September 10, 2009
We went to the Festival of Quilts show again this year and again is was really good. Lots of quilts to look at and draw inspiration from and lots of wonderful stalls to help us spend some money! There seemed to be a lot of Art Quilts this year which I’m not too keen on. Some were very clever I will say that but I much preferred the traditional and some of the contemporary ones.
We found one stall, The Seattle Quilt Company, selling wonderful flannels. I couldn’t resist and have bought some lovely pale green ones to make a blanket for my youngest child – watch this space!! Meant to be for Christmas so best get a wriggle on!
Another stall we went to was Lin Patterson with her wonderful hand dyed velvet and cotton. My mum and I both bought some velvet at last years show and never managed to do anything with it. Well this time I have made sure I was going to use my purchase. So having bought some of her hand dyed cotton fabric I have just finished a cushion using that and the velvet. There was just enough of the cotton fabric to do both sides.
September 4, 2009
We’ve just returned from a week in the sun! Booked last minute and a very good decision it was too. Lovely sunny days (>30 degrees), no clouds, most importantly no rain, stunning views, a pool and plenty of relaxing (even with children around!).
Early in the morning we left Bristol in the cold and wet and arrived in Malaga mid-morning to glorious hot sunny weather! Travelled for an hour or so in our delightful hire car – a Berlingo!! (Never again!) up into the hills towards Granada where we found our villa! Nothing around but a few houses, a bakery, a deli and a small shop. Much of the week was spent in the pool or sitting by the pool. We watched some locals crushing their grapes. Loads of fruit trees growing around the villa but still haven’t worked out one of the fruits!
It was a shock to the system to return to a very wet and cold Bristol a week later.
Our Spanish villa
May 17, 2009
P took the older children out on their bikes for a few hours this afternoon, baby went to bed and after getting dinner organised I sat down to do some sewing. I received a jelly roll for Christmas and I keep getting it out, sitting looking at it, pulling it all about and still can’t decide what to do with it. So today I thought ‘right this is it I’m going to decide on my project’. I imported all the fabrics into my quilting package, played around with many designs and colour selections but still couldn’t make a pattern or colour scheme work.
It’s now late and I’m still trying to decide on the pattern. I’m kind of hindered tonight by my six month old daughter being grumpy and not wanting to do anything but moan and wriggle. Looks like the decision is put off once again! I shall get the books out again for inspiration.
May 17, 2009
I have finished P’s quilt. It’s been finished for a little while now but just haven’t got round to photographing it. I’m quite pleased with it now it’s done. I was very dubious about it being ‘scrappy’. I tend to like quite simple colour schemes or designs with few fabrics. So this was quite a challenge. I am so impressed with myself that it hasn’t taken me several years to complete, shows what you can do when you put your mind to it. It is very simply machine quilted but decided it didn’t need lots of quilting as it’s already quite busy. It got big too, what started off as a snuggle quilt has turned into a very generous single bed quilt! It now fits comfortably on our sofa bed which is handy when visitors come or sick childern keep us up all night!
May 16, 2009
We had spinach from the garden for tea last night! And even Abi said it was good! It’s a good job it tastes that good as it seems to have taken over and is growing very well. So I guess it will be spinach again for tea tonight, and possibly tomorrow and possibly for a few more days after that! I guess we could have a night off and eat some of the lettuce which also seems to be doing very well. Must be something to do with the amount of rain we’ve had lately.
February 9, 2009
Yey, the squares are finally all made for my latest project. I feel I have been making these 5 inch blocks forever. I did warn P that the quilt probably won’t be usable until next winter! But then with 3 children it’s very likely that, even with the baby being 1 year old by then, we’ll still be up all hours of the night needing some warmth. Now I just have to sew them all into rows.
Although this is supposedly a stash buster quilt, I am now on the hunt for something to use as a border. There just never seems to be quite the right piece of fabric at home to do the job! Shame.
February 2, 2009
I announced to our 5 year old this morning that it had snowed during the night. She loves the snow but we rarely get anything here and so is always disappointed. This morning was really no different. She rushed to the window to look and then said “That’s not snow mummy that’s just frost”! Despite the tiny scattering of snow she still tried to make snowballs on the way to school! It’s been trying all morning to snow so perhaps we’ll get enough flakes tonight to actually call it snow.
February 1, 2009
I was sewing the blocks of my latest quilting project until our 9 week old daughter put a stop to that by waking up and demanding feeding. So now the sewing machine sits (once again) idle behind me. My daughter lays (once again) in my arms pretending to be asleep until I attempt to move her to her own chair. And I attempt to write something on this blog that my husband has just created for me!
