Archie The Wonder Dog

On Friday, I knocked something else off my Finish-Along list and considering it's been on my list since Q3 2015, it didn't take long to finish.  Less than an hour, in fact *hangs head* Here's how it looked at the start of the quarter (it's item four on my list), when it was going to be turned into a pin cushion: I decided that I didn't really need another pin cushion where I had to be careful of where I'm putting pins.  In the end, I decided to stretch it in a hoop so it could be hung on my sewing room wall. I found a strip of turquoise solid that was almost but not quite wide enough to go behind it, so I pieced another bit on with a quarter inch seam and then top stitched it to make sure it would tolerate the stretching required.  I then stretched it over the hoop and secured the back. You can just make out some of the seam at the bottom of the hoop: I then did the same with the pulled thread work (after giving it a quick press), but used a pale pi

Earlier in the year, I bought some lovely navy floral needlecord from a local fabric shop for about £6 a metre and from the outset it was destined to be a pinafore.  At that point, I hadn't even finished the toile of the Kate dress (pattern by Sew Me Something)  but I already knew that it was going to be a pattern that I would make and make again, with variations to make different dresses but with the same basic pattern. Once I'd made my toile ( see it here ) and established the changes I needed to make to the basic pattern to get the fit right, I traced it again (I'm a big fan of keeping the original pattern intact and tracing onto tissue paper - it's a bit of a faff, but I find it works for me) and altered it so that it became a pinafore.  Essentially, I lengthened the arm hole so that it came quite a bit lower, narrowed the shoulder a little at both the outside and inside edges, and created a softly curved v neck instead of the round neck.  I also drafted the fac

...but I don't know why it's been an odd week so I'm going to blame the clocks going back!  I also don't feel like I've got anything done, so let's see what I can pull out of the hat, eh? I reached a couple of milestones on the blue and white quilt's hand quilting.  Here's Mini Archie helping me celebrate the first one: Three quarters of the way there!!! And here's Archie wondering whether he'll get his tea before I reach the next milestone: I'm sure it's teatime.  Tell me it's teatime.   A while later, after Archie's tea, I hit the milestone! One hundred stars quilted!  (Just 27 to go!) I've even bought the binding fabric, as I had a discount code for Simply Solids and wanted to use it before it ran out.  It arrived yesterday and I think it's going to work well: I'm now aiming to get it finished for either Christmas, or Mam's birthday in early January.  I was doing two stars a day during