Sudoku Quilt

About a million years ago (ok, 6 1/2), Sarah started making some blocks for a sudoku quilt - but then things came up and she was busy and lost interest and so on.  In the move, we found the project and she said "Oh, I should finish that", so yesterday she made a few more blocks - all the pieces were cut out already except the sashing, so it wasn't hard to get back into it. The plan for which block goes where was there as well, which helped.   She only has two blocks to go now, and then the rest of the sashing. Perhaps we'll manage between us to get it finished this time!

ATCs with the kiddies

Today we made some ATCs together for a swap - we did them all as round robins - we each made a background to start, and then passed left and let the next person add an element and so on until we'd gone all the way around. These are for a swap of ATCs done with your kids - the kids will each get an ATC to keep, in return.

This first one is my background, Alex's jewel dots, Olivia's mushrooms and Sarah's butterfly.



This one is Sarah's background, my leaf in the foreground, Alex's small leaf and woman's face and Olivia's black and white flower (the music was part of the background).



Here is Alex's background (half blue, half rose), Olivia added the bird, Sarah added the stripe of red tea paper and I finished it off with the word "rose" and the cut out roses on the bottom half.



And finally, Olivia's background; Sarah added the white glittery stripe and flower, I added the woman and the flower and dragonfly punches and Alex finished it off (with some trial and error and consultation) with the red gems and the red bird.

Teacher cards & other bits

Did a little less work today - shoulders still feeling all that quilting yesterday! Though I did take the quilt around to Sharon this morning, and she seemed very pleased with it, so that's good. Anyway, one thing I did do was put some hanging tabs on this little beauty - I was going to do a sleeve, but decided not to in the end, due to the height of the hanging rail (which was already on the wall) - this way, I didn't have to move the rail down, and also, I quite like having the blue at the top again. It's not the same fabric which is in the centre, but it's very similar, so works well. I have moved the quilt which was in this space - the spring Four Season's quilt - it was actually a little large for the space anyway. Not sure where I will put it yet, but I will find it a home before too long...





I also did my journal quilt from last week, which really bears no relationship to the week, except that the kids and I had the sequins out today. The background is a paper napkin from a pack I bought in Sainsbury's (but they are much too nice to be used as napkins), I then quilted it a bit, added a few feathers, and a load of sequins. Simple, but effective... and done!


But the main thing I did today was to help the kids do their end-of-year cards for teachers - which mainly involved wielding the rotary cutter, fusing, and in Alex's case - helping with the glue. The design is entirely due to the children in each case, with relatively little input from me, other than the occasional reminder not to put stuff too close to the edges (as that hinders the satin stitched edging later). I did also do all the edges - more for time's sake than anything else. The three above are Alex's (he has two TA's in his class) - and below, Sarah's are to the left and Olivia's to the right. No surprises there - some people may think "less is more", but Olivia is certainly a "more is more" type of girl!

Discharged!

Today felt like a piecing sort of day, so I decided to do some more blocks from my dad's shirts - finished four which were partly done before and did another four. Sarah came up to chat and wanted to work on her quilt, so she stitched another block (below) while I did some of the cutting for these blocks and some more for tomorrow.



There were some fun things in the post, too - this card, which is not for Valentine's Day, but in honour of the first heart transplant in the 1960s, for that swap. It's from Anne R.

And also in the post - the pieces from the discharge swap, which are below - some great variety. Not sure what I will do with them, but they are lovely... I do like discharging.

Sarah's sudoku quilt and a bag

Pardon my knees there in the picture... These two blocks were made not by me, but by DD1, Sarah, who decided that today was a good day to start her quilt for Sandown quilt show (June). She's doing a sudoku style quilt - nine fabrics, all arranged so no same fabric is in the same row, etc. Like the puzzles. These are two of the nine sashed nine-patch blocks. She was a little annoyed at me by the end of the session as I insisted that we redo the blocks in a couple of places where the sashing was badly misaligned (a little mis-alignment is fine - she's 10, after all - but she has lazy tendencies and hates to pin things & I'm trying to teach her that being careful in the first place is better than re-doing...)

The other thing I did today was to make a bag - this is like a plastic carrier bag, except it's fabric, and it folds up into the outside pocket to make a little parcel. I intend to keep it in the panniers of my bike (might make another one as well) as I frequently forget to take bags out with me when on my bike (the car is fine as there are loads of bags in the boot). Obviously I can put purchases in my panniers, but getting them from the shop to where I've parked the bike can be a challenge...

Anyway, this bag is the first in the 2008 BQL (British Quilt List) Bag Challenge - each month there will be a new bag pattern for us to make (if we've made the previous one) - if you don't finish on time, you miss out on new patterns until you are finished. But potentially, there are 12 possible bags to make & collect. I am a co-moderator of this list, so I get sneak peeks on some of the bags, and may well make some out to test the instructions, etc, but I won't be showing them here until the actual month they appear. By the end of the year, I imagine I'll have more bags than I know what to do with (Christmas pressies for 2008?). [By the way, this one isn't breaking the embargo - it was give out early as a Christmas present!]

Inching towards Christmas

Christmas inchies were the order of the day today as I have two swaps of these, both of which need to be in by early December. I know it's nowhere near early December, but I am away until the 17th, and then there's the mailing time to the US - so I thought if I had them done before I went, I could post them while in the US... So that's what I did today. These pics show them packed up and ready to go - one is doing sets of five, the other is pairs & they have to have an eyelet and be decorated on both sides, so I have added some nice Christmas sequins to the backs of these (but haven't photographed the backs). Here are the sets I did - mostly snowflakes, no one will be surprised to see!




The left set is a purple snowflake fabric background, with variegated purple thread edging and blue or white plastic snowflakes. The ones on the right have a white and blue snowflake fabric background, with decorative stitching around the edges and snowflake brads in blue, white or silver.




And here we have a blue snowflake batik background (yes, I do like snowflake fabrics - how'd you guess?) with transparent "snowflakes" which are actually buttons and only have 5 arms, not six, but I think they work anyway, don't you? On the right, the purple fabric again, with some silver foil on it, then snowflake sequins in various colours. Both of these have silver metallic thread around the edge - straight stitched on the left and zig zag on the right.




And then I decided to move to stars and do a few in more traditional Christmas colours - a green leaf background (I think it's a Debbie Mumm fabric) with gold wooden stars, and on the right a gold shimmery fabric, with red silk satin stitch to edge and on the back a very pretty Christmas print with mistletoe and pointsettias. And of course, red and gold star jewels on the front.





And to keep the inchie theme, I got these in the post today - orange and black stamped inchies, from the October swap on Joanne's blog. I have an idea for something fun to do with them for my friends who are really into Hallowe'en, but that's for next year. At the moment, they are just adorning my pinboard. And, not an inchie, but lovely nonetheless is this "J" card, from Melinda - J is for Jack. Great idea, Melinda - thanks!





Finally, I have been promising Sarah that I would help her make a pencil roll for her coloured pencils for a while now, and we finally had a time we could both do it this afternoon. She did a lot of it, but got tired of sewing the lines where the pencils go after a while, so I finished it off. She has a set of 24 very nice artist's colouring pencils, so there are 24 spaces, then a larger space for sharpener, rubber, small ruler, etc and then two more pencil spaces for regular pencils at the end; it has a ribbon to tie. Pretty AND practical. I've been making a lot of useful things lately - whatever has got into me? lol.

One of those days

Here is the sum total of today's sewing - some little bags for party bags for Sarah's sleepover party on Saturday. We made them this afternoon after she got home from school - really quick drawstring bags, made from an old wrap I bought in a charity shop. We have filled them with a large handful of sweets (Celebrations, Quality Street) - too hard to think of anything else to give 9 & 10 year old girls, really.



Although I was home all day I didn't actually do any sewing - wasn't really in the mood, so I unpacked the shopping, cooked the Bolognese sauce for dinner, cleared out a number of bookcases, tidied up various things the kids had left lying about (this is a never-ending process in our house, though often I make them do it), read email, and finally got around to writing the words about my dad for the Celebration of Life which my stepmom is organising (more on that on my family blog). A busy day, and productive, but no sewing.



Anyway, here's a quilty picture - this is the baby quilt for Geoff's other co-worker, whose last day is tomorrow. I finished the binding on it last night (see - I'm not always last minute about these things!) and it's ready to go in to work with him tomorrow. Still have another one to finish for my own friend, and then I really ought to get another one at least to the binding stage, just in case...

Hats off - or on, rather

Today - the last day before the girls go back to school (Alex won't go back until next week, but it's still an official school night). Ran some errands - post office (including sending my blue & white quilt off to Hever), library, hair trim for Sarah, and then some friends around this afternoon, but despite that, I did actually work on the stripes postcards this morning - got up to the edging, but no photos. I'll photo them tomorrow, as I'm sure I'll finish - I only have a few more edges to do.

Instead of today's work, here's the post - a postcard from Anne for 1900's (SOS accepted as universal distress signal in 1908), an African block from Karol Ann for our private block swap (great block, but now it's my turn, unfortunately) and Cloth, Paper, Scissors, which I took with me to the park to read when I took the kids out for half an hour, but of course, there were two friends I hadn't seen for most of the summer in the park, so I just chatted instead. Life is so hard!

And finally, here are the girls' hats - we finished Sarah's this morning, and started Olivia's almost straight away. She did some rows, I did some more while chatting to my friend Caroline, Caroline's daughter (Sarah's age) did a few rows, then Olivia did some more and I finished it off tonight. They love them - in fact, Sarah has worn hers all day. It suits her, actually. And they were so easy to make. I foresee presents!

Little bits and pieces

So, believe it or not, I actually got some creative stuff done yesterday on the journey home from Ireland. Cathi had a set of these knitting rings, a bit like big knitting dollies and gave us the larger two (there are two small ones as well) - Sarah started a hat for herself and Cathi started a scarf for me, which I have subsequently finished - did all the length of it in the car yesterday while Geoff was driving (I usually do most of the driving as he doesn't really like it, and I am a bad passenger, but I was so tired and my ankle and knee ached, that I had to swap) and tonight put some tassley bits on the ends. It's quite a loose weave, so it will be a good intermediate scarf. And great yarn - it was called Monet, and you can tell why. Sarah's hat is nearly done, just needs to be cast off, which I will help her with tomorrow.

Here are some more bits and pieces which arrived while I was gone - the moulds I actually had to go and collect, as they had to be signed for, but if I'd been home, they would have come Saturday - really quick service from Argentice. And hoorah, new faces to make! The bits on the right are experiments with sheer fabrics - a technique swap for my surface embellishment group. Lots of fun pieces. Which I might use for something someday... or not.

Then today's post brought me these little chaps, which look very decorative in their bundles, but don't really show, so I have taken them apart and spread them out to photograph. When I have a few more, I will have to work out how to display them. They are all great, but of course being me I particularly like the brown row...

And finally, amidst the laundry, errands (post office, school (to put away uniform in the uniform shop in prep for wednesday), haircut (olivia), playdate (sarah), dentist (all three)), and general getting-the-house-back-in-order-after-holidays I actually did manage a little work. I made up three more cards with faces on, and did a prototype of a stripes card - it will also have some stitching on it, not sure just what yet. And will be edged with variegated thread, which produces a striped effect. I also worked a little on the sunset cards, the prototype of which I made before going to Ireland. Perhaps more tomorrow on those, though we have another busy day, of course.