'Tis finished

Last night I sewed the mitred borders on Toby's quilt, it's now ready to go quilting. On reflection (pun) I've noticed it's very bright!! I have a few other kid's UFO's to finish up, but my quilting soul is aching for some adult/duller colours after this one. Perhaps I should wash and then cut my brown and cream fabrics I won at the Patchcom Quiltfest raffle last year (www.patchcom.de) and get started on the Log Cabin quilt I hope to make.
The pattern for Toby's quilt is a fun one and I would love to do it again in roses (and hearts- suprise suprise!) I do love roses and hearts) I had seen someone do this pattern (called "slash a stash") in those ikea rose type fabrics and it looked great... I'll have to add it to my 'Wish-F-O's' although DH would definitely prefer the brown log cabin I'm sure. I think there are probably only so many rose and heart quilts even a 'keeper' can take.

A few minutes piece/peace...

Not that I used the time for quilting, but at least now I'll have no laundry guilt when I do get sewing.... Absolute bliss, both children asleep at once (in my bed as chimney sweep/s were all over the house!). The quilt on the bed is from ages ago and was inspired by a postcard Birgit sent me. I kept the postcard for ages (still have it somewhere), I appliqued the hearts now and again while holding down a hectic London day job, made the triangle blocks with a bit of trial and error (yet again, Birgit taught me a thing or two, this time quarter square triangles!), I still have loads of orphans from that lesson as my quilt maths let me down yet again LOL... then eventually I got the time to put it together.
I remember basting this quilt on Mark's floor (now DH's old floor!) when he/we lived in London. I guess I must have known then: any man you date who lets you baste a quilt on his lounge floor is a keeper!

Christmas comes early, HO HO HO

I won't post a picture, but I am pleased to announce that I won't need to get handwashing! Hubby mentioned a few times that he wished he could have wrapped it etc etc, so I guess it really is my Christmas present! I can think of worse things so I am very pleased indeed with my new washing machine which apparently has a bigger load capacity. Hopefully this means less loads (but more colour-catcher sheets I imagine!). Sewed a bit, but not enough to write a blog about LOL!

One of those days...

Yesterday was definitely one of 'those' days... it started at 4am when baby wouldn't go back to sleep. When I eventually got my tired frame out of bed after being allowed a 'micro' lie-in, I went to hang out the washing only to discover that my trusty machine that has been working like a dog lately had been a very bad washing machine and had 'eaten' the arm off one of Toby's babygrows!
The post cheered me up with some great books from Trudy, but silly old me, I already had one of them! The others are great though and I hope to make some time to read and use them.
On the sewing front, I managed to scrimp and scrape (and patch) enough fabric together for the border of Toby's quilt. With the day I'd been having, I held the rotary cutter at arm's length and was VERY careful! 2 sides are pinned and as soon as the kids are in bed tonight, I'll try and get those on, so that I can grow my pile to send for quilting. I've also been doing bits here and there on the spare kid's quilts front and hope to have 3 to quilt as soon as I've cut and attached borders for those (single borders though!)
And I've been sewing the scrapbuster blocks into pairs (okay well I've only done 3 pairs so far, haha) then I'll sew pairs together to make 4's which will match the blocks I have from another swap. Then I'll have to think what to do with them...

yet another view of Jack's quilt

I had to post this... I was just looking through the photos I took today and here's one of Toby having a sneaky little sleep in Jack's quilt while he was out for a walk. If Jack had seen him, Toby probably would have had it pulled out from under him!

Balls, balls

Finished 2 more balls. Love doing them, but they sure do take a long time. I have to hide them from the kids as they seem to like them. Did some pinning of swapped blocks and will lay them next to my machine for enders and headers and then hopefully I'll be a little bit further to assembling my picnic blanket (for this summer) out of the scrapbuster swap blocks and another smilie quilt made out of 6.5 inch snowball in boy's novelty fabrics.

Quilt maths...yuk

I managed to get the rows together for Toby's quilt and thought I would check I have enough border fabric... I don't! I keep doing this! I got QuiltPro for my birthday, still need to give it a go, but I hope it improves my quilt maths!!!!

Jack's Birthday Quilt

Here's Jack's 1st Birthday Quilt - this picture was taken quite a while ago, he's a lot bigger now! He uses this quilt almost every day. Toby's quilt will probably only get finished after his birthday (like Jack's). And I'm yet to finish Toby's baby quilt!!! I'm terrible, but this blog is to help me with all those UFO's which will be lovely when they're finished. And honsetly I don't have that many UFO's, or do I....?

Slash a Stash

It's taken all evening, but I've finally laid out Toby's First Birthday quilt. I would have left it a bit longer to finish (especially as he's only 6 and a half months!), but Jack doesn't want to share his quilt with Toby that much anymore so I thought I better get going on it. Plus I did start it about 2 years ago before Toby was even a twinkle LOL.

So I will try and get it together and the borders on and then I'll send it off for quilting as my machine quilting on Jack's quilt is not the best and I just don't have the time to practice at the moment. Jack's quilt is half square triangles in similar (and some of the same fabrics) - hope to post a picture of Jack's at some point too, perhaps when they are both finished...

Also stuffed two more balls, will post a picture when they are completely done.

How to start...

I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon, yet again! and start a blog in order to motivate myself to finish some of my UFO's and because I do get stuff done in the few hours I have when the kids have gone to bed! really I do LOL, not a lot I admit, but it's better than nothing.

Recently I've made a patchwork puzzle ball (and started a few others to sell), opened an ETSY shop, made an African Block for Kate and sorted out my sewing room (a bit).