Wot a week...

Yes, what a week it has been and it's all down to lamb bones! A kindly friend gave our Missy a couple of lamb bones, a real treat for her as being veggies she doesn't get much in the way of bones! (us being the veggies not the dog!) However, lamb bone shards are very sharp and unfortunately two bits of bone lodged in her colon. Disaster! So it was off to the vets and then off to the doggy hospital 16 miles away, one big op and £2500 later said shards were no more. It has been an anxious time for us and a very painful one for Missy but now she seems to be on the mend and at long last has started to eat something, mind you I have to use the cats to tempt her to eat...now that has come out the wrong way! no I don't mean the dog eating the cats, what I mean is... if I put food down for her and any of the cats come near she is terrified they are going to eat it and although she doesn't want it she is damned sure the cats aren't going to have it!
With all the tooing and froing not a lot of knitting and sewing has been going on, but I have managed to finish the Mothers Day gift I was making for my mum, a lined knitted peg bag. I used Debbie Bliss organic DK in a pretty rose colour and lined it with some pretty rose cotton fabric I had left over from a dress I made in the summer.

I have also been working on the blue and white quilt and for the first time I have used a hoop

Although I have had the hoop for a couple of years I hadn't used it until now (sounds silly but I think I was scared of the blooming thing!), but the nature of the pattern for the hand stitching leant itself to the hoop and on this quilt for sure it has made it easier to stitch.

I used a template for the pattern, which is on every square, and the overall effect is really quite pretty. I have quilted with blue embroidery thread (coton a broder) about two thirds of the squares and once that is done it will be the borders next and I plan to quilt those diagonally.

my quilt of many colours!

At last I have finished my latest quilt...

it is made up of strips of my favourite fabrics, stitched together to form a very long strip, then cut into strips the same length and pieced together to form a block. Altogether there are nine blocks pieced together with white sashing and lilac corner blocks.

My quilts take ages because I quilt them by hand with embroidery thread, I find it very therapeutic (although time consuming) to sit on the sofa stitching the lines of quilting. As my rows are very close together there is an awful lot of stitching, but in future I think I will make them wider and save some time!

The backing is made from a duvet cover that I picked up from a charity shop, it's lovely and soft and the wadding is a medium weight polyester. To finish it off I made a border out of some pretty pink dotty fabric. The overall size is 120cm x 120cm.

It's a lovely quilt, I haven't quite made up my mind what to do with it, whether to keep it or to sell it, it would look lovely on the top of a single bed or as a throw. At the moment it looks pretty gorgeous on the back of one of my armchairs, I've gotta make my mind up soon!

humpty dumpty and other nursery rhymes

My niece Katie is expecting her first baby, which is actually due today! I had knitted a couple of things for the baby and I wanted to present them in a sweet way so I decided to make a nursery gift bag for the little jacket I had knitted. I had some lovely nursery fabric that I bought online and made this sweet little bag

I love the detail of nursery rhyme figures on the lower part of the bag

                                        one little piggy went to market

                                              Humpty Dumpty

                       
        you can just see Hickory Dickery Dock on the left hand side

The fabric for the upper part of the bag is a lovely bright red colour with letters of the alphabet and numbers and stars, a perfect nursery fabric. I finished it off with this pretty trim. I am really pleased with the result and hope to make more of these bags to sell in my Etsy shop.
Let's hope Katy doesn't have to wait any longer for baby as I am pretty sure she is getting fed up with waiting!
What one needs when nursing babies is a rocking chair! And here is one I made earlier ( well I didn't make it so much as bought it!)

I have always wanted a rocking chair and when I saw this in a second hand shop in Needham Market I had to have it.

I intend to make a comfy cushion out of this fabric, I think I picked it up in Felixstowe a while ago, it will suit the cottage style I want to maintain in my home.

In the meantime a quilted throw and a ticking cushion made by me does the trick!

home continued..

As promised I managed to finish the lovely home patchwork cushion. I chose the fabric I wanted to make the borders with, it was a fabric that I had used  in the patchwork mainly Petit Fleur by Lecien, I bought them as fat quarters from Quilter's Cloth (who have a fantastic range of quilting fabrics) and then added various other fabrics that I thought would work. In total I needed 13 different fabrics

It seems a lot of the fabrics I have are from Lecien, the hearts in the middle are made from the Durham range

There are also designs from Moda and Makower, all 100% cotton. The next step after attaching the borders was to iron some fusible wadding onto both the front and back, for the back I used an unbleached muslin and although this fabric is quite flimsy, adding the wadding gave it stability. Then it was simply a case of stitching them together.

Being a keen recycler I stuffed the cushion with the insides of a previously used cushion pad long ago discarded and sewed up the bottom et voila! I just love the way the colours all work together I am very pleased with the end result, in fact I am definitely going  to make another, but perhaps with a different mix of colours and fabrics, the truth is I have a huge selection of gorgeous fabrics to choose from!

oops, one patchwork panel too many

Wasn't the closing ceremony of the Olympics fantastic? We loved every minute of it but what now it is all over? Perhaps my latest quilt will get finished! I couldn't cope with all the excitement and hand stitching at the same time! Well I think have broken the back of it now. I just have to finish quilting about 3 of the panels by hand and the next thing will be to decide on the fabric I want to use for the binding, make the aforementioned  binding and then attach it to the quilt. Easy hey!

 I foolishly made one panel too many so I have turned it into a very pretty cushion.

and the back I made out of pretty lilac gingham fabric finished off with 3 white buttons.