Started a scarf last night!

Back into knitting again. Once upon a time I did a few sweaters, including one with complicated cabling in the design of two intertwining trees! I thought I'd left it behind but I feel the pull again, so here is my start, a fuzzy scarf for Aine to match with a fuzzy pink coat I found at the local Oxfam charity shop! Aine likes pink. Would you ever have guessed, LOL? I will make a matching hat and then do a set for little Aisling. My next project will be to try some warm toasty socks I keep seeing around the blogosphere! Can't be too hard right??

A few people asked about what I was going to do with the crazy quilt to embellish it... I will be doing a round robin with it! Barbara has organized one with about 7 of us and we will each embellish one or two blocks for each member in the RR. I can't wait to see how it will come back to me next year!

We took a break from packing on Thursday when we realized that no one would be showing up Friday, so we have a few more boxes to pack and then just a basic tidy up to do tomorrow. Dave goes back to work Monday and will meet the movers Tuesday afternoon at the new house with me and the girls and the cat close behind (I hope, hope hope! there is still no guarantee that Tuesday will the day, please keep fingers still crossed??)

Anyway...I hope to sew my top border for my Dear Jane quilt tomorrow. I will try to post some progress, as Dave is taking the computer apart tomorrow night, oh the withdrawals are starting already! 

No Moving Anywhere Today...

But I did finish the top for my Crazy Quilt!

If you can believe it, the lawyer for the purchaser never got the mortgage organized for today, and in the meantime the moving company cancelled our moving date anyway... so we are still here, with a new moving date of next Tuesday. We couldn't believe it when we called the moving company yesterday afternoon. In the morning they had told us they could move it all into storage today even if we didn't move it to the house. When we called, they had cancelled the whole thing, no moving to the house, no moving to storage, nothing, so even if by some miracle the house purchase could have been completed today, we couldn't moved anyway. Ugh. I hate moving. All our pots and pans are packed, as up until yesterday afternoon we were working on the premise that we would be packing into storage today. Hello takeaway, bye bye Weight Watchers till next week!

In order to destress last night, I finished up my last few crazy quilt blocks and sewed them together with no sashing and a brown border. Thanks for all the good opinions on that previous post...I like them set without the sashing!

Anyway, we will be camping out here in the house till Tuesday, so evenings will be filled with Dear Jane sewing and my new knitting project...fuzzy pink scarves for the girls this winter! I'll be signing off the computer on Sunday and DH will bring the computer in his car Monday when he heads back to work. It may be a week or two or three before post again, or I may just be an addict and pay per minute for dialup every once in a while.

You may see some Dear Jane progress or knitting progress later this weekend...as I am still well addicted to reading my blogs and will not be able to stay away, LOL!

Off with the family into town to donate some toys to charity shops, and return library books...and get some Subway subs for lunch - they made it here to the wilds of Ireland! 

Moving Day...Friday?

Blogger has disappeared several posts in the last week...it is getting a little frustrating. Here are the few things I was going to show...my collection of sewing tins...the sampler one I got from a thrift store for 10 cents! It holds my threads...and other sewing stuff... The house one has my basting pins...it is a tin I bought in Giverny in France...it is Claude Monets house... The Cream of Wheat tin is my traveling sewing kit...with a spool of hand piecing thread (mettler) and some #12 sharp needles, a small scissors and seam ripper...

The other photo is the last pillow I did for Aine's favorite teacher. Aine helped me pick out the scraps for it and had great fun.

I'm so tired and stressed these days with the move. The purchaser's lawyer hasn't sent back everything, so we are not sure about Friday, though the mover is booked already. I can't wait to be settled somewhere again!

Anyway, I hope I don't get kicked out of the ring from lack of posting, I hope to be back within a week, but if not, I'm drowning in a sea of boxes. I shall return and get back to my regularly scheduled quilting! 

Busy Week

Mostly with the work I do from home (graphic design)...but kept on doing a few bits and pieces...

The montessori quilt is done except for a hanging sleeve...and I've done 3 of the 4 orphan block pillows for the teachers. Check out the gorgeous batik I scored at a thrift store the last time I was home in the States! I was preparing to cut it and found some tags on it...it is an Indonesian batik and there was a price tag of $28 on it! I am seeing lots of nice bags, pillows, etc with the length of fabric I got at the Village Thrift shop for 50 cents!! I had forgotten I had it, but it is lovely!

Moving day is getting closer and closer...getting a bit sad about leaving here, but I know I'll make new friends eventually and have plenty of quilting projects to keep me busy, LOL!

Anybody have a good way to get some will power? I'm at the heaviest I've been in years, and need a swift kick in the rear! Starting using my Weight Watchers points counting again. Lost 70 lbs on it before, could stand to lose about 40 lbs now. Sigh.

 

Crafty Weekend...

This will be a quilt for Aine's school we are leaving behind...I will bind it up with scrappy bright binding I had leftover from another project (I knew it would come in handy at some point!) and need to piece together some batting scraps to do this one... I have found enough orphan blocks to make pillows for each teacher as well...a little nicer than the typical box of chocolates, well, in the long term anyway!

I also found an orphan block I have that will be PERFECT for crazy quilting practice! My grandmothers fan block. The lace is actually from my grandmother's stash so will be used in my crazy quilt blocks for the round robin as well!

My MIL is here for the weekend and funnily enought brought a knitting project. Aine is there with her own "knitting". I will definitely be teaching this girl some crafting when she gets older and can manage a sewing needle or knitting needles. I wonder what a good age will be for those, hmmm????

I've started on the top border for the Dear Jane, with an aim of getting the quilt top done by October at the latest!

 

Some Dear Jane progress again...finally

Last night I sat and stitched the last bit of the bottom border on to the quilt. I'm slowly making progress... Now to get the rest of the borders ready to stitch, will make it easier when we move to have a "little" hand project while the sewing machine is in transit, LOL. I don't really have a desk for it yet, we plan to build the office later, so will need to get a cheap temporary fix for computer/sewing desk. I might just take a little break from machine sewing for a while and focus on hand sewing, after August 25th, our (hopefully) official moving date! 

Little Mischief Montessori

This is the little quilt so far... just need Montessori and then to sort out a border, am thinking about lots of scrappy blocks for the border, but maybe I should use just one color to calm it down a bit, as the words are very scrappy! I'll use muslin to sew the words together and a few inches around them, so the border frames them nicely.

A friend has commissioned me to a pillow as a gift for a godson, so I know I have another free pieced letter project for next week! They are a lot of fun and don't take ages, and the kids love to see their names, so I imagine that I might be doing many birthday gifts using this idea in the future...

Have had a lot of work to do the last few days, and so quilting has taken a back seat to work after kids are in bed. No more crazy quilt blocks for tonight. But maybe tomorrow, or over the weekend!

Goodnight from this "artisan/designer/liberated (read "imprecise"/crazy" quilter! 

Crazy Quilt Developing

Okay...tonight's block is okay, but probably a bit busy...but I am happy enough with it...

Was playing around in Photoshop with it, and trying to figure out if I like the brown or green sashing best...maybe I should try it with a muslin sashing as well...I hope to do one each night till I'm done...3 more to do...

I also need to get back to my free pieced letters, but this has called to me first. I'm leaning towards a green sashing. What do you think?

 

Maniacal Blogger!

 I know you are wondering what the heck has gotten into me, blogging 4 times in one week, my average is once a week!

Well, several big project are over and I'm having fun with these CQ blocks, each is different, so I thought I'd subject you to the next one! This one features my two cuties, Aine (onya) and Aisling (ashling) ages 3 and 2 respectively...they were more like 3 and 18 months here in this photo, but I love it, it is one of my favorites and taken by my husband with them sitting on my lap... I was going to have a muslin sashing, but I'm thinking a dark brown or green to link the blocks would look nicer.

This is going in a different direction than I had envisioned but I like the colors and textures I pulled out of my stash, so I'll stick to this pallette...

I also managed to get all the sashing sewn onto my Dear Jane quilt today and started sewing on my first border...maybe you might even see that tomorrow.

Somebody STOP ME!

On a totally different note, we seem to be progressing towards moving...oh so slowly, tomorrow I run around town doing legal and banking things while my dear friend looks after the girls, bless her!

Been looking around at quilting and knitting blogs, I feel the knitting pulling me in...used to do it ages ago, before kids...will I succumb? do I have time to? Hmmmm...