Speedy Make

I had an idea in my head last week for a quick lap quilt for my Granda's birthday.  He is the fantastic age of 93 today.  I bought a lovely layer cake at FoQ last month which was just asking to be used to who was I to deny the cutting of fabric to be carried out.

I have no idea what the fabric is called or who designed it unfortunately but I do know that it from Robert Kaufman and it's lovely.  I changed by mind about the design mid way through last week so by Friday I needed to go and buy some sashing material and backing fabric.

Saturday naptime I managed to get the fabric cut out, Saturday evening I started to piece the blocks until my machine fell out with me and stopped working.  So I threw in the towel in trying to fix it and went to bed!  Got up Sunday morning with renewed energy determined to figure out what was wrong with my machine so I did this

and gave it a good old clean.  Hoovers out quite nicely actually, but no still no joy in getting it to do more than one stitch before it jammed up and refused to work.  *insert a very stressed person, lots of shouty, growly, thumping about and threatening to throw it out of the window*  But then for some reason I looked at the bobbin .............

I had been using the one on the left!  It should look like the one on the right.  No wonder it kept pushing he bobbin case out of the machine.  So once that was sorted it was like working with a different machine and it was full steam head.  So as daddy kept the dude occupied (ok they watched a dvd but it kept them out of my hair) I got all quilt top pieced.  Another short nap time and I got the layers basted.  We then went to visit my Granda at his nursing home.  He was in fine fettle if a little confused (apparently he was going to visit his auntie!).  We then got home and when daddy did bedtime I got on with the quilting, making and attaching the binding.  I finished about midnight last night!  But I'm really happy with it and what's more so is my Granda!

I did worry that it might be a bit too modern for a 93 yr old but he talked about it all afternoon apparently (after asking my dad if he needed to go to school today, bless him!).  We got it home because I forgot to attach a label with his name on it but I'll get that done tomorrow. 

A Wee Test

I'm having a play with my new Android phone and being fairly useless with technology I not always convinced these things will work. So this is my first attempt.to blog straight from my phone!

I am even going to try adding in a photo of 'pirate Euan'!!

Procastination

be thy middle name!!  Oh dear, I don't know if it's post holiday blues or just laziness (I'm leaning more towards the latter) but I've struggled to get back to my normal level of organisation since I came back from Embo.  I get little bursts of energy/enthusiasm but they don't last very long ...........

......... or I get interrupted. (I did start this post at 1.30pm today but a little person decided he'd had enough sleep so it's now 6pm and he's busy watching the Bedtime Hour on Cbeebies - I know dreadful parenting eh!)

Anyway, this week has been busy with getting back to work, catching up on everything that went on when I was off and getting back into our normal routine.  So all fun stuff has kind of taken a bit of back seat but I have been getting on with my hexagons.  This is 71 of them sewn together, I not sure what I'm going to do with it to be honest.  I did have a bit of an idea of making them into a cushion cover but I'm not sure about that now.  It's a funny shape of I need to cut out more and then see where I get too.

The husband is off working tonight so I'm planning to get some more hexies cut out and try to get some more of my mystery quilt done.

I've also been spending some time this week doing a little bit of family history research which has been really interesting.  It's something me and my dad have talked about doing for years but never really got round to doing anything about it.  But with my grandad's 93rd birthday coming up my dad wanted to find out if he will be the longest living of all his siblings, he was one of 7 and is the only one still living.  So that has meant a bit of digging about to find out birth dates and then that led to finding out marriage dates and similar information.  So in a short number of hours the other night I discovered that when my grandad's parents married  in 1906, his mum was 25, 3 years older than his dad and both her parents were deceased which my dad didn't know.  In fact there seems to be quite  few marriages in my family history where the bride was older than the groom which I think is quite unusual.