all sorts of sewing going on

The 5 patchwork stockings I was working on all got finished and loaded into the tartan bee shop.

Then I had to make 3 new bow tie brooches for the new ladies who joined the choir I sing in. I'm pretty sure they won't be taking part in our concert with us - 5 weeks to learn all 14 songs we'll be singing is a bit much really - but I thought it would be better to be prepared so I just went ahead and made the brooches for them.

I bought and planted 12 hyacinth bulbs - 4 bowls each with 3 bulbs in them. They'll be fabulous when they come out - and probably a bit overpowering scent-wise!

The biggest thing I've been doing lately is embroidering reindeer. I got the set here.

I was really pleased that there were the correct number of reindeer! "You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen ..." etc. I'm thinking of embroidering their names under each one so I'll have to choose which one is Rudolf so I can put a red sequin or a red button on his nose!

Oh and you might have noticed that, at one point, a plaster appeared on one of my fingers. I didn't sew through my finger but it did come into contact with the jaggy end of the machine needle! Ouchy!

baby quilt done and musical bags

I finished the strips baby quilt this week. I LOVE it!

I decided I wanted to make myself a new bag to take to Singers when we restart in September so went ahead and embroidered this design on what I hoped would be one side of the bag. The denim in this photo is really washed out - the true colour can be seen on the bag at the bottom of this post.

This is actually a slightly botched version of it because, when I first embroidered it, I used a blue colour for the word "listening" and it really got lost on the denim background. I decided to unpick the word and do it again in pink. It took me 2 hours to unpick it! (I was watching telly at the time so it wasn't as if I'd wasted good sewing time doing it.)

Next day, when I went to re-do the word, I didn't get the alignment quite right and "listening" is just slightly squint. To be honest, I wasn't too sure from the start if I wanted this design on the bag and all the messing around didn't help so I went for another option altogether. I did a test run first - learned my lesson!

When I made the bag - this time in calico - I changed the colours of the treble clef and the surrounding circle.

I put a wee pocket inside the bag for my pencils.

I didn't want to waste the denim I'd already cut out and, since I had enough denim to cut another bag piece, I went ahead and did a test piece of an appliqué of music notes.

Then I did the same design on the bag and this is how it looks. Fab! (This photo shows the true colour of the denim.)

I lined it with the same spotty pink I'd used for the appliqué and again put a wee pocket on the inside.

I'm really happy with both of these bags. I might just have to make some others. I mean, you can never have too many bags - can you?

2 weeks?

Really? It's been 2 weeks since I blethered on here? Wow! Time really does fly when you're having "fun"! Let me show you some of the "fun" I've been having in the last 2 weeks.

First of all, I tidied the freezers. Threw out some things that were better out than in ...

... and made lists of what's in there so, hopefully, there won't be any more "what the heck is this?" kind of things happening! (No guarantees on that if labels fall off! LOL)

Next I made a jacket to wear to the Singers' concert which took place last night.

I am trying to block from my mind the number of attempts at making this jacket and how many were abandoned/ripped down because they were ugly/far too big/etc. etc. This one, although it doesn't look that great on Diana the dummy, looks fine in real life on me. Phew!

I saw on Pinterest - where else? - that people cooked all sorts of things in their waffle maker so we had a bash at it too. First of all I cooked bacon - no pic of that - and then fried some eggs.

They were delish - a bit difficult to get out of the waffle maker in one piece but that wasn't too important! Just a note if you want to try doing the same - you cook the bacon with the lid closed but you leave it up to cook the eggs. Great fun!

We had about 2½ days of warm sunshine last week so Tilly and I sat outside for a wee while. I have no idea why she's sniffing my trouser leg! :oD

I sold one of my baby quilts from my Etsy shop - yay!! - so I wanted to make another one. This time I went with my sudoku quilt pattern - 9 colours, no 2 the same in the 9-patch or hoizontal/vertical rows. Using a completed sudoku puzzle is a great way of not having to decide what goes where. Here are some photos of the process:

And the finished quilt top just waiting for me to put in on to a fleece backing:

The most exciting thing that's happened is something I bought for myself. I thought long and hard about getting one of these - I'm talking at least 20 years! - then, last week, I saw that an online seller had dropped the price by £200. I jumped at it - £200 off was far too good to turn down!

What did I get? An embroidery machine! This is it as it came out of its box.

Within 20 minutes of it arriving, I had it set up and embroidering.

These are just a few of the designs I've done so far.

It's quite a learning curve I'm on at the moment but, boy, is it fun! Whoever said "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" was wrong! This old dog (!!) is learning a lot of new things - and having a lot of fun in the process too! :o)

padding the dummy and other things

I can't show everything I've been making this week as some of them are "blanks" for Christmas gifts. I've taken photos, though, so, after the big man has been, I'll dig them out and fill in the blanks.

In the meantime, here are a few miscellaneous shots from my camera.

First of all, this is Diana the dummy in her new spotty outfit. I wanted her to look more like me - bigger in the boobular area and not so flat over the tummy section so I padded her out with wadding and bump (curtain interlining) and this is how she looks now. She's got a few lumps there (a wee bit like myself! :oD) but she measures the same as I do now so she'll give me a more accurate idea of the fit of things. Hopefully!

I dug out our Christmas mugs last week, washed them and hung them on the mug hooks. Three hooks are empty because I'd already used the mugs before I thought of taking the photo! I have to say, I find the 2 mugs on the right really annoying. The pattern is only printed on one side and, to show said pattern, they need to hang differently from all the other mugs. I don't think I have OCD but it annoys me a lot that they're like that! ;o)

Yesterday morning we had snow. It did lie for about quarter of an hour but, thankfully, it was wet snow so it didn't take long to disappear. Phew!

I was tidying my Christmas fabrics and found a few that I could make pinnies from so I cut them out yesterday and started sewing them today. Only the tapes to sew on now and I can start wearing my share! Yay!

I also found a piece of Christmas pvc fabric in the pile so I cut it out for a shopping bag. I know I'll be letting loose with a few wee sweary words as I sew the pvc but hopefully not too many. I need to remind myself when I see pvc in the remnant box, how much I *hate* sewing with the stuff!!

Our Christmas concert yesterday went quite well. There were a few "moments" that should have been better but the audience didn't notice and clapped loudly. Hopefully we'll have made a lot of money for the "Save the Children" charity. Douglas did take some photos for me but he was so far back in the hall that you can barely see the choir never mind the bow ties and mini bow tie brooches I made. Oh well, maybe next year! :o)

blog more often!!

Why don't I blog more often? I ask myself this question quite a lot and I don't ever get a sensible answer from myself! The thing is, when I do blog - in today's case 12 days (!!!) after the previous blog post - I have so much to say/show that it takes ages to write the post. And who wants to read screeds and screeds of "here's what I made" posts? Not me, that's for sure! So, I'm really going to try to blog more often. We'll just have to wait and see if that happens!!

Okay, so here are some photos to show what I've been doing since I last blogged.

I finished the 2 Christmas stockings for the raffle at our concert only to get to the rehearsal last week to be told there wasn't going to be a raffle table. After a bit of (inward, small) sweary words, I just let it go. If I'd said anything, I'd probably have been roped into organising it and no way was I doing that. It should have been done weeks/months ago, not 2 weeks before the concert takes place!

Debbie is doing a table at a craft fair on Friday so, amongst other Tartan Bee stuff, I've given her the 2 stockings. Maybe she'll sell them, maybe she won't. If she doesn't, I'll just list them in my Etsy shop.

The next thing I made were a couple of white blouses. The first one is my old standard McCall's 5359. It fits me beautifully and might well be the blouse I wear under my red jacket for the concert.

This next one is a Vogue pattern - Vogue 8747, view A. I was a bit concerned that the bust wouldn't be big enough but, when I made it up, the gathered bit is actually a bit big for me.

I've tried the blouse on under my red jacket and it looks fine so it's another possibility for the concert.

I made a wee tree ornament for Joanna to add to a gift she's sending to someone in the US. It's all made from scraps of tartan so appropriately Scottish!

Last Friday, Douglas, Joanna and I headed to Glasgow. Joanna and I went to the Country Living Christmas Fayre and Douglas headed to the Science Museum. A good time was had by all. I didn't buy much but I did spend £1 to get this bag from the Scotsman newspaper stand.

It also had some oaty snacks and a packet of quick porridge as well as the newspaper in the bag. The handles were too long for me so, when I got home, I shortened them and added a bag lining. Others may also have paid £1 for the bag but mine is now unique!

Joanna asked me to trace her next stichery for her. It's going to be awesome!

I took a notion to make myself a mini bow tie brooch to wear on my red jacket.

It was quite finicky to make it so I didn't really want to make one for all 14 of the ladies in our choir. I puzzled over it last weekend and tried a different method of making them and it worked so here are the 14 mini bow tie brooches all waiting to go to tomorrow's rehearsal.

On Monday afternoon, Joanna and I headed to Stirling. We were going to a talk given by Diana Gabaldon - author of the Outlander series - and Neil Oliver - tv presenter with his first novel released. The talk was to be at Stirling Castle. I took this photo when we got to the car park. Isn't it fabulous? I love it so much, I've set it as my desktop picture on my computer!

The talk was absolutely fascinating. Both authors had stories to tell and were very interesting. I was definitely glad we went. This is Joanna after getting Neil Oliver's autograph.

And here she is with Diana Gabaldon. Both authors must have had sore hands by the end of the night after signing all those books!

Joanna had asked me to make an Outlander bag for her to give to Diana Gabaldon but I made it a bit special. Nobody else has one like this!!

Okay, I think that's me caught up now. It's taken me more than 45 minutes to write this post. Lesson learned. Blog more often!!