lil twister whirylgig ruler

I spent some of my Christmas money on a Lil Twister ruler.

I'd seen this on the internet a while ago and really liked the pattern it made but then I forgot about it until I saw a pin on Pinterest for a tutorial for it. I did some investigating and found a UK site that sold the ruler so I ordered one and it came yesterday. So, naturally, I had to have a shot of it immediately!

First of all, I cut out 30 5" squares and put them in a 6 wide x 5 high layout.

Then I sewed them all together and added a 3" border around the outside. (I used that dice fabric again - it's being well used this week! :oD)

Next I had to lay the lil twister ruler on the intersection of all the squares - there are lines on the ruler you have to line up with your seams - and then I proceeded to cut out the shapes.

Here are my new squares re-arranged into the whirlygig pattern.

And here it is all sewn back together.

When I do it again - and I have absolutely no doubt that I will make this again LOTS of times!! - I must remember not to put colours that are similar to the border fabric on the outside edge. If you look at the top left corner, the wee pirate skulls fabric is lost because it's so similar to the dice fabric.

I'm still *really* happy with it, though. In fact, I *love* it! :o)

tumbler table topper

Tumbler table topper. Try saying that 5 times quickly! LOL

Anyway, today I decided to make a wee topper for the table that sits just to the left and behind me when I sit at my computer. The table is just one of those Ikea tv table jobbies and is only used to hold the cable for my camera, a block or two of paper and, if I'm not paying attention, anything else Douglas manages to dump on it!

I used one of my new Go! cutter dies and cut up 24 pieces of fabric into wee tumblers. My first idea was to just go with no real plan for the fabrics but I opened the "blacks" drawer of my fabric scraps and the more I pulled out of there, the more I decided I wanted to use all blacks. Black isn't really a colour I'd use in a quilt or whatever so why not use it for my wee table cover?

Here are the tumblers all laid out ready to sew:

Here it is with the fabrics quilted on to the wadding and the back piece - don't ask me why I used yellow thread. It was another of those "why not?" moments. :oP

The piece of fabric I used on the back is also a black fabric and it's covered in red and white dice. It's one of those fabrics that I bought out of the remnant box which, almost as soon as I got it home I wondered what had possessed me to buy it. I don't know anyone who gambles so what on earth would I do with it? Oh wait ... why not use it on the back of my wee table topper? Why not, indeed? :oD

And here's the final table topper:

Now, the eagle-eyed amongst you might have spotted that there are 28 tumblers in the final version ... that's because I decided that a 6 x 4 arrangement wasn't big enough so I added another 4 fabrics in. Who'd have thought I had 28 pieces of black fabrics? Well, I don't have 28 now because some of the pieces were just big enough and no more for these tumblers. So I've cleared some fabrics out by making this - yay!

The even more eagle-eyed amongst you might have spotted that the bottom row in the original plan became the second bottom row in the finished article and that the arrangement of the tumblers in that second bottom row is changed ever so slightly. Yeah, let's just say I slightly messed it up and leave it at that! :oD

sunrise ~ sunset 3 January

Instead of taking weekly photos of the back garden which, after all, stays pretty much the same year after year, I thought it might be interesting to watch the dawn to dusk chart thingy I have on my dashboard. Here it is for today:

So today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 8 hours and 40 minutes

sunrise to sunset = 7 hours and 6 minutes.

I'm fascinated to see how quickly - or slowly - these figures change over the year.

got the dates covered!

I am so excited by this that I couldn't even wait until the evening to post about it! :oD

I had intended making Jo a cover for her diary before Christmas but didn't get around to it so I went upstairs this morning to do it.

First I cut out the fabric for the cover - a remnant of tweed - and another piece of fabric - a bright yellowy orange cotton - for the lining. I measured the diary using a sewer's measuring tape - ie a flexible one - and added 2" on the the height and about 8" on to the length for seams and flaps. (No photo of that stage.)

Then I cut out some flowers (which I had created in Photoshop) from both fabrics (orange not shown)

Next I printed out the numbers from my Photoshop - font is café rojo - and cut them out of the orange. I interfaced the fabric first just in case it needed it.

Yes, they are sitting on top of last year's diary but it's the same size as this year's so it's all good. :o)

Next I made up the flowers by spraying the orange with 505 adhesive and stuck the orange bits on to the tweed bits. I then stitched around each petal just to hold them together. I also sprayed the numbers with the 505 and stuck them on to the cover and sewed them around the edges. That 505 stuff is amazing - no pins needed when I was stitching them on.

I put pins in the tweed to show where the edges of the cover would be and attached the flower using a button in the centre.

I then sewed the tweed and the orange together leaving an opening in one of the short ends for turning. After turning it through, I top-stitched all the way around the edges, closing up the gap on the short end as I went. I put the cover over the diary, pinned where the flaps would go and then sewed them down with their wrong sides together - no turning needed for that bit. Here's what the inside looks like:

And the outside:

And here's what it looks like on the diary.

As I said, I am soooooooo pleased with the way this turned out. And, more to the point, Jo loves it too! Yay!!

Christmas loot - last post!

Okay, last post about my amazing Christmas loot - honest! :o)

I got some fabric:

I knew I'd get money from the grannies so I put it towards some more dies for my Go cutter:

Jo got me some notebooks with appropriate covers on them and a few other odds and ends designed to keep my occupied in my sewing room!

And then I got some FAB-U-LOUS salts and peppers, a cream and sugar set and a napkin holder to add to my collection. I *LOVE* these! (I love all my presents, I hasten to add, but I especially love these!)

Didn't I say already that I must have been awful good to get all that? I am a really lucky girl! :o)

books read in 2011