Archie The Wonder Dog

In June last year I went on a Bargello workshop run by my talented friend Beryl at her teaching studio and a month later I added the resulting project to my Finish-Along list.  It's been on every list since, including my current one , and I'm thrilled to be able to say that it's finished! This is how it started: Four FQs and half a metre of Kaffe shot cotton (tip: if you're using this, starch it well - it likes to move and stretch!) After quite a bit of sewing and cutting, I had sets of strips of varying widths (Daddy (wide), Mammy (medium) and Baby (narrow)!): Dreadful photo, sorry!  Still, at least you won't have to see it again after this! Once I got started again (it sat in a bag from July 2014 until last week!), it didn't take me long to get the panel complete, even though I had to unpick three strips (two because I hadn't double-checked my seam allowance when I started and one because I made a daft mistake). The grey pieces towards t...

I've been quite lucky in recent months and have won several giveaways and/or link up prizes and I thought I'd share the luck around a bit.  In March, I won this bundle of Dashwood September Blue from Sew Hot and I'd like to share it with one of you. If you'd like to win a fat eighth bundle of this gorgeous fabric then you have two possible chances: 1.  Leave a comment below telling me what you'd make with the fabric.  (Be warned, I may copy you!) 2.  Leave a second (separate) comment if you live in the UK. The giveaway is open to everyone, no matter where you live.  If you live in the UK then you may get some chocolate/sweeties in your parcel, if you live outside the UK then you probably won't as I think the postage cost is going to be surprisingly high.  (Sorry!) The giveaway closes a fortnight today on 4th June at 7pm BST and I will close comments at that point.  The winner will be announced and notified some time after that. If ...

The project I'm concentrating on for the next couple of months is a quilt for my youngest niece; my deadline is her fourth birthday, in July.  In my last post , I showed you the first twelve (of twenty-eight) blocks (which are based on the Stained quilt by Sarah ) and today I'm happy to say that I've (machine) pieced the remaining sixteen (15") blocks: Almost two hours of crawling round sorted the arrangement: Excuse the dire photo, it was night time and, as you can see, well past Archie's bed time! For ease of piecing, none of the 'in block' sashing strips line up with each other and I decided that I wanted to maintain that when joining them up.   (There will be the same  ½"  (finished)  sashing strips separating the blocks.)  I also decided that I didn't want one side of a sashing strip to need to line up with the edge of another strip (i.e. no 'steps' in the sas hing) because I would have to ensure they were aligne...

My new FAL list  contains two new items which makes a pleasant change, don't you think?! The first one is a Sakura shawl , using this beautiful alpaca/silk mix: Lynz  and I are knitting in tandem (and holding each other's hands through the tricky bits!) in a very informal knit along which, at the moment, has a lovely slow pace to it!  The yarn was found by Lynz at  Maple Tree Yarns  and was a bit of a bargain as it's no longer going to be stocked - there are a few skeins left in the shop and when it's gone, it's gone!  My yarn is 'Drake' and is gorgeous but hard to photograph, or that's my excuse! After a slightly sticky start (we had to email the designer for help with a couple of things, most particularly where to do a make one left and where to do a make one right and Leila Raabe * couldn't have been more helpful - she emailed back within a few hours and spelt things out for us and didn't make us feel at all daft.  This is one of th...

It's been a while since I blogged - I foolishly thought that I would get back here before Christmas but was suddenly very (ridiculously!) busy making unexpected Christmas presents (more about that in my next post) and then January and February have been full of feeling horrid, spending afternoon after afternoon in bed and trying to claw back some energy.  (For those of you who don't know, I have M.E. which means, among other things, that I 'spend' my (limited) energy quickly (even on 'little' things like brushing my teeth) and it takes me a long time to recover from exertion (mental or physical), leaving me feeling like death warmed over.  It tends, for me, to be particularly bad after Christmas as all the present buying and wrapping, little bits of socialising, etc., leave me exhausted and I don't usually 'bounce back' until around Easter) which means that I don't tend to have any energy left for blog writing, even though I've really missed...

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...