Saturday, 30 March 2013
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Making Me Smile - 13/52
This is my desk all closed down for the Easter hols. No more workin' for a week or so. BIG SMILE TODAY!!!!!!!!!!
PS - As these Making Me Smile posts are random and not exactly earth shattering in their originality or content, please don't feel obliged to comment. I love to read your witty remarks and generous encouragement if you want to, but if you're thinking "what on earth...?" then you can leave me to my own wee world where smiles are generated by small stuff these days! I started this project in the New Year just to see if I could pick up on the little things this year but I didn't realise how hard it would be to get variety in the pics of stuff making me smile. I highly suspect that when I look back at the end of the year these pics will prove my smiles have been generated mostly by family, food and fabric - not such a bad thing, really!
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Sew Many Plans - April 2013
This March is not going out like a lamb that's for sure. Snow is still lingering in our labyrinthine streets out here in the sticks of NI, and I want to see some spring, pleeeeeeaaase ...
It doesn't feel like I got to the sewing room nearly as often as I'd have liked this month, but there were a few blasts of activity which achieved this little lot:
- Fun Bee Blessed blocks using the Happy Zombie Funky Wrench pattern - I really like how these blocks look and can't wait to see all the variations arriving from you lovely peeps for our quilt top. I also finished piecing a top from the Inspirational words blocks that Judith helped me to make. I think this is what I'm most proud of this month.
- Rachel's beautiful butterscotch Puss in The Corner block was stitched up and despatched back for her hipBees quilt.
- 3 blocks were added to the collection for the Special Birthday Sampler Quilt.
- The crocheted snood was finished and, I'm sad to say, is getting MUCH use.
- Mother's Day was serviced with a Martha May bag and a kindle case.
- Those lingering baby taggies are no longer upsetting my WIP/UFO pile. Hooray!!
- And, I stitched up a wee sunglasses case for a gift and started the preparations for a new EPP project.
So what about April?
Hmmm, I am really torn this month by wanting desperately to do some new things and knowing that I really need to get some of my "already starteds" across the finish line. Getting the balance right is difficult sometimes...
So here goes,
Bee Blessed - there will be new blocks to be made
hipBees - Karen is our Queen Bee for April - wonder what block she'll ask us to make for her? Also, it's my turn to be QB in May, so I need to get organised to send out those little packages at the end of the month!
Special Birthday Sampler Quilt - I'd love to get blocks 9 & 10 ticked off, though I haven't decided which blocks they should be yet.
An Infinity Scarf - it WILL be spring soon and I WILL be able to retire the snood until the autumn so, living in hope, and believing the folks who say these take no time at all to make, I'd like to sneak one of these into my list for April.
I would really love to add some more new projects to the list, but this seems like more than enough to be getting on with and much as I want to start new things, I don't want to increase that UFO list over there on the right! (Placing sensible head on.)
Hope you all have a fabulous Easter break and lots of time to indulge your stitchy passions.
Saturday, 23 March 2013
Snowed In!
Yesterday's deluge of snow left us with a legacy of a 17hr power cut and rather a lot of effort required to dig all of the cars out of driveways or out of their abandoned positions in the street (some of my neighbours had come home late last night and couldn't get their cars all the way home).
In the last three years we have had some very heavy snowfalls, but this one was the most snow I have seen since we lived here. This morning we cleared our back steps, but instead of stepping down off the bottom step on to the driveway, you now have to step back UP off the bottom step onto the snow level!!! Crazy.
Early Saturday morning brought a flurry of more snow and of neighbours with shovels clearing a way out of our development and out of individual driveways - just the kind of hard work that leaves you gasping for a great cup of tea - if there was electricity!! Or, if your hubby is an outdoor fanatic and has a handy dandy gas stove!
Job done. Now we're all just hoping for no more snow!!
And, since there was no electricity to set my sewing machine a-whirring, I positioned myself in front of the fire with all those paper pieces I showed you yesterday and got basting! Electricity came back on just in time for me to have to make dinner instead of sending hubby out for a takeaway - typical!!
If you've had snow, I hope you are safe and warm or enjoying the snowmen and snowballs!!
Friday, 22 March 2013
Snow plans
My car is under there somewhere! The white stuff is falling fast and looks like it has no plans to let up tomorrow. Could be a day or two before we can venture forth. Good job I have plenty of fabric to play with!
A snowy afternoon made me face my fears and finish off those long neglected baby taggy feelies for the craft sale (deferred for a while anyway).
With those out of the way, I felt that maybe I could justifiably consider a wee new fun project ....
Lots of paper pieces in a whole range of sizes from that irregular hexagon to the teeny sliver beside it and everything in between. We are not going to talk about how it might be possible to baste a sliver of paper - I didn't think it through, but I'm going to blunder on regardless.
I've been saving my precious remaining Ruby scraps for this wee project - happy dance!! I can't wait to get some of this stitched up so I can show you!
Hope you all have great plans for the weekend!
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Monday, 18 March 2013
Weekend Tidbits
Firstly, let me say a massive thank you for sharing your experiences and thoughts on the questions about alternatives to Google Reader and on tablets. I really appreciate that you took time to let me know what you know and I will certainly be looking into them in due course. There's no way I want to lose touch with all the blogs I follow regularly and I know that just having some of you listed in my sidebar will not mean I see everything you're up to, so this definitely something I want to sort out sooner rather than later. If anyone else is interested in what people have had to suggest as alternatives to the loss of Google reader or their experiences on blogging from a tablet take a look at the comments on the last post.
In stitchy news, I have been finishing off the quilting and binding on this cute little panel that was donated to Bee Blessed.
I quilted it in a diagonal grid reminiscent of garden trellis and added red polka dot binding. I still absolutely love the butterflies on the backing and hope they will make some little girl very happy!
I also stitched up a wee going away pressie for my lovely young colleague at work who has decided to take herself on an Australian adventure for a year. With packing being kept to an absolute minimum, I didn't want to encumber her with something she won't have space for and just opted to make her a wee flex frame pouch for her sunnies. I hope she will like it and be able to fling it in her bag when she's off to the beach in the glorious sunshine! Not that I'm jealous, much...
I did have plans to sketch the words "sunnies" on it, but let's just say my efforts were less than acceptable and I reverted back to just the applique of the sunglasses. I love this so much that I now have a list of another 7 that will be made as gifts over the course of the next few months, including end of term teacher pressies for June. Yay for having a plan!
Moving on from the pretty to the practical, I thought I'd share a stitchy housekeeping tip with you for defluffing your cutting mat. When my mat starts to look like this -
I reach for my handy dandy lint roller (less than £2 from IKEA with great value refills too). Don't just swipe the roller from left to right to defluff it. That action is great for picking up rogue threads and trimmings, but for really shifting the wadding and fabric fluff that's gripping in there, you need to position your roller at the bottom of the fluff line (just like in the pic above) and push it up the line to the top of the mat. Does that make sense? No rolling involved, just a good old push and friction.
Your roller strip will look grungy after that but, hey presto, one defluffed mat in a matter of seconds.
Give it a go, I promise it's worth a try!
In stitchy news, I have been finishing off the quilting and binding on this cute little panel that was donated to Bee Blessed.
I quilted it in a diagonal grid reminiscent of garden trellis and added red polka dot binding. I still absolutely love the butterflies on the backing and hope they will make some little girl very happy!
I also stitched up a wee going away pressie for my lovely young colleague at work who has decided to take herself on an Australian adventure for a year. With packing being kept to an absolute minimum, I didn't want to encumber her with something she won't have space for and just opted to make her a wee flex frame pouch for her sunnies. I hope she will like it and be able to fling it in her bag when she's off to the beach in the glorious sunshine! Not that I'm jealous, much...
 |
| Just so you can see that with a 3.5" flex frame this pouch is nice and roomy even for sunglasses deeper than mine. |
I did have plans to sketch the words "sunnies" on it, but let's just say my efforts were less than acceptable and I reverted back to just the applique of the sunglasses. I love this so much that I now have a list of another 7 that will be made as gifts over the course of the next few months, including end of term teacher pressies for June. Yay for having a plan!
Moving on from the pretty to the practical, I thought I'd share a stitchy housekeeping tip with you for defluffing your cutting mat. When my mat starts to look like this -
I reach for my handy dandy lint roller (less than £2 from IKEA with great value refills too). Don't just swipe the roller from left to right to defluff it. That action is great for picking up rogue threads and trimmings, but for really shifting the wadding and fabric fluff that's gripping in there, you need to position your roller at the bottom of the fluff line (just like in the pic above) and push it up the line to the top of the mat. Does that make sense? No rolling involved, just a good old push and friction.
Your roller strip will look grungy after that but, hey presto, one defluffed mat in a matter of seconds.
 |
| See? No fluff. |
Give it a go, I promise it's worth a try!
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