Archie The Wonder Dog

Oh, it's nice to be back online!  For over a fortnight I had no internet access at home (so could only check for vital emails, etc. when I went to see my mam and her laptop mouse pad is a little erm, temperamental, shall we say?  It likes to suddenly scurry over to one side and refuse to move, or sprint around the screen while you try to get it back under control, etc.  Not the most relaxing experience!) and I missed all my lovely quilting friends.  I haven't yet managed to get completely back in the swing of being online again and, quite frankly, I'm going to try to keep it that way as I feel as though I've got lots of sewing done while I wasn't able to read about what other people were sewing... First, though, I need to say a long overdue thank you to a couple of quilty friends for prizes received: I won a gorgeous cushion from Leanne (which happens to be made from the same pattern as my very first wall hanging/small quilt) and it's made itself quite a...

Anyone who has seen my ridiculous FAL list for this quarter will agree that if I'm going to get anywhere with it then I need to get a bloomin' move on!  To that end, I've stuck a copy of my list on my sewing room wall (it'll go on my new magnet board, just as soon as I sort out some magnets.  And fix the board to the wall...) so that I can keep myself on track.  So far, so good and I've managed to tick three things off the list.  I'm going to blog about them separately (to make it easier to link up in January) and today is the turn of my first finish, Mr Penguin: Mr Penguin is a large (for me!) pin cushion made from a selection of Japanese import fabric and some linen (I think it's this stuff but I'm not sure as it was a present from the fabric fairy).  I really don't like EPP but, in my opinion, it's the best technique for hand stitching these prone-to-fraying fabrics so I swallowed my intense dislike and got on with it.  (I don...

Thanks for popping in to see my entry in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival.  I haven't managed many finished quilts since the last festival (no surprise there!) and didn't think I'd be entering this time round, but Nicky reminded me about the mini category and so here I am! I made this little quilt, 'City Walk' (naming quilts isn't something I usually do but I felt that participating in a blog hop and designing a pattern for Oakshott warranted a quilt name!) in July when I was part of an Oakshott blog hop  and is designed around the traditional 'walking triangles' block.  I wrote a rather  ridiculously long tutorial for it as part of the blog hop and you can find that here , should you wish to make your own version. The quilt is made from a F8 bundle (plus a piece of wadding and a piece of fusible fleece) and I decided that I wanted to make something useful as well as decorative so this little quilt also doubles as a block roll (to keep piec...

On the second Tuesday of each month, Nicky and Leanne  are hosting a scrappy linky party, entitled 'Scraptastic Tuesday'.  You can link up a blog post or Flickr photo (and possibly an Instagram photo but as I'm not on IG I'll leave that to the rest of you to work out!) about a scrappy project or scrap sorting system and you'll have a chance to win a prize from one of their sponsors.  Why not join in?  They've done something clever (I think it might be magic) with the linky party and you can link up to the same party from either of their blogs.  This month you have two weeks to add your link. We're approaching the end of the current year with Bee A Brit Stingy (the second year of the bee and my first year as a proper bee) and our penultimate Queen Bee is Catherine , who chose scrappy blog cabin blocks as her block.  She asked for the blocks to be the classic dark and light log cabin blocks; two of the blocks needed to have a dark side made from brig...

I think I may have been visited by madness when compiling this list.  For the last couple of months I've been adding projects as I thought about/remembered them and all of a sudden I seem to have the most enormous list of things I'd like to get finished.  Fortunately, my natural realism has reasserted itself and I know I'm not going to get all of these finished in three months (or even half of them in double the time!) but I'm going to give it a good go! Pin cushion I'm in need of a new pin cushion and am going to make a larger version of the small EPP Japanese pin cushions I've made in the past.  This would be a good evening project, I just need to bury my complete dislike of EPP for a fortnight or so!! Dresden little quilt This gorgeous fabric is going to become a Dresden plate which will then be turned into a little quilt for my sewing room wall - I think I'm going to add some embroidery around the edge (and possibly in the centre), if I c...