Strange week!

What a strange week this is turning out to be!  We are having to do a school run twice a day all week this week! we haven't done that for years!  Charlotte's Mummy isn't very well so Charlotte is staying with her Daddy, who stays most of the time with his girl friend and her children (their Daddy died in a motor bike accident a few years ago).  As Stuart goes to work early to avoid the M25 traffic hold ups and Leslie needs to leave by 8:30 and her children all go to a local school, and walk there, we are picking Charlotte up at 8:20 to take her to school the other side of town. 
It seems funny to have to think about collecting her at 3pm and then having her here till Stuart picks her up again around 5:30pm.  We have told him that we will not be able to pick her up from school on Thursday as we want to go and see Joshua and Emily in there schools Nativity play.   I'm looking forward to that........
Today she asked me to wash her hair for her, she was going to the youth group attached to a local church this evening and her hair was 'greasy' she said......she has very long, very thick hair (down to her hips) and it takes ages to deal with it. I think she has trouble doing it her-self, and she likes the way I can blow dry all the waves out of it!

I think that Brian and I are going to be exhausted by the end of the week! and we don't yet know how long we are going to do this school run.........it may be till the end of term, depending on how quickly Charlotte's Mummy gets well again.

Rain!

I am fed up with the rain.......we have had so much lately and now it looks as though it's going to cost us a lot of money!  The garage roof is leaking !!  Himself has already started on the clean- up........he had our old kitchen units out there as a work bench and storage - they are in soggy bits down the dump now! and the tools and pots of paint that were stored in them have been dried off and are sitting at the other end of the garage! 
This roof has already had a 'patching' job done on it a couple of times since we moved here but it looks as though this time it will need something more drastic! and expensive!!
He is going to have a proper look later on today - now it has stopped raining for a while.........but it is soooo cold out there at the moment ,  just 2c with ground frost..............not good conditions to be climing a metal ladder - he could stick to it!
Oh well if it has to have a new roof it does but that will mean less money for our holiday to Canada next year.  We are going to Vancouver for a family members wedding and are going to ride the Rocky mountaineer train to Calgary and then fly to Montreal to see the rest of the family. 
We will be away all of August and some of September too.    Everything is booked except where we are staying in Montreal - we are hoping that the family will take care of us there........a sister and five neices should be able to have us a few days at a time don't you think?  if not we will go into the Comfort Inn nearby, the family all live fairly close together on the west side of Montreal and not far from the hotel is a fabric shop - the one that is the reason why I do P&Q.  La Maison d' Calico in Point Clare. (this site is in Canadian French but there is a button to change it to English on the site bar)

Arfur

As promised to Purple Podded Peas a picture of my red tabby..........waiting for his supper..........he has been gone a few years now but I still miss him.

He always took advantage of any body in a reclining position!

November !!!

Where has the last month gone - what with Halloween and  bonfire night and baby sitting and illnesses (not mine) and one thing and another I just have not got round to blogging!

I have been sewing - I found a panel of Christmas placemats - easy sewing - so I am getting on with them.  Also I have taken up the challenge from Thamesiders and have been busy hand sewing that.  I also decided to try out Pam and Nicky Lintotts book on Jellyrolls and make one of the quilts from there with the fabric given as a freebee when re-subscribing to one of the magazines.

I have now finished this top and it is waiting for me to put the wadding and the backing on and do the quilting.  This fabric is very 'manish'  not just because of the dark colours but also because it has golf as it's theme.  Golf balls and tee's and people playing golf and all the Argyle patterens that the men wear on their socks and sweaters.

At a day spent with some friends one weekend I made these dear little balls in Christmas fabric and they will be hung on my Christmas tree eventually!

Laundering a big quilt!

As I had marked up the patterns I wanted to stitch with white washable and blue washable pens, I knew I would have to wash the whole quilt - there was just soooo much drawing on it!

 Well, firstly 'would it go in my machine?' or 'would I have to take it to the launderette?'  best to try it and see.......it fitted my machine so there it stayed with three colour catchers just in case - ('cos I am one of those who never washes fabric first - I think it makes it harder to cut accurately and sew evenly if you have washed the stuffing out of it - and who wants to spend loads of time spraying starch while ironing it any way? - I want to start my quilt 'NOW') The catchers were hardly marked - but better safe than sorry.

I washed it on the lowest heat setting on my machine 30c - the woolies wash! and hung it in the garden to dry.  It hadn't dried by bedtime so I brought it in and humg it over the clothes airer..........big mistake!  OK - it was dry in the morning but when we spread it out on the bed it had five bumps in the middle!! I have an airer that has 'shelves' on it and the supports for the shelves have 'shoulders' .......if I hadn't been so tired I would have realised that it would cause problems! So I had to dampen it down again and rehang it in the garden........all day again!  It was still damp when I brought it in again, but this time I folded it carefully and hung it over the back of the conservatory sofa beside the large radiator and left it till the morning!   Perfect job! when laid out on the bed it was bump free.

I e-mailed my daughter to tell her it was finished and she came over expecting to take it home with her - I told her I wanted to hang on to it for another couple of weeks - she can have it at the begining of November! WHY? she asked?  I wish to take it for 'Show and Tell' at http://www.thamesidequilters.co.uk/ on Monday evening and I also want to take to a quilting day with my friends over in Yateley at the end of this month.

I have been 'lost' since I have finished this biggie.......I need to start something else - something I can hand sew on the days I go to meetings and something I can machine sew for when I am at home.   I have a lot of projects waiting to start but don't know which one's I want to do now.......I keep going into my workroom and standing and looking and coming out none the wiser!  Perhaps to dya I will be able to make up my mind.

Finished at last

Here are pictures of the finished quilt - it is 100" square - that is smaller than the original top was made at.....someone didn't want it that long after all - after I had made it and marked the quilting patterns! so I took a whole pattern block off the bottom, after detaching the borders ..........I was not a happy bunny!  It has affected how I felt about the quilt and I am sure I have not made as good a job of it  as I would have done.

Now the younger daughter has asked me for a new quilt for her bed (another kingsize) I don't know if I want to do another one yet.  She already has a blue and white one I made for her many years ago but now she is changing her colour scheme and wants a pink and white one!  Perhaps I will htink about it in the New Year .

Catching up

Gosh what a long time since I last posted! I haven't been away again - just busy at home.

I have been working on the kingsize Double Irish Chain quilt (Quilt in a day Eleanor? I don't think so! it took two days just to mark up the quilting designs!), and it is nearly finished......the rest of the binding is being sewn down today - then I shall take pictures.......

I have also had two lovely days at lacedays with my friends, so my table cloth edging is growing , slowly - unfortunately there are no more until the begining of Feb 2010, so unless I make a commitment to myself to make lace at least once a week, nothing else will be done till then!

My middle granddaughter came over one week end and spent the time going through my stash of fabric and chosing colours for the ninepatch quilt top she is making - it was going to be just red and dark blue - but- other colours are creaping in as she discovered fat quarters of gorgeous yellows and greens and purples......."oooh can I have some of that Granny?"  A lovely weekend of sewing with her left me exhausted - not just through raking through boxes and cutting 3" squares for her, (I have yet to allow her to use the rotary cutter!)  but because she never stops talking! She's worse than me!!

Thamesider Quilt group ( http://www.Thamesidequilters.co.uk/index.html ) have thrown us a challenge - we provide a block - any size , any style - for the center of a quilt and then pick an envelope from the box which will tell us what first border to put on.  We will have two months to make that border then we will pick another envelope.....till our borders measure 20".  Sounds like fun so I am going to join in......will I regret it - we will see..........