Archie The Wonder Dog

Furtle (v): to have a rummage or delve into the contents of something Hello! November has turned out to be quite a productive month, which is a good job as I'd fallen a bit behind in October with my scrappy trip blocks. I finished off the last block from October (it did get finished while it was still October, but not in time to take its picture for the Furtle): Once that was done, I decided to prep the final eight blocks for the top rather than just the four for November while I was in the mood for stamping and had something to watch on telly: And I've made the four blocks for November: But, as you can see, none of them have taken themselves to the iron.  In fact, the three blocks from the last post haven't done so, either.  I may as well wait until I've pieced the final four blocks and press twelve at once. Won't that be fun?! I'm well on the way with the first December block and am hoping to have that finished in the next day or two, depending on how long it ...

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...

In May last year, I took part in a blog hop for Oakshott and made a table runner from their gorgeous Lipari range, which was being relaunched.  Before I launched into making the blocks for the runner, I needed to piece a test block to check the templates worked.  Here it is mid assembly: I couldn't leave it on its own, so let it choose some potential friends: I decided to stick with the fabrics from Monico Solorio-Snow 's Sew Yummy collection for Cloud 9 fabrics , so out went that multi dot and in came some tomato pin cushions.  I made an exception for the bead lines second down as that would make an ideal binding. I pieced these blocks in fits and starts in between other projects as I found that having made sixteen whole blocks and four half blocks, my enthusiasm was somewhat lacking.  To think that when I made the test block I thought I might up the size a bit and make a big quilt!  I think not! At some point I had three blocks: Then I ha...

Me again! (I know, no posts for months and then loads in one week.  I'm going to try to be better next quarter!  Crowd (off):  mutters We've heard that before...) Way back in October, I started work on a tutorial for the 2016 FAL and chose to demonstrate how to accurately insert narrow (1/4") strips into a piece of fabric and, of course, I needed a project to demonstrate it on. I decided to make a table runner from pale grey Oakshott, with strips of darker grey inserted (and with blocks of turquoise inserted into those).  I didn't manage to get the runner quilted, so at the start of this quarter, it looked like this: And here's a closer look at those inserted strips: I spent a while puzzling how to quilt it until I took it to show a friend and we puzzled together and eventually decided that echoing the strips down the length of the runner would look quite nice. I measured the width of the inserted section (11 x 0.25" = 2.75") so I knew ho...

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...