Reene's FAL list Q3 - keeping it real

I'm scraping under the wire this quarter! There's so much going on around here that I know I'm not likely to finish much other than my Quilt Now commitments but I still want to play along with Katy's FAL so I'm keeping the list short this quarter.
1. Jess's cardigan is back on the list!

2. HipBees village quilt - Hanging on the design wall ready for when I have some free time to play with it.This really must be finished this quarter!        

3. HipBees Denyse Schmidt Strings quilt - The top is finished but it's still waiting to be quilted. Maybe I'll get round to it this quarter :) I'm feeling hopeful about this one!

That's it for my list this quarter. I decided I would rather have a short list with more hope of getting them done than a great long list and lots of crosses by the side of them come October. It feels a bit like I'm cheating but I can live with that ;) Right, I'm off to check out what everyone else is hoping to achieve this quarter.

Catch you soon x

As I sit writing this..........

......there is a blue sky and a little sunshine peeking through here and there.  The birds are flitting hither and thither. I love that word.. thither...it makes my tongue tickle when I say it.  Go on try it and see...  Go on ...  See it does doesn't it?  And, in my head, it conjures up times gone by, Jane Austen, Elizabeth and Darcy *sigh* ... anyway.. the garden is beginning to throw up shoots and there is that promise of better days to come.  Spring... I am really longing for it this year! I am thoroughly tired of Winter and will be very pleased to see the end of it!! And I'm sure I'm not alone.

We had a pretty busy January working on the house.  Apart from doing a little in my sewing room Ralph tore out dodgy fitted wardrobes in the guest room and sorted out wiring, took out a sink and built a lovely roomy airing cupboard. He redecorated and I made curtains from some vintage Laura Ashley fabric I'd had for ages. We bought a new carpet and  now that the furniture is in and I've added the finishing touches we are really pleased with it. ......Ha...I just read that back and it sounds like we worked like a team doesn't it?  In truth, we don't that often.  He likes everything to be his idea and I know that I couldn't possibly agree with him...or we'd both be wrong..  I'm not sure who coined that phrase but it perfectly describes us.  Our tastes seem poles apart and we have to spend a ridiculous amount of time getting to a compromise.  But we usually do, fortunately. :-) Just a couple of photos of the finished room for you. 
Before...

Airing cupboard before

...and after airing cupboard.

Close up of the Curtains and tie backs

The finished room!

Finished room 

On the proper sewing front, as opposed to boring sewing, I've started a few things and have been working on the WIP's for the finish along with Katy. Unfortunately, I haven't done as much as I had hoped to.  The lurgy that I mentioned Ralph had come down with, in my last post, developed into some awful Noro type virus that made him more ill than he has ever been in the over thirty years I've known him.  He even stayed home for two weeks which is unheard of....And spent one and a half of them in bed apart from two hourly crawls to the loo.  I know I can hear you saying it "TMI",Yvonne way more information than you needed!!!!   Matron would have been so pleased with me though, my hands are still stinging from all the antic bac rub, anti bac soap, Milton, bleach and anti bac wipes that I scoured everything with all day.  I tell you, I even anti bac wiped the bleach bottle!!!!!

So, to my projects.... I made a quilt top and backing for Mackinlay's birthday and started something for a newly 17 year old too.  Both have been abandoned until I regain my energy levels as they are at almost zero now and both projects are machine made and I can't face that at the mo. So I'll tell you about those another time.

But I have done quite a bit to the quilt that I'm making with my 2011 Fresh Modern Bee 2 blocks.   
I have used Cindy Lammon's  book 'Gathered from the Garden' as my inspiration.

 The fabric is Oasis by 3 Sisters for Moda. Really like their fabrics designs.  each of the bee blocks were 12" squares with flowers either appliqued or pieced onto them. Most particularly I'm using Cindy's quilt 'My Secret Garden' as a focus.

I'm placing the bee blocks throughout the quilt and building in elements to connect them all together. Some of it is from the book and some of it is improv and it's a combination of piecing and applique. 

It's very liberating to have no pre planned ideas and I'm forcing myself to NOT overthink every piece.   Way out of my comfort zone but I am thoroughly enjoying it....surprisingly..... 

Close up right

Close up left

I'm almost a third of the way through it, I would think, so I'm beginning to believe that it might be a quilt top by the end of the year!!  

I love that I'm connecting the others ladies work into something for me and am so grateful to all of them for the blocks and for inviting me to join in their bee. I'm really pleased with it thus far, what do you think?

Hopefully, I'll feel up to adding a little more this week even if it's only some applique.  We'll see.

So that's me for today.  Thank you so much for stopping by and keeping me company.  Hope you have a good week.

Take good care of yourselves.

 Happy sewing. Xxx

Jubilation!

Hello All, I can't begin to tell you all just how excited I am right now! I've bored the crowd on Instagram over the last few weeks with pictures of my Not-so-Lonestar quilt and today that will cease (for the time being anyway) because I've finished it!!!!!!!!! I can't believe it but it's true :)

I completely love it! I feel a bit like Bruce Forsyth today when I say that this is my favourite quilt to date.

 It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, there are plenty of duff points and bias issues but the fabric is so gorgeous and busy that those things don't really matter. I actually feel a bit bereft that it's finished. Well, not quite finished because it still has to be quilted but I'm not doing that myself...no chance, this beaut will be heading over to Trudi to work her long-arm magic :)

It's really tricky to capture the scale of this quilt so I took a pic of it with Jess by the side as a guide, she's about 5'5" :)

 When I took this project back out of the WIP box at Christmas I was really anxious that I wouldn't have enough fabric left to complete it as I'd started it in 2011 and wasn't sure how easy it would be to get hold of Innocent Crush and Soul Blossoms now. Thankfully the angst was unnecessary as I have this lovely pile of fabric left!

I'm so pleased I'll be able to use these fabrics in other projects in the years to come :) I think you'll be pleased that I've got all this left too because it means that I'm feeling generous with the scraps from the making of the quilt! There's 290g of scraps of pretty much all the prints I used in the quilt. They're all really useable sizes so I'm sure they'll be very handy for scrappy projects.

As a thank you for all the encouragement I'm giving this lovely scrap pile away! You get up to 3 chances to win:
1. To be in with a chance to win just leave a comment here.
2. If you're a follower, new or regular, leave another comment.
3. Share the giveaway news and leave another comment here letting me know you've shared.

Please make sure I can contact you if you happen to win, (no-reply bloggers I mean you!) I'll draw a winner with Random Number Generator on Friday 24th January 2014 around 8pm (GMT).

Thanks for cheering me on from the sidelines :) Catch you soon x

Edited to add: Giveaway is now closed. The winner was Mrs FlyingBlind - Hadley.

FAL 2014 Q1 - Yvonne's list

..... sigh....  I know a 'nudge' when I see one and this post of Correne's, about Katy's  FAL for 2014, was more of a 'shove' than a 'nudge' !! 

Having said that I have watched other bloggers joining in with the Finish alongs that have been hosted over the last few years and found them inspiring.  It is such a good idea to share with like minded people your plans to finish projects and then look back to see what you have all, hopefully, achieved.  Or at least the steps toward finishing that you have taken.

So, after giving myself a good talking to..... and an agitated encouraging chat with Correne on the phone .... I've decided to join in too.  Please imagine a very scared face here.  It's not that I'm competitive.... much .... it's just that .... I ... prefer to waffle on in my own sweet (?) way.  So no one else can see when I don't achieve my objective!!!  All nonsense I know!!  But hey, what am I making a fuss about?  You're all lovely people and will only encourage me, so it's all good isn't it? :-)  Besides which, I've got a lot of very noisy UFO's and WIP's as this post  told you and they have become even more noisy since the move!!   

Without further ado, here's my list:

1. This is destined to be a cushion.  I've been plodding on with it in the evenings whilst watching tv and it's so close to being done. I told you about it in a previous post, masses of tiny hexies swapped with Helen for scraps of Liberty fabric. The really good thing is that it will be Helen's  finish too as she made all the tiny hexies in the first place!! I hope she's reading this and is impressed. :-)

2. I'm ashamed to say this was started in 2011 as my part of the Fresh Modern Bee 2 on Flickr. In my defence, I did become really ill before the end of the Bee's year and spent eighteen months or so on almost complete bed rest.  I still struggle and am generally very slow making anything but I would LOVE it to be a finished quilt by the end of 2014.

3. Honestly, this should be a quick finish, even for me, if I can just decide what I want to do with it!!!  Some of my favourite fabric ever I think, Lecien's Petit Fleur.

And that's it folks!  I know I know only three!!!!  And one is a long term one too.  But I'm hoping that I will get more confident each quarter...... perhaps?


Now then, I'm off to ask Correne how to do the linky thing with Katy's blog.  No doubt she'll get tired of explaining and do it for me..... At least I'm hoping she will!!!!

Thanks for dropping in.  Take good care of yourselves.

Happy Sewing Xxx

FAL 2014 Q1- Reene's list

So, after receiving a gentle nudge from Katy I've decided to bite the bullet and join in on the Finish Along 2014. Having said I've got a ton of things to finish I need to be more specific for purposes of the FAL. I'm going to try and be realistic in setting my targets!
1. The Not-so-Lonestar quilt - as you know I started this one in 2011, it has since been unpicked and started again so it's almost as though I only it started in 2013 ;) I am utterly determined to finish it this year!

2. Diamonds, kites and stars EPP - I started this one in September when I was recovering from my op. I feel a bit of cheat adding this one to the list as I've just finished it but as I'd already mentioned it as a WIP here I'm kidding myself that I can get away with it ;)

 3. Quilt and Stitch Village competition quilts - I think I'm safe adding this as I have the ideas firmly in my stitching journal and have just sent off the entry forms. Last year Susan and I dared each other to have a go this year, so we have both filled out the forms with trepidation and sent them on their way. In my infinite wisdom I've decided to enter 2 quilts that haven't yet been made. One low volume improv quilt and one bright and fun medallion. These must be done this quarter without fail!

4. Crochet blanket - I couldn't find any pictures of this on my computer but there are quite a few over on instagram. I started this when the cold weather set in and would really like to get it finished before Spring other wise it will be relegated to the back of cupboard somewhere :) So far I have 9 rows completed of a total of 16.

I think that's enough to be going on with for now. I'm looking forward to having more encouragement to keep to the task so thank you very much Katy for organising :) Catch you soon x