Spring has NOT Sprung here yet!

I laid out all my blocks for my Purple Oceans quilt...

And have pinned them together to sew.

Borders are cut and I'll do them

as soon as I've got these together.

How I continually fail at quilt maths is beyond me :)

3 extra blocks!!!

ALL in the purple/brown colourway!

*****

Spring sadly has not arrived...

The sheep still shiver and snow lies on the ground

where it just will not melt away

nevertheless, it was Easter
and eggs were to be found!!!

The boys still had their Easter baskets

I made them years ago,

and of course Miss-Kalico had to get one made too!

She got lots of help

and lots of loot :)

Happy Easter to All!

Burying Thread Tails

I found this super video on YouTube

for burying your thread tales:

What a great tip!!

Yellow Yellow

If you know me...

you know that I am not a fan of yellow,

but I saw this door in Lancaster

and I love doors, so...

I had to love this :)

We'd gone to Lancaster for blood tests

for my youngest son

who is just not himself...
He was also NOT happy having his finger pricked

and squeezed and squeezed...

He hates plasters (even fun ones!),

but he loves sweets :(
They cheered him up.

It was a yellow day...

*****

Today we went to Kendal to get the boys some shoes

They had free facepainting at the shopping centre.

We came home with a snake:

And a leopard:

*****

My first practise quilt is ready to come off the longarm :)

I really enjoyed it.

I quilted this kids quilt with 'Stars and Loops'.

Then I quickly cut some binding

and not caring that it was past midnight,

I whipped some borders on the next top I plan to quilt.

It's a top with Maple Leaf blocks

that I swapped ages ago.
I did think to do a leaf panto, but I'm going with roses

in pale pink thread.

I just need to piece the back

and get it ironed and ready.

Looking at this picture I'm wondering if I should do leaves....

mmm, I may have to think about this....

And so to Bed...

I was recently given a bed head to recover.

This is the 'Before'

i.e. this was the original cover:

 This was the brief:

A curtain from the room the bed head will live in....

 This was the idea stage:

 The 'After':

The side detail:

I used the curtain from the 'brief' for the back and sides

The back:

 The 'After' including cushions

made out of the original cover:

*****

On another note:

please accept my apologies if you got a spam email

from me. Well it wasn't from me, it was from

goodness knows who, or more importantly,: why?

Honestly these people should quilt,

it would keep them out of trouble LOL

Brrr! Cold Weather Crafting

I have loaded my first practise quilt on to the machine,

And I'm using a pantograph called stars and loops...

It's fun to do

and I'll hopefully start making a dent in my UFOs!

*****

But it's been bitterly cold out.

I missed getting photos of the snow drifts

as I was tucked up inside,

but the snow went right up the walls I was told...

While inside, ... I laid out my Scrappy Trip blocks

to see where I was with them...

Just a few more to make a picnic blanket for a friend.

I cut a pattern for and made an Easter Bunny...

And did some Easter crafting with the boys...

This is my youngest son's egg.

He likes things just so.

No help from me besides supervising the glue tube

produced a really pretty egg...

My older son is much more random

and definitely not as fussy

as to decorative element postitioning :)

This is my elder son's Easter 'Bonnet'

I had some lovely green bobble trim

and he just snipped all the bobbles off

to glue them randomly on his hat :)

My younger son of course was into symmetry...

Each decoration placed with care.

Two children so so different.

I Have Been Sewing, I Promise...

...I haven't JUST been looking after sick children!!!!

I have made all 66 Ocean Wave blocks that I needed...

Actually, I needed 64!

Not sure what happened there? :o)

I have made some more Scrappy Trip blocks

as Leaders & Enders....

Oh and I have done some 'committment sewing' too.

Can't show that until the recipient sees it,

but remind me never to say yes

 to ANYTHING that needs to be 3D.

My brain just does not work in 3D or HD or... LOL.

PS, Do you like my 'Design Hand'?

It's because my 'Design Floor' has been taken up by

my lovely Longarm machine!!!

Time for a 'Design Wall' me thinks!

Wordless Wednesday - Lost Treasures?

Somebody Pinch Me!

I still can't believe she's actually here

and happily living in my studio.

(By 'living' I mean taking up pretty much most of my studio LOL)

I never thought that I would ever be able to say this, but it's true:

 I am now the very proud owner

of my own Longarm quilting machine.

and I am thrilled!

Now if I can just figure out how to get the best out of her

(and me) we'll be sorted!

Just 3 More Leaves

Just...

 3 more leaves to stitch down

and then I need to decide on berries...

If I'd followed the pattern...

I'd know how many berries I need,

BUT, I appliqued far too many leaves

so I will have to see if the berries

suffer the same fate :)

 The papers are still in:

 I English Paper-Pieced the bulk of the quilt,

 And I like to leave the papers in

until I'm almost ready to quilt.

But that's just the way I do it...

A Finish For February...

A Finish?...Well almost... :)

The binding IS on...

And it has been beautifully

custom longarm-quilted by Chris!

A case of the quilting making the quilt indeed!

(Picture heavy because I wanted to show the gorgeous quilting...)

BUT...

And here's the 'but'...
when I started this quilt in the 1980's

I didn't know what I was doing...

And so I backed each block with batting

and muslin and handquilted it in pearl cotton...

Meaning that when I tried to handquilt it,

it was too heavy going,

The quilt also ended up too large

after I'd joined the four large blocks and put borders on...

Chris kindly helped me unpick my handquilting...
And did a great job of echoing the stars with her custom quilting...

But (and here's that 'but' again!)

she couldn't quilt over my quilting
as it would have been impossible to get a needle through it!!!

So, although it's quilted

AND bound!

It needs some attention to the unquilted bits:

Not much, in my opinion, ahem :)

But enough to fix the 3 layers together

However, a finish is a finish...

Well almost! :)

Wordless Wednesday - Bears