Christmas comes early

Last week a large supermarket chain filmed their Christmas commercial in Austwick. Some of my friends were filmed and the village was decorated with a huge amount of festive lights.

On the Wednesday, I went down to the village to attend the P.T.A. and saw the Christmas lights. Thinking the kids would love it, we went down the next night (with a camera) only to find they were gone!! So when we drove back from Skipton on Friday, we were delighted to see the town lit up once again (and this was visible from the A65!!) I drove in to town and let the children run on the village green to look at all the lights. Of course, this time I had no camera!!! A friend took this picture of us though...



It was very exciting for the boys and so very festive!

Loulee also got me in the Christmas mood when she sent me some rose fabrics this week! She included this gorgeous Santa which she had stitched!



Thanks Loulee, he's very special and will be treasured.

Hexagons: I do it like this

Last time I was in a quilt shop in South Africa buying rose fabrics for my hexagon quilt I got chatting to the shop owner about hexagons and ended up going to the car to get 'my' hexagons to show her what I was doing...



"Oh, you do it like this" she said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You sew it in rows"
I imagine she was surprised because people often stitch hexagons in flower formation, but I don't, I just add each hexagon as I go along. Of course, now every time I read the children this story book I think of her words...



The Story of the Little Mole (who knew it was none of his business) by Werner Holzwarth & Wolf Erlbruch



The little mole searches to find out who has done their 'business' on his head and each animal replies:
"Me? No, how could I? I do it like this!" And promptly makes a poop to show him how they do it LOL

Well me? No, how could I? I do my hexagons like this! I do them in rows as I purposely don't want my hexagons to look like flowers...


Then the lady showed (and gave) me this...



It's very interesting. The hexagon is folded over a smaller hexagon with batting/wadding inside. So each hexagon once stitched is pretty much already quilted. I liked this idea, but it's too late for me now LOL

The first photo above shows, the current state of this project. The second photo above shows what I have presently in the car for those few stolen moments when I get a chance to sew. (This is usually Thursdays while the children swim with their Dad and I get to watch and do the changeover of kids into costumes and kids into dry clothes...)

In another bag, I have the pieces of fabric wonderful people send me and the papers...



For example, this week has been a great rose week as yesterday Jane sent me some roses and an empty box of chocolate. OK, it wasn't empty, but it is now (and it WAS Dee-vine!!!) LOL. Jane's roses are the second pile from the left. Kathie, a blogger I had not 'met' before last week, kindly sent me some roses this week too (Kathie's roses are 2ND from the right).

On the far right are the roses from Siobahn which I had previously neglected to photograph. Siobahn sent me a huge piece of the blue rose fabric and it's so lovely that it will definitely go towards a bag as well. On the far left are the bee-oot-iful roses from Jodie! I am planning to piece a back from the rose fabrics too and then perhaps return the favour and offer any leftover hexagons to anyone who would like to give them a go. But that will come later. In the meantime a big THANK YOU to all my friends who have sent me fabric. It does get used and stroked and one day when I'm old and grey I will look fondly on this quilt and remember the friendship and generosity of others and be grateful of it. In the meantime, however I will just do my quilt like this!

It's not my fault, I swear!!

Right so no-one will ever believe me again when I say I don't always get great mail!! I don't, I promise, but when I do...



It's really great!!

Nicolette and I did a swap. I sent her those African string blocks I made. And Nicolette sent me some wonderful Dutch fabrics and other fantastic goodies including these wonderful cats for the boys...


(Never work with kids or animals!!)


DS1 tells me his is going to show-and-tell at school tomorrow...



And DS2 took his to bed. (I bet Teddy was a bit miffed LOL)



(Camouflage cat! -



The stripy one matches our living room rug!!)

Here are the fabrics. They are lovely, I did have an idea for them before they arrived, but now I'm not so sure as I don't want to cut them up too much...



I shall have to have another little think! (The photo of the Moda fabrics didn't come out well and I'm too tired to go take another photo, but they are gorgeous too!) Thank you Nicolette (and the boys thank you too!!)


Today was a big day for me. I mean for DS2! He had his first day at nursery (where he will go one day a week to start) and he loved it. I took a photo of the boys on our front doorstep leaving for school. The sun was shining (a bit) and all was good with the world.



So I didn't cry much because he had a grand time!

The 'in's and 'out's

I know it always looks like I just get wonderful parcels 'IN' the mail, but I do send some 'OUT' too! I wish my Booty Swap Quilt would arrive so that I can show that (Sorry swap partner, you have been so patient!).

In the meantime, I made an African bag for a special friend...

Here's the front



And the back



I did receive some GORGEOUS!!! rose fabrics from Siobahn and Jodie. Thank you both for such lovely fabrics! When they arrived my camera was kaput and now that I have a new camera I realise that they have been absorbed into the dark little pit I call my sewing room which is next to a half finished family bathroom!! And above a half started utility room!

Actually all roses get absorbed into the 'big hexagon rose project' (perhaps an update on that soon..) which is not nearly as fantastic as Jodie's 'Big Selvedge Project:'



I borrowed this picture with Jodie's permission from her blog because this dress made out of fabric selvedges is just so awesome (and I can see at least one of my selvedges in there LOL - see I do send some stuff OUT!)

October bag (done and dusted)

What's that you say? It's only the 14th of October and I've made my October BQL bag?



I most certainly have! I couldn't face the last minute scramble again. I like this bag. It's called the 'secret shopper' and if you want to know the secret you'll have to buy the pattern from Kandy (her email is on the BQL bag blog) to find out!

Picking me up off the ground

Thank you Julie!



This is what I found in my postbox on Saturday. Julie made it and sent it to me because I blatantly cyber-drooled all over it. I love it!! And it was a real pick me up as the day before I had been (stupidly) washing my car and tripped over some scaffolding, bruising my leg, cutting my hand and winding myself. I staggered in the house and shouted:
"Mark move that scaffolding!!!"
"I have!!"
"What do you mean you have???"
"I moved it next to your car!"

So, thank you Julie! Because, this is what I have to deal with while we renovate the entire house!!



We went for a walk trying to find the perfect place to photograph it...

(Some people had to see what was over the wall that was so interesting...)




And the boys found the perfect place to paddle...

African Mama

Sometime back I saw an 'antique' quilt on Ebay made with blocks of this design on a cream background. I have wanted to make it for ages, but somehow I just never got round to it...



I owed Kate a block for our African blockswap so thought I would give this a go and promptly made 2. It's the first time I have ever done needleturn applique using freezer paper shapes. It's a nice method and less time consuming than my usual method of first basting each piece over paper, appliqueing the shapes, then cutting out part of the backing to remove the paper.

Here's the original block that I saw. I 'borrowed the image', but forget now the seller or any more details about the quilt...

She's cute. I only found the image as i was blogging this so it's a pity, I forgot to white the eyes and add the hair... (maybe next time!)

Birthdays and bug days

I had to 'do' playgroup today. It is run by the 'Mum's' these days. When you 'do' playgroup, you have to make the teas and coffees, bring fruit for a snack for all the children, and put on an activity. As they are only little painting, playdo, sticking etc is the usual activity.

I decided that we would be hairdressers. I brought along a bag of fabric scraps and got the glue out. I drew faces without the tops of the heads and encouraged the children to glue the hair on...

Here is DS2's (with a little help)



DS1 wanted to do a rocket.
"No Jack we are doing hairdressers"
"Rocket. I want a rocket"
"Why don't you try some hair Jack"
"No, I want a rocket"

My child! I couldn't decide whether I was curbing his creativity or if he was just plain difficult... Anyway here's his



It was DH's birthday. We made a cake.



Everyone helped to blow the candles out...



About the spiders in my previous post. They're not real!! They're paper decorations and DS2 loves them so they are now in his room...



I don't 'do' bugs. I guess that's why I only shower these days...

Scary Scrappy Houses

I have completed a UFO!!!

Toni sent me these cool Happy Scrappy House blocks. I doctored some of the windows and doors to make them more scary for DS1 and have machine quilted it in metallic varigated thread that I won some years back in a raffle at Birgit's Quiltfest. (Time to win another raffle as I'm out of this thread now LOL - or perhaps I just over-quilted with it??)



Here's a close-up of the quilting. I tried some words. I have never done words or much machine quilting, but I am really enjoying it.



I definitely need more practice and I also just need the hanging sleeve or something like that and it's done, done.


I've been having a little play with the leftovers of some charm packs. I robbed the charm packs of roses and then thought that some of the rest of the fabrics would make a few small Autumn wallhangings...



It's still in the 'play' stages... I cut the pumpkins out free hand then I tried a bit of hand stitching and machine stitching of the felt pumpkins and just played around... These were fun. One will be a very mini gift for the hostess of the annual Halloween party.

We just did not 'do' Halloween in South Africa when I was growing up so I've got some catching up to do :-)

And for those who wonder how I sew at all in this house, here are the gruesome details:

We have lost our 'dining room',


(here you can see my friend Vicky and I sitting at the upstairs kitchen table perusing patchwork magazines on the last day the table lived upstairs.)

but gained some stud walls and a skeleton of a bathroom.


Oh well, at least my scrappy houses are finished! :-)