September Musings

Amazing that two thirds of September has gone already and it’s been a busyish month.  I can show some socks that I made last month and gifted to my sister for her birthday.  I made a drawstring bag for them too and by chance this fabric went really well with the socks.

These are made from King Cole ZigZag sock yarn, which I know is really hard wearing, the colourway is called Lilacs. I did a pretty good job of matching and didn’t have to wind off too much yarn.

One other important thing that happened was that I bought a new (to me) car.  The red Jazz was 14 years old and had just gone to the dealers for service and MOT when I saw a car which was 5 years old.  The red one passed its MOT, though over the next year would need some work so the time was right to replace it and the new one was just in my budget. I had been agonising over the past year about changing but I think I had a good deal in changing. So here are my new wheels

As you can see it’s another Jazz, though silver is not a colour I would have chosen and even now look for a red car in car parks before realising! It’s low mileage and has the bonus of air conditioning, which my red car didn’t have (well,  unless you opened the window!).

Back to sewing and I made a block for the Siblings Together bee that I belong to and this was a heart block, the original design is by Neverland Stitchers here . The block finishes at 12.5” square in blues and white.  The block bee Mama has now received this so good to get that done.

Earlier this month at West Country Embroiderers there was a workshop tutored by Anne Hellyer, called home is where the art is.  I had to take a picture of the house, of which I made an appliqué of part of it onto a background fabric to make a book cover. Using acrylic paint we had to make features of the windows and doors.

This is how mine looked after I worked on free machining the next day. I don't think my machine was too happy about the paint as I couldn't get the tension right so there's loopy stitching on the back.

I might have another go later or I might not.

There's been some more hexies posted on Instagram

Sewing notions for week 11

For week 12 (as at today it's day 83) the theme was Vintage

This next week's theme will be creatures and I've prepped my hexies ready.

On the yarny front I have crocheted another teddy and both teddies have gone to Yarndale.  This second one is girly, and has a fancy green jumper as the wool I used was self striping I managed the plain green for the body and keeping the coloured bits for the sleeves.  The teddies are bound for the Mercy Ships charity that are hospital ships serving poor countries and the teddies will give comfort for children. I've enjoyed making them so much that I think there may be more teddies on the horizon.

Next Saturday I will be at Yarndale and I'm really looking forward to it.  We've been looking forward to going to Yorkshire, even though its going to be a short time up there and making the most of what we like being there for.

August into September

Seems ages since I last blogged and I had hoped to get this done before the end of August.  But the usual 'where does the time go...'  time runs away with me and its now into September.

Here's my mini quilt from 10 years ago which I've used as a marker for Instagram this month.  I quite like the contrast of the colours against the black and white backgrounds.  I had a phase of using black/white and white/black a few years ago and a still have fat quarters (or parts thereof) of those fabrics.

Anyway what have I been up to?  A second quilt exhibition in a month, this time the West Country Quilt Show.  Luckily one of the local groups was running a coach trip so no driving was involved and it was a good day out.  Being a smaller show makes it easy to get around and talk to people.  The different specialist groups were demonstrating their skills so there are a lot of ideas to pick up.  I've done a collage of some of the photos I took.

Some really brilliant quilts and exhibits, this show is growing popularity.

I've made my Siblings Together blocks for July/August and those have been sent to the Block Mama.

I wasn't too happy about the bottom block (with the fishes) but they might be put to good use. I really like the September block and made that already, but will post that later.

There has been a bit of crochet going on and I've made a teddy, which I started at Knit and Natter last Thursday morning and finished on Sunday.  Here it is before stuffing

 Looks like Flat Eric, but it (he/she?) is lying on a knitted square which was my coach knitting when I went to the quilt show.

 And here it is stuffed and below getting comfortable on the chair in my room.

This is a community project for Yarndale, which I will be going to at the end of September (yay!!!).  There are details about knitted and crochet bears for Mercy Ships (read about it here) and the crochet pattern is by Lucy of Attic24  which was really easy to follow.

Another item that I've made is a Granny Square for Granny Square Day which was on 15 August, though there are still posts about it now - seems like a long day!  This pattern was by Sweet Sharna here and a pretty block it is too! 

I'm still keeping up with with my Bramble Patch kit which has 0.5" honeycomb hexies and a 3rd square has been completed.  What I have done to arrange the blocks before sewing is to make a mini design board 6" square made of mount board with wadding over.  I used binding clips to clip fine net over the top to try and keep the pieces in place.

This was how the other 2 blocks look, so its coming together

I'm also keeping up with #100hexies100days so far on Week 10 and posted day 64.  Here's what the other weeks looked like.

Week 6 - Adventure

Week 7 - Japanese (for some reason I didn't do a collective photo)

Week 8 - Sewists choice - I chose some mini charm squares (but I now can't find the rest of the pack!)

Week 9 - I-Spy - hexies are hidden amongst the Kingfisher quilt ones.

So that's what I've been up to in August.  In September I hope to get some quilting done on one of my Finish A Long quilts and have a quilt top ready to put together for the Scrap Busting Sew Along.  

There's just time for me to link up with Mini Archie's Furtle Around the Blogosphere.  So here's the link 

There's been a few explorations to so will share that soon.