Oh happy day......

It's been a somewhat exciting weekend, this one. After my day in the shop on Saturday, and a lovely Chinese meal out with the other half that night for his birthday, yesterday a few of my LMQG friends met up for a sewing day.

The lovely hostess

Nat is lucky enough to have a dedicated sewing space, so five of us happily sat around sewing and chatting, and eating lunch, and generally having a good time!  There was plenty of space for some cutting out, machine sewing, hand stitching of binding, and in my case, unpicking some dodgy quilting!

We had a lovely lunch provided by the gorgeous Kelly who was working on an Aeroplane bag - and very stunning it looked too, in the fabulously glittery latest Melody Miller range.  The weight of the fabric makes it perfect for bags and such like, and I can't wait to a) see Kelly's finished bag, and b) attempt one of my own.





isn't it gorgeous?

Kelly and her cleavage!

Check out that top-stitching

Of course, it wouldn't be Kelly without some tom-foolery, and she couldn't resist demonstrating other possible uses for the amply sized smaller bag - here she models the latest in over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders..... what more can I say! As you can tell, it wasn't a terribly serious day.

I'm quietly confident my little Janome would happily fit into this smaller bag, so I have some Melody Miller of my own that Charlotte very generously gave me for my birthday, and so I will be putting that to good use - watch this space.




binding away

Amanda was happily handsewing the binding onto her stunning diamond ring quilt, which looked lovely made from the Pearl bracelets range. She also had a play with Kelly's 11.5" inches, and we all spent a large part of the day planning what we could sell in order to justify the purchasing of new machines - needless to say there is no limit to the deviousness of female quilters when it come to inveigling a new machine into the house!
  

checking the fit

Amy was having a foray into dressmaking with her Schoolhouse tunic. it will be so summery once she's finished.

 

All in all, we had a wonderful day, and the next one is already in the calendar, when we plan to all attempt The Weekender together... apparently we have homework to do in preparation for that one!

Oh, and I just realised this is my 100th post!  Perhaps I ought to have a little giveaway...

What a surprise!

So, today I was happily doing my shop-keeper act, helping out Annie at The Village Haberdashery - I've been there 3 weekends having a whale of a time while Annie gets to know her beautiful new son, Harvey.

Imagine my surprise when a rather large contingent of Kinky Bee ladies arrived in the shop, and proceeded to stay, chat, and buy substantial amounts of fabric! Altogether they were in the shop for about 2 hours, and it was lovely to meet some new faces and also to chat with others I'd met before, including Moira, Liz and Di (gatecrashing from Lincs!).

Happy birthday to me....

What more could a girl ask for??

Covet of the week...

Now, I'm not sure if I really want this fabric, but who can resist a range called PB & J, with a style called Bag of Chips and a colour called Fluffer Nutter!!!

Plus and minus....

On Friday, we went to deliver our secret Project President quilt to the lovely Annie, fabric shop owner and quilt guild leader extraordinaire, who is expecting her first baby early next month.  

We had a mini baby shower, and took great delight in force feeding cold baby food to poor Annie, who had to try and identify the ingredients.... apparently it's a Canadian thing...!

You can read the full story of the quilt on Charlotte's blog here.

But that wasn't my only excitement this weekend.... Charlotte, knowing I would be likely to squander my hard-earned pay packet on the new Melody Miller Sparkle fabric, newly in stock at The Village Haberdashery, very, very, very kindly (and wisely!) gave me an early birthday present of more of the fabric to go with the beauties she brought me back from QuiltCon.  As you can imagine, even the brown fabric wrapping didn't manage to quell my squeals.  

I just can't wait to get stuck into these - they're a lovely heavier weight fabric than the last collection.  I think the roller blades are destined for a lamp shade for my sewing room, although I am hatching a plot to reupholster an old arm chair in patchwork Melody - still working on the OH for that project though - he's not convinced.....

(Looking at these photos makes me realise I really need a new camera..)

Kelly had very generously given me some of the blue and green phones a couple of weeks ago, so these are all now sitting together waiting for me to do them justice.  

So that's the plusses, now onto the minus.... Having found myself with some unexpected time off this week, I finally found the courage to cut out the Renfrew Top pattern in the Nani Iro jersey I invested in before Christmas.  

Yesterday, I read up on sewing with jersey and so today went to tackle some practice with the jersey machine needles I bought specially for the project.  

You know what's coming next, don't you?  

Yep, I can't find the blasted things - I am 99% sure I know where I put them in the sewing room, but now can't track them down for love nor money.  So if any of you have any ideas of where I might have hidden them, do let me know.  I've checked the fridge and the bathroom cabinet already, but no joy.  Trouble is, I've tidied the sewing room since I bought them, so they could now be anywhere.  Of course, the fact I've just ordered another pack means the minute I walk back into the sewing room, they'll be right there in front of me.

 

Time for a change

So, as you all no doubt know, Google reader is going, and I'm switching to Bloglovin along with a multitude of others. So here's this linky thing...


Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Hope to see you there soon :-)

I count myself very lucky....

to have such wonderful quilting friends. Today I had two fab girls keep me very busy...... I'd like to say sewing, but actually I did a lot more gassing than stitching!!!

I had chance to play with two stunning sewing machines, a Husqvarna Viking Topaz and a Janome Horizon with a full 11.5" of throat space which I saw put to fine quilting use this afternoon, had my first go at FMQ which I loved - so exhilarating and liberating - and was given free run of a fab scrap box where I managed to find loads of scraps for both my planned Melody Miller and Welsh flag quilts. My two fur-kids were very ably and affectionately entertained by the two resident gentle giants, although the least said about Daisy sneaking off upstairs for a quick nap on our hostess's bed, and bringing a sock back down with her to greet us at mid-afternoon snack time, the better!

Some things I also learned this weekend were:

1) the first idea I have of how to achieve something is almost always wrong....

2) when using a tutorial and going off-piste, as it were, with different fabric, it's probably best NOT to slavishly buy all the notions asked for in the tutorial beforehand, in the blind belief they will just be fine with the amendments - ie buy a 14" zip only to find you need 20".....

3) it's best to realise your catering size brownie pans won't fit into your domestic oven BEFORE making the mixture to go in them. (Don't panic, brownie devotees, I bought new ones!)

4) it's best not to think too much about where the dog found the roll of Sellotape she just deposited on the spare bed because it will either a) raise too many questions about the standard of your housekeeping or b) raise too many questions about which cupboards she has now worked out she can open, to the point you become too paranoid to ever leave her in a room on her own again!

All in all, a nice, relaxing, distracting weekend. And I'll leave you with a picture of the box bag made this weekend as a very, very belated birthday present for a lovely friend, from Aneela Hoey's oval box bag tutorial, adapted to use Melody Miller's Ruby Star Vinyl records.