Archie The Wonder Dog

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 may not have made much progress with this blog in the last few weeks months but I have managed quite a bit of sewing, in between resting (I was completely exhausted after the Oakshott project and it took me quite a few weeks of sleeping for fourteen hours a day to get back to anything like my usual normal.  M.E. does that to you but I'm lucky that, with lots of rest, I can gradually bounce back.  Lots of people don't...) and Archie-related emergencies (I'll explain more below but don't panic, he's feeling much more like himself, thank goodness!) and I thought it was about time I popped my head in here to let you know what I've been up to. In July, I made these blocks for Charlotte : In August, I made this snowflake for Nicky : There are 239 pieces in this 9.5" x 9.5" (finished) block (each red square finishes at 0.5" x 0.5") and I love the back almost as much as the front!  I must tell you that Nicky didn't ask for ...

After saying, in my last post , that I don't often get to say "I've finished!", I'm now saying it again!  You can tell it's the end of the FAL quarter, can't you?! When I put this quilt on my list  back in March, I'd done about a third of the quilting.  I managed to finish the rest of the quilting by the end of April, mainly by doing a line or two a day; it's amazing how quickly you can get something done if you do it little and often.  It stayed like this for another five weeks, though, until I finally trimmed it and stitched the binding to the front. It then took me almost three weeks to stitch the binding to the back, mainly because most of my hand sewing time has been taken up with the secret sewing (I've finally finished it so if you come back on Friday you'll get to see a finished item, rather than one with tacking all round the edge, which is what I feared may happen!).  I managed to do little bits here and there and y...

I've had lots of fun with bee blocks this month!   Di asked for two 12" (finished) blocks and wanted one to be made from either a 12" or a 9" leaf and the other to be made from smaller leaves, with a creamy background.  Of course, I had to be different (some would say awkward), didn't I?!  I knew I would far prefer to make small leaves rather than one giant leaf and a couple of small leaves so I asked Di if she would mind me making several small leaves instead.  She very kindly agreed (and wondered, along with Nicky , just how small I would go), so I hopped straight to it and got busy choosing fabric whilst planning to see just how small a leaf I could manage and still have it square and with all the points intact. I started with a couple of 3" (finished) leaves to get me warmed up: I have no idea what either of these fabrics are (they're from the fabric fairy!) but the one on the right (yes, Hadley , the brown one!) is gorgeously soft and love...