Achievement

The lazy Saturday evening obviously revived me and I actually got quite a bit done on Sunday, even with a little lie in and the lost hour.


I now have a tidier flat (note not tidy but I can now see most of the floor!), an almost finished quilt which is causing me dilemmas over the colour of the binding (which I have half sewn on and now may hate) and a tidy, replanted, re-soiled balcony garden.

Not the prettiest thing yet but there's potential.  Off to the left is a clematis which should've been cut back earlier in the year but is now growing happily.  The blue pots are filled with alpine strawberries, never tried them before but apparently they're ok in shady places.  The big black planter is packed with trailing lobelia which usually do well.  There's a thriving hellebore and a smaller one off to the side.  And the terracotta pot is full of ignored orange lillies which I bought a few years ago from a RHS show and keep on re-appearing each year looking gorgeous.  It looks a lot better but I must remember to fill the bird feeders for my friendly neighbourhood blue tits.

Lazy Evening

I know I should be doing something - tidying up before my flat turns into a total pigsty, basting and quilting my cousin's baby's quilt, prepping one of the two other baby quilts I've decided to make, knitting - plenty of stuff to do but I've settled to vegging out on the sofa!  It's not like I haven't done anything all day,  I've been to my local quilt shop and commenced a small quilted sampler.

Nothing overly spectctular but I really enjoyed learning some new skills and want to carry on developing them, busy trying to spot places to use free motion on upcoming projects.  It was mentally exhausting though.  I also managed to set my bank pin number to something I can finally remember, it's only taken four attempts with the bank sending me replacement pin numbers embarassingly often.



Proof

Only a quick post but I'd just like to prove that...despite my misgivings...

...My Kindle cover fits my Kindle (my sister's too but if I wait to post a photo of hers this post'll never appear!  I'm very glad, it's not as if they were hard to make, but I love the colour combination and have no more red left.  If I make another I'd make it a tiny bit bigger, no more than 1/2 an inch, and I'll try and centre the fastening.  I'd like the top flap to be neater too but thats simply a case of practice making perfect.

Now to decide what else to do with the glittery fabric - hoard it springs to mind!

Oh and if anyone would like 19 inches of pre-cut HSTs then go to Quilter In The Gap's Giveaway.  Three simple chances to win (although if you don't go it may improve my chances!

Kindle Covers...or maybe not

My sister has just got a Kindle and I am hoping that I am days away from getting mine, and so on realising that cases would be needed I said I'd make some.

Afer a bit of searching around I found this tutorial by Junie Moon for a Kindle 2 case, which looked simple and adaptable to a Kindle 3.  I made a couple of other changes too - I want to use a button as the fastener rather than vecro and I have no idea what fusible fleece interfacing is but I do have suitably sized offcuts of wadding.

So just over and hours work and ta-da...

Two sparkly Kindle covers (in a photo that could have done with a little pre-posting rotation).  Hooray i hear you say.  Well maybe not.  I adapted the covers to the dimensions of a Kindle 3 and they should have been fairly generous but I think I may have miscalculated, sewn seams too wide, should've found out what fusible fleece was, or missed something in the instructions and I have a niggling feeling that these are going to end up as a slightly too small first attempt.  Oh well practice makes perfect, loads of the sparkly fabric left and I'm sure I have some more left over fabric for lining.  Lovely looking cover though just what I wanted!

Weekend Half Finishes

With only a limited time for crafting this weekend I was determined I'd make the most of it and so I did.

The top for my cousin's baby's quilt is all sewn together and in need of a press.  I didn't get round to basting it as I really wanted it all sewn together before I guessed the quantity of wadding (batting?) and backing fabric required, so couldn't go shopping for more fabric until the stitching was done. 

I think I'm going to use a coordinating fat quarter and a coordinating plain to make the back but need to go to a quilt shop to figure out the colour (neither of the two fabric shops within a half hour drive of my house open on a Sunday).  I'm also toying with incorporating the remaining HSTs in the back somehow.  I'll have a little think over this helped by probably not having the chance to do any sewing until near the end of the month, but can't take too long as the baby is due in April. 

I also managed to finish a sock which has been on the go for well over a year (possibly two).  I now need to start its mate.

The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill in Peacock (I think) and the photo doesn't do it justice (more work needed on staging and photgraphing my craft items one feels).  The pattern is Pomatomus by Cookie A (Pomatomus) which I have found fun to knit once I got my head round the slightly tricky pattern.  I want to start a shawl but I am forcing myself to finish off at least the two pairs of socks I have on the go.  Oh and I have decided I much prefer knitting socks on shorter DPNs, these felt really awkward.

Happy Zig Zags

Am in love with this quilt.  Haven't got all the strips done yet but wanted to get a feel for what it looks like.  I love patchwork when it's pressed, very crisp.  Pleased I made the effort to get the picture triangles the right way up.  If I'd had more time and fabric and patience I would have tried to improve the look of the letters strip.  Hey ho, my perfectionism hasn't got to a state where that is worrying me too much.

To any readers using blogspot out there - how can you e mail replies to people's comments?  Any e mail replies I've had have had details of the blog post in the title, is it done automatically or do you have to track down the person's e mail addy and then type the title?

Oh and THANK YOU so much for your lovely comments.

A Finished Quilt ... Finally

Sorry for being absent for so long but I have been endlessly seing in the ends on the Christmas present for my Ganny (unfortunately this is not me being highly organised this quilt is for Xmas 2010), but I have finally finished it and sent it on to my grandmother. 

I even manged to blanket stitch on a label.  Need to do a bit of work on my quilting - the stitches bunch up and get tiny when I go over seams - but all in all I love it.  And I'm sure Ganny will too.  And hopefully normal service will be resumed with my blogging.