Autumny

I've been very lax with my blogging over the summer months. There have been two main, even good, reasons for this. Firstly, I absolutely love it when Sophia is home on school holidays and very little sewing gets done as the two of us hatch various plans. Secondly, I am 21 weeks pregnant, thus the summer months have been plagued by sickiness and exhaustion! Having suffered three miscarriages after I had Sophia it has also been a very anxious time for us as a family. However, all was well at last week's scan so I find myself a little bit more relaxed this week - I don't think I'll chill completely til February though!
School has been back for 3 weeks now, the weather has got a bit chillier, but we are still enjoying sunny days. Autumn is my favourite time of year - I love the colours, the weather and the sense of getting ever-so-slightly closer to Christmas. I've indulged in various Autumn pursuits - blackberry picking, apple crumble making, soup making and knitting! I've also placed a new basket in my living room to hold blankets and quilts as it gets colder. Hopefully over the coming weeks the basket will accept more quilts as I have loads of lovely projects lined up for those shorter, darker evenings...

Binding Interrupted

It's hard being 5 years old! My 'Happy Camper' charm square quilt is done bar finishing sewing the binding. This did not deter a very tired Sophia who fell asleep under it anyhow!

Busy Day

60 wedding cupcakes and 51 placename cookie lollipops completed! I am very tired but thoroughly looking forward to Chinese tonight as a reward!

Efa's Quilt

This is a little quilt I've been making for my friend's 2 year old, Efa. It's made from a Oh-Cherry-Oh honey bun and leftover layer cake of the same range. As you already know, I LOVE this, now hard to find, Moda range! The colours are so vibrant and cheerful - just like the quilt's recipient! I used some Heather Bailey fabric to add two strips at each end of the quilt. The backing and borders are made from various spotty fabrics in my stash. Oh I love spots and dots!

Summer!

The Summer holidays are here. The last few weeks have been a marathon to reach the end of the school year. I've never known a summer term be so busy with all Sophia's social calendar to negotiate amongst everything else! I am looking forward to lazy mornings, relaxing, catching up with friends and a bit of sewing and knitting here and there! The sewing and knitting has been slow of late but am hoping to have catch up time over the hols. There are still so many projects to complete yet I am still buying more fabric! We've just returned from a fabulous mini-mini-break (basically one night away) in the Surrey village of Abinger Common. We stayed in a lovely B&B called Leylands Farm which essentially had its own guest annexe. It's location, between Guildford and Dorking, gave me the perfect opportunity to visit The Quilt Room. I bought (yet another and pictured above!) jelly roll - Bliss by Bonnie and Camille, which I've been hankering after for ages! Also pictured above is my summer project - the rainbow camper. It is a counted cross stitch kit that I saw on the Clothkits website and I just had to have! I'm not the greatest fan of cross-stitch, well not the framed variety, but this I plan to turn into a funky cushion! As always I have my work cut out!

Things I'm doing

I am plodding along with many projects - as usual! I can't seem to resist starting something new despite the fact I have many WIPs!
I've started a quilt along with Amanda-Jean of crazymomquilts fame. I've made the decision to only use scraps in this one as I can't justify buying more fabric until I've cleared some of my stash. This is partly because a scrumptious new fabric shop has opened near me!
I'm also knitting a cushion from Amy Butler's new book 'Midwest Modern Knits', using her new yarn for Rowan - 'Belle'. It's a quick, chunky knit, made using two skeins at the same time. I'm planning to only knit one side of the cushion cover, using fabric on the back.
My brother's wedding quilt is progressing slowly - a little bit more cutting is needed before I can sew the final blocks. I'm still working on Leeanne Beasley's BOM programme 'Down in the Garden' which is just sooooo lovely. I still need to take some pictures of my finished blocks to post here.
If this isn't enough, I'm still experimenting with my Oh-Cherry-Oh honeybun and this morning I've taken a 'Happy Campers' layer cake out of its packet, wondering if I could possibly make a picnic quilt from start to finish before Saturday ...
Forgot to say, pictured is the fantastic book and catalogue that I bought at the V&A Quilts exhibition. I'm still taking in all the wonderful designs from the past and am in awe of many of the techniques! I wish I could go again and see them - without my 5 year old in tow!

Finally Finished

I have finished the 'Snippets' quilt finally! I'm embarrassed to say that I started cutting out back in January - oops! I wasn't sure if I was going to like the finished article - I was very unsure about how the background fabric would work as the quality of it was not as high as that of my lovely Moda jelly roll. The finished quilt was a pleasant surprise - I fell in love with it as soon as the binding went on. Sophia adores it and has been on her bed every night this week. The quilting was, er, interesting - mainly because I changed my mind, not once, but twice! I started stippling, changed to straight lines and then returned to stippling! Am glad I did though!