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

Purple Oceans

An unexpected chance to sew

meant I have a few more blocks...

And a few more to go....

But they are all

(bar one which somehow, I cut really weirdly)

ready to be sewn!!!

I even have the border pieces cut!!!

They are in a nice tidy pile,

waiting for some more sewing time...

(Naughty me!: Last night I really got into piecing these blocks

and the studio was so warm...

that it was well after midnight

before I admitted that sleep might be a good idea!

- You just can't beat a bit of me/sewing time!!

Far cheaper than therapy LOL)

Wordless Wednesday - Lily Progress

Sunday Sewing

I have had sick children for over 2 weeks now!!!

Do you know what that means!?!?!

It means they are home off school,

they NEED constant attention

and they create a LOT of extra laundry.

Besides all that there is the worry...

you worry that they seem so unwell,

that some nasty bug just won't go away...

or some nasty teeth are causing pain...

and all you want is to see them better.

Then when they are vaguely better,

you want to sew!!!

Over the last week, I didn't feel

that I could spend much time in the studio

as there was always one child

either crying or being sick,

so I brought in some fabrics from the studio

 and just decided to cut, cut, cut!

(I cut scraps for easy use and I cut a new project.)

In my previous post, I showed the quilt

that inspired my Jelly Bean Borders.

I have really liked that quilt from the first time I saw it.

I also have quite a few Fat Quarters

that I have been 'saving' for a special project.

Well, I wanted to do this project

and I also wanted to use some of these 'special' fabrics....

Here are the first few sewn up.

I think I have another 20 something cut out...

I'm planning on making 48 blocks

and then I'll see what it looks like

with the same borders as before. 

I'm not sure all the blocks will 'work',

but I'll decide that when I have more.

It's really nice to use these favourite FQ's

for some of the blocks as it brings back memories

of either being gifted them or buying them.

*****

Here is one very good excuse

why my house is never tidy!!!:

How can you get cross with a face like this:

Innocence and light LOL