Moustache Quilt

A little while ago I was lucky enough to get in quick with my hand up for some Oakshott fabrics. Lynne from Lily's Quilts was offering the chance to play with some Oakshott Liparis. Now I have long been an admirer of Oakshott fabrics, the iridescent quality of them is beautiful.

So! what to make. I played around with a few ideas and in the end I decided to create a new design and so the Moustache quilt was underway.

One day I may actually get round to writing patterns to go with all my designs but for the moment I will stay with my trusty notebooks that are overflowing with good and bad designs and quilt math which can be found on scraps of paper all over the house.

I quilted it with wavy lines that picked up on all the fabric colours used. It was the most fun I have ever had quilting!

I also used scrappy binding for the first time and I'm happy with how that turned out. I have some Liparis scraps left over and I am thinking of making a matching cushion to go along with the quilt.

So a big thank you to Lynne for giving me the opportunity to get my mitts on these fabrics.

Midterm is over so let the sewing begin

Sophie getting her nails done for the first time,
 it was a really special moment. The beautician was so sweet. 

So I did practically no sewing during mid term. I decided to devote all my time to Sophie and to a lesser extent Jack. Boys of 14 don't really want their mother's around so much! I really enjoyed our time together, I even got her to help with the chores. She normally just goes no to any request for help! One sign that her comprehension level is pretty good. But she helped me make beds and so on. I am trying out a different approach to her speech development. It used to be that there were no motivating factors to encourage her to carry out any therapy tasks.

But now that she's nearly nine and likes her food and her drink of milk and has just discovered chocolate. Yep you heard right, Sophie has only in this last year tasted chocolate for the first time. So with all this in mind I decided that she had to ask for a drink properly before she got one. So the idea was that she had to say 'Can I have a drink please' Okay so maybe I should have dropped the manners aspect of this but it's too late now. You see what happens when you live day after day with a child who doesn't have fluent speech is we don't notice it so much.

She orders us all about with one word commands. These single words aren't pronounced properly either, I swore that they were to her old speech therapist but then when I came home and actually listened I realised that they weren't. So she would just say 'dink peas' and then by magic a drink of milk appears before her.

So I'm coaching her through each word and using sign language she is actually saying the sentence! Now sometimes it's 'I ave a dinkapeas' ha ha. So I refuse the drink until it's said properly. So it's not the easiest exercise. For some reason she doesn't like to say can, so our conversations go a little like this:

Sophie: I have
Me: Say can
Sophie: I
Me: Say can
Sophie: I have dinkapeas
Me: Say Can I
and on and on and on

But then a couple of weeks ago she came into the utility room and said 'Can...I...Have...A...Drink...Please'
!!!!!!!
I was so happy, but here's the thing. You can say good girl, but you can't get to excited as she gets really really upset if you praise her too much. She's a complicated little girl who can fill me with such pride I think I might actually burst, but then she turns around and does something really naughty so it all balances out.

Ooops this post was supposed to be about sewing and now I'm out of time. Never mind, I'll post later on this week about the current quilts I'm working on.

Geraldine x

Medallion update

Okay so I'm not so hot on following instructions, I do read everything but then kind of forget it when I'm sewing. I have messed up the size of the central piece and I'm not linking up as I should but there you go. I am going to try and follow the instructions from here in. But I'm not going to beat myself up if I go astray either as I like to call it, getting lost in my fabric fog!

Midterm already!!!!

Just when you are getting into the groove of sewing Mid term comes along. Bored kids and terrible weather don't make for a productive week. I did however manage to do some sewing last week so I'll show you what I'm in the middle of making.

First off is my January makes. I was happy to see a good few things in here as January is usually a bit of a blah month!

I have started on my central block for the Medallion QAL. It's the first time I have attempted a Dresden Plate. I wanted to use my Joel Dewberry fabrics, as I've been waiting for the right project to come along. I am going to team this palette of oranges and pinks with grey. I thought these guys could do with breaking up in the plate so I added a quarter inch of grey sashing to it. I'm so glad I did as I'm really happy with the result. I'm eager to continue on with this project but I have orders to get to first.

I have made bibs for my nieces and nephews recently and they are very popular. I wanted to make a smaller size for 0-4 month babies so I experimented with resizing my template. Next up is trying to work on a barrier layer within the fabric to keep dribbles away from soaking through! I do like making them though and it's great for a quick project.

I had a couple of cushion orders in the last week too.

I also had a bunting order for a little boy called Ryan.

I bought a little bit of fabric!

I brought Sophie to get her nails done yesterday. It was so cute to see her perched on the high stool chatting away to the beautician. The only problem was that Sophie talks with her hands so there was quite a bit of smudging going on! I explained to the beautician that this was more about the experience than the end result. She was such a lovely girl and had a great conversation with Sophie.

We received the most beautiful card and wreath from Sophie for Valentines day. It's now on my board in my sewing room so it joins Sophie's other artwork. To me that's what it's all about!

So I'm not planning on having a huge amount of sewing time this week. I have 2 quilt orders waiting for me and a quilted table runner order that's in the works.

I will hopefully have more to show on the Medallion quilt when I check back and have some progress done on my quilt orders too! 

Happy Mid Term to all xxx

Medallion Quilt A Lonnnng

So I'm a bit late, as always. The Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland have just started a Medallion Quilt along and I want to join in. The trouble is as always I'm a little late. But I did put together a mosaic and here it is.

This will actually be my first QAL! I'm always watching these things going on and love to see the whole collaborative thing going on. Now I have already started a King size quilt which is waiting patiently for me to have more time to work on it. But I can't resist trying this guy out too. Now I know that I'm unusual in the fact that I don't usually have more than one project on the go, and I don't have any UFO's as a rule but I'm breaking my own rules this time.

I'll check in from time to time with my progress pictures.

Geraldine x

I'm really good at this blogging lark aren't I!

At the beginning of December I lost my voice for nearly 3 weeks, but I seem to have lost my blogging voice for much longer. I don't know why I have difficulty in keeping up to date with it, but I seem to all the same.

I think Instagram might have something to do with it. It's such a good tool for a quick status update and for keeping up to date with others too. Nonetheless I still do read all of my usual blogs that I follow. Maybe I build it up into a big deal, thinking it has to be a mammoth post when a small post works equally well. Anyhoo I'll get down too it.

Sewing update: I have made 3 quilts since my last post. I have just completed an apron order too. I have a quilt start today and I'm working on a personal king size quilt project. My hubby surprised me with a Janome Memory Craft Horizon 8200QC on Christmas morning. It was my dream machine and I love it so much, I will be writing a full review on it in the near future. I do want to get to know it better though before I do that. It didn't take me too long to get to grips with it, I think it's my IT background. I read the manual 2-3 times and watched the instructional DVD twice before I turned it on. Yep nerdy me.

I have also had some bunting orders and there are always some cushion orders in the mix.

I didn't do any Christmas fairs last year. I wasn't prepared as I was so busy in the run up to Christmas and I knew that health wise I wasn't up for standing all day in draughty stands.

So happy New Year to all, I'll be back again really soon and below is a selection of what I'm working on and what I've finished.

Geraldine x