Busy Lizzie

Well the Sugar Overload quilt top isn't quite done, but what a week it's been. I do have all the blocks finished and ready to be wonkified (that's a technical term). Then I'll just sew them together and the top will be done. I suspect the most time consuming part will be organising the layout of the blocks. Random block placement requires careful thought!

I have also finished crocheting my first granny square. Yay for me. When I say "first" I really mean "first presentable", as there was a trial run which had some significant issues. I discovered crochet is really easy to undo - so no yarn wastage. And good old Spotlight is having a yarn sale tomorrow. So I sense supplies for my first wee bed throw will be bought. I think granny squares must be like 9 square blocks in quilting. You feel like you've learned how to piece a block. Then you find out about appliqué and English paper piecing, and you realise it's only the beginning!

But the real work around the house has been in the front entrance. Carpet is up, the floor de-stapled, wooden beams sealed, random hole in wall gibbed up, plastering finished, flooring booked for next week and wallpaper chosen. We are all ready to finish painting this weekend, and then we will have our floor put down next week. Hopefully it will all be complete for the delivery of the stripped back quilt cabinet next Friday. I'm very excited. Not excited enough to get a quilt finished to put in it though. Perhaps the wee man will think about sleeping next week, to help me out. He tells me he doesn't sleep because he likes to hang out with mummy. Who can blame him, really.

Finally, I thought I should write out my current to do list, for posterity. Here goes:
* make backing, baste, quilt and bind Henry Fish
* quilt Cherish Nature, bind.
* finish Sugar Overload quilt top
* make Henry Fish pillow case in time for Mothers Day (heh)
* finish puff quilt

Then:
* Kitchenaid cover
* zombie quilt for the hubby

That'll do!

More secrets

Look what I was doing when I was supposed to be getting to sleep early tonight (sleep is a big deal with an 8 week old, as you can imagine). The picture is dark because I was pretending to hubby that I had turned the light out.

Yep, that's right. Learning to crochet with Craftsy, my new love. First thing this morning I had never picked up a crochet hook. This is the start of my second square. I'm very proud, wonky and all.

If my team at work ever find out, any remaining shred of cool will be gone. Who am I kidding? I lost the cool with quilting, anyway. I will have to practice saying "I craft, and I'm proud". Repeat after me...

Sweetie pie

We've been meandering along making some Sugar Overload quilting progress this week. Right now we have:
* 18 lovely completed blocks
* 38 blocks with white borders
* 76 little strips of sprinkle fabric 7"x1.5"
* 76 little strips of sprinkle fabric 10"x1.5"

It shouldn't take that long to get the blocks complete. But as always it is a matter of finding the time! Princess investigated the completed blocks yesterday. I asked which one she liked best. She said she liked ALL of them mummy. And then she announced she liked this quilt better than her Hello Kitty quilt. Oh well. Just as well we kept Hello Kitty instead of sending it off like a present as originally intended then.

This lack of completion hasn't been helped by me deciding that the front entrance needs to be redecorated. To be clear, our entire house needs doing up. We bought size, not quality, and given the arrival of our happy little family over the last 3 years, there has been neither time nor money to change anything. The hubby has been doing some work on the garden (under careful supervision), but that's about it.

But the arrival of the new quilting cabinet, which will go in the entrance, means that of course it must look its best. Ultimately this is my BQF's fault, because she got me into quilting, which led to the cabinet, which led to the commencement of destruction. So far hubby has lifted carpet, removed skirtings, and started painting our awful brown ceiling beams white. Lovely white.

Needless to say, the time I have spent supervising all this activity and looking for wallpaper online has impacted seriously on my spare quilting time.

In other news, I have some Riley Blake labels to make quilt labels with. Thank you for all your helpful suggestions. I think I will be handwriting and ironing plus sewing on at this stage. We'll see what they look like.

Do you like the donuts?

Quilting explained

I was having a little discussion with Princess about her "lolly fabric" (aka charm pack) and explaining how it would become a quilt.

Me: well mummy uses the sewing machine and sews your lolly fabric to other fabric and it gets bigger and bigger. Then I sew the fluffy fabric inside and it becomes a quilt.

Princess: *thinks seriously* That's like magic, hey mummy?

Me: that's right, honey! Just like magic.

Bloglovin and other stuff

Well I'm not really up to par with all this bloggy stuff, but apparently Bloglovin is the next big thing, so I have added a link to follow me over on the sidebar.  Hopefully it works.

Happily there has been some sugary progress.  See.  56 happy little charms with two of their borders.

The slushies are my favourite 

But then I bought some more fabric.  I cannot control myself.  First, I needed something for one of my future projects - a cover for my One True Love.

Covet

I had a looksie around Spoonflower and there it was.  Japanese cuteness. And because I really can't control myself, I got three other matching fabrics.  That should be one fine Kitchenaid cover.

Then hubby decided he wants a zombie quilt (yes really) so I got some zombie fabric too.  I will need to think hard about a pattern, but while I was looking around the interwebby I found this awesome book.  I have resisted buying it so far (mainly because I am destitute from fabric buying), but I sense it in my future.  The cuteness is endless.

And The Little Craft Store is closing down, so I "needed" a few bits and bobs from there.

Who knows when this will all get made, I will be back at work before I know it.  I guess it is good to have goals!

Sugar overload

Following the completion of Monster Bash, it was time to pick the next project over the weekend. To ease the new project guilt while Henry Fish, puffy quilt and Cherish Nature are unfinished, I basted Cherish Nature first. I had been putting this off while waiting for basting spray to arrive at Spotlight.

I'm still waiting. But the lady there suggested generic crafting spray, so I gave it a try. Well - that stuff sure is sticky. I suspect my machine needle isn't going to be a fan, but we shall see. It's not like I basted the quilt to start quilting though! It can sit around now making me feel sensible while I piece a new top.

Speaking of which, we are going all sugar and spice and all things nice in this house. In further pursuit of sensible quilting practices, I decided to use existing material and dragged out the cute little Sweet Tooth charm pack I ordered for Princess in February. By "use existing material" I mean that I got the charm pack out and headed down to Spotlight with Princess to buy all the other fabric to go with it, and lovely soft pink towelling for the back. Hardly a cost saving measure.

Any-hoo, we are using a cute wonky charm tutorial from "that girl, that quilt" (I'll add the link to my resources page). I bravely let Princess choose the background fabric. Surprisingly, she didn't want plain pink, but instead a "sprinkles" fabric which matches the charm pack. She assured me, with all the confidence that a three year old can muster, that she really, really liked it mummy.

So we are cutting, cutting. On the world's smallest quilting table, because we decided to give our battered oak table to the restoration guy when he picked up my new cabinet on Saturday. It is barely bigger than my cutting mat! Character building.

Monster Bash is done

Yay. Everything seems to take so long these days! As soon as it was finished Princess decided that she likes monsters and orange after all and promptly had a tea party on it with all her bears. Poor wee man isn't going to get a look in any time soon.

Stippling was a new experience, that's for sure. I think it turned out okay. It is pretty forgiving too. Having said that, I don't think I will be stippling too much more until I get a machine with a bigger throat.

For the binding I tried a new technique I spotted on another blog (I cant remember where!) using a zigzag as the top stitch for the machine binding. Except I don't like zigzag, so I used a curvy decorative stitch that I thought matched the style of the stippling. It certainly results in a well attached binding. It won't be coming off any time soon, which I think is excellent for a small boy's quilt which will be thrashed.

The hubby is responsible for the binding colour - I don't like a solid. His explanation is that the colour matches the monster's eyes. I guess there is logic to it. Bless.

So overall, this has been a very good learning quilt!

My next learning experience is to be quilt labels. Any tips will be happily received :-)

My lovely new cabinet is off to be stripped (eww err) tomorrow and should be back in a week or so. Very exciting. Time to sew sew sew.