blouse for Joanna

I made a blouse for Joanna yesterday.

I used this pattern - view E (shown in yellow on the pattern).

I made it out of the leftovers from a blouse I made for myself last year and the buttons came out of my button jar so this felt like it cost nothing at all! Yay!

I don't know if it fits her or not but I'm sure it will. At least I hope so!

So that's one more thing out of the crate of "things to make for Joanna" made. I think that only leaves the summer dresses now. I think there are 3 if not 4 or 5 of them to do. I wonder if I can distract myself with anything else? I bet I could! :oD

sunrise ~ sunset 30 July

Today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 17 hours and 48 minutes (32 minutes less than last week)

sunrise to sunset = 16 hours and 10 minutes (26 minutes less than last week)

tumbler table topper - all finished

I finished the tumbler tabler topper and, even though I do say so myself, it looks fab!

Here's the finishing off as it happened:

The quilting is done - one side:

The other side:

It's a shame this won't show as it'll be on the inside. I love the lines of quilting!

The binding about to be hand-sewn on the "back".

And here it is on the table - one side:

And the other side:

Yet another project made from the scrap boxes. Making it double-sided meant I used up twice as many scraps! Yay!! :o)

tumbler table topper

I got the two sides of the tumbler table topper sewn today and made a start to the quilting. I didn't get much done as my back started to play up and I know, if I don't pay attention when my back says "stop", that I'll suffer for it the next day - and the day after that and even the day after that.

I'm making the table topper reversible and decided to quilt the pieces separately and then will put them together when I put on the binding.

This is one side - it's already been quilted horizontally. I plan to quilt it down the vertical lines as well.

And here's the other side with my hand there to give an idea of the size.

I'm liking it so far! :o)

in the garden

Although I have done a wee bit of sewing this week, today I spent some time sitting out in the garden because - WOW! - the sun shone! A-MA-ZING!! Of course, I took my camera out to document said sunshine because it'll probably be raining again tomorrow!

Here's our hanging basket:

The Livingstone daisies really look their best when the sun shines.

Some nasturtiums - nasturtia??

The hydrangea has tons of heads on it this year - it usually does when it gets a lot of rain!

I just adore fuchsias. I remember as a child calling them the ballerina plant because they reminded me of ballerinas. They still do! :o)

I bought this earlier this year in the supermarket. According to the label it's a "blue lace cap hydrangea". Em, no it's not ... but it's pretty anyway.

And here's what I took outside with me to do. The unpicking had to be done because I forgot that in the tumbler pattern, the rows aren't all the same. Oh well, at least I didn't have to unpick all 60 of the pairs - just 6.

I finally managed to cut a few sweetpeas. They've really been affected by all the rain this year but I'm hoping that more will come now that they're being cut. I love the smell of sweetpeas.

sorting scraps

Today I was determined to do something about the overflowing scrap boxes so I first of all went through them and cut 120 mini tumblers with my Go cutter.

I have plans for this which I hope to get to this week.

As I was going through each of the scrap boxes looking for pieces big enough for the tumblers, I decided to put the really small bits into one big box. I defined "really small" as "I can't cut a tumbler out of that". This is that box of mixed scraps after cutting the tumblers.

I then went back through the scrap boxes again and cut some drunkard's path pieces again with my Go cutter.

I do sort of have plans for this but haven't quite decided what yet.

After doing all of those, I had so many "really small" bits that the box was overflowing so I had to decant them into an even bigger box!

Douglas came into the sewing room as I was doing the cutting and he looked at the box of wee scraps and said "Are they just going in the bucket then?" *gasp* I don't think he believed me that I'd be able to make a quilt with those scraps. I might just have to prove it to him!

Anyway, after all that scrap cutting, the scrap boxes now look a bit emptier which was what I wanted to achieve today.

Just before I stopped for the day, I pinned the 120 tumbler pieces together in pairs ready to start sewing them tomorrow.

A fun day! :o)

sunrise ~ sunset 23 July

Today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 18 hours and 20 minutes (29 minutes less than last week)

sunrise to sunset = 16 hours and 36 minutes (22 minutes less than last week)

last 2 cushions and a tidy up

I finished off the last 2 cushion covers yesterday. These 2 couldn't be made in the envelope style as the other 8 had been as, although I had enough material to cover them, it wasn't in a single piece. So I made zipped covers for these two.

After I'd finished those, I decided to do something with the crate of scraps which were "too big to throw out but not really big enough to make anything substantial with". I went through the fabrics, rolled them up, tied them with elastic bands and put them all into a cardboard box.

I've told myself that I've to go through that box in a year's time and throw out anything that I haven't used by then - but I really don't think that will happen. I know myself well! :oD

Editing to say that "throw out" is not the correct phrasing. I should have written "I've to go through that box in a year's time, take a look at it all, admire it all and put the box back on the shelf". Yep, that's definitely more likely to happen! LOL

some cushion covers and a surprise win

Yesterday I wrote that there were 5 or 6 cushion pads in the spare room waiting for new covers. I was mistaken. There were 10!!! So, because there were so many of them, I didn't quite achieve my plan to get them all covered today. But I did get 8 done:

They won't all stay in the livingroom because, let's face it, they become annoying as they take up all the couch space and the person wanting to sit on that couch ends up throwing them on the floor! Some of them will go upstairs to sit on the spare bed and others might even go into our bedroom but some will stay on that couch.

As for the surprise win in the title - I don't often enter giveaways and I certainly don't ever win them so, when Heather had a giveaway on her blog, I wasn't in the least surprised to find that my name was missing from the list of winners. "Oh well, never mind", says I, and posted a comment to congratulate the winners. Imagine my surprise a week later to find that, because none of the winners had e-mailed their details to Heather, she decided to give the prizes to the people who had congratulated the original winners. Wow! I was - am - a winner.

My parcel arrived yesterday and this is what was in it. Am I lucky or what?

I e-mailed Heather yesterday to thank her for my parcel of fabric - and the sweeties! Yum!! Thanks again, Heather. I really appreciate your generosity! :o)

I wonder if this is the start of a lucky streak? Maybe I should go and buy a lottery ticket!

what's next?

So what does a person do after finishing the FW quilt? Well, this person thought it might be a good idea to clean her sewing machine. I think you can see why!

This is what came out of the bobbin case holder alone! Eeeek! :oO

And here it is all clean and ready for action again.

It is working beautifully again and it's so quiet now!

So, what did I make? A new cushion cover for Rosie's cushion in the livingroom. I actually had to make 2 covers as the inner cover left a lot to be desired - in other words it was literally falling to bits so I made a new one from some calico I had and then made the new outer cover too.

And then I made a couple of covers for cushions that have lain on the spare room bed since Debbie was here in March. She'd brought the box of cushion pads down from the attic and somehow they didn't get put back up so today I decided to make new covers for them. (Another sneaky peek at the FW quilt in the background.)

There are at least 5 or 6 more to make so that'll keep me out of mischief for a wee while!

Farmer's Wife quilt - it's a wrap!

At last, here's the final unveiling of the Farmer's Wife Quilt.

Here it is with the vertical and horizontal sashings all sewn down:

Next I straightened up the outer edges:

Then I sewed on the binding.

I actually sewed it on twice as, for some reason - human stupidity - the needle on my sewing machine hadn't been nudged over far enough to the right and, instead of sewing a 1/4" seam, it sewed a 3/8" seam which meant the binding wouldn't go up and over and sew down where I wanted it to on the back. So, that all had to get unpicked and re-sewn properly! *sigh*

Next I pinned the binding down on the back through from the front as I wanted to machine-stitch it down rather than hand-stitch it like I usually do.

Next the label got printed out and hand-sewn on to the back:

Then Douglas obliged me by standing on the bedroom chair and photographed the quilt on our bed. (I didn't realise I was in the photo or I'd have stood back a wee bit!)

And here's the back - aargh, there's my foot in this photo too!

I made no attempt at putting the "odd" backing squares in any specific order. I must admit, that worried me a wee bit as I'm usually desperate to have some sort of logic to the patterning but this time I just went with the flow and I have to say I really like the back. I love how the quilting of the blocks shows up so well on the back.

Finally, here's where the quilt is for now - over the back of one of the couches in our livingroom. It's over the one I don't sit on so that I can admire it from my couch.

I know I say this about most of the things I make but I really do LOVE this. It's not always been an easy make but it's been well worth all the effort.

I just want to know one thing - if I only used scraps for this quilt, how come the scrap boxes aren't any less full than they were when I started???

Quilt details:
I used 64 of the blocks in the book "The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt" in an 8 x 8 straight formation - ie not on point like they are in the quilt in the book. It measures approximately 52" square.

FW quilt - are we there yet?

Are we there yet? Not quite but we're not far off now. Woohooo!

Here's the pile of rows waiting to get the top and back sashings sewn on this morning:

And here's how it looked this afternoon as I was pinning the front sashings down.

I'd like to get it finished tomorrow as I have lots of other things I'd like to make but won't start them until I've got this quilt done. Fingers crossed that I come back tomorrow with a "see what I made" final posting! :o)

sunrise ~ sunset 16 July

Today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 18 hours and 49 minutes (43 minutes less than last week)

sunrise to sunset = 16 hours and 58 minutes (32 minutes less than last week)

FW quilt - vertical sashings done

I had a good day of sewing today and managed to get all the vertical sashings on the rows of the FW quilt. Here's the first row which I did in full before I started the others so I could remind myself how to do it.

Notice the notebook where I took copious notes of what I was doing so, the next time I use this method, I won't have to work it out from scratch again!

Here are the other 7 rows waiting to be sewn.

And here they are all sewn and back on the table in their piles waiting for the start of the horizontal sashing.

Here's how much thread was left on the reel after doing all that stitching:

I do have plenty more thread!

And now for a mystery. I don't know what this dark mark is.

It looks like oil but it can't be oil as my machine doesn't need oil and therefore doesn't get oiled. (How many "oils" can you get in one sentence! LOL) Whatever it is, I'm hoping that it will come out in the wash!