A very busy month or two

Well February & March had me on my toes. It's been a very busy month with lots of baby boys being born.


To start off I'll share my contribution to the Bee Blessed group.

February's Block

March's Block

I am still very much enjoying adding these blocks to the terrific work that the Bee Blessed Group carry out.

Next in line are the quilts that I've made since my last post.

I'm now starting work on another quilt for another baby boy! This one will be made from my Oscar design and I'm looking forward to making that quilt again. It's been a while.


I also made an Easter Basket especially for a customer of mine who had already ordered some from me a couple of years ago. It was great to make one and I had forgotten how much work they were! But it was enjoyable work.

I also gave my sewing room a huge clean out and sorted out my fabrics and took stock of what fabrics I had and those that were running low. It always feels great when your sewing room is back in order and you can start to mess it up again the next day.

I did however notice that I'm running very low on yellows and purples so I may or may not have order more fabric to fill that space!

So this is happening..

..this week:

I had an order for one of my baby boy blue quilts. This design is my most popular by a million miles. I need to tot up how many of them I have made. Although I have made lilac, floral and pinky ones, the original blue ones are still my best seller. I kinda don't post about them much anymore as I'm thinking you guys are so bored of seeing them and I can't say I'd blame you!

I have two more orders for this quilt lined up over the next two weeks.

I do think I have some of the best customers going though, they are so much fun and when orders turn into secret missions - well all the better. I love going the extra mile to make them happy. 

Next up I have a cushion order, before I go launching into the next two quilts. This is for a little baby girl. We have decided on the general idea, so I was playing around with placement and did all the cutting out today.

I'll leave you with a selection of photos of herself doing her Austin Powers impression!

Happy New Year

Another January, another flying start to the year. I finished up sewing quite early in December to give myself a much needed break and also to ease myself into the Christmas spirit. It was the first Christmas in years where I didn't take part in any swaps & I didn't sew anything Christmas related either - other than a few embroidery hoops that don't count.

I opted out of the Modern Irish Quilters Bee last year and this one too. Although I did enjoy the Bee I did in 2012 I found it quite stressful. 2012 was a terrible year for me health wise I was in hospital a lot and found my months stacking up. Now there was absolutely no pressure put on me, and the ever wonderful Sarah sorted everything out. All the Bee ladies were very sweet and understanding. BUT I still did feel that completely self inflicted pressure - I don't know why, but I did. 

I suffer from a very rare and debilitating illness which leaves me in considerable pain. I cannot tell from one week to the next how I will be, so it is important for me to be clever with my workload and commitments. I used to get carried away with wanting to sew everything and offer crazy quick turnarounds on orders but I finally copped on and gave myself space and time to do what I can. If I can't physically do anything for a few days then that's fine.

Sooooo when I saw Judith's Bee blessed Block of the Month on the MQGI blog I made a commitment to myself to make a handful of these blocks every month. What's great about this is I don't have to worry if I miss a month, I can always make it back when I feel I can and I'll get to participate and learn some new blocks into the bargain. You never know I might even make one of the Bee's sewing days in Belfast sometime in 2015 if I'm able for it!

So January's block was the Maple Leaf, a block I've never made before and have been meaning to try out. I really enjoyed making them and they got me back in the sewing saddle after 5 weeks off!

January BOM for Bee Blessed 

So, once I got my sewing boots on I wanted to make a pillow case to match the quilt I made for my girl Sophie in late last year. The quilt is a random mix of 3" squares from a huge variety of fabrics. The finished quilt measures 60" x 80" so it can grow with her. 

The old pillowcases whilst still pretty, didn't quite match the quilt. I am so happy with the result and it's so nice to visualise something and get it done! Now the only thing left to do in her room is everything else! 

And an added bonus was her reaction! Seriously I didn't think she would be a bit bothered or even notice but she loved it, gave it a squeeze and laid her head on it, what more can a mother ask?

Geraldine x

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