Rules Reset

Hello there! I'm still here, just working on important personal stuff and not able to handle much internet at the moment. I just wanted to pop in to mention a new love... cross stitching! I haven't tried to cross stitch since I was a small child, but the adorably fantastic patterns at The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery have completely converted me. I had been meaning to sign up to one of their clubs all year, but keep forgetting in time to start with everyone else. I do realize I can stitch any of the finished sampler clubs at any time, but the element of surprise (and the whole 'being in a club' thing) is totally part of the appeal. So I signed up for both the Autumn Sampler and the Halloween Spooky Sampler and I am so so excited about both! I have started with the Halloween Sampler as the patterns to fill in the squares will be arriving for this one first. I really enjoyed picking out my threads from our local haberdashery yesterday. Being able to shop local for all my supplies was amazing. Then last night Dan helped me to get started with the actual stitching!

I do find it pretty hard to count the spacings, especially before I have a reference point, and I have made a few mistakes so far. But I am systematically picking out the errors and replacing them with accurately placed stitchy goodness, and I am really really enjoying it :)

That might just be a finished Swoon quilt, in use and much loved already. Technically it is missing about 4" of hand quilting, which I'll get around to fixing shortly. Almost all my hand-quilted quilts end up missing just a few stitches where my thread ran out and I forgot to go back and finish the area.

I have been making a lot of progress with my dermatillomania control lately. I managed to not pick for an entire 7 days, the longest ever for me. Really really proud of that. I've not managed a gap of more than two days since but I am working on it. Its a huge (really really huge) effort to keep from doing something that is so much a part of every activity, but I do feel optimistic about my long term goals to lessen and stop completely.

Unfortunately, I have developed 'floaty craft syndrome'. I cannot sew at all right now. I'm still excited about my sewing, just cannot concentrate on any one project for long. I have tried knitting (and currently have socks on my needles for both Dan and myself), but even that is too intrinsically linked with derma. Hence the cross stitchery. It's really really helping :) Interestingly, it is also making my feel more excited about sewing. I'm planning to sew Noodlehead's Divided Basket this weekend, as a home for my stitchy projects.

My main machine really needs a tune-up, so any sewing I do take on will be on the tiny Brother machine, but I think we can handle it :)

Random Little Happenings

I haven't felt up to much blogging since returning from London. I have been sewing, but actully photographing my work and providing tangible evidence of activity defeats me at the moment. Really, I just want to sew and enjoy the summer. But I'll be updating when I can :)

I have four new Farmer's Wife blocks to share so far. Maybe more by the end of the week. I have ordered Sketch in black and white as my FW sashing, which I hope will look fantastic. Just need to settle on a cornerstone fabric now.

My Swoon hand quilting is going really well. I picked up much better quilting needles in London (Milward no.5 embroidery needles) as well as a new thimble and needle grabber, and I am now able to quilt entirely pain free. The limiting factor is now my eyesight and not my fingers! I don't feel like working on the Swoon everyday though, so I have a couple of smaller quilting projects on the go to. This 'Chubby Star' mini quilt has been made using the Strawberry Fields pattern by Sarah Fielke in Material Obsession. My copy of this book had a few errors in this particular pattern, but I have tested the corrections found here and I am pleased to find the block works perfectly. I'm planning to use this pattern to make a quilt from my Briar Rose stash (which arrived last week!)

Dan and I made pizza from (almost) scratch a few days ago. We used a gluten free bread mix that I don't like as bread. It made a delicious pizza base, with tomatoes from my parents garden, mozzarella and goat's cheese.

I figured the best way to fight holiday withdrawal is to plan another holiday, so Dan and I are going to London (TOGETHER!) in September :) Really looking forward to it.

Farmer's Wife Week Two

Frantically preparing for my trip to London right now, so this will probably be the last you will hear of me until I get back. Let's go look at the farm!

I have only had my Farmer's Wife book since last Monday, so technically week two is only just beginning, but I'm not supposed to be making any more blocks until I'm all packed and organised, so this will probably be it for the week. There is actually one more, but I'll save him for later. Totally addicted to making these :)

 Block 5 Bat Wing

 Block 6 Big Dipper

 Block 15 Buzzard's Roost

 Block 57 Morning

Week Two Blocks together.

Fat Quarterly Retreat Sample Swap

Only a few days left until my trip to London for the Fat Quarterly Retreat. I'll be leaving home on Wednesday and spending Wednesday night at my sister's in Dublin, to catch my Thursday morning flight to London. I'm frantically working on last minute preparations for my classes at the moment, and finally have a few photos to share of my finished sample swap goodies :)

I made sewing cases for my group using this tutorial with a few adaptions. I also made one for myself which has been in regular use ever since, so I hope their recipients will find them useful too.

Exterior fabrics are Sarah Watson's Indian Summer prints. Linings and ties are Carolina Chambray and bindings are either an Architextures crosshatch or Mama Said Sew dictionary print.

Sewing case interior features a tiny pincushion, hexy needle-keeper and four pockets (vertical pocket has been divided into two), perfect for stashing hand-stitching supplies or embroidery tools.

My Swoon quilting epic is continuing, slowly but surely. Just two more blocks and the cornerstones to go! Feeling a wee bit overwhelmed by retreat prep, but looking forward to it very much.

Farmer's Wife Friday

I started my Farmer's Wife project this week. I'm planning to do as many of the blocks as possible without using templates. I was planning to do them in the order listed in the book (alphabetically), but I changed my mind and am now working on whichever block appeals to me on the day. I struggled a bit with my fabric choices as I want this quilt to look scrappy and contain as many special fabrics as possible, but I need some limitations (rules) to guide my choices. I'm now fairly sure I'm going with the colours from Denyse Schmidt's Chicopee line, and so far I have included a piece of Chicopee in each block. The barn block drawing in the above photo is from Lori Holt's Quilty Barn Tutorial. I love her patchwork barns so much and will definitely be making one soon. Not sure yet whether it will have anything to do with the Farmer's Wife quilt though.

Block 1 Attic Windows. "The Wallpaper Out of Space".

Block 2 Autumn Tints. "September in Los Angeles".

Block 14 Butterfly at the Crossroads.

Block 31 Evening Star.

My first weeks blocks all together. 

I'm planning to make 100 blocks and set them all straight with some sort of small print/textured sashing. Need to make sure I buy enough of it once I figure out what it is. I attempted Block 5 Bat Wing this morning. It did not go well. Going to redraft and have another go soon. It is still very very hot here. Which would be absolutely fantastic if we were equipped with air conditioning or a fan, but we are not, and my sewing room is a very well insulated oven.

WIP (Thursday)

Hello there :) These last few days it has been rather hot here. Too hot for sewing in fact. I'm mostly wandering around outside and eating ice-cream. I did manage to make a few quilt blocks and finish my FQR sample swap items though. I'll hopefully remember to photograph my swap items shortly. Still need to prepare my supplies for two workshops, and do all my checking-in-online business. Leaving in one week!

Three more spool blocks got finished this week. I have the 'threads' cut out for lot more, it's the end caps that require a bit of catching up. I'm aiming for 100 spools in all.

I received this gorgeous bundle of fabrics on Monday from Annie at The Village Haberdashery , a prize I was lucky enough to win in Katy's recent giveaway. It arrived in a lovely dotty printed parcel and cheered up my day immensely. The fabrics are from Jenean Morrison's Beechwood Park line with coordinating solids. I love them! They feel like sunny days in the park, paddling in the river and strawberry ice-cream. I'm planning to use them for a summery quilt, quite possibly the St. Louis 16 patch.

My Farmer's Wife book also arrived on Monday, and I have finished two blocks already. I'll write about those tomorrow.

I was planning on writing a list of all my wips with their various status reports, but I'm not quite up to the task right now. It's far too hot for quilting so not a lot of finishing going on, but I may just manage a bit of EPP or some small block sewing.

Swoon Sunday

On Monday.

I'm on the final stage of my Swoon quilt. I started back in January 2012 using Kona Coal and a FQ bundle of Tula Pink's Prince Charming. Sewing the blocks was fun, and the quilt top went together perfectly. Then for some reason I decided to hand quilt it. Which would have been fine, but I'm using sew simple cotton wadding, which has a scrim and is really tough to sew through. And my needle are mostly blunt as it's impossible to get suitable needles here. Gah. But I am making myself finish it, and am actually enjoying it now!

I have three blocks to complete the quilting on (two of these are in progress already, only one totally un-quilted block left.) I'm also quilting two lines of stitching to echo each cornerstone star. Some of these are done.

I'm using a combination of pearl cotton in size 8, and Aurifil 12 weight, with clover chenille needles in size 24. I think slightly finer needles would be better, but I haven't found the perfect ones yet. This past week I have decided that I do like hand-quilting, I'm just not using quite the right tools. I'd like to try more traditional style hand-quilting soon using finer thread and smaller stitches.

The biggest piece of progress for the Swoon quilt has been my decision to bind it before finishing the quilting. The edges were fraying badly and the whole quilt plus excess backing and batting was ridiculously bulky to work with. So I stitched just enough of the perimeter quilting to stabilize it, then edge-stitched the whole quilt, squared it up and bound as normal. I feels so much nicer to work with now :)