Archie The Wonder Dog

Hello!  I'd like to start by saying thank you very much for all the lovely comments you left on my previous post about Archie.  I'll be honest, I did intend replying individually to each and every one, but I just can't do it, so please consider this your reply.  Thank you xx I've finished quite a few things, both from my  Finish-Along lists  and not (oops!), and here's a sample: Mini Archie's hexy quilt Welly socks for Moo Socks for Sarah (Moo's mam) Socks for me A tunic ( Kate Dress ) for me A crocheted wreath, started before last Christmas and abandoned when it became clear it wouldn't be finished in time! A Fair Isle jumper for Mini Archie (my first ever Fair Isle and my first ever jumper, what a project to start with!) I finished my seaside embroidery (on my FAL since Q3 2015) and made it into a pouch A Lola pouch for a friend A Lola pouch for my sister-in-law Another wreath which...

I think we're around halfway through the first quarter of this year's FAL , so I thought I'd write a bit of a progress report on my list, which you'll find here .  I'm just going to share the projects where I've either made progress or have finished and blogged about them, so if an item isn't here then it's either finished and awaiting its moment of glory or, more likely, hasn't been touched. The big blue and white quilt (which I'm making for Mam's spare bed), has been machine quilted.  Here's how it looked at the start of the quarter: And this is how it looks now: I added an awful lot more lines than I thought I would.  I originally planned to do the vertical and horizontal ditches between the blocks and then across each diagonal on the nine patches, but when I'd done that, it didn't look finished and the ditches of the snowballs weren't quilted.  I decided to add four more lines per block and get a four patc...

For some reason, I decided that I wanted to finish (hand) quilting the giant star in this quilt by the end of January.  Perhaps it's because that's the latest I felt I could be working on a Christmas project which doesn't necessarily shout Christmas from across the room and, like my penguin cushion, it would have to go away at the end of January.  Or perhaps it's because I like to think that there's a slim possibility of having this finished by the end of the year (oh, to sit binding it while watching a film on Christmas Eve - that would be wonderful!).  Anyway, no matter my reason, I decided to see if I could make a decent fist of it and set to with lots of telly to catch up on and an increasingly bent needle. It's been a while since I last showed this quilt in its entirety as it's hard to photograph due to its size (78" x 110.5", I think) and it's a bulky and heavy quilt, particularly when you add in the brushed cotton backing so I struggl...

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...