knitting a length of 6 squares and then joining those lengths together.  If I were really clever I would have been able to join these rows with apparantly invisible seaming, but no matter how many attempts I had I couldn't do this.  So, rather that be defeated I decided to join them together with good old backstich and then hide the terrible seams with a backing. 

 I used a £3 fleece blanket on the back and stitched it all together.  It is so toasty and I can't wait to give it to Alison.

Around about this time last weekend, I didn't think I was going to have the knitted blanket finished, so I decided to use some scraps and make a quick baby quilt:

This was a nice easy quilt to do, and I will finish binding it tonight - its just something he can roll around on on the floor.  Its lucky that he was a boy, judging by the fabric I picked!  I did two of these quilts - I am sending the other one to one of the girls at work who has also just had a boy.
Studywise this weekend, I have managed to do the last of my skills test practise papers, which I have to send in for marking.  Then, in a couple of weeks, after a little more revision, I can take the real skills test and that will be it for my intermediate year!  And, then, at some point, there is the housework to do.........

First blog

So this is my blog, I hit upon the name and decided to finally blog: maybe to no-one (apart from family!) but then that's ok. It's going to take a while to get in to this and to design my page, but it will be lots of fun.
My name is Catherine: I work full time, but have the school holidays off.  I love to sew, quilt and knit and try and do something creative at the weekend.  I am also studying for my AAT (accounting) distance learning, so find that the sewing helps me to unwind.  I live with my two wonderful daughters, 17 & 14, in the south east of england.  And it is a wonderful life.
I will post pictures of some of the things I have sewn and things that I am working on.  At the moment I have 3 quilts on the go, a baby blanket that I am knitting and a 'sew a long' from "LMS Adventures in Quilting" blog, all of which i will show you. Oh yes , and a secret project!
so now I have to go and work out how to make my daughters my first two followers x