The last hurrah!

So, where were we....

Oh yes, Sunday.  I didn't get to hang out with everyone on Saturday evening for various reasons, but I was back bright and early on Sunday morning for my foundation paper piecing class with Lynne.  Now, I have done some of this before, with the double wedding ring wall hanging I made for my sister and her new husband, and my Good Friday wrestling match with my beach scene mini.  We had a choice of 3 patterns and unknowingly I picked the 'advanced' option!  Yep, I've done it before but I'm far from advanced level.  So, double circle of flying geese it was...

Anyway, I'd chosen Countdown to Christmas for my fabric and after a really tricky initial hour trying to manipulate my brain into the backwards thinking necessary to work out how the heck* (insert own expletive here) to accomplish this method, I managed to block out everyone else and concentrate hard on getting my first 1/8th of the pattern done.  When it came to starting the second eighth, though, my brain got a bit complacent and I made more errors. In the 3 hours of the class and part of lunchtime I managed to put the two triangles together and make a quarter of the full design.

I'm determined to finish the full cushion cover before Christmas, although I may need to spend a lot of time asking Lynne for help!  Just so you can see how tricky the pattern was, here's a glimpse at one part - admittedly this picture is upside down, but don't let that conceal it's complexity:

Anyway, lunch provided a welcome chance for the grey matter to recover, and to catch up with the LMQG girls and compare notes on our morning's achievements.  After lunch was the class I was secretly looking forward to more than anything, which was wonky log cabins with none other than Quilt Dad himself, John Adams.  I loved John's tutorials when I first discovered them, they were so clear and detailed, and it's my comfort block - when I want something easy, fun and enjoyable to make, it's a wonky log cabin I turn to.  Again I used Countdown to Christmas and actually put a bit of thought into the arrangement of the fabrics rather than the more usual freestyle choosing from a big heap!

I was really pleased with how this turned out, and am looking forward to adding a solid border and quilting it ready for a jolly festive sofa in a few months!

All too soon, it was time to hit the road, cram myself into a packed tube train and head home.  It was sad to say goodbye to all the lovely people there, some of whom I didn't get anywhere near enough time to talk to.  And I cannot wait till next year and have started putting my pennies in my piggy bank to save for my ticket for 2013. 

What a day!

So, yesterday was my birthday and I wasn't exactly looking forward to the arrival of 45!  However, once I realised it co-incided with the next LMQG meeting and that it was possible the lovely and talented Aneela Hoey might be coming, all of a sudden it seemed like it might be quite a good day after all!

Aneela and I travelled into London together, and were so busy chatting about everything under the sun, the poor sat-nav woman had a job telling us where to go, and it's fair to say we got a bit lost and were a bit late!  Still, I'd gone armed, not only with Aneela, but also the best chocolate brownies in the universe, so I was sure of a warm, if belated welcome.  The rest of the group didn't know Aneela was coming, and their faces were a picture!

However, my day wasn't complete yet.... the lovely Charlotte had made me a pretty little iced fairy cake for my birthday.  I've also got into an expensive habit of ordering a few bits and pieces from the Village Haberdashery for Annie (our group president) to deliver at the meeting so she handed over a very, very, very exciting bag with not just one of my weekly covets, but two!



I'd also ordered a stack of Magical Lands and some lovely embroidery cottons for me to have a play with.


To say I was a happy girl would be an understatement!


We got on with the meeting, including talking about the Siblings Together project.    Judith (Needles & Lemons) has offered to collate some blocks and make them up into a quilt.  I handed over 6 simple log cabin blocks made with Pezzy Print (which I forgot to photo! you can now see on Judith's blog here) so I'm looking forward to seeing them appear in one or more of the final quilts.  If you want to get involved then go over to the Flickr group (linked to above)and sign up.

Our challenge for March had been to make a wonky log cabin or crazy block using the scraps we 'won' in the swap at the beginning of the month. It was incredible to see how, even in a small group of 20, we all had such differing tastes as so many of us commented on how we'd found the received scraps hard to work with as they weren't our style or colours!  I confessed I had shamelessly cheated, as I'd been dying to make something with the Pezzy Prints, and so I used the smallest of one of my scraps and then made up the rest with lovely Pezzy!  I thought it worked really well with the geometric design.




Once the meeting part was done,  the important part of fabric buying started!  So Michael and I trotted through to the back of the shop where I indulged with a few stash boosters - some that will go with existing stock and some that are just too-much-fun-to-leave-on-the-shelf-and-will-come-in-handy-at-some-point!


The afternoon was rounded off  back at Charlotte's lovely house, with a fashion parade of her amazing quilts, a very envious ferret through her drawers (oo-er!) in her quilting shed and a lovely cup of coffee!

Covet of the week

It has to be said, with one thing and another, I've not had a lot of time for covetting this week!  Work has been frantic, I've been a day behind myself all week and nearly missed 2 meetings and a birthday, and then to top it all, I think the tangerine has seeped into my brain and turned it to orange juice!

Last night, in a frantic burst of catch up energy I made my March LMQG challenge thingy.  However I proudly incorporated my first attempt at machine quilting..... and now I'm thinking I wasn't meant to finish the thing, just make a block 'top'!

Ah well, I have cakes to take, along with something really exciting, so hopefully they'll forgive me for getting it wrong - as my old dad always used to say -'read the question'!

On the covet front, just been having a browse and came across this on Pink Castle fabrics website.  It's Sea Garden in Summer - Salt by Cosmo Cricket for Moda, and I love the flowing shapes as well as the combination of colours. 

It makes me want to go and sit in the garden and sew, instead of get out on the drive and clean the car, which is what I have to do instead.....

Fat Quarterly Retreat name badge

I'm gutted that I missed out on the Fat Quarterly name badge swap on Flickr and so I'll just have to get on and make one for myself. But......


How???


I am possibly being a little lazy asking this here, but if anyone can point me in the right direction of what we're supposed to be producing, I'll make a start.  


I also keep seeing all sorts of mentions of swaps and things, but I can't find more info about what the agenda is or what will be happening at the retreat in general.  I've never been to anything like it before, so am a little out of my comfort zone!  I like to know what's going on and what to expect!  

I'm back!

Did you miss me?  Or more to the point, did you not even realise I was gone??  We've been on a little sojourn to Cornwall with the dogs, staying in a lovely mobile home, courtesy of our friends, Tony and June just outside Newquay.

The OH has spent the almost-week fishing, while I met up with friends, walked the dogs (I think Daisy's face kind of says it all about how mcuh we enjoyed ourselves!) ate yummy cornish food, bartered for our holiday accommodation with the promise and commencement of making some curtains for our friends' own home, and of course did a bit of my own sewing. 


Now, lovely as our mobile home was, I discovered they are not the best locations for laying out quilt tops!  Having sewn all my circles onto squares, I cut them into quarters, frustratingly stupidly messing up the first one, so I have to make another one now I'm home to replace it. 

I sorted them into colour piles and started trying to put them back into reassembled circles - harder than it sounds!  I managed to find enough off-the-ground space to lay out 3 rows in total, but here's some of them so far - they might change as I get further on, and need to swap out colours or patterns.

It'll be interesting to see how it develops, but I have realised a piece of fleece or wadding hooked up on the sewing room wall is going to be a necessity to get this one finished!  I love the fact that our 3rd bedroom has become a much more glamorous 'sewing room', but can't quite bring myself to call a blanket on the wall a 'design wall' yet!


In other news, I have a new super-hero to worship in the form of Annie from The Village Haberdashery, who not only has a bundle of my original Covet of the Week, but has also tracked down a small supply of my second Covet of the Week!  I'm clearly going to have to try harder with my fabric choice for this week's Covet, or I'll be buying fabric every week!  Then again.....

And lastly, while out buying fabric for June's new curtains, I bought some of this to make curtains for the sewing room so that whenever I'm in there I can look up and be reminded of Cornish holidays.

Ooh, and I have some really exciting news for next Sunday's LMQG meeting....

 

Look what I found....

Look what I just found - last week's Covet of the Week, the beautiful Melody Millar typewriter fabric is featuring in a giveaway by Canadian Abroad - how excited am I?  So, I've done all the things to enter, but I've also found out I can buy the fabric stack if all entries fail.  Am saving my pennies......

Covet of the week

So I've looked everywhere for these - Pezzy Print by American Jane.  I can find the single colour fabrics, and I can buy those by accident thinking these multi-colourways were included...

I can try and buy these from Pink Castle Fabrics, but their system was forcing me to buy two of each which I didn't want and they haven't replied to my email asking why...

So if anyone knows of anywhere else I can get these brilliantly colourful fabrics, do please let me know - I have a pezzy-shaped hole in my stash box!

WIP's

OK, so please excuse the quality of the photgraphy, but this was at 11.30 last night with my mobile and an enery saving light bulb!  On Friday, having admired the gorgeous raw edge circle quilt on Cluck Cluck Sew for some time, I decided to take the plunge and started cutting! By bed time last night, even with a busy day of chores yesterday, I'd got this far:



So I've got 56 squares matched up with 56 circles and now all I have to do is start sewing them together.  The tutorial is great, and so straight forward.

I've also got a quilt started for my OH's parents, made with a Maison de Garance layer cake - the centre of the top is sewn, it's just awaiting borders and then quilting.  I just need a bigger house to find the space to lay the bigger quilt tops out!

Hope everyone's had a lovely sewing-filled weekend

birthday present.....

Yippeeeeeeee!  Lovely, lovely, lovely OH has bought me a weekend ticket to the Fat Quarterly retreat in June!  I cannot wait, two of my quilting heroes will be there, and I'm beyond excited!