Favourite Thing Friday

This week has been an interesting one in that I have been on a bit of a downer missing some close friends, none of who live an easily accessible distance from here. Some are further away than others. I tick along merrily most days getting on with what needs getting on with, but there are occasional slumps - we all have them (I think). On the other hand one of the best friends a person can have in the world will be here visiting from Canada in less than a month. That's something to look forward to.

And then there are you guys. All of you are my Favourite Thing Friday, because of your kindness, lovely comments, humour and generosity. You brighten my days and widen my world. Can you believe that I got two more packages in the post today?! From the lovely Ceri - one of the fabulous Brit Bee girls who blogs over at Inspired By Felix and makes the most beautiful things that she sells (Yes! Sells successfully.) I got some more bird fabric. What is amazing is how little duplication there is in the wonderful donations I have received for my Birdies quilt.

I love that bird in the upper right hand corner!

The other package was from another of my friends made when I joined Brit Bee - the wonderful Sarah who can be found at Narcoleptic in a Cupboard. Sarah is having a QAL very soon and I am doing it. It is called Stained Pink - though my quilt will not be either stained nor pink - I will be using her pattern. I got two donations from Sarah and her mum (that just makes me smile even more) for the bird quilt.

All those empty bird cages that have been escaped from. Perfect.
And the colours in the purple fabric are so cool!

And a donation to my HR quilt too.

Horses!!
(What more can I say?!)
You'll just have to imagine the stupid grin on my face.

A huge thank you to Ceri, Sarah and Sarah's mum. You guys are the best and I hope you'll let me know when you have a specific theme for a quilt that you could use some help with.

I have been blogging for just short of a year and I can't imagine how I got by without all of you before. It was a lonely sewing existence. The support received is nothing short of amazing, and I hope I manage to give some of that back. In an effort to spread the love (so to speak) I made something to pop in the post for someone else today.

A little needle book.
Which would have had more perle stitching in lime,
if I hadn't run out of that colour of thread.

Simple, but colourful and fun.

This will be popped into the post. I would like to say today but it looks like I have left it too late as the school run needs doing. But I hope it makes the recipient smile the way the kindness of so many has made me smile.

Thank you for being my Favourite Thing Friday. You've made my week a much cheerier one by stopping by here. As usual with FTF, I will be linking this up with Shay over at Quilting in My Pyjamas and will be having a look at what is making other people happy this Friday.

And for you Mouthy Stitchers out there - I have spent a good part of my day doing partner allocations. Oh, it is going to be so much fun! Hope you are ready to receive your partner this weekend. Because it is coming whether you are ready or not!

Susan

Resolved to Sew

I spoke about Resolved to Sew the other day because Ali is having one of the best giveaways ever over at Very Berry Handmade. But she is also giving us an extra chance to win if we talk about our sewing plans for 2012. So it would be silly not to take Ali up on her offer of another chance to win because I would love to win this.



But quite frankly, even if I didn't get first choice, all her prizes from the wonderful sponsors are brilliant and I would do a little happy dance if any of them came my way.

Since I did Sarah's Winter Sewing List and Rhonda's Finish-a-Long you have a good idea what my aims are for the next few months. But I will talk about them some more and about further plans in the year.

(1) I will finish Emily's quilt before the end of this month. (I have my fingers crossed behind my back just in case there is a slight delay.)

(2) I will make One for the Birds, my Favourite Fabrics quilt (in Sarah's Stained Pink design), and my Heather Ross Fan Club quilt this year. At least one of these quilts will be for me, me, me! I have yet to make a quilt entirely for myself and it is time.

(3) I will write a proper tutorial and it will work. Enough said!

(4) I will spend less time on the computer and more time sewing. I need more balance!

(5) I will be involved in the organising of more swaps (Mouthy Stitches being part of this goal) and I will enjoy the process and stress less.

(6) I will start my Christmas sewing now, not in November and avoid putting myself in a blind panic and being exhausted for Christmas Day.

(7) I will eat less chocolate. I have to! It's getting out of hand. Really!

That's enough. If I make lists too long I start to panic and procrastinate rather than get on with it because I end up intimidating myself. We wouldn't want that to happen.

Meanwhile I have had more happy post. Jan from Isisjem and I got emailing about my One for the Birds quilt and she quite liked the idea. She found that she had a number of bird fabrics too. I suggested that we do some swapping so that we each had more birds and before you could say 'yes' she had a package in the post for me. (No, I haven't sent hers yet because I am useless like that!) Look what I got!

Lovely card with the package!

Birds, birds and more birds.
I love those birds on a chair prints. Love!

Look what else Jan sent.
Some contributions to my HR quilt. Sqeeeeeee!
And chocolate! Died and gone to heaven here.

You can't say happiness for a quilter more than fabric you love. And with that in mind I got on with cutting the charm squares for the Over the Rainbow Charm Square Swap - Rounds One and Two - because I didn't want to miss out on any good fabric! All cut and ready to send off to Emily now. Tick that box off my list.

California Dreamin' for the pink.
Enchino for the purple.

I'm rather pleased with myself today because I have also finished doing a good old clean of the house the past two days. If you dropped by right now you would have the rare opportunity of not finding me mortified to let you in. It won't last long but it is nice while it lasts!

Theoretically I should be sat diligently working out the partner assignments for Mouthy Stitches right now. But I did have to get these other things done and out the way so I could concentrate.

Susan

Nosy Parker in the Neighbourhood

I'm linking in to Kat's Nosy Parker in the Neighbourhood over at Diary of a Flutter.Kat this month. I missed the Christmas link up because, well by the time I thought of doing it I was done with talking about Christmas and just never got around to it. Kat gives us a bunch of questions to answer each month and then those who wish to join in, link up and tell all about the subject of the month. January is all about our sewing spaces.

1) How long have you been sewing? Are you a first generation sewer or was the knowledge handed down to you? Basically tell us about your journey...

About five six years ago, after trying a few other crafts unsuccessfully, I asked himself if I could have a sewing machine. A friend got pregnant shortly thereafter and I decided to make something for the baby. My quilting career was born. I knew nothing, but that didn't stop me. I very quickly discovered the joys of shopping for fabric online and was instantly addicted. The sewing was secondary to the buying for a while. No one I knew sewed. My mum never sewed anything. Until I found my LQS and took a few classes I was winging it. I don't think the world of blogging had been born yet, and if it had I was clueless about that too.

I did bravely hand quilt it though. With varied success.

2) Where do you sew?

I sew in our dining room. There are no other options in this house. I dream of having a sewing room. In this dream the room is big, with every toy and bit of storage I could ever want. Meanwhile I have this -

Admittedly it is not perfect, but it's better than nothing. And it beats the conservatory in the last house we rented where there was no electricity, or heating, or lighting so it was either too cold, too hot, too bright or too dark. I didn't get much sewing during those two years at all!

I have a small cutting mat I keep on the table for while I am working. It proves equally useful for piling stuff on to shift it when we want to eat in the dining room. When I am required to cut larger pieces of fabric I use my other cutting mat on the floor. This gets pushed under the rowing machine when not in use. The rowing machine is useful for stacking fabric on as well. Beats having to exercise on it!

3) What does your sewing room/area look like today in it's real state. Take a picture of it if possible and show it to us real :)

Well, the above shows some of the tale. I am currently planning on cutting that purple Enchino into charms for the Somewhere Over the Rainbow Charm Swap, and there is a yard of pink somewhere waiting the same fate. On the table are the bird fabrics, and Judith's blocks and a few other items. By the machine are the fussy cut birds waiting for sashing.

And on one of the chairs is my growing stack of Heather Ross fabrics which have not been cut into yet. I just like to have them there right now reminding me of the quilt I am going to make soon and they make me smile each time I see them.

4) What is the first thing that you made which you were really proud of? Show us pics of your favourite project.

I am so used to parading Wonky Stars, or one of my Pips quilts when asked this so I am going to go off piste and show you the scrappy blue quilt I made with leftover two inch scraps. It isn't big but I think it is very, very pretty and I love the way it went together - without a plan as per normal for me. Just started piecing the scraps in an experiment and the next thing I knew I had a quilt top I loved.

5) Do you always stick to the "rules" when you sew, or are you more improvisationally minded?

Rules!? What rules?  Think that about sums it up.

I have been making it up as went along pretty well from the beginning. The use of patterns in my quilting is almost non-existent. I will look at other people's quilts for inspiration - and there is some pretty amazing inspiration out there - and I will often take parts of an idea that suit me. Even when making a traditional quilt like an Irish Chain pattern I have just worked out the maths and the cutting requirements for myself. Yes, there have been mistakes along the way, and sometimes those very mistakes have become projects that I loved. Live and learn.

A year ago this blog didn't exist, I was just starting to read other people's quilting blogs, I had never sewn a pillow or a cushion, a zipper in any of my projects, done a swap or found out just how much finding a quilting community online would brighten my life, infuse me with new found love of sewing and experimenting, and generally open my eyes to a whole new world.

I like it!

Susan

Catching Up and Resolved to Sew

This was one of those days I seemed to spend much of my time catching up. Catching up with a good friend over a cup of tea. Catching up with emails because I fell way behind again. If I missed yours - apologies - I sort of zoned out after a while. I also caught up on a few more bird blocks for One for the Birds. I now have twelve thirteen fourteen blocks in total. It's a start.

My favourite from today is most definitely this one -

I also notices, in the process of reading and replying to emails, that a number of you differed in my opinion of how hideous my Christmas fabric was. I will now stop hiding the truly fugly ones behind the more palatable ones and show you the horrid truth. There really are some crackers in there!

Now, if any of you have a hankering after the above I am more than happy to swap some for some Heather Ross or bird fabric. Trust me on this, I would give you great big pieces of these fuglies in return for small pieces of coveted fabric. Just a thought!

Last, but so not least, you probably will have noticed that there is the most amazing giveaway going on over at Very Berry Handmade. Everyone is blogging about it. And that's because it is a giveaway that beats most giveaways. Well, it's also because we all love Ali and her blog, and she's hanging out with us over at Mouthy Stitches. (Cindy and I are thrilled to be hanging out with the cool bloggers - Hadley always was cool.) The Resolved to Sew giveaway shouldn't be missed. Nor should the Very Berry Handmade blog. So off you scoot and go have a look. I'm all done here.

Susan

I Didn't Know...

... that I owned some of these fabrics! And my stash is small compared to most, I believe. I have sat here most of the morning, sorting, smiling, frowning, and wondering where some of it came from. I have sat and stared at some of it wondering what on earth I was thinking at the time. And here I thought I gave away just about all my ugly fabric a long time ago! Apparently not.

But there is still lots of fabrics I like. I have surrounded myself with storage boxes and have been sorting diligently.

Obviously I will have to 'borrow' space from the other storage unit sooner rather than later.

I have grouped together certain fabrics. Because they don't fall into a category, are brown/sludge, unbleached cottons, etc.

That one that looks red is actually a rust colour
and just doesn't seem red enough to make the cut to the red box for me.

Then there is a box just with solids in it.
There are more still to come I do believe.
And a whacking great big piece of Ash.

Still to figure out is what to do with the 'other' fabrics. There is a small pile, so far, of fabrics I am keeping together rather than sorting according to colour.

Fabric gifts, my Pips, etc.

There is a horrendously huge pile of Christmas fabrics still, despite my best efforts this past Christmas to use up some of them. Maybe there should be an ugly Christmas fabric challenge later on in the year. I'll supply the fabric!

I admit I tried to put the less horrible ones on top so you didn't realise just how bad it was.
Surprising how you can hide the ones with gold in them due to mortification!

I was also incredibly surprised to learn that I have a lot of Simplicity leftover from making Helen and Emily's quilts. I must have bought a lot! I might have to think of a project to use some of this up.

There is more to sort out, but the bulk is done now. This certainly focuses you, shows you what you have and what you desperately need more of. Especially in the colours. I need more reds, and oranges, and yellows, and purples - which are particularly hard to find - well purples that are palatable are.

If I get this task done I will be able to see the carpet again, which will be a shame because I am sure to get a visible reminder that it needs hoovering. Maybe I will leave my fabric out for another day. Just because I can.

Susan