Archie The Wonder Dog

Furtle (v): to have a rummage or delve into the contents of something Hello! Where did December go?! Honestly, one minute it was all ahead of me, the next it's behind and it's time to write my final furtle post of the year. Let me show you what I managed this month: I hand pieced the final four blocks for my LV scrappy trip quilt: It feels like a while since a backside picture, so here's the final block: I also machine pieced the rest of the tomte blocks: The note says 'Mind my ear!' And then spent what felt like hours finding an arrangement which works: And got the blocks joined into rows: I've decided that I'm not going to have sashing round the edges (I'll bind it in the navy so the binding will look like the sashing does here) so I have a bit of unpicking to do before I can join the rows to either side of the sashing strips - just the strips either end of each row, fortunately, so it won't take long. Once I'd finished all the scrappy trip blo...

Furtle (v): to have a rummage or delve into the contents of something Hello! November has turned out to be quite a productive month, which is a good job as I'd fallen a bit behind in October with my scrappy trip blocks. I finished off the last block from October (it did get finished while it was still October, but not in time to take its picture for the Furtle): Once that was done, I decided to prep the final eight blocks for the top rather than just the four for November while I was in the mood for stamping and had something to watch on telly: And I've made the four blocks for November: But, as you can see, none of them have taken themselves to the iron.  In fact, the three blocks from the last post haven't done so, either.  I may as well wait until I've pieced the final four blocks and press twelve at once. Won't that be fun?! I'm well on the way with the first December block and am hoping to have that finished in the next day or two, depending on how long it ...

Hello! I don't know how the end of the month has snuck up on me so quickly, but it has! This month has been another hand piecing month, with three blocks finished (none have taken themselves to the iron) and the fourth well on its way - it should be finished by the time the month ends so I'm still on track to have all fifty-six blocks made by the end of the year.  Here are the three blocks I've finished: I think I've almost finished filling the new cupboard in the sewing room (yes, it got built and yes, I love it! I can also get an awful lot more in there, which is good.  I'll take pictures once I've got everything in and labelled and a map drawn to help me locate, say, the cocktail sticks!) and am mainly left with all the faffy bits which don't have a natural home. The urge to shove them all in a box and call it done is growing, but I shall stay strong.  Apart from anything else, there's a certain someone looking for an excuse, any excuse, to give me a ...

Welcome to Fettle Those Finishes! For those of you wondering what on earth 'fettle' means, it's one of those words which can mean different things. You can be in fine fettle (good health and feeling perky), you can fettle clay before firing (less of a dialect word, more of a technical one, that) and you can sort out/mend something or get it ready.  You might 'fettle that cupboard once and for all' (give it a good sort out), you might 'fettle the tension on that sewing machine' (fix it) or you might 'give it a fettle' (get it ready). For this, I'm using the 'sort out' definition as we're going to give our project list a good sort out and hopefully get some things crossed off. Flummoxed?  I do hope not! As the Finish-Along is returning in 2021, this is just to tide us over until the end of the year. I'm going to concentrate on the things I stand a chance of finishing/making good progress on between now and then: 1. Scrappy trip bloc...