Preparation

Leanne posted a tutorial on fabric napkins recently and I was keen to make some, so I used some of my 'pre modern' Christmas fabrics to make some

So, I now have 5 festive napkins.

I am also making Beccy a quick cushion as she has already had most of her Christmas present (think Top Shop, Oxford Street!!), so I wanted her to have a few things to open

I have used the same fabrics as the bunting in her bedroom

I was up early today to get all the last bits and pieces and pick ups

Which means I am all done now. Tomorrow we are making gingerbread houses and chocolate truffles. And battening down the hatches if the weather forecast is anything to go by!

So, if I don't get to blog again,  Happy Christmas to you all and I hope you have a fabulous time

Cushions for Christmas

So, those of you who follow me on IG will know that I was meant to go to Sheffield at the weekend, but didn't quite get there!! The trains were cancelled and Jenny and I turned round and came back home.
That meant I had a whole weekend without any plans: so I finished off a whole heap of Christmas cushions

I also finished off my Stepmums lemon and lime cushions that she asked me to make for Christmas

I am really pleased with how they have all turned and it took away some of the dissapointment of not getting away at the weekend.

I will be putting these forward to Midge's cushion for Christmas Linky in a few days. You should hop on over and take a look, bet there is a cushion you could put forward too!

Christmas swapping

Over at the Bee a Brit stingy Bee, Sheila, Nicky and Helen got organised and arranged a Christmas swap -a fabric envelope.
My fabulous envelope arrived from Emily

Gorgeous stamping and lovely goodies, including earrings that Emily had made
I made for Nicky

These were really fun projects and I have no idea why I haven't made them before.

Succesful November

Oh yes, November has been a success for me!

 

My best finish has been my DWR quilt.  This quilt was hand pieced all from scraps and the border was made up of orphan blocks made for me by my Bee a Brit Stingy friends.  I LOVE this quilt

 

 

 

I managed to squeeze in a finish for Jenny too - just in the nick of time - now that she is in her own house

 My Bee a Brit Stingy block got sent off to Charlotte yesterday: this is a big block at 16.5".  And it's not quite a finish, but I an nearly there with my folded fabric Christmas tree

Yesterday a whole group of us gathered around our computers for a web chat with Sarah.  This was all very cleverly organised by Rhonda as a baby shower for Sarah.  We had all been secretly making for Bean and yesterday Sarah got to open her gifts while we watched and listened (some of us listened, others watched, some got to do both.  It was very dependant on our computers!!)
I made Sarah some burp/sickie cloths

 There were lots of amazing gifts-no doubt you will see them popping up.  We also won prizes.  Everyone made a prize to donate and no-one went away empty handed.  I made two minis

 It really was amazing to be part of this: to hear Sarah as she opened the gifts even though she was hundreds of miles away in the Shetlands.  And to interact with people from USA, Canada, Europe....I think there may have been someone from Nz as well?  Makes the world a much smaller place

And to finish off - these two popped in last week.  They have been poorly, which is not suprising given the start that they had.  But they are growing and are very well loved.  Not so little anymore

 Tonight I will be sitting down and catching up on about a weeks worth of blog reading!
Linking up with Lynne : have you seen her cute barn quilt advent calendar that you can join in with?

 

Tah Dah - DWR quilt

So, here is my 'Tah Dah' post about my DWR quilt : which is finally finished:

The quilt has been made entirely from scraps and each little bit of each ring has been hand pieced by EPP.  I machine stitched the rings on to the quilt

My main memory of making this quilt was sitting on the train from the Lake District to Glasgow, which gave me about 2 and half hours sewing whilst watching the world go by

The scrappy border is courtesy of my friends from the Bee a Brit Stingy Bee.  I asked them to send me the orphan blocks from the pineapple blossom blocks that they made.  To have them involved in the quilt too is so great
In keeping with the scrap aspect, the back of the quilt is an old duvet cover

I had so many ideas of how I was going to quilt this - none of which transpired because a) I wasn't clever enough to do that kind of fmq and b) hand stitching what I wanted, which I did try, looked truly dreadful.  So I quilted around each ring

 and did a double cross inside each one, with a bit of hand quilting on the four blocks in the middle

This is a quilt that I am really proud of: I always love my quilts, but this one I am also really proud of making.  It feels like a real 'old time' quilt....how it was done in the pioneer days....
I am also entering the quilt in to this competition run by the NYC Metro Mod quilters.  I have no grand ideas of winning - there are some amazing quilts over there (go and have a look).  But hey, having taken two or so years to make the timing seems very serendipitous.  Thank you to Leanne for pointing it out to me.

The quilt measures 60" x 60" and is also another FAL finish

Now..... where can I put it............

Stingy geese

Today wasn't the day I was planning -Beccy was poorly last night and we saw every hour between midnight and 5am :-( so I have been on a go slow.
Anyway, I managed to get Charlotte's Bee a Brit stingy block done

Charlotte chose a fabulous block made entirely from flying geese and gave us a palate to work from, so I hope I have got it right!

And now, this is happening

......binding going on my DWR - finally

Weekend plans

I have been doing my fair share off Christmas sewing and this is my latest effort

 It will become a Christmas tree and the fabulous tutorial
 can be found HERE

This is how they start out:

My weekend needs to be spent finishing my DWR quilt

 Just the binding to go on now!

Tomorrow I am shopping with Jenny then hoping for a lot of sewing time

November Mama

My blogging has taken a real back seat recently-mainly due to not using my computer much, as  I prefer my tablet (poor excuse!)
We have also all had our birthdays these last two weeks: I am a year older and also appear to have a 17 yo as well as a 20yo! How is that possible.
November is my month as queen bee in Hipbees-this is the block I went for

It's from Quiltville and is called Jared takes a wife. Very easy to do. I wanted to use the charms from the rainbow charm swap

and this was just the block.  Here are Reene's and Rachels

There are others popping up too but I havn,'t been able to 'borrow' those pictures yet. I can't wait for them all to come home to mama!

Chilled out

Well, this has been a lovely relaxing few days off.  Starting off with a spa day on Tuesday: a few of us from work decided to treat ourselves and we had a great day chatting and being pampered - all in gorgeous surroundings.  I can definitely recommend a spa day to anyone!

I have used the week to get ready for my turn as queen bee in the Hipbee group - it took me days to decide what I was going to do and get all the fabric together and cut out.  I have chosen a block that will use up my charms from the Rainbow charm swap a while back: the pattern is over at Quiltville

 

We have had a birthday: Beccys was on Tuesday.  My baby turned 17 and had her first driving lesson, which she really enjoyed.  Her birthday marks the start of 10 days of family birthdays: it works out to be about one every other day!

And there have been various amounts of sewing too, although not as much as I would have liked (there was a lot of diy needed doing too)
These are from the fabulous 500 quilt blocks, which I am making in to a table runner for my dad and step mum - as per their request

 Back to work tomorrow, and November is going to be a very busy month - lots of evening training that I have to go and do: I hate driving in the dark :-(

Getting things done

Having worked a 53 hour week last week(very, very tired!) I decided I was going to do nothing strenuous this weekend - just lots of sewing.  So, I have my first FAL finish - a Christmas tree skirt

You may (or may not) remember that I did a tutorial for a summer tablecloth for Abakhan fabrics and Lynne back in the summer: this is the same tutorial but just made Christmassy.  It is now listed in my Etsy Shop.

This fabulous book arrived this week too, and seeing as I was in Christmas mode, I made my first block from the book and turned that in to something Christmassy too

 The block is a bit wonky, due to me not taking enough care (it's called rushing) and not really having enough fabric.  But hey, it's just going to be a little Christmas wallhanging for me, so I don't mind.
The book is seriously amazing, but I think most of you have it already if Instagram is anything to go by!

I have started to quilt my DWR too having finally decided how to finish it off : the HST's around the edge came from my Bee a Brit stingy friends, they were the orphan blocks from my Pineapple quilt, and I think they look perfect here (excuse my pj's!)

 

 And finally these are my winnings from the IG competition that The fabulous Brenda, at Pink Castle fabrics sent to me.  The picture is rubbish, because those yellows are so much more vibrant