Archie The Wonder Dog

Anyone else now got a craving for a chocolate biscuit?! Item eight on my Q4 FAL list (item eight) was a Christmas cushion using the penguin fabric and octagons (surrounded by white frames so they'd look like they were on ice/snow), and it looked like this at the start of the quarter: As I said, my plan was octagons and I'd carefully measured the penguins to check what size octagon they'd fit in without having disembodied flippers appearing in the frame, and that size was 2" x 2  3/8" with 1/2" triangles taken off the corners to create the octagon.  However, when I spread the fabric on the ironing board and started ironing the templates in place, it became apparent that there were three or four sizes of penguin and my original plan wouldn't work.  You can see here how few penguins fitted.  And it's also a lesson in opening up the fabric before making a plan as it's much more obvious from a distance that not all the penguins are the same size...

The last time I mentioned my polar bear cushion (I think), I was having a bit of a dither about what to use to fill the spaces where I didn't have enough polar bears and snowflakes and had decided to start piecing and leave gaps where I thought something might go.  It turns out that piecing gaps is harder than you might think (I kept thinking I'd leave a gap and then finding I'd filled it!) so I decided to scrap all my ideas of using grey or turquoise fabric for the gaps and instead sacrificed part of the remaining polar bear fabric I was (still) hoarding, and cut more polar bears and hexagons. Once the hexagons were pieced, I checked that my plan for the trapezia and triangles round the edge would work (I'd deliberately kept the red snowflakes away from the edges so I wouldn't end up with two prints together):  And hand pieced those in place before choosing a border, which was attached using the machine: I pressed the seams and marvelled at the polar b...

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...

...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 ...

Hello! (I know, I'm here again!  I can't quite believe it...) This week has been a week of dithering and hand quilting yet more stars.  I've quilted just over two-thirds of the stars on the blue and white quilt, here are the latest two: I started cutting the hexies for my first Christmas cushion, and discovered I was eight hexies short of a cushion (a phrase I'm hoping passes into common usage!): so I set about trying to work out what to put in the gaps, which is where the dithering started.  First of all I removed the plain hexies: which I liked, but something's going to have to go in the gap so I searched through my stash and found some options: and the only thing that helped me decide was that I'd use the stripy fabric for the binding.  (Thanks, Clare !) I thought that laying the hexies over the options might help (that was less fun than you might think!, but it didn't: but it didn't stop me trying again: Still no dec...