Monday 30 May 2011

My Boy

.......is 2!  We've had a busy week.  I've been on holiday and spent the first half of the week preparing for the Toddlers AGM last Wednesday.  Being the group treasurer does involve a fair bit of work making sure that everything is up to date and logged properly so I wanted to make sure that I had everything correct.  Which meant that I checked, double checked and triple checked the accounts before the meeting.

Then Thursday was the Dude's birthday, this is him in one part of his birthday present.  We didn't get a chance to build it up until the morning of his birthday which was interesting to say the least.  It's looks fairly simple doesn't it?  We didn't think it would take very long - it's only a few pieces of plastic after all!  Over 2 hours later we had a different view of it!  But he loves it so that's all that mattered.  The other part of his present, which is bigger, went together so much easier and quicker - sod's law eh! (that's my nephew checking out the doorbell)


I attempted to go one better than last year's cake and I'm pleased with the result.  I'm going to spend some time this year improving my icing technique before the next birthday but it tasted really good and my butter icing was just amazing :)  (that'll be why my jeans are tight!)
And to finish off my week off work we spent the weekend at Grannie's Heilan' Hame holiday park.  It's at Embo, which I'd never heard of before, but it's about 3 miles from Dornoch (the place where Madonna and Guy Ritchie got married) and it's lovely.  Check out this beach ....... (and blue sky)
I'll be back tomorrow with more about the weekend.  Just now I'm off to have a decent cuppa (I'm contemplating taking my own mug on holiday the next time to try and get a proper cup of tea) and watch a programme about space archaeology!??!

Friday 20 May 2011

Thinking & Playing

I've been doing some more thinking about my design for my mini quilt for my BQS partner.  I'm leaning more towards doing the flying geese design but I think I'll probably make up the shoofly/pinwheel combo too.  More just to see if I can do it LOL.

 Anyway, I've been redrawing the flying geese (how hard is it to find graph paper btw, I had to download it!), and playing about with how it will look and trying to decide on fabrics.  I'm more or less settled on these.  They are Kaffe Fassett, bundle of about 25 fabrics which I bought at the Festival of Quilts 4 years ago I think and never really figured out how best to use them.
But I also acquired some fabric for the shoofly block (i.e. paid my sister a visit and somehow left her house with these in my possession!!)
 I've got a week off (I mentioned that yesterday) and although we've got a few things planned, including a small person's birthday (where have the last 2 years gone?), I intend to get some serious sewing time built into my week.  We're also going away for the weekend next Friday so I'm going to take something with me.  Possibly try my hand at hexagons.

Thursday 19 May 2011

Brit Quilt Swap

I've been playing about with some designs for my swap partner, I've got all their details with their likes and dislikes so I've got some ideas running round my head.  I've played about with the designs I posted the other day, which were my first drafts, and added some colour.


 This is a off centre shoofly block with pinwheel blocks round 2 sides. 
 This one is a half log cabin block repeated 4 times in a square.  I will not be using these colours, I was just playing about with felt tip pens.
The last one is flying geese with the middle row facing the opposite direction. 

I can't decide which one I like the best.  I'm tempted to make up all three and then see what I like the most.  

 I've been trying to make my garden look a bit more welcoming late, I do NOT have green fingers.  I have a tendency to kill plants, no matter what I do they end up dead!  So when I looked at these baskets this afternoon and I had pleasant surprise.  If you look closely at the fuschia there are little flower buds.  Look!
 Tiny little flowers nearly ready to bloom!  I planted up 4 different fuschias and this is the first one to show any signs of flowers so I'm really, really pleased :)  And this little orange pot takes me back to my childhood, it's got sunflowers growing in it - from seed!!  I planted them up, explaining to my little man what would happen so it's exciting to see them growing and seeing Euan taking an interest.  (ok, he just wants to water it ALL the time but he's still taking an interest).
I'm now off on holiday for a week and I'm looking forward to having time to relax, spend some decent time with my little man, my husband and get some sewing done stress free. 

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Crazy animals and busy times!

Well I think that's what the fabric is called!  I can't actually remember and none of the selvedges I can find have the full name.  But it's by Moda, at least I know that.  I've had the material for a few months (think I bought it at the Scottish Quilt Championships last October but it might have been the spring one!) but couldn't think what to do with it.  So after seeing a few square in square quilts over the last few months I decided it would be an ideal design to show this fabric off.  The white fabric is actually a white duvet cover that I bought in Asda.

Really need to try and take some pictures in daylight, these don't really do the fabric justice.  Still to sew the rows together but it's taking shape really well.  I'm planning to give it a border so should get than done by the weekend hopefully.  Mind you we've got our next block in the Mystery Quilt - paper piecing, another new technique for me, which is great looking forward to try my hand at that.  And we've now got our partner info in the Brit Quilt Swap so I've got my thinking cap on to design something for my partner.  These are my first 2 ideas, scribbled out very quickly during my lunch yesterday.
 To top of last night look what I spied outside and double rainbow!  The sky had a really cool pink tinge to it for a while afterwards too.

Monday 9 May 2011

First of many

and many firsts this weekend.  Like the first block being created for my first mystery quilt (see the wee linkie thing at the right hand side).
My first attempts both 1/2 square and 1/4 square triangles - they're not as difficult as I expected.  Who'da thunk it!!  I really enjoyed making it, only one small error where I misread the distructions but it was easily and quickly fixed.

My first time using orange (ok not a big first, but a first nonetheless!).  It actually goes surprisingly well with my couch and carpet in my livingroom which is a pleasant coincidence.  My first block sewn with my new 1/4" foot - huge difference in my precision, admittedly the block could be better but that was because I was rushing to get finished so was getting sloppy.  (I'm still contemplating unpicking one seam and redoing)

Not a new first but my first in a LONG, LONG time.  I bought a SMALL size from M&S this weekend, it's a belt, not a pair of jeans but it's still a small.  I honestly don't remember the last time I bought anything to wear that had small on it.  It's been a bit of bumpy weight loss road I've been on lately but I've still lost 1.5st and I'm back on track this week so we'll see what I've lost tomorrow.

And lastly the first of many new words from this little person, I can't keep up with everything that he's coming away with these days!  We've had everything from window, jam, milk to Judy and Darkest Peru tonight (we were reading Paddington).  I can't believe it will be his 2nd birthday in 2 weeks, it's just flown past.

Saturday 7 May 2011

It's been longer than I thought

but I'm back!  It's been a strange week, what with having another long weekend, then we had a childcare issue which caused more stress than it needed to.  At the same time as that my laptop decided it didn't fancy working AT ALL but all is well with it now, I did think briefly that I'd lost my photos of Euan from when he was born but it didn't happen thank goodness.  My photos have now been backed up (and will be on a regular basis from now on!).

It's also been hetic at work and I've had to work different hours this week too, so it's been a confusing week all round.  So I've had little spare time, just a ton of housework to catch up on.