Weekender Sewing "Marathon"

Liz and I deep in thought.

Last Saturday saw the first sewing meeting of the East Midlands Modern Quilt Guild (photos shamelessly stolen from Di , Moira, and Kerry), and the ladies were due to meet up to sew a Weekender Bag using the Amy Butler pattern.  We all headed over to Stitchcraft Studio in Grantham, which is a fabulous fabric shop with workshop rooms and a little cafe- perfect for my favourite things, sewing, eating, fabric shopping and nattering!  You'd think that in nearly 6 hours I would have made some serious progress, but if I'm honest it was a pretty poor attempt, and I only managed the below:

Ooops, the pocket panel is upside down.

This was due to a number of reasons, enhanced procrastination to begin with, as I had decided to do QAYG but due to my head space being cluttered the previous week with moving information, I hadn't actually decided on fabrics to use, so I dragged about 100 fq's with me, and had a bit of a think about it.  

 

Decisions had been made (finally)

My inspiration was this fabulous Weekender made by Cassie which I had seen on Flickr a while back, I loved the monochrome "background" with the pops of colour.  A few weeks ago I had fallen foul of the lovely Justines Tempting Tuesday over at Simply Solids and ordered some bargain Essex Yarn Dyed in Denim (there was no black available) and decided to use it for the piping and lining etc.  

The other reason for the lack of real progress was a simple but good one, the company.  The ladies are just such great company, and I just couldn't resist chatting to them, it is so nice to be with others who share your passion for sewing and quilting.  So although I didn't exactly get it finished or anywhere near, all of the main pieces are cut out, and ready to go.

 So I just need to find a little time to make some more progress, but with my Simply Solids Bee Block for April not having been done yet, and the May block already up, as well as Stitch Tease starting in May, I had best get my skates on!

Others did make better progress, Di had been a good girl and done lots of prep, so she was ready to put hers all together, she finished it over the weekend, and look how fabulous it is!

 

 Trudi was storming ahead too with this beautiful pile of fabrics:


And Kerry has managed to get this far after a little work out of hours:



A big thank you to the lovely Mandy who provided the expertise, canvas and the piping cord, what a total star.  :o)
Ange x

Grumble, Grumble, Changes, Whinge!

Ok, ok, I give in, I am signing up to Bloglovin'  it's done, find me there too.

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Ange x

Nesting...

As so many people have enquired about our house move, and how things are panning out now we're in, I thought I might share a few shots of what has been dubbed "The Ugly House"!  We finally got in just over a week ago, and I can quite honestly say, after the relief had worn off, there was a brief, "What the hell have we done?"  Well, we managed to get over that, and dove straight in to stripping the little ones room of the awful woodchip (badly) painted a horrible orange.

 It's all stripped now, and yesterday I spent the entire day cleaning off wallpaper glue, and sanding down walls- there is still more to go, but we're getting there- although when we removed the wallpaper on the ceiling half the coving fell down!
 
After 2 nights spent camping in our own house, these guys turned up with our belongings, and the good thing is that having things in the house covers up some of the awful, badly applied, paint and decoration!

I will have my own separate sewing room in the new house, and this is the teeny tiny box room that will be my cave to hide in, not sure i'll be keeping the wallpaper, as it makes my eyes hurt, and hopefully I can get round to stripping and painting it soon, then my lovely man will be building a sewing table and shelves for me.  This is how the room looks now, with my fabric and sewing paraphenalia in it, I think we need to be very inventive with the storage!!!

 And for the days when I can't remember why the heck we bought this place whilst I am dealing with the pink and blue ceilings (why the hell would anyone do that??) and gave ourselves all of these jobs, I just need to look at this, my favourite "room" in the new house- and where I had lunch yesterday.
 
Ange x

Congratulations....

.....to all of the brave people running the London Marathon today, in pretty hot conditions, raising a heck of a lot of money for charity, and my especial congratulations to my (much) older brother Mark (41), who completed his first marathon in just under 5 hours, hooray! I'm a very proud little sister. :o)

Ange x

All Done

Despite all of the madness of the last few weeks, I have finally managed to finish my Chevron Quilt for the British Quilt and Stitch Village, which opens on the 26th of April in Uttoxeter.  

This project actually all started with a techniques course I did at Quorn Country Crafts about 12 months ago where I made this little quilt which lives on our sofa for my little one to snuggle under whilst watching TV

It was my first time using solids only, and I rather liked them, and as I had quite a few large pieces of leftover fabric I sat down one afternoon, and started sewing strips of them together.  I cut them into 12.5 inch squares around my ruler and when I ran out of scraps, I decided to buy some more in purples and blues, and kept going until I had 20 squares.  

So after chopping them up I ended up with some alternating chevrons.  Well, that was at the start of September, so I procrastinated for a month of two, put on a white border, and then continued to procrastinate for a further 5 months, until the deadline for the show loomed.  So in a state of extreme homelessness, and when I should have been harassing Estate Agents and Solicitors I decided to escape to this lovely place in Hinckley for the afternoon.

It was great, I had a nice chat to one of the owners, Fay, did a little quilting, and realised I didn't want to heavily quilt it, so it was feasible to get it finished for the show.  I can neither confirm nor deny that I celebrated news of exchanging contracts with buying a little fabric :o).

And so, over last week/end, in a little holiday home in Melbourne in Derbyshire, I finished up the quilting, binding, adding of the sleeve, and the show entry details.  And so here we are, 


a finished quilt, and I can honestly say I love the front AND the back.  Some of the not very straight line quilting doesn't bother me either, as I have finally finished it- thank goodness, I was starting to bore myself with all of the procrastination, well it has been nearly a year of fannying!

This beauty will be hand delivered to the showground by Mr H.O.C on Monday on his way home from work, and I will get to go and see it next weekend, yay. :o)))) 

I've been pretty busy other than this, but more of that next time....

Ange x  
 

Finish Along- Moving Day

As if i don't have enough to do today, i thought i had better get myself into the Finish Along list, to really get me going!  My projects for this quarter are:

Chevron Quilt:

Hexy Quilt

Craftsy BOM Quilt 2012 (4 blocks still to do)

Siblings Together Quilt


Put Together Crochet Blanket

Its the quilty quarter!


Ange x