Of sleep and blocks.

I've come to a decision - I like the one with the red middle and the paler colours around the outside. That's the one I'm going to make more of. Lots more of.

I also need to make more of the purple ones. Lots more.

I also need to quilt and finish Emily's one, which shouldn't take too long.

And - it's payday!

Mum is coming over and we have stuff to do, which is cool. The front room just needs a quick swish round, the kitchen needs a quick swish round and the dining room needs a minor miracle, but actually isn't that bad. There are no dirty clothes in the house (as far as I know, because you know what small boys, and big ones for that matter, are like!) so today I will strip the beds and wash all of that.

I would love to go back to being a SAHM in so many ways, or even a WAHM, because at least then my house would be clean and sparkly! There would probably be a dump room, and every now and again I'd get in there and dejunk, but it would be nice.

Not going to happen though. *sigh*

In other news, there is none! We assume BG is ok, we didn't hear anything after last nights calls, so no updates, and I'm guessing that there's been no reading or work going on because she's been in so much pain. That's a good reason lol! Hopefully she won't be too bad today, and it will have had some chance to heal a bit in her sleep. At least she didn't have to have her teacher go with her like N did when I went with him! No pain at all though then, but it was gelled and then injected, and then just popped out. Not to worry, it's done now. It's Friday, so there should be a phonecall tonight so we can find out how she did then.

If I'm asked, I'll try and get up to town to pay the money, but if not, I don't want to interfere, so I'll leave it. I think that's the best option.

AC is going off to his fathers at 9am. He coughed a bit last night, but not too badly, not enough to wake him up. Once the weather settles, it'll all come good. I slept well, R slept well enough, and the AC is still in bed!

Cup of tea and blog reading catch up I think!

More material, more blocks!

Utterly fabulous day.

Today was great.

We stayed home this morning, and Rach and Sally came round with the new Jehovah's Witness magazines, we had a chat, and it was fine. It was about the difference between religions and denominations. Interesting in many ways.

Then the AC and I went to the park. He skated all the way there, with lots of help, he skated around there with very little help eventually, but, reasonably enough, his legs were too tired to skate all the way home, so he put his trainers on. We also went to town, I bought material, forayed into prints with colours, and have spent the evening stitching log cabin blocks onto Stitch and Tear.

I'm not sure how I feel about them.

The material is nice. It's not looking so good here - I'll try and take pictures in the daylight tomorrow and see which I prefer. Basically, there's a beige, a pale green, and the red background with the print on top.


I tried them in each of the three colourways.






I'm heading towards the middle one I think. I like that one better. Any input would be cheerfully recieved!

And here's my favourite picture from today. I took the video camera with us so that I could practice using it, even though we've had it for a long time now, and got some lovely pictures. This is the best one in lots of ways,



because it's so him. Right down to the mud.

Love him so much.

Love BG as well, who has had 2 fillings and a cracked tooth extracted. Poor baby. She was so upset and all she wanted was her Daddy, and she cried and he listened and they were fine, until her mother just said "I need to speak to Daddy now" said to R, "She'll call you later" and hung up.

Eventually she did ring back, and she sounded a little better, and was asking about her Daddy, and it didn't hurt so much - but it shouldn't have hurt at all! Not like that.

Oh well. It's done now. Just hope and pray it doesn't get infected. But there's nothing we can do from here.

Never mind. (Although I do!)

Bedtime!

Quilting class

Ok, I'm home and my brain is buzzing!

I made 4 log cabin blocks today, using something called stitch and tear. It's foundation piecing (I think it's what the She-Ex was suggesting, so when Rita said about using it I immediately said yes.) Anyway, apparently when I'm done I can just take the paper out easy as anything. We'll see about that I expect!

I only used a couple of colours (I'll put photos up later) but it looks lovely and my colour choice was commented on in a favourable sense! I am tending to go for solid colours. I'll progress on at some point, I'm sure, but I like solid colours.

Right now though, I need a cup of tea, and/or a nap!

It was so cool though.

The new bag

The new bag was finished last night. No pattern, just a sketched out plan and some imagination!



The stitching is better than on the last one, so that's an improvement, although there is still plenty of progress to be made. The back is quilted, but not the front. This means it's soft on my hip, but I can feel what's in it without looking!


It's based on a black bag I have that is great, but isn't quite big enough for my Organisedmum Family Life book (the best diary known to man and woman kind btw!). I have been carrying two bags, or a bag inside a bag with the FLB next to it, but this option came up from the generous gift of corduroy fabric I recieved, and I did it! YAY ME!


I made it so that the front flap will tuck over the diary and then down behind it, and the back flap will come forward and over the top. In retrospect, I will be making the back flap longer next time I do one of these (and we know the bag thing is here to stay!) and then that should make it more secure.

However, I love it!

Fabric

I love it.

I was given some navy blue Corduroy today and there is TONNES of it. Ok, not literally, but there's a lot.

I'm getting off of here at 9pm so I can make with it! A surprise make at that. One with no pattern. One that may not go well. But hey - a person can try!

IN other news, AC is reading this


and we are up to here


which is the "very exciting bit". Sam and Adam are being very brave apparently, and he would do the same thing.

That's nice to know if I ever get stuck on a mountain. I'll have company!

He reads very fluently, but we're still having to work on reading with expression! He'll get there - he is only 5! (Ok, 6 in 17 days - he works it out on the calendar each morning!)

And now BG is calling! YAY! She wants to know if we have exciting news.

Tesco?
Cleaning the kitchen?
Doctor?

LOL!

Not a very exciting day really. :-)

Look what I did make!

The other day I thought I would try some crazy patchwork. It's in the book I got, and it looks great. So I made a square of it that, un-co-incidently enough was the same size as the trial patch I made for Emily's quilt.

Today I made handles, stitched them in, lined it, stitched it all together, and it's done!


Da-dah!
t
The bright side is Emily's quilt, and the pale side is Lilly's quilt, so that appealed to me as well. There's even some spare blocks in Lilly's side.

I love it. I'll take better pictures tomorrow, but I'm tired from last night now lol!

Laters people.

Top done!

From this ....



To these....




To this.....

And then to this.


Yep, I stitched the blocks into rows and the rows into a quilt top last night. It's a little wobbly in places, but then so is the person who made it!

Of Geese and Wheels and Dishes

Ok.

I ironed all the triangle squares, then laid out the blocks I had made. Then I set in the squares in the spaces so that they would make blocks, they just weren't sewn together yet, so that I could see how they would go.

and then I went "Hmmm! That looks ok!"

Tonight I have completed the remaining pinwheel blocks, completed the flying geese blocks, and stitched the halves of the broken dishes blocks. It's all good.

The only thing that isn't good is that yet again we phoned BG, and yet again there was no answer.

Oh well, that solves one question for us then!

And so to bed. Sneaking time to Do Things I Shouldn't Do is great. So now I'm going to sneak time and Do Something I Should Most Definately *Do*! ;-)

Sneaking time

I am going to be sneaking time from Other Things I Should Be Doing to do more quilt.

I am loving it. I have also kicked the behind of the credit card company, who have apologised for their error (HA! Tell ME I'm late paying them - I blooming well am not, it's a direct debit you idiots!).

SO far today I am in a much better mood, no tears, no maudlin thoughts, no nothing.

There's no answer from the She-Ex to anything, and there was an apology from the He-Ex for not looking at the bags properly. Anyone would think it was payday tomorrow or something lol!

AND!

I think I've done my first APP child. Maybe. I need to speak to the lit co-ord to see if I've done it properly lol.

HA!

A sewing I shall go!

How to make a Pinwheel bock

Just thought I'd post the pictures of this mornings work. The green and ivory fabric is my trying-things-out material, as it's strong and heavy and quite forgiving. More than anything, this is here to remind me what I did in what order. You know how it is sometimes.

Draw and cut out 2 ivory and 2 green squares.



Put the ivory and green square on top of each other, right sides together, and draw a diagonal line from corner to corner on the ivory square. Stitch a seam 1/4 inch from the line.


Turn the square around, and do the same from the other side of the line, 1/4 inch away.



Cut along the diagonals, and voila!



Open out to see 2 triangles stitched together.




Match up two sets of triangles, and stitch to make a rectangle. I'll have to do some other photos to remind me how I did it, but I basically opened them all out to the pattern I wanted, then folded them onto each other where the seam had to run.



Open them all out, check the pattern, and then fold together, wrong sides out, and stitch the seam.



Open out to reveal the finished block! One of my green corners isn't quite right, but its righter than previous attempts!


And now we have to get on because the AC and I just realised it was Thursday and Claire and E are coming to play at 1030. And we are both in jamas, planning a jama day. And he needs a bath.

But we don't mind. It's all a lovely day!

More goodness....

....

*warning* Geek alert!
.....

We use Activprimary at school, and I've just discovered on Primary3 how to combine flipcharts. How to just select the actual part of the actual flipchart I want, and place that into another flipchart.

This means I can write a flipchart to follow through what I want to teach, and then add in the bits I want to my daily flipchart.

I said it was geeky.

HOWEVER!

On the anti-geek side of things, I have this completed. Well, aside from the sewing in of the ends, but you get the idea. I was just experimenting with squares and triangles and how they fit together.



And then I went out today and bough this material,

Which was a whole £6. Slightly over my budget lol, but there is lots!

Eventually it should look like this (but in lilacs, not pink and blue)



A truely gorgeous quilt for a baby!

But work first. Bah humbug

Ok, well,

... I've done nothing this morning so far but slowly finish the quilt.

I couldn't get the hang of the binding thing, so I've stitched the edges instead, as I also think they will be softer for the small child to snuggle under, as that is the plan for this quilt.

It's not brilliant.

The seams don't always match.
The oversewing meanders slightly.
The colours are slightly in the wrong places.

Professionals may tut-tut at me, but I am absurdly proud of the progression of this, from old jeans to soft and snuggly quilt, stitched with love for the small child, for those nights when just a duvet isn't enough, or when curling up on the sofa requires a cover.

I have a sewing lesson later today, to which I shall take my pictures, and then I might even book myself a quilting class. Depends on the cash, 'cos there isn't a lot of that at the moment lol!



It is in situ now, awaiting his approval......

Update the second

Well, I got distracted.

It happens. I am my mother's daughter.

And so, in order to refocus myself, I went with the quilting option that I had been putting off for a while. I started this thing in November, from a pile of jeans that I needed to use so that I stopped wearing them.

Some were just old and tired. But still fitted. I could only wear them in the house because the knees had gone, but that was ok.

Some were too big, and left over from my size 16 days. US people, I think that's a size 14. Whatever, it was in my heifer days. As in Size of a Cow by The Wonder Stuff. I loved the Wonder Stuff. Almost as much as, in those days, I liked cake.

I still like cake. But these days I exercise and I get lots of what has been referred to as the mattress mambo (which expression made me laugh!) and I don't eat as much rubbish, nor drink as much alcohol, hence I am back to a trim size 10. US people, I think it's a size 8. If I'm wrong, leave me a note lol!

Size 10 is still overweight apparently, but I'm 34, I'm 5ft 3, and I'm happy, the man thinks I am the most gorgeous creature he has ever seen, and that suits me!

Anyway.

And by the way, that's the way today has been. Distracted.

So (what was I on about?) Oh yes, the quilt.

So I made it from a lot of old jeans, cut into squares, stitched together by hand into strips, and then I had to stop, because I had blisters. Denim is hard stuff.

Now I have a sewing machine, I went with the sewing the strips together option, as opposed to the sorting clothes upstairs option.

Please to observe the results thus far.



It's bigger than this, this is just a photo of about half of it I think. I have an old blanket to go underneath it, and then probably a flannel back on it.

I think it looks quite lovely. We'll ignore the fact that some of the seams don't match up and that there's a couple of squares in the wrong place for the colours to go properly, and focus on the fact it's my first one, and it's functional, and I like it.

I love it.