Archie The Wonder Dog

Long, long (long) ago, I started a hand piecing project that I knew would be a long-term project. I had no idea just how long it would actually take. It started when I saw a blog post by Lynne of Lily’s Quilts of her new block and I fell in love with it. Her blog is undergoing some renovation, so this follow up post to the initial one is only post I can find . And on that post, I left this comment: Notice the date - such optimism! I started (not long after Lynne’s post) by making a test block (It was made into a  mini quilt in June 2015 ) I bought background fabric and furtled through my fabric boxes to find suitable prints and plains (and a lovely friend  bought me some bright tone on tone fabrics at FOQ (or maybe the first Fat Quarterly retreat?) to supplement what I had) and by April 2013, I had this: And by the start of June, I had my first block: It took me eighteen months to finish the next block (isn’t it amazing how long things take to make when you’re not working on t...

Furtle (v): to have a rummage or delve into the contents of something Hello! It’s been a busy month and, for once, the busy hasn’t all been knitting. There has been some knitting, though. I finished the socks I’d started last month: Yarn is one of the gobstopper range by  Easy Knits  which I bought in a destash I knitted a pair for a friend: Yarn is  Purple Nimbus by Made By Penguins  and the pattern is the  soon-to-be released Chestnut Bark Socks by  Mrs Moog And started another pair for a different friend: Yarn is an alpaca, silk and cashmere mix from  Coastal Colours And I quilted (and quilted and quilted) ET, under the watchful eye of Mini Archie (who soon moved once I pressed the foot pedal!) But, although it looks fine on the front (just how I hoped, actually), I’m not happy with how the corners look on the back. I quilted three of them using the quilting bar on my walking foot and the third one had nineteen lines rather than eighteen so a tiny ...

Furtle (v): to have a rummage or delve into the contents of something Hello! (To coincide with the sun appearing, my laptop has decided that it’ll hide all text in file explorer so I’m writing this post on my tablet; this post may be a little, um, disheveled as a result…) This month, I taught myself to use TouchDraw with the help of the instruction pages available and Lynne’s marvellous tutorials  and am ready to start prepping my next hand piecing project as soon as I’ve finished ET Phone Home. As machine quilting and prepping hand piecing are both things which I do in the afternoon, I decided that it would be prudent to tackle ET first. That way, I’ll get to have a clear table and will avoid much tutting from the tiny felty fella. I’ve started quilting ET and, as expected, quilting in the ditch with black thread on a black with white dots fabric is hard on the eyes. Just another few hundred metres to go… As I haven’t got any hand piecing to do in the evenings, I’ve been knitting ...

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...

Hello! Welcome to February's Furtle!  Thank you to everyone who linked up last time (how exciting was that?!), I hope you all had a good time reading about people's furtling? This month, I have finished four things from my Finish-Along list  while I was confined to my sewing room while the decorator was here and I was unable to rest: The little ipod sleeping bag from my Finish-Along list: A pair of socks: My hot water bottle cover: The Oakshott table runner on my Finish-Along list, which I quilted in the ditch (many, many ends to darn in, which was quite good as in addition to being confined to my sewing room, I had no telly and no internet - thank goodness for the radio!): And I've pieced the second LV scrappy trip block:  Phew, what a month! Linking up to the February Furtle If you're linking up, please add a link (one per person, please) to your blog post, which could contain: a mosaic of all you've made in...