A finish!

Ok, so this isn't a new finish but actually my first ever finished quilt!

Isn't the clematis pretty?

I bought the fabric when I was pregnant with Anwen - five years ago! We didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl so we decided on a neutral spotty theme for the nursery. I found this fabric at my lqs.

I still have some in my stash, complete with selvage

It has spots in four different colours so I decided to pair it with four corresponding solids and a white. I bought enough of the spot to make some curtains too.

Now, remember, this was before I discovered all these wonderful blogs and tutorials on the interwebby so I started cutting it up into squares and sticking it to cardboard squares with Sellotape!

I still cry when I see how much fabric I used to waste on seams!

Unfortunately this is as far as I got. I really can't remember why I didn't carry on.

So along came Anwen

My favorite pic from that time - I look awful (after 53 hours without sleep I was allowed to) but we both look SO happy!

and the quilt was forgotten about :-( And I never got around to making the curtains either.

So roll on around four years and I was pregnant with baby number two. I would get tired so easily and was in bed straight after Anwen (sometimes I even beat her to it) but I wasn't ready to sleep yet. I needed something that I could do in bed whilst watching telly......I know! I sent Endaf up to the attic to retrieve a shoebox and there was my ready to be pieced quilt. I laid out all the squares trying to come up with a pattern. I decided that it worked better without the white.

So every night I could be found in bed sewing away, piece by piece, row by row until I had a quilt top! (Sorry - no in progress shots - 'normal' people don't take pictures of quilt tops). I was advised by the lovely ladies in my lqs that as I was planning on hand quilting I should go for a 100% polyester batting and a cotton quilting thread (Gutermann hand sewing cotton). I decided that as I'd gone for plain and easy on the patchwork I'd do the same with the quilting.

And then there was the matter of the binding. Due to the baby being upside down I had one or two extra scans but insisted that I didn't want to know the sex so it had to neutral. I didn't want to go with one of the colours that I'd already used but still wanted it to be quite bold. I toyed with the idea of lilac but thought that it would be to girly. In the end I went for a dark purple.

Now I'd never heard of double quilt binding at this point so went through the painstaking task of making single quilt binding. So much more work to make and to attach to the quilt. I'm afraid that I didn't do a very good job of the stitching which wasn't helped by the fact that I thought that I needed to use quilting thread to attach the binding and couldn't find a better match! This was a slow, slow process and I didn't really enjoy it. And that's where I left it because....

Yes hubbie is wearing the same T-shirt! I had this idea that I would change my Facebook profile pictutre from Anwen's baby picture to this one. I even had the same yucky nightie in my bag ready! What I hadn't considered is that all the tubes and wires that come with a caesarean meant that I couldn't take the hospital gown off let alone change into my own clothes :(

Along came Marged! Doesn't Anwen look proud?

Now anyone out there that thinks that they are busy with one child try having two! (how some of these quilty mums with five plus kids manage to sew at all is beyond me). Just the normal work involved with having two children was bad enough but feeding issues meant that I had to wake Marged (and myself) every two hours so finishing that binding was the last thing on my mind. So back to the attic it went.

Then this happened

Poorly baba

When she was sixteen weeks Marged developed bronchiolitis. It wasn't as bad as it looks but they wanted to keep her in to monitor her in case she got any worse. Only problem was the children's ward was full so we were shipped off to another hospital 90mins away from home.

So with no clothes to iron, no food to cook and no floors to hoover I found myself twiddling my thumbs. I sent Endaf into the attic again and by the time we arrived home we had a bound quilt.

I'm trying to vary my photos from the usual 'on the line' suspects

Now I know that this quilt is far from perfect but it was my first (well, first completed quilt. I have two quilt tops under my bed that started life long before this one!) and will have a special place in my heart for a very long time.

But at heart I'm a lazy girl so here's a picture of the back 'on the line'. The wrinkles?
The quilt was fresh out the washer and since it was on the line I took a photo. Did I mention that I'm lazy?

and it's been used. A LOT

We had a mini photo shoot on a rare sunny day.
(Like the dress? I'm going to have to try and find a picture of a super cute baby wearing it around 32 years ago ;-))

I was a nasty mummy and took the egg from her as soon as I'd taken the picture.

in fact it's keeping my legs warm at this very moment.

And that was it. I was hooked. And I know another little girl that could do with a quilt for her big girl bed.......

I've been following the Lets Get Acquainted Blog Hop and realised how important pictures are. I've tried playing around with some of the photos in this post. I'd be grateful if you could leave me some feedback. Thanks.

Linking up to:

this week with Aunt Marti at Thirteen in 13 and  Finish it up Friday with Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts

A week away?

So we're home from our yearly family holiday. We spent four nights in Butlins (Minehead) and had a great time. Butlins might not be everybody's cup of tea but when you have a thrill seeking water loving four year old (fun fair and swimming are included in the holiday - she could go on as many rides as she wanted as many times as she wanted - Dadi was looking a little green by the end - and go swimming everyday!) and a seven month old water baby it's ideal.

Fun at the fair!

The first time we went to Butlin's Anwen was just over a year old and we got a lovely picture of her in the swimming pool (taken by an official Butlin's photographer). We were looking forward to getting a similar picture of Marged this year but were told that they didn't currently have a CRB checked photographer so wouldn't be able to provide this service! The world has gone mad.

This is the fourth time that we've been to Butlin's and Anwen has been excited for months. Last year she was really excited about seeing characters such as Fireman Sam, Angelina Ballerina, Mike the Knight and Thomas the Tank Engine, this year not so much. This time it was all about the DISCO! She would change into a different dress every evening, wear some of Mami's make up and   insist on having a funky hair do!

There was even some Dadi dancing!

Last year Katy Ashworth from CBeebies' I Can Cook was there and we watched the show. Members of the audience were asked up on stage to help Katy cook and Anwen was really disappointed that she wasn't picked (I wasn't - we're a Welsh speaking family and at the time Anwen could just about answer "What's your name" in English).

This year Katy wasn't there but her friend Julie (one of the red coats) needed help with the cooking and this time Anwen was one of the lucky ones!

 

She spoke really clearly and didn't get frustrated when Julie didn't hear her 

name properly and went on to call her Ann for the rest of the show! 

She really thinks that she's been on TV and can't wait to tell her friends in school and show them the name badge that she got.

The weather was far from brilliant and definitely wasn't beach worthy, however we've had pictures of us on the beach from all out past holidays so we had to get some this year too!

We literally ran onto the beach, took these pictures, and then ran away again. See those clouds in the background? It started raining around five minutes after we took these pictures! It's a pity as the beach in Minehead is really nice.

Marged had a pretty chilled out time which mostly consisted of eating lots and generally relaxing in the pushchair! 

One thing that I'm really glad that we managed to get was a family photo. In the seven months that we've been a family of four we've only managed to get two photos of all four of us together. The first was a few hours after Marged was born. I had just had major surgery and was still wearing my hospital gown - not a pretty sight! The second was at Marged's Christening. We were all dressed up and you'd think it was the perfect photo opportunity - if only Anwen had been in the mood - not a single shot of her looking at the camera. So when we saw that we could get a group shot one evening we jumped at the chance - and yay! everyone's looking in the general direction of the camera - RESULT!

I would have preferred it without the 'Butlin's' in the background but beggars can't be choosers right?

                                           

All in all we had a great time just spending time together as a family without work/laundry/dishes etc getting in the way.

           

Now the eagle eyed amongst you might have noticed the question mark in the post title. I may have had a week away from home and my sewing machine but sewing wasn't far from my mind! When looking through my bag of past patchwork projects I came across these -

 

   

                          

 

Hundreds of little shapes wrapped in fabric ready to be hand pieced. I think that the original idea (all those years ago) had been to use up scraps and sew them together in a completely inprov kinda way.

Anyway as I was heading out the door I grabbed these, a spool of thread and a few needles thinking that I might get a little sewing done whilst we were away and I did:-

           

I set myself up in the car and did a little hand piecing when it wasn't my turn to drive and the motorway scenery was boring me!

I didn't get much done just a few pinwheels (no pictures I'm afraid) but it was really nice to do some hand sewing for a change. I think that I'm going to carry on with this until I've got something big enough for a cushion or something. As for the rest of the ready basted shapes in the bag? I can't believe how much fabric I used to waste when I used this method so I think I'm going to rip off all the Sellotape press the fabric and keep them in my scrap bin.

And just to prove that you never know when inspiration for a quilt is going to strike look at this -

I couldn't believe it when we drove past this just before Bridgwater. (Not the statue - the building in the background!) I think that it's a distribution centre for Morrisons supermarkets. My husband thought that I was mad as I scrambled for the camera and cursed when it hadn't 'woken up' before we'd driven past and the opportunity for a photo had gone. I did try and get a pic on the way home but there was a hedge between our side of the dual carriageway and the building do I couldn't get a clear shot. So I Googled it when we got home and found the picture above here.

I'm really into green at the moment and when I saw the above building it just shouted QUILT at me. I've got a really long 'to-do' list at the moment but would love to make a quilt based on this building one day. Isn't it refreshing to see an industrial building that isn't the usual grey or mock brick? This really cheered me up on what could have been a really boring journey.

Wow. I can't believe how long this post has ended up being! I'll try to keep the next one shorter and less about the family and more about the sewing!

Unidentified unfinished objects!

Whilst going through my bag of very old unfinished projects I came across these:

I don't really remember making them, have no idea where the fabric came from etc and have no idea what to do with them!

There are three of them and I made them using the trusted cardboard box/Sellotape method!

I guess I was into Shredded Wheat at the time!

 I lied when I said that I had no idea what to do with them. I think that I'll remove the cardboard and Sellotape, use some polycotton that I have lying around to back them and then practice some quilting techniques on them. I don't think that I'll actually turn them into anything useful.

I've gotten nearly no sewing done this week. I've been too busy checking out all the giveaways over at sewmamasew . It's a little addictive to say the least I think that winning Katy's giveaway has given me the bug!

I think that my little one has just woken up so I'd best leave things there. I'm going to try to post a little more often but with two kids and our yearly holiday next week (packed? all our clothes are in laundry baskets either waiting to be washed or ironed!) it may be a while before my next instalment.  I'm sorry I know you're all on tenterhooks waiting to see what else I pull out of this bag!