So behind..

July already and I've not blogged stuff from June!!

Here goes!!!:
The white corners are in! After a fruitless search for the white rose print, I just ordered some plain Kona white fabric and got on with putting the corners in on my Carolina Lily, the English paper-piecing way.


Now I need to add the borders which I plan to do with papers in as well although that may be tricky. I have pinned the corner flowers ready for stitching together and then appliqueing onto the white. Slow and steady as they say...



The garden is coming on a treat. We could do with a lot more bees, but the mix of hot weather one day and rainy weather the next means everything is thriving.

My roses:


The peas taste good, even if some people are impatient (early) pluckers!!:


Strawberries waiting for some sun:


First courgettes: (Yippeee!)


First cucumber: (Double yippee!!)



I found a wallhanging I had started donkey's years ago. I offered it to my neighbour for a new member of her extended family...

All she has to do is stitch some of the iron-on flowers and butterflies down and add a binding...

(one UFO off my list LOL!!)

The Levens Quilt show was held on the last weekend of June. I went with my neighbour and was very restrained. I only bought one FQ of brown, a box of pins (always need pins!!) and a holiday apron kit type thing. The quilts were great. Here are 2 of my favourites:
L OV E D this one:
And this one: (nice and scrappy yet a nice limited palette)


Then (also in June) was the school Sport's Day which went by in a whizz: :-)



Egg and spoon: (oops! LOL)


Spectators:

Winners:


A nice surprise:
(Although I was informed that "it's only for picnics, not for the bed" - maybe she thought I didn't like it!! I did, it's cute!)

That's all folks. See you in August at this rate:-)))

Cats & Dogs

My second finish for 2010.

The front:



The back:


The label:



This quilt or idea and fabrics for it have been around a while. I finally finished the top last year in the hopes that I could get it longarmed for DS1's birthday in September, but that didn't happen in time so it just got put aside for yet another bit. As I'm due to go into hospital soon, I just wanted to get it done so I machine quilted it myself with a wiggly line around all the blocks and up and down the borders in a sort of grid formation.

I finished sewing the binding and label on last night, but am not sure now when I'll give it to him, perhaps sooner rather than later as it's been so cold here and he could at least use it while it still so icy out (only problem is I haven't really started DS2's Mickey Mouse quilt and I haven't much time before my operation!)

PS we get some strange birds, feeding on our birdfeeder, these days!

Raining cats and dogs

I can't remember, it has been so long in the works, but I think I started this quilt (or at least the cutting thereof) for my eldest son's first or second birthday. He will be five this year and I have only this last week managed to get this quilt to 'flimsie-ish' stage.

No borders yet as I still have my youngest son's quilt to do and I need to keep an eye on my yardage...

I cut so many dog and cat squares for the first quilt (no planning as usual LOL) so I have more than enough for a second quilt, only this time I'm thinking of doing simple snowball blocks...

This week saw us at DS1's first Sport's Day.

(We were clearly Sport's Day novices as we neglected to bring folding chairs, umbrellas, picnic rugs and a taste for watery tea LOL...)

My eldest is still only in Nursery, so there weren't many races for him, but I think he had a great time in the rain and in the scattered sunshine :-)

On your marks... get set... (err... whenever you're ready)... go ;-)


First sack race...

all good fun.

Progress report

After another tidy up where the house is still nowhere near where it needs to be, I rewarded myself with some sewing... not much sewing, BUT I have almost finished my bag for Linda's bag swap and I have worked on my Booty swap as well as making my blocks for Aryn's quilt organised by Alison for Kid’s Quilts...


These were mailed this afternoon.

Here are some sneak peaks of the swap stuff...
Mmm... a bag perhaps? We'll see...



And what's this? It's awfully small....



Now it's packing and more cleaning and tidying in preparation for a very mini-break to London tomorrow where I will be delivering this...



Photos taken on our first sunny day in a looooong time!



With a label!


Oh, and here's the dratted trophy LOL.




And the article in the village paper...



3 of us (as in my family) made it in to the photo in the paper, except for DS1 who was hiding under a table!!! That boy is going to be the gray hairs of me!!!

I am not quite sure what to do with it. I have never won a trophy before and would quite frankly like to return it before I lose it LOL, but I guess it will have to sit around here and collect dust until next year!!

Here's the painting...


It's a bit blurry, but I struggled to get a shot as it has a plastic mount cover...
I did it while at college. It's titled: 'My dad was an electrical man'. Quite sentimental to me. Everything about my Dad tugs at my heart. We lost him when I was 12. Anyway I'm sure he would've been proud.(not of my dust though LOL)

When I come back I am going to clear out my sewing space and give some bits away so I hope there will be lots of homes out there... in fact I found ANOTHER bag of assorted African fabric scraps which I would love to giveaway.



There are scraps of all sorts of sizes and qualities and quite a lot so perhaps I should divide them into 2 bags... just leave a comment if you would like them and I'll draw 2 names on the 30th of August.

Happy Customers

In a rush (!) to get a kid's quilt done for a friend's son who was visiting yesterday, I resorted to my 'cheater's binding' again. I will show how to do it in another post (if you're interested). With only a few days to get it done, I thought I'd just quickly do 'my' binding again. In fact it's so quick I managed to put the binding on 3 kid's quilts in 2 days with another kid's quilt ready to be pinned...

Here's the 'gift' quilt... (sorry a bit blurry - I blame the quilt-rack LOL)


Here's the 'happy customer'


We had gorgeous weather today so we went outside and made use of our 'entertainment centre'...



Both boys had to have an afternoon nap after that! Here's DS1 under another quilt I finished this week

This will be a spare travelling quilt with the purpose of story-telling from the 'I-spy' pictures.

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??)