Pass it on... Pass it forward!

I have seen this on a few other blogs, but when I saw it on Kerry’s I thought umm, ooh, ahh... ok, maybe...

I can't remember how I stumbled across Kerry's blog, but I just love reading about her wonderful retreats and I whistfully think "Maybe some day" - Maybe someday we'll be having retreats here in Yorkshire too!

Anyway, here's the idea:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don't know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week... LOL... but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.



On the homefront:

I made a pie!
Ok, I didn't exactly follow the recipe to the letter and I haven't tasted it yet, but here it is...


Ta dah! One gooseberry, redcurrant, raspberry and apple pie - Bon Appetit LOL

ps we have just had a mega-slice each and DH says it's restaurant quality - we haven't eaten in a proper restaurant since we've had kids so perhaps I shouldn't get too excited about the compliment LOL

Access denied

This is the sorry state of my sewing room! The outside is covered in thick black plastic because DH is currently taking the roof off of the conservatory.
The conservatory is directly above my sewing room. I have been dreading this moment. Yesterday the plastic was put on. Today I begged for a slit and therefore some access. Luckily I have been in strip and piece cutting mood for a few days now and I have a few projects on the cutting table. I slowly and ever so quietly moved some cutting equipment (small table, mats, cutters, fabric, iron...) into our old bedroom which is now quite bare and I have been quite productive with the old rotary cutter and so much space to use it in.

The whole house is to be renovated in stages and at every stage I get the jitters. I worry I will have no access at all soon especially when a door gets bashed through into my sewing room making it accessible from the house.

On a happier note, the sun shone and we took a short drive

to picnic and to 'pick our own' raspberries. It was great for the kids, they even had a sandpit and a tractor Wonderful!

Nothing like a good swap

I dashed out today to take the kids to another Farm Park and I had invited along a friend or two who in turn invited a friend or two so when we all arrived and the farm park was shut it was rather awkward. Not really sure what to do and with lunchtime approaching and lots of small children looking rather hungry we had our picnic outside!

Afterwards we went to a local play place and chased our kids around and now I'm very tired indeed.

However, the sewing-related hightlight of my day was coming home to a lovely parcel from Kate P. Lovely bits and pieces and even a piece of African fabric! It's so nice to have a glimpse of someone else's stash through a one-on-one swap like this. Thanks Kate P!

I'm never going to do this again

This is one of those projects (UFO's!) I wish I had never started!

My quilt group decided to make these 'executive toys' at least a year ago and I thought, "Hey, this sounds like fun".

Well, it wasn't, it has taken me ages, but today while visiting my DSIL I decided it just had to get knocked off my UFO list.

The photos don't really show it off well, it looks better in action as it is not 5 different toys, but one toy made up of 8 cubes covered in 6 different fabrics.

I'm pleased it's done, I hope Toby plays with it, but I will never make another (ever!)

The great British seaside

Today saw us taking a train to the seaside.

It was DS2's first ever train ride so it was very exciting LOL. Here are some pics our first ever trip to Morecambe Bay...



It was bl**dy freezing and the wind was blowing a gale, poor Toby took shelter in his pram,
but Jack and his friend took no notice of the elements
No self-respecting seaside trip would be complete without a cup of tea...

or an amusement park!


And for me, of course no day is complete without something sewing related. I purchased this dinosaur fabric, not thin enough for patchwork, but it may make the boys some nice curtains or bags or something. Oh and I bought some bag handles, but I'm not sure where they are now... oh, and the dotty background fabric is a piece of pvc-coated fabric for our kitchen table. Oh, and...just kidding!

On the actual sewing front, I have been using our old bedroom to cut strips for my next few projects (hopefully never to be UFO's!). A while back I collected butterfly fabric for a project for my DSIL, but then she changed her decor to brown...

I have brown LOL

Slugs and snails...

There's nothing quite as exciting for a little boy as a tractor parked outside your front door...
...except when there's a digger in the garden too!
We're having our garden leveled so that we can use it. It used to be really slopey - you couldn't even put a garden chair on the grass without it toppling over, but soon we hope to have space to kick a ball and sit out - weather permitting.

The weather was quite nice this afternoon so we went to the local park. I always take something for Toby to sit on, but now that we're crawling...
there's no stopping us. This quilt was made for a friend a few year's back, but it didn't quite fit in with her decor so she went with this one instead.

I kept it and it gets a lot of use for general rolling around, first for DS1 now for DS2.

(Note the dark clouds - one minute we had jumpers on, the next I was getting hats and suncream out the car!)

Odds and ends

Just because I don't post every day doesn't mean I'm not constantly up to something (quilting or otherwise LOL). I sadly can't finish a quilt a week and posting about a UFO every week made me feel terribly guilty, but I do manage to sneak in a bit here and there, such as the (wild) borders on this...

... it's the last of the 4 Smilie quilts that are going to be quilted by Chris.
I've also managed to get all the bits together for the borders and backing of my Scrapbuster quilt. And I've been handquilting my Bag O' challenge. More on that later...

Here's a little trip down memory lane for my friend Birgit. Birgit, remember this? Birgit helped me cut this kit out for a 'Children of the World' quilt that I made for a friends daughter. Sadly, I don't have a digital photo to show (and the old fashioned paper photo (LOL) is somewhere...) As Birgit cut, I sewed and she had a brilliant idea that she would cut enough pieces for 2 quilts. Except, ahem, I er.. well I haven't sewn the second one yet and so this kit has been in the bag for about 10 years (?) or at least since I lived in Germany (could that have really been ten years ago??)

Not much 'up' here besides some scaffolding

In the post today, this book that I was the lucky winner of on Jane's Blog. It looks like a lot of fun to do and as soon as I have some spare time, I'd love to give them a go... Thank you Jane!

This is just a quick post as besides the book and more pinning, I really am not up to much sewing-wise (well I'm also handquilting my Bag O", but as I may have mentioned before, I can't show you, but soon...).

School sports day was rained off today so no photos of that as a downsized version took place indoors. Jack (DS1) refused to run in his race and decided he wanted to rather chew the plastic spoon and egg rather than run with it - well he is only 2!

On the home front, we have a new 'King of the castle', but at the bottom the same old 'dirty rascal'!

The cows were not amused... nor was I when I heard the roof would be coming off soon on the conservatory so we will lose yet another room. I am running out of place to re-house things!!!

And here some baby swallows who've come out of the garage (where they made their nest because DH left the door open once too often if you ask me) to poop on the garden gate where I like to photograph my quilts. I will have to wait for the rain to clean the gate before I take anymore photos LOL!

All I ever seem to do is pin...

... so yesterday when we had our pub lunch at the pub opposite Embsay Mills, I just had to pop in and buy some Quilting Pins. That's not new fabric the pins are lying on! Ok, it is, but I only bought these 2 pieces and the shop was just full of fabric LOL

This evening, I cut borders for the 2 tops that need to get ready to go longarming, I've pinned one and hopefully tomorrow I'll get some sewing time.
I also basted the top for my 'Bag O' Stuff' quilt challenge, but I can't show that as I'm still supposed to keep that one under my hat until it gets sent home to it's owner whoever that may be...


On the homefront, I tried doing some more housekeeping today in between fetching, carrying and looking after children. As soon as I start someone wakes up or wants something, but I may be on to something as DH had been out and I used some pretty powerful cleaning stuff in the shower. When he came home, he said "Hmmm, someone's been cleaning!" So I was thinking perhaps if I just spray that stuff every few days, he'll think I've cleaned...!

Lucky day

I was supposed to be writing my own blog, but just happened to be reading a few when I noticed that today was my lucky day! I have won a book on Jane's Blog. I'm really chuffed as it looks really interesting, it's Gail Lawther's new book 'Stained Glass Stitchery Bowls'.

Other than that we had another busy day so not much sewing. In fact, I felt pretty tired so we put on a DVD and I stuffed lavender sachets (very exciting LOL), but Christmas is coming Ho HO Ho and I want to start now on my gifts and stocking fillers. Here's a trio of sachets for Grandma as a thank you for some card making kit she's kindly given me.


And here's my next African block for my swap with Kate. It will go in the mail tomorrow. I wanted to try a sort of chequerboard effect, a variation of a postage stamp block and that's quite African I should think.

The boring stuff

I haven't really had much to blog about because I've been doing pretty boring stuff... piecing the backing fabric together for my Scrapbuster quilt which meant first alot of crawling around on the floor. I was trying to use pieces as they were and not cut them uniformly and thereby end up with more scraps. Then I've been sewing these pieces into rows - I've almost finished that. Once the rows are done, I'll sew those together and Ta Dah! I'll have my backing piece. Knowing me, I'll have mismeasured, but it's so scrappy I might just get away with it LOL.

At the same time I've been pinning another "I Spy" (or "Smiley" quilt as the swap was affectionately known) together as Chris told me that she can fit one more on the backing fabric. I have already handed over three so I want to get this one done asap. Hopefully Chris will be able to do my Scrapbuster quilt at the same time, but I suspect that will depend on me finishing it... :-)

And also at the same time (I like to dabble in a bit of this and that as you can see) I have been sewing together my African Block for my swap with Kate. More of that hopefully later, should I finish it tonight....

What happened to yesterday?

Well after our big day out at Hesketh Farm Park we were all exhausted. In fact the only sewing I managed was....

I cut lots of little squares for my next African swap block, but that was it!

But we had a great day out. DS1 enjoyed the coach ride, he and DH had a great time in the haystack maze which you had to exit via the slide. The go-karts are resting after our visit... And we all loved feeding and petting times too.

Here are some pictures of the farm residents.




We hope to visit them again soon.

Blooming Marvellous

Phew! I just need to fix a little leaf (or two), but it is done, and boy am I pleased. I have paper-pieced my heart out with this project or as I kept thinking as I was sewing "This is not foundation-piecing for the faint-hearted!" LOL.
It will just get a little border and then some hand quilting and embroidery and then I can shout "Ta Dah".
I have really enjoyed it over the months it's taken even though it's definitely NOT perfect.


I have also finished the hospital quilt tops - the borders along with a lot of the rose piecing were part of last nights efforts - These tops will hopefully go to Vicky this week. She'll get them finished off with the help of some other ladies in my LQG for the premature baby units at 2 of our local hospitals. I also cut loads of strips for more so the strips will be donated too and if anyone in the group has nothing to do , they can make more baby quilts!


And the post brought my winning postcard from Kate's Washer challenge...
very nice, now where to display it?