Archie The Wonder Dog

Yes, I did it!  I've finished my niece's quilt in time for her birthday!  In fact, I've finished it about a fortnight to go so have plenty of time to keep it in the airing cupboard to ensure it's completely dry after being washed and (mostly) tumble dried. I started this quilt in April and wasn't at all sure I'd get it finished in time (there's nothing like deciding to make a quilt for a present when the birthday is fast approaching, is there?!) but thanks to some canny block designing which made the (machine) piecing as quick and simple as possible, as well as putting just about everything else aside, I'd finished piecing the top by the middle of May: As you can see, it's quite a large quilt for a soon-to-be four-year-old (this is a double bed  and hers is a single) but her mam likes quilts which go over the top of the pillows and can be tucked under them, like a bed spread.  It'll make a great quilt fort, I'm sure! The quilting wa...

I've been chained to my sewing machine since my last blog post, desperately trying to finish quilting the fairy quilt (which is based on Sarah's Stained Quilt design ) so that I stand a chance of having it finished by my niece's birthday (mid-July).  This is how it looked at the halfway point: The straight lines (1" apart) are much faster to do than the not-quite-wonky-but-far-from-straight lines I pulled out but the quilting wasn't without its annoyances.  Every now and then (about every 600", I think), I'd get a loop of top thread on the top of the quilt, almost like the bobbin thread wasn't pulling it through properly.  I tried everything I could think of to fix it (new needle, rethreading the top and bobbin thread, altering the top tension, altering the bobbin tension, sewing really slowly, sewing a bit faster) but nothing seemed to work and, as it's such an intermittent fault, I can't replicate it!  It just meant that I had to keep a ...

While I was waiting to get wadding for the fairy quilt (more on that later) and then waiting again for thread to be delivered, I managed to get a few projects from my current Finish-Along list finished.  The first was the Bargello cushion from my last post  and today I'm going to introduce you to Mr Fancy Pants Pouch (or Mr FPP, if you're feeling familiar). Back in March last year (so it's only taken just over a year to finish - I call that good going!), I won a giveaway (sponsored by The Village Haberdashery) on Katy's blog  for the fabric and notions to make a chevron clutch , which designed by her for The Village Haberdashery . Mr Fancy Pants Pouch (my name for him, not Katy's or Annie's!) was supposed to look like this: Image taken, with permission, from  The Daily Stitch (The Village Haberdashery's blog) . Photo credit: Annie Barker, The Village Haberdashery but I knew I'd rarely use a clutch bag (I don't really go out on an e...

After what feels like ages (but isn't, I think it's just because I'm on a deadline with this quilt!), I've finally got the fairy quilt top finished.  I'm finding it hard to take a decent photo of it because it's so big (about 68" x 108") so this is the best I can manage at the moment.  I think this photo captures the colours fairly accurately, even if you can't quite see all the top! Yes, it's a rather large for a soon to be four year old but when I made a quilt for her older sister, her mam wanted it to be long enough to go over the top of the pillows so I've done the same with this quilt...and then some!  Here's her older sister's quilt, which also features fairies! As you can see, my photo taking hasn't got any better since I took this five years ago!! As the current fairy quilt is so large, backing fabric was going to be horrifically expensive.  In a fit of  'I'm not paying that!', I decided to piece...