Archie The Wonder Dog

Hello!  Welcome to the December Furtle, which is also acting as (if you wish and only if you wish) a 2019 Round Up Furtle - a dual purpose Furtle, if you like. This month has been an odd one for making, but let's see what I can pull out of the archives. (Is it just me who can't quite believe that the beginning of December was only 30 days ago? It feels more like it might have been 90 days ago but, at the same time, I don't know where December has gone...) I've already blogged about the  penguin hot water bottle cover and two rope baskets (haven't quite managed the third one of those I was hoping, but there's still time left in the quarter, even if there isn't time left in the year!) I've made this month (which feels like it happened last month, at the very least), but I made a last-minute Christmas present for my niece: I bought the fabric from here , the zip from my usual place , and used a combination of this tutorial for straight-si...

I've managed to squeeze in a final finish this quarter and it's one which has been languishing on my FAL list since Q1 2015 - I think it had given up all hope of being finished, but I knew I'd get to it one day.  It is item two on my  Q3 FAL list  and I'm linking up with mere hours to spare! This is what it looked like at the start of the quarter (and the start of every quarter since Q1 2015!): The best photo I have of it - a blurry one.  What a surprise! The reason this made a reappearance on my FAL list (it was finished for the first time in Q2 2014 - here's the 'It's finished!' blog post from then ) is because the bobbin thread kept snapping.  Initially, I was going to re-quilt each line (one at a time so I could keep the binding on) with a heavier thread, but the thought really didn't appeal, which is why it has remained untouched for so long.  A couple of weeks ago, I got it out, had another think and decided that I could add...

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 thought I'd do a quick catch up post of things I haven't blogged about lately (or at all!) and so have made progress on since you last saw them - prepare yourself for lots (and lots!) of photos.  And very few words.  Well, that's the aim, at least!! *having reached the end of this post I can confirm that I completely failed at this!  No surprise there! (I feel the need to explain that I haven't done all this in a month (or even two or three!), I've been slowly working on these projects for quite a while, making a little progress here and a little progress there but haven't got round to blogging about them.  Just in case you think I'm some sort of superwoman or something!  I know there are quilters who finish four quilts in a month , two months running, but I'm definitely not one of them!!  I wish I were...) I've made progress with the hand quilting on my hexy quilt: I'm not sure how obvious it is in this photo but I've just...