Happy New Year everyone

We had a quiet New Years Eve.
We went to the Cinema, we had to pick a family film suitable for our 6 year old so saw "Nativity". It is a British film with lots of English comedy actors in it - Martin Freeman from The Office, the original "The Office " with Ricky Gervais, Ashley Jensen from "Extras", Pam Ferris, Alan Carr, Ricky Tomlinson, Marc Wootton. Good film, we all enjoyed it.

And the moon was wonderful last night -

Then we went to a local Pizza Resturant. We whiled away the time waiting for our food playing "Bananagrams". It's like scrabble in as much as you have letter tiles and you have to construct a crossword but you make individual ones, you are playing all the time and not waiting for other people to have their go. We love it and have played it quite a bit over Christmas.
Came home, put the little one to bed then tried finding something we wanted to watch on the TV. Ended up watching the first Lord of the Rings film - had to pause it a few times to check the time, managed to see Big Ben do the chimes, then carried on with the film. Ohh Viggo, I can't wait to see part 2 tonight!

Anyway I had 3 hours, in which I managed to hand stitch the binding on my Mini-quilt. So here it is, I will just give it an iron, then it will be packed up and sent, hopefully, on Monday.

It's not as perfect as I hoped for, but I am pleased with it. Against the light the seam allowances make a pretty pattern!

Now I need to go and supervise an 11 year olds room tidying. It gets so messy he can't really get to grips with it. So I help a bit. Probably a bad idea, but I feel I need to!

Plan to go swimming today, then tomorrow a friend is coming over and we are going for a walk. We are fortunate to live in a rather picturesque rural area, and the fields and canals beckon.

I'll see if I can get a new blog title picture up today - the latest has been up since December 1st.

I've received a Mini Quilt from my swap partner!

How exciting -

and how beautiful.

Many thanks to Ann from enbellefrance.blogspot.com for my quilt, and bag, notebook and chocolates!

Ann is Welsh, now living in France. The Quilt is in lovely muted colours, with an Apple print background, and black and white print border. I am delighted with it.

It's the first ever swap I've done so it's been a great experience, and I am keen to sign up for more. When I've finished mine to send!

Tuesdays sewing efforts.

The front (obviously!)

A close up -

The back - And Rudolph and friends have their borders - Now I need to think about how I am going to quilt my mini quilt.

Sewing the Nine-Patches and getting a new Car!

I don't know what's more exciting - this coming together or getting my new car today!
Something tells me it should be the car...

Mini Fall Quilt Progress Part 2

I have started to sewing the strip sets together into the Trip and the Chain blocks.
It's going OK.

Progress

Here are my first strip sets - now I need to cut them up and sew them together. It's going OK so far - I cut the strips 1 and 1/4 inches so the plan is for 3/4 inch strips / squares.

Mini Fall Quilt progress

As time ticks on I have decided to start a Trip to Ireland Quilt.

I have decided on this arrangement -














I designed it on Excel - I use conditional formatting to colour the squares according to the number I type into the cell. In this way I can try out different arrangements, and it adds up how many squares there are of each colour, and it calculates the fabric requirement.

In these fabrics -














I've cut all the strips, I've used a variety of fabrics in most of the groups in order to add "texture" to the quilt.

Mini Fall Quilt Swap - thoughts.

At last the suspense is over!

I have the name of the recipient-to-be of my handiwork when it's done.

I have looked at her blog, and by golly do I have my work cut out!

Anyway, in the past few days, prior to my discovery this morning, I have been thinking about the mini-quilt.

I would like to learn something new during this process, so as a start I have challenged myself to come up with 10 ideas.

So far -
1. A seminole quilt using fall colours.
2. A trip to Ireland quilt using fall colours.
3. One fairly detailed tree.
4. Naive style trees in various colours.
5. Simplified trees in various colours - shapes really.
6. A Leaf.
7. A selection of Leaves.
8. A Squirrel with it's stash of acorns.
9. A basket of apples.
10. Any block I've always wanted to do using fall colours.

Now I need to dig out all suitable fabrics, and think over it all.

Mini Fall Quilt Swap

Just to say since signing up for this I have looked at the blogs / flickr pages of some of the other participants and have scared myself.....