I am excellent at starting things, or more particularly, buying all the things I need to start something. I am not so good at dedicating regular time to sewing, or to finishing one thing before I start (or shop for) the next. As a result, I am involved in quite a few projects which I thought I would share.
That's not a quilt?
No, it's not. My introduction to quilting involved promising myself I would make time to do so, and I tested this with learning to knit and crochet. My Granny is a wonderful knitter and was quite enthusiastic about helping me. I remember sitting in her living room when I was little watching her knit and watch telly at the same time. She's so fast and doesn't even need to look at her work! Now, that is where 75 years of practice will get you but I'm still amazed.
When her first Great Grandchild was born (my cousin had a baby in 2009) she made him a blanket. She also made him hundreds of other little bits and bobs, but the blanket was the thing she specifically told me about because she had crocheted it, which she doesn't normally do. In fact, her friend had taught her how to do so especially for the blanket. I really like the idea of the two of them sitting crocheting together and hope my friends and I do things like that when we're 80 odd. By the time the second Great Grandchild came along, Granny was finding knitting less easy on the hands, but she still made lots of lovely things. She wanted to make sure he had a blanket too and made 48 squares. These have been ready for months, but she couldn't muster the enthusiasm to sew them together (she and my Aunt agree knitting is fun, but sewing it together is boring). Being relatively new to the game, I volunteered to sew them all together for her.
I have had them in my house for about four weeks and made a few attempts to work out the best way to attach the squares, but have not been as dedicated to the task as I should have been. I have now decided to crochet around each of the squares and attach them in the same way I did my Granny Square blanket.
Baby Quilt 2
The top was made in January,
the quilting was done and the binding was added in February...
.....and now I just need to hand sew the back of the binding in March. This is for my pal who had her first baby a fortnight ago - if I could only finish this sewing, I could go see them!
Present
My Future Mother In Law decorated her living room just before Christmas. New curtains, new furniture - the works. The colours are dark red and grey and I wanted to make her cushion covers to match. They found some lovely fabric for the curtains and I surreptitiously acquired some for the centre of a cushion cover.
I thought it looked a bit grubby so I washed it, which I think was probably a mistake. It made the edged fray, and as the top of the flower is near to the edge anyway, I have reduced even further the margins of error. I will have a go anyway, but this is the only piece I have so I have to practice first. Any suggestions of patterns/blocks with a central square? I have some other red and a light and dark grey fabrics to go with it.
Other
I also bought a lot of fabric after a particularly long day at work last week to cheer myself up. I have bundles of yellow and green to match some aquatic themed fabric for the next baby quilt (the parents are marine biologists and the sex is unknown to me), and some peacock fabric for a runner for my dressing table. I am going to make myself a present!
I think that sounds like enough to be going on with. In fact, the sales lady in the shop remarked how busy I was going to be when cutting the metres of fabric I was buying to improve a bad day!
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