Sewing Everyday in May Week 1

This month the week started with a flourish - a whole skirt.  Then with being out and about at the weekend whittled down to nothing!  However yesterday I was back with piecing and quilting once again.

First of all I made a summer skirt (then the weather turned colder!!).  I bought some lobster fabric last year which was the end of a line from the previous year, but the lobsters looked cute.

 I liked the selvedge with the colour spots like boat floats

The finished skirt

And wearing the finished article.

I've used a New Look pattern number 6053, which is described as Easy 2 hour and has a pencil skirt as well as an A line version in different lengths.  This is the third time I've used this and it works well with making the skirt one size larger than my dress size.  I've added a pocket, which I drafted out with the last skirt I made.

During the week I added the hexie units to my ongoing Kingfisher quilt and completed the bottom border of the quilt.

In he second pic I've got the hexie units laid out ready for the top border so it's getting there.  I hope this week to get that done.  I'll have to think about backing and wadding soon.

I had started to join up the excess hexagons together and thought it might make a notebook cover.  I seems you need more to make up the top and bottom to then cut off.  I got a bit disheartened with that so not sure what I'll do with them.

On Friday I made a start on a crochet Granny shawl.  I'm using a Crazy Zauerball yarn that I bought the previous weekend from The Slipped Stitch in Sherborne. I'm really liking the soft colours.

Over the weekend we had trips out to Exbury Gardens and to my daughter's at Dorchester, but more of that in another post, so as you can imagine, not a lot of sewing went on.

Yesterday I went back to my machine and bought out some orphan 16 patch blocks to make up to 12.5 inch squares and here's the result of that.

I've bordered each of the 5 blocks and I've quilted the blocks that are on the left of the picture.  Using fabric from stash I've kept the quilting simple - just straight stitch, nothing fancy.  I hope the get the other 3 quilted and sort out fabric for strips to join together.

One thing I found useful after using my friend's one is this shape cut ruler, which has slats every half inch into which to rotary cutter can go in and cut a straight line.  Why didn't I have one of these before?  I bought one last month from Amazon and have been using this ruler a lot

And I received a Wonky House postcard in the post yesterday from Rita.  My photo does not do it justice, its really lovely.  Mine was sent to Heather last week - posted one day and received by her the next!

If you want to follow my sewing I use the hashtags (can't find the symbol on my keyboard) keepingsuebusy or sewingeverydayinmay on Instagram, but will update each week here on my blog.

I'm going away this weekend to Nottingham to the Quilters' Guild conference on Saturday for the AGM and mini workshops and visiting the Great Central Railway together with a return visit to the Crich Tramway Museum.  There will be a chance of sewing at the Quilters' Guild but I wonder how much will get done the rest of the weekend?