Progress

Remember the quilt I am making? Well I have finished the applique and have now added the borders to the center.  I have sourced the white 80/20 Hobbs heirloom wadding I wanted, in the size I wanted - a whole piece just the size I need , so I don't have to piece it - great! .  I bought the backing fabric - a white on white small flower design - at the Quilt Show at Sandown in June and that now needs to be pieced - quite a mammoth job and I have to feel like doing it.......! BUT the fun starts here! how do I quilt it? what designs shall I do - feathers? straight lines? in the ditch? cross hatching?  - I think I will spread the top on the spare bed and leave it there for a couple of days and wait till it tells me what it wants me to do!

Thamesiders challenge 'Add a Border' quilt.

In the mean time I have gone back to the Thamesiders challenge 'Add a Border' quilt........this next border must be 13" wide, be curved or woven in style and have a special requirement of log cabin! Help............!
I thought perhaps twisted log cabin for the corners - a block of four in each, but I can't make my mind up what to do for the sides of the border - I think log cabin all round would be too heavy a pattern, besides being an awful lot of work...... I have thought of Celtic trails, or swags, or large and small clamshells  in three colours - what do you think? 13" is such a wide inner border and I don't want to make it too fussy.........I will show you what I have done at a later date - when the brain has got it's self into gear and told me what to do.  I have just realized that this picture does not have all the borders on it that I have made - just added an updated piccie.  The Suffolk puffs (yo yo's) are only pinned in place  in case the next border was a complicated one and the top was begining to look too busy.

Third border in place - with pinned on Suffolk puffs.

A horrid day - so far!

This morning I have had to go to the dentist - I hate the dentist!  Himself  had to come with me to hold my hand - you would never believe that I am a grown up great grandmother by the way I have quaked today at just the thoughts of this visit!  I hate impressions and that is what today has been all about...........I'm such a whimp!
Thank goodness the rest of the day is a fun day - sewing with friends this afternoon and lace making with others this evening.  To morrow I will be exhausted - but at least I will not be having nightmares about a dentist chair tonight! and I can sleep in -  if Himself doesn't wake me while getting up to go Earlybird swimming at the local pool.

SewingGranny sews........

Sarah's first quilt

I have been asked to show a friend what I have been sewing lately, so here are a few photo's - sorry if they are wobbly but it is breezy today.   This is the beginnings of a quilt for my youngest daughter, she and her DH have moved at last into the new bedroom they had built onto their house last year and she wants to change her colour scheme from blue to pink.  This is going to be a big quilt to fit their king sized bed. The borders are still to be finished - as you can see there are only three here  - one more to go.......then I have to attach them to the main part and applique the corners.  Then the next lot of fun starts with the sandwiching and the quilting -I shall quilt on my Bernina of course - my hands can't cope with hand quilting any longer....and although I would love to have a frame to put my machine on to it is never going to happen - htey cost too much! so the diningroom will be taken over while I have the machine downstaires on my table in my dining room  and with the help of the ironing board I will manage to support this monster!

Photos of our holiday in Cornwall in May this year.

St Ive's on a lovely sunny day - May day               celebrations made the town very full - lots going on - a parade along the harbour wall by the scouts and girlguides and other groups all marching to a brass band.   

A trip to Mousehole is always a must for us, we find it a facinating village. Himself always like to walk over the cliffs to Lamorna and back again but this year he and only walked to Lamorna with our son-in-law and then was driven back to Moushole as he has been so very ill this last winter.

                                                                

    The gardens a Cothele are always a delight and this year was no exception, the flowers all seemed to be making it up for our hard winter and gve us a spectacular display.  The daffodils under the trees in the orchards were amazing - so many different tyoes and colours.

                                                                                     St Micheals Mount is another must for us - we have been going there for so many years that we almost know every stone up to the castle - even knowing under which one the Giant's heart is buried!          

                                                                                                    

The gardens at Trevarno were a delight this year - the flowers amazing! and the bluebell woods ! well I don't think I have ever seen so many flowers there. This peacock was displaying to anyone who would stop and watch him, be you a peahen or not

Bluebells at Trevano gardens

Quilt times

Quilt Times has a book to give away - a nice looking Christmas projects book from Martingales.  Go and have a look, you may be the lucky winner, you never know but if you are not in it, you can't win it! 

Holiday in Cornwall - part one

We have just come back from a very cold weeks holiday in Cornwall.  We find travelling all that way in one go a bit too much these days so we stopped off in Devon for a couple of nights first.  We found a delightful Bed and Breakfast place in Lydford (we never book a B&B in case we need to stop earlier and you can always find something somewhere ). This one was on a farm where they have some rare breeds and some ordinary animals but not a hugh farm with hundreds of cows and sheep.  The farmers wife ran the B&B and she was so hospitable that we are keeping her telephone number with a view to going there again.  She kept the chickens and geese and we were served fresh eggs for our breakfast - you can certainly tell hte difference from the super market ones.
While staying there we did a bit of nostalgia visiting - we used to camp in the area when the children were small and haven't visited for years, so we had to go and look at the church on the top of Brent Tor and the Cross on another Tor and of course we had to go down Lydford Gorge to see the White Lady falls.
While visiting Tavistock, a little way away I found a very nice patchwork and quilting shop near the Pannier Market and of course I bought a few things in there!
For another nostalgia trip we visited Morwhellan Quay - oh dear I wsh we hadn't - when we took the children many years ago now - it was a busy tourist attraction with the Quay working and all the assosiated trades and shops around and all the people wearing costumes of a bygone era - it is now nearly derelict - nothing working and no one there, so sad !

Cothele house and terrace garden.                                             Some of the Rhodedendrons   

Looking from the terrace over the vally gardens to the viaduct and across the moors.   

 So we went to have a look at a National  Trust property called Cothele over the border in Cornwall - it was the wrong day to be able to go in the house but the gardens were glorious! the Rhoddies and Azalias were in full bloom and looked superb! We had a nice lunch in the 'inn on the Quay' and walked round the gardens in the warm sunshine.  A great day out in the end.

catch up from April

I had the children for a few hours while Mummy worked, Emily is being the proper hostess and giving her Mummy a cup of tea when she came to collect them....I can't believe how quickly she is growing - it seems such a little while ago that she was just learning to walk, and now she has just had her fifth birthday.                                                                                                                                                                    

Joshua is showing her the airplane he made out of my very old Lego.....they always get this out when they get this out when they come to  play.   He is very clever at making up the Lego, and has even been onto the Lego website and made up things from that with the kits that he has.  Daddy has loaded pictures onto the Lego site of the things Joshua has made. 

May is nearly with us..........!

May is nearly with us and I haven't blogged for ages.......we have been busy, have had more birthdays, dreadful colds, done some gardening, cleared the greenhous - you know all the usual busy household things.

We spent a day at Polsden Lacey  - lovely National Trust property on the North downs. The weather was superb - we walked round all the gardens and lawns and woodland - found loads and loads of cowslips -n ot seen thes growing wild since I was a young woman - they apparently like the chalk soil of the downs.  The house is worth a visit too - it s not like the usual NT property where you are kept behind ropes and can only view from a distance - here you can wander round the furniture sit on the armchairs, wind up the gramophone, pick up hte books and magazines laying around and even have a game of billiards in thebilliard room, while listening to someone playnig the lovely old Steinway piano.

I have been sewing still and have got stuck on how to quilt a Maple leaf quilt top......I will work something out I know, but in the meantime I have made a couple of table mats and  have been using some of my stash to make a mock up of a quilt for my youngest daughter - she wants one in pinks this time.  Her new bedroom is nearly finished - just another coat of paint on the walls and the raidator installed and a carpet on the floor and she and her DH will move in there.  I made her other quilt nearly 10 years ago in blues and although it is still on her bed and is still good she wants a change! 

I have had a bowl of fruit standing on the green and cream mat and hadn't realised that there was an imprint of the bowl on it!  Ah well it does show that we use what I make.

I have also done the next 'round' on the stay-at-home Round Robin quilt......pictures at a later date .......promise!

Busy days

Gosh where has this week gone? I know I have been reasonably busy,  Sewing all day Wednesday -  Joshua's, family birthday party on Wednesday -  Supermarket shopping Friday plus the dreaded h/w (don't like to mention that here! so will whisper it - housework) , oh and Sarah came and cut my hair..........hooray! (I was begining to look like shaggy sheep ) and all day yesterday I was at the first lace day of the year........lovely day.......lots of folk I know and my special lacemaking friends to gossip with all day.

I have some photo's of Joshua's birthday party, when I down load them from my camera I will show them here, but no photo's of yesterdays outing - somehow I just forgot to take any.  There I have done them. The orange thing is another Lego cake made to eat at home.

Brian is gradually improving - thank goodness, but his leg and arm are still very weak, and his leg collapses under him sometimes.  He says he has to think about how he puts his foot to the ground before taking a step!  He has started doing exercises to strengthen the muscles and is swimming early every morning again.  I expect it will take some time to get back to normal - after all he was out of action and doped up to the eyebrows for over two months altogether.  I am finding it difficult to allow him to take over the reins again - I have done his chores as well as mine all the time he was ill.

He had a good day out with our sons yesterday - unfortunately Chelsea lost the first game at home for many many months..... but they had a good day any way.  Kevin has told me today that Dad had trouble walking from the car to the ground as they had to park a long way from the entrance and that he was getting cross with himself - his strength will come back slowly we have been told by the Doc. provided he does as he is told and excercises!

Birthdays

Although his birthday isn't till Thursday, Joshua had a party yesterday afternoon.  He shared the party with another 7 year old also named Joshua - Mummies then can share the cost! They went to a local play area called Little Angels.  It is like a giant climing frame made with metal rods (scaffold?) commando nets, rope walkways, bouncy castle like stuff, tubes, a plastic ball pit,  shutes and a massive slide. great fun if you are between 3 and 12.  After the fun they had chicken and chips in a basket and plenty of soft drinks.
Grown ups are not allowed on to the equipment unless it is to help a little one get up and down the steep steps and commando nets but I went on it.......hehe.......I just love slides and this one was superb! long and bumpy! My son-in-law was amazed that I had done this and I got away with it because I made Emily (4) take me to it and go down with me.......

Joshua was telling me the other day that he had lost anpther tooth and this photo shows that it was a bottom one - his two new top ones are growing well.  Don't they look funny when they have a gap in the front - we had been teasing him over Christmas about the top  gap but the teeth have grown so quickly.

Mummy Sarah made the cake - Joshua is obsessed with Lego so of course his cake had to be a lego brick! he loved it. I didn't get any as it was all eaten by the children but Sarah is making another identical for Thursday afternoon's tea, so we shall go and have some then.

Although I haven't been posting lately I have been busy,one of the quilts shown is now finished and the other is well on it's way. 

The bag I made in a few days and has been on it's first outing, I made the handles a lot longer than they are now and found that they were too long so I have altered them - I can still get them over my shoulder, so I am happy about that!

These little pin cushions have been mad using paint palets, circles of fabric, wadding and a hot glue gun! they are for friends of mine as pressies.

I have done quite a lot of sewing over the last couple of months as my DH has been so very poorly and has done nothing but sleep - he missed christmas totally as well as the New year celebrations - he is now on the mend but has to watch what he is doing as being inactive for so long has meant that he has lost o lot of strength .

Updating - again!

We have had the snow that most of the country has had - when I last  measured the depth with a metal rule it was 9" deep.  It has been very cold but not as cold as Scotland has had it, and I don't like it -can it all go away soon - please?  The icicles that have formed from the gutters on the conservatory are amazing! sooooo long!  Our conservatory is heated by a radiator on the house wall and the roof above gets warm - so the snow has melted there and the melt water has run down and icicles have grown and grown and grown!  it has looked very pretty but I have now had enough of it!

I have been house bound as our road was impassable, not a car has been moved for a week - now people are finding that the main roads are clear and they have no excuseto stay home any longer - so the weekend saw lot of drive clearing and car cleaning.  This last picture shows the car on Tuesday evening  last week - just an inch or so of snow but by the morning you couldn't see the car at all - just a heap of snow!

My grandaughter wanted to borrow my car to day so I told her that she would have to dig it off the drive first - so she and her Mum and Auntie did just that - I had already cleared enough snow of the drive to enable them to get to the car........well I had to get out to post birthday cards for friends and rellies and didn't want to fall over before I had begun my adventure to the post box at the end of the road.....!

I don't know if we had fairies in the garden early in the morning when this picture was taken or if it was just the reflection of the flash on snow flakes, but as you cansee the snow was quite deep at this early hour and it continued snowing all day!  How my sister in law who lives in Montreal Canada cope's with snow for nearly 6 months of the year I don't know - I don't think I could.

I know that the children have all been having loads of fun,  building snowmen, making snow angels, toboganing down slopes in the park and helping Dad making an igoloo because they have had time off school - but yesterday they had to go back to  their classrooms.  I believe that every school in our town was closed.