Christmas in March

Another lovely Saturday. I could really get used to this not working on a weekend thing!

Today I have spent the afternoon with my mother-in-law doing her Christmas present. A little late I know but December is just such a busy time so this seemed like a much better time to do it. In fact the last couple of days have really felt like Christmas all over again.

Last night we went over to see some really good friends that we haven't seen for far too long. They are those sort of friends that you can go for months without seeing and then just instantly pick up from where you left off like there has been no time apart. Their dog had definitely not forgotten us after a few months apart!

Yes, those are my legs! Anyone who knows how terrified I am of dogs will never really believe this photo! He stayed there for most of the evening as he has always done whenever we have been to stay. It always feels so much like going to our second home going to visit - so comfy and with the best cheese sandwiches and cups of tea in the world!

As we were leaving they did produce a bag of Christmas presents for us as well - yes it's been that long since we saw them! Again a sign of some really really good friends as well, such thoughtful presents. I got a box to keep all of my sewing stuff in as they know that I have recently started to give sewing a go as well as a sewing magazine which included my very first ever proper sewing pattern.

Today's prezzy was for me and my mother-in-law to go on a flower arranging course with Totally Flowers (http://www.totally-flowers.co.uk/contact.php). The one that we did was the supermarket flowers course - learning how to arrange flowers that could be bought in a supermarket & let's face it, the only kind of flowers we are ever going to buy/be bought!

We started off by choosing the container that we would like to make our arrangement in - either a small glass cube of this tin. We lined it with sellophane in case it would leak when in contact with water and then added some flower foam (also known as oasis). The oasis was soaked in water prior to adding to the container and adding any flowers. This would just be rested on top of a bucket of water (with flower food in) until the foam was completely submerged. We were told not to force the foam into the water as this could create air bubbles inside the foam.

Then to start arranging the flowers - the scary bit. We were left to our own devices a little so that our creations would come from within and not be a replica of anything that she had made. These were the flowers that we were all given.

I personally thought that they looked nicer already arranged in this bucket than my supermarket flowers normally look after I have tried to arrange them in a vase.

I decided to arrange mine tall on the right and then low on the left. The intention was for this to go in the corner of our living room, next to the fireplace, in the alcove but the colours don't quite work now I have got it home.

I started off with a very tall flower on the right (no idea of all of the names though I was told on numerous occasions) foliage sticking out on the left to start the formation of the shape that I was trying to create and some ivy around the front to hide the front of the foam over the top of the container.

And gradually to form the rest of the shape in between with the other flowers - lilies next.

And then the remaining flowers that I liked the look of for the rest of the arrangement.

I am really pleased with the way it turned out. My mother-in-law did really well with hers too. It's amasing how different the two arrangements turned out even though we were given the same selection of flowers to start with.

And both of them survived the journey home too!

It has definitely been a really really lovely day. These chilled out and relaxing Saturday's are very much needed at the minute and I am looking forward to an enjoyable evening too - I'm sure my hubby won't mind having a nice girly evening and will love it that the pair of us will most likely spend our time knitting/crocheting. Maybe we can gang up on him and get him to join in as well! Not holding my breath on that one though.

Engine System Service Due

Well yesterday was slightly eventful but turned out to be s really nIce day in the end. It all started with an engine warning light coming on in the car on the way to work. It had only been into the garage earlier in the week so we decided to turn around and take the car back to our local garage to see if they could correct the issue without us having to call out a recovery truck. They did manage to fix it without too much trouble - they had put in too much much oil during the service.

In the meantime though I had had to call into work to say that I wouldn't be able to make it. I may as well enjoy my day off if I'm getting one even it is completely unexpectedly. I booked to have my hair done which I was really pleased about as otherwise I was going to go next Saturday morning at 8am (I have another day off next weekend which I will tell you all about next week) and so I spent a lovely day being pampered and doing some sewing too.

I went home to have a lovely long shower and sew whilst watching a really old TV series (Cold Feet) that I have on DVD but never normally get the chance to watch as it is pretty girly, before going out to have my hair done and to collect the car after it was fixed. I started off with seeing some more of my rows together of the patchwork seat cover that I am making. This is as far as I got with the second set of rows for the patchwork befor my machine stopped working:

Once I got to this point my machine started not releasing the bobbin thread properly and started to eat the fabric into the underneath of the machine. It has done this a few times before and I have sorted it (with the hep of my hubby) by taking off the base plate of the machine, removing the bobbin and cleaning out the bobbin holder to get rid of any lint that had got stored in there. This time I had tried this and still couldn't get the machine to work. It was still doing the same thing of eating my fabric into the underneath of the machine.

I wasn't sure what else I could do the fix this so I decided to start cutting the pieces for my chicken instead of sewing and see if my husband could see something that I was doing wrong when he got home. I have cut out the larger pieces now - the only bits that I have not yet worked out how to do is the comb, wattle and beak as I am still not 100% sure of how to do these.

Once I had been to collect my hubby from work in our (now fixed) car I asked him to take a look at this. He found what we thought was a really large amount of lint underneath where the bobbin sits in my sewing machine. We removed this with tweezers - it did look a lot like a big tube of lint stuck well down into the bottom of the machine and then re-attached everything as it should be. I tested my machine and his now seems to be working fine. By this point it was fairly late so I have not done any more sewing with it since its test.

After more searching online last night it would seemed that we have removed the oil wick from my machine. I do think that this must have been damaged anyway as there was a small piece of plastic that also are out with it and the wick itself seemed to be really discintigrated. The machine should still work ok without this I believe but might need servicing regularly in order to keep the machine oiled. Hopefully if I can get it serviced soon this might be able to be replaced as well.

In the evening last night I did manage to make one more egg for the easter basket meaning that I have have 4 (almost) complete eggs. I just need to sew in the ends on this final one.

I think I will try to increase the pattern slightly to make some larger eggs. Doubling up the yarn on one of them worked ok but I think it would be good if I could also increase the pattern a little and make some slightly bigger eggs as well.

Finally this morning I have been getting ready to go to Wembley to watch Bristol City play Walsall. I don'T really support either team but I did live in Bristol for a while and my hubby's Dad also supports Bristol City so it seemed like it would be a good day out.

Luckily Bristol City and Nottingham Forest both play in red and white so this morning I found some scarves that I had knitted a long time ago but had never quite got around to sewing the ends in. A couple of minutes sewing this morning ensured that the ends were finally finished and these are now ready to go and be used at the match today.

Come on you reds! I know that chant as it can also be used by both clubs! Let's hope it's a good game.

Yesterday was definitely an eventful day but turned out to be very nice really - the after effects of one service fixed and now another one required for my sewing machine. All in all not too bad though - I definitely feel like I made the most of my unexpected day off, even without my sewing machine for a portion of the afternoon.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Today I have had an absolutely lovely day yet again. This wasn't quite such a crafty Sunday as the  but there is still a little progress to report today.

Whenever I have had a spare few minutes this week I have been working on my patchwork for the seat cover in my little crafty den. I have really enjoyed finding the time to sew and I really feel like I am now making progress. I have managed to get some more little rows of squares made up ready just to sew together and then attach to the first block that I made. I chose this time to make rows of 5 blocks this time instead of 4 - this just makes the rest of the numbers work out better - just another block of 5 to go until the seat cover is its full size.

I hope that these will join as successfully as the last ones did.

Today I also had a lovely day celebrating Mother's Day as well as my Nan's birthday by going out for a lovely meal with the family.

When I got home I decided that the next celebration to really start to think about is Easter which is coming up in only a few weeks now. We are having a couple of friends round this year. We're not planning a huge celebration but we thought it might be nice to have a few little special touches compared to a normal Sunday.

I was looking around this afternoon for inspiration and spotted this basket. It was one that we have had for a while now. It originally came with a selection of sweets from the era of my childhood inside and has pretty much ever since been used as a storage basket for the wool that I used for the rainbow ripple blanket.

I had seen a few days ago a pattern online to make some small crocheted eggs. I think that if I make a few of these in different colours and sizes this could be really fun for Easter Sunday. To answer the title of this blog post the egg definitely came first. I started to make a few this evening.

The tiny golden egg is made from some leftover 4-ply yarn that I had from the Christmas table runner that I made in red and white but have decided that it is best not to decorate with anything else as I had planned. The blue and green speckly egg is made from some yarn that I had a tiny amount left of from making some of the baby blankets that I donated to the local hospital for premature babies. I have now also started to make a slightly larger egg by using 2 strands of double knit weight yarn and mixing both  pink and yellow together.

What does a basket of eggs need? A chicken of course.

I have found a pattern online to sew a chicken. I hope that once it is done this will be able to sit on top of my little eggs and will make a good Easter decoration.

I have found and printed the pattern off of the Internet and started by cutting out the pattern pieces so far. There was much deliberation about what the perfect chicken colours were and what this should be made out of. Again being the slightly nervous (and possibly slightly cheapskate!) sewer I decided that this could definitely be made from something already in my stash.

I have gone for a brown tweed body. This material came from one of the Crafty Creatives boxes that I got. I have always thought that it was lovely but being only the amount of roughly a fat quarter I wasn't too sure what I was going to make from it or how this would combine with any other materials. It seems it has finally found its destiny as a chicken body.

I will use some of the green checks for the wings. I still have a lot of this left from making my skirt from the double duvet cover that I bought.

And finally I think I will try to change the pattern slightly from what it says to do and make the comb and wattle from the pink checked fabric - previously used to make my sewing bag. I am hoping that I can amend these pattern pieces to include seam allowances and slightly stuff each of the pieces before attaching them to the rest of the chicken.

I am not really a huge fan of using felt for these kind of finishing touches so I hope that this will work on my chicken. The beak (if that's what you call it on a hen) I am not totally sure about yet. This is also a felt piece in the pattern and the way that this is attached I am not sure how I will be able to make this from anything else but I think that this might have to be something that I experiment with towards the end of my make and see if there are any other options that might look a little better.

This week is set to be a pretty busy one so I am not sure how much time there will be for any crafting but I will let you know of any progress that is have made as soon as I can. I still have a couple of longer term projects to share with you so I will see you soon with the progress that I have made on these even if I don't get too much further with these that I have already shared.

Quilting

It really was not intentional at all to leave my blog for a while 6 months before writing again. I know I say every time that it has been far too long but this really is quite ridiculous!

There are a few things for me to catch up with on here but we'll go for 1 at a time for now. Today's challenge for me was quilting (or at least making some progress on what I have started as my first quilted piece).

I thought I had at least let you know about when I met the lovely Hannah from her blog but maybe I didn't. We had a lovely weekend together last year during which we started to make a dress together as a bit of a sew-along. We both got as far as cutting all of our pieces out but as far as I'm aware neither of us has since got any further. We did also manage to get to a local fabric shop (the fabric guild in Leicester). As the only things that I had made previously were clothes (my apron and skirt) but Hannah's specialities lye in quilting she really inspired me to give this a go.

From the fabric guild I bought a load of packets of fat quarters that I thought would go together nicely and would work in my crafty room/study.

I decided that I would make a cover for the "seat" in the corner. this would involve quilting 2 pieces of fabric, joining these together and filling them with a foam square the correct size to fill the corner bench in he room.

I cut all of the various fabrics I into 3.5" squares so that this will make 3" squares when joined together (1/4" seam allowance for each side).

I then laid these out on our spare bed in order to establish the best possible arrangement of the colours/fabrics.

This is how it turned out. I am very happy with the arrangement and fairly sure that this is just about as random and as spread out as each of the colours can be.

Once I had done all of the arranging then comes the time to start the sewing! The exciting bit.

I started from one end of the picture above and started by sewing 2 squares together at a time.

Then cakes squares 3 and 4 from each row. I was advised that by making rows first this should then be fairly easy to join these rows and make this feel like a decent size piece (and a decent size accomplishment) later on.

I had got this far a fair while ago - all of the rows of 4 squares completed but the joining of these row felt really rather daunting. When I tried to line up the squares, as a first look there seemed to be a lot of pieces where I had been no-where near accurate enough. I was very worried that none of the squares would line up and I would end up with a very wonky looking patchwork.

Today I finally braved it. I started to join the rows after my wonderful helper (my husband) had ironed all of the seams for me. Each piece had one seam to the left and the next to the right, alternating on alternate rows so that I could make something called a "nested seam".

The first two rows went together something like this:

I was really quite shocked and very pleasantly surprised as to how well the seams seemed to be matched up. They are by no means perfect I know but for the first time that I have tried any kind of patchwork I was really quite pleased with how this had gone. I had started at the end that I thought seemed to be the most accurate in the initial stitching so was still nervous as to how the rest were going to go but pleased with the start anyway. It made stitching the rest of the rows together feel suddenly a lot less daunting anyway.

The rest also went as well/better than I had expected so I am really happy with the way that this is going. All of my rows of 4 are now together so this should now be the full left-hand side of the planning photo complete. Just a few more to go but I think that this will look fantastic once it is finished.

As much as I'm sure that sewing should be really relaxing and as much as I enjoy it while I'm doing it I also find it really rather stressful and involves an awful lot of concentrating for me at the minute given how new I am to it so I am tired out now and feeling the need to just sit down on the sofa and chill out. There might have to be a bit of crochet happening this evening as I have a couple of projects on the go that I will tell you about next time and a Sunday night film with some lovely dinner. I have to say that this has been the best and most chilled out Sunday that I have had for a long time (even if I did have to do some of my college course this morning - even that wasn't awful as I was preparing my own revision to get ahead of the game before I get too close to my exam.