I won’t be coy: It’s my birthday today! Family and friends have lovely ways of making this day special for me; phone calls, visits, cards, gifts and days out, along with a lotta love 🙂 And, without intending to be morbid, life expectancy being what it is, knowing I have more birthdays behind me than ahead it would be very silly not to enjoy all the treats and good wishes being sent my way!
I’ve spent a pleasant half hour or so listening to the first disc of The Lord of the Rings soundtrack (thank you, A&T) whilst tidying and rearranging my sewing room. These past few months it has become increasingly important to me to maintain a bit of order in my room. I think this may be due to the rather ridiculous number of projects I have on the go. It really is essential to tidy away group together the parts of one project after a burst of activity before spreading around the pieces of another project.
My ‘on the go’ projects include:
The curved piece runner – I quilted it earlier this week and have attached the binding. I’m saving the hand stitching for my two hours at the craft shop on Monday. I’m pleased with the quilting, especially the free motion pebbling (read Jessica Skultety’s letter to quilted pebbles here).
I’m developing my foundation paper piecing skills by making a couple of star blocks to feature on a tote bag. I downloaded the free FPP pattern from a Carol Doak website and I’m referring to her Craftsy class – which is one of the very best classes I’ve purchased from Craftsy (it’s half price at the mo).
Viv at Purple Stitches is about to launch a block of the month – Chocolatier by gen X quilters – and has me testing the instructions and fabric quantities prior to leading monthly workshops for anyone who wants a bit of hands-on guidance.
I’ve made a quilt sandwich of the Candy Hearts quilt – next steps: buy some white thread for the quilting and make the quillow ‘pocket’. I mentioned in my last post that I’ve decided to make the quilt into a quillow and what-do-you-know one of my birthday books has come up trumps 🙂 A quick flick through Allison Harris’ ‘Growing Up Modern’ and I found beautifully clear instructions for making a quillow (thank you for the book dear MIL).
The left over fabrics from the Candy Hearts quilt are calling to be made into a quilt top – not decided on the pattern yet…
During the last sewing day at Brown Candover, I pieced all the blocks for a new design using a Lewis & Irene 10″ Scrumptious Squares pack. Someone saw the blocks laid out and passed a helpful comment or two that sent me into complete self-doubting spin regarding my design. I took her advice and bought some plain fabric in a bright colour to ‘pull it all together’ but now have to tackle re-jigging the design on EQ7 or graph paper…
I bought this dotty Layer Cake at the Malvern Show and have drafted a pattern on EQ7…
And there’s a quilt sandwich lanquishing on the top bunk calling to be quilted and finished (I’ve even made the binding ready for this one!). From here we move onto the UFO pile and I don’t want to go there just now, I think my head would explode!
Tomorrow will be an opportunity to soak up a bit of history and receive more patchwork inspiration as we plan to visit the American Museum at Bath 🙂 It’ll be our first visit there and I’m looking forward to it, especially as we have the opportunity to meet up with DD and SIL. I have another birthday book which I think will tie in well with the quilts on show at the Museum, ‘Civil War Legacies’ by Carol Hopkins (thank you to A&S).
Birthdays when you are a ‘grown up’? ….. Not so bad 😀
Linking with Sarah for Can I get a Whoop Whoop Friday.
Allison
Happy Birthday. Love looking at all your projects.
Thank you Peggy. I did have a fun day, and the weekend’s only just begun…
I love birthdays! Congratulations on yours. My, you do have a number of projects on the go, don’t you? I just wrapped up 3, but will admit to having a handful open, as well. Really I need to consider for each whether I really want to finish them or not. If not, perhaps someone else will. I can put them aside to donate in my guild’s biennial auction. We’ll see…
Thanks for your good wishes Melanie. The open projects have got out of hand really. However I am sure I want to finish them all so I’ll try not to get over whelmed. There are probably some UFO projects that I should make a decision over though – I think you are very wise to let projects go when they are not exciting you to finish them.
A very happy birthday to you! And many more!
My goodness, you are busy! But it looks like a happy busy! I want to see what your plan is for the dotted layer cake! 🙂
All will be revealed…! But first to push on for a couple of finishes ☺
It’s probably already the day after your birthday, Allison, but I’ll wish you a Happy Birthday, anyway. I hope it was fun and that you enjoy the trip to the American Museum. You have a lot of fun quilts in progress!
Thank you Nancy. My Friday birthday is spilling over into the weekend in many pleasant ways – not least the visit to the Museum, which is a gem more than worthy of a blog post!
You’ve got a lot to keep you busy but it all looks like fun! I have that same dotted layer cake, and just need to find time to decide what to do with it. Happy Birthday!
Thank you Beth! It’s a funny things with these pre-cuts, they look so beautiful it’s hard to make the move to open them up and start cutting!