Sew Mama Sew giveaway day!

It's that time of year again folks, Sew Mama Sew giveaway day! Thanks to them we get to peruse lots of lovely new blogs with the bonus of the chance to win some goodies :)
This time round we're offering 2 prizes to one lucky winner.

There's a festive table set of table topper and coasters in the ever popular Mama Said Sew by Sweetwater and a festive cushion in Bliss by Bonnie and Camille.

The table topper is approximately 9.5" x 15" and the coasters are approximately 4.5" square. I think they're festive without being too holiday specific.

The holly is raw edge appliqued with red Aurifil thread and I've used a lovely red fabric from the Rendezvous line by Kristian Howell for the backing :)

Yvonne has made a gorgeous cushion/pillow (depending which side of the Atlantic you're on) cover using one of the blocks from the Farmer's Wife Quilt book.

The colours are much prettier in real life, Winter lighting is so tricky! This will be sent without the pillow form to keep our postage costs low, it's a standard size so you shouldn't have any trouble finding an insert for it :)
So....now to the best bit. All you need to do to enter is leave a comment telling us your favourite holiday movie. If you fancy a second chance at winning you can click the follow button  and leave another comment telling us that you did or that you already follow us.
The giveaway will close on December 13th at 5.00pm PST. In the UK that's around 1.00am so you can rest assured I'll be tucked up in bed asleep then so I'll draw the winner using Random Number Generator when I wake up.
We're happy to ship Internationally but we obviously can't guarantee that the goodies will be with you before the New Year as the lasting posting date for guaranteed delivery by Christmas has now passed.
Again to remind you: 1st chance to win - leave a comment telling us your favourite holiday movie
                                   2nd chance to win - leave a comment telling us you are a new or existing follower   
I will try to answer as many comments as possible but please don't think I'm rude if I don't manage to reply to everyone as these giveaways can be so popular and I have a lot of sewing to be doing :) I almost forgot, please make sure I can contact you if you win by leaving an email address with your comment if you are a no-reply blogger. If I can't get hold of you and don't hear from you the day after the draw I will draw another winner.
In the meantime I hope you all enjoy visiting the other blogs taking part in the SMS giveaway. Good luck to all who enter. Catch you soon x

Updated to add - Winner of the giveaway was:

Thanks to everyone for taking part, sorry you couldn't all win something. Catch you soon x

I think i might have.......

...... discovered a new stitch!!!!

Now, it might take me a while to get around to telling you about that as I need to procrastinate a little.
Actually, my family will tell you that procrastinate should be my middle name instead of Susan.
Well, in fact, it shouldn't even be Susan!  I was named for my maternal Grandmother Sue.  When reading through papers a few years ago we found her birth certificate and her name was actually
Sue -Ann.  I like that better, a bit quirky methinks and I like quirky.  I might have to change it.

Thinking about it, it runs in the family - forgetting your name - my Uncle, the aforementioned Sue's son was called Harry.  One day at work someone was calling for Henry Dawson, quite often and persistently, and he didn't realise it was himself till a workmate told him!! Hehe.  What a family, I so belong to them. :-)

That so very neatly leads me onto my next subject.  Siblings Together who tirelessly work to help separated siblings to spend quality time together. If you don't know of this amazing charity please click the link and read about them, it is such a worthwhile cause and I have only the greatest admiration for the people concerned with it.

Apologies for some of the photos they are photos of photos so not very clear at all, Hopefully, you get the idea from them anyway. 

I love my family

Errm...sugar!! It won't turn round.  Sadly no Jess and Simon in this photo.                    

and have so many happy memories of times spent with my sister

I know black and white. Showing my age, but you all know I'm ancient anyway. That's me on the left!

and I know that Correne feels the same about Oliver.

 

Hehe, couldn't resist it. Don't they look cute?

 

Yikes, nearly got me in there too!!           

And Jess and Mackinlay love each other as siblings too. She adores him and he cries if she leaves the room.  :-)                                                                                                                                       

 

It's difficult to keep him still for even a minute, most of my photos of him are blurred!

So when Lynne told us about the opportunity to make a quilt for a child at one of the Siblings Together camps we were so pleased to get involved. As Correne has been so unwell this year, it fell to me to do the honours and I am so pleased to tell you that I managed to make a complete quilt, even do the quilting. This was a massive step forward for me from last year as I had only managed to make a quilt top last year and it took me weeks to recover.                                                                             

So the quilting on the machine was a real challenge, to say the least.  I decided to do straight line quilting in the ditch.  Keep it simple. No chance for errors.  And so on. Such a dumb idea!!! What was I thinking?!!! I can't even walk in a straight line! How did I think I would be able to sew in a straight line the whole length of a quilt??  Don't ask me, I have no idea. Cue me having a hissy fit. Mumbling and muttering, walking out the room, I may have even slammed a few doors, raiding the chocolate stash, feeling guilty that I'd raided the chocolate stash.  Don't worry it wasn't till I'd eaten it that I felt guilty- I'm not that dumb!! And so on and so forth.....

So, trying to pull myself together, I sat down with a glass of wine and a cigarette - wait no I don't drink or smoke,  I sat down with a cup of hot water and had a loooong think. And that was when I realised that I'd discovered a new stitch. (I told you it would take a while to get there!!!) It's called 'meandering in the ditch stitch' or 'meandering in and out of the ditch stitch'. Depending on what seems to fit at the time of stitching!! Now I'm feeling a little less .... what shall I say.....ok.... yes......grumpy.......(nods heads vigorously)........that's the word......Grumpy. Here it is then, I'm tempted to say our but I really shouldn't lump Correne with any of the responsibility of it's creation.  After all she only offered much needed support and the compliments that come with the rose tinted specs of a daughter! But...............it is from Nellie's Niceties. 

Before quilting - spot the upside down block!              

                              The closest I'll ever get to a roll up!                                

 Don't look too closely at it please, just admire the fabric.

Well, I know it's not perfect by any means, the quilting is .... well, it holds the layers together shall we say and one of the blocks is the wrong way up.  But the fabric is bright and fun, Fairytale friends by American Jane with Kona orange, yellow and blue - colours that are right out of my comfort zone.  But it is made and sent with much love and hopes for a bright future for the young recipient.  And hopefully, the young person who receives it will have a generous heart and love it anyway for the spirit in which it is given. :-)


And just to remind you that I do get it really right some times, although Hadley may beg to differ if she's reading this and sees the colours! In my defence, Correne gave me the layer cake and it is by Sweetwater who do design great fabric lines. :-))  I wanted to make a quilt for her to take into hospital. You know, in place of a hug from me but it's been sooo hot and I don't cope in the heat, so it turned into a pillow.  Which is probably as well, Correne hates the heat too and hospitals aren't the coolest of climates to be in.

 

The back.

The front. Much more like it.

Pure by Sweetwater. Hand quilted in blue, brown and caramel perle. Straight lines and never once falling into the ditch. Sorted. And resulting in a happy me.                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

So folks, that's it for now.  Thank you so much for visiting and spending time with me.  I really appreciate it.  Hopefully, next time we can tell you about our secret projects, cause I'm bursting to tell you about mine!!!!!

Take good care of yourselves.  Happy sewing. Xxx

Sneaky Stars

I'm really excited to share with you a project that I've been working on for a collaboration with Justine at Simply Solids. Let me introduce the Sneaky Stars quilt.

I'm really thrilled with how this pattern has turned out. I've been working on it for quite a few months so it kind of feels like my baby. It's a super quick quilt to piece and I really hope that I'll see versions of it popping up on blogs/flickr when the pattern is released ;)

Justine will be selling kits for this in time for Festival of Quilts. I'll update you when the kits go live :) This version of the quilt will be available to view on Justine's stand at Festival of Quilts. For those of you who won't be there here are a few more pics of it.

I wanted the solids to do all the talking so I did some very simple echo quilting in white and a rather lovely blue, variegated 12wt Aurifil. I wasn't sure if it would be possible to machine sew with the 12 wt but it went through with no problems :)

The improv pieced backing really shows the star quilting up beautifully, even if I do say so myself :)

I've also made 2 other versions of the pattern so you can see how versatile the design is. First up is a baby quilt that I made for Amanda's little man. I used Noteworthy by Sweetwater and a natural Moda crossweave. Excuse the rather uninspiring picture.

Here are some close-ups so you can see the pretty fabric:

The cross-weave made this little quilt really snuggly, just what a new baby needed :) You've already seen a sneaky peek at the other version that I made. I thought it was about time I made hubby a quilt so I put this one together for his birthday in June.

I dug out the perle thread for the quilting on this one. There are 3 different colours but it's difficult to capture them properly with the camera. Either way it stands out beautifully on the black solid. 

So there you have it. The Sneaky Stars quilt kit coming soon to now available at Simply Solids! I'd better crack on with writing the pattern now ;) Stay cool this weekend. Catch you soon x

Jumping on the band wagon.

This is one band wagon that I just could not resist! I've seen lots of Marcelle Medallions popping up all over the internet and so I bought myself a copy of Liberty Love by Alexia Abegg for Mother's Day so that I could join in. I am determined to fight my usual safe mode of sticking to one collection per project for this one. It's going well so far!

So far I've included fabrics from 6 different designers in the central medallion. I'm going to try to keep count as I go along :) That's Patty Young, Melody Miller, Saffron Craig, Sweetwater, Sandi Henderson and Helen Dardik (I think...correct me if I'm wrong, it's the dot fabric).

The central medallion went together really quickly and I managed to get the first border on too. That's 2 more designers there...Pat Bravo and ???( not sure on the black and white fabric).

I'm very motivated to get this top finished after seeing Mandy's finished Marcelle Medallion in real life at Lynne's last week!! In other news, I attended the inaugral meeting of the East Midlands Modern Quilt Guild on Saturday thanks to Kerry. It was lovely to meet more mad sewing ladies in person, including Di, the HipBees Queen Bee!! Any lovely readers from the East Midlands area that fancy popping along to join in with other like-minded people can find out details in the flickr group. Hope you've all had a good weekend. Catch you soon x

Not at Fat Quarterly Retreat

Well there have been a multitude of blog posts from the lucky attendees of the Fat Quarterly Retreat and as I was not one of them (I'm not bitter, much) you might want to look away now. Hopefully you won't be deterred and will stay here to see my finished Mama Said Sew flowers quilt. The weather finally cooled sufficiently for me to finish the hand quilting. 

 I love how it finished up. My rather large scale hand quilting adds just the right amount of definition to the shapes. Unfortunately the thread I used doesn't show up very well against the Amy Butler backing fabric so it's difficult to show you the effect, it looks great in real life though :)

 I've also managed to crank out some more blocks for my Central Park triple squared quilt :) This is going to be a super cheerful quilt.

Catch you all soon x

This weekend

The postie heralded a fabulous start to the weekend with this gorgeous Fat Eighth Stack of Mama Said Sew by Sweetwater!!! I'm ridiculously excited to have got my hands on this before the general release later this summer. Thanks to Jane of Want it, Need it, Quilt for super speedy despatch from Australia. I already have 2 plans in mind for this yummy line and as soon as I finish my commitments for the Siblings Together initiative I will be making something for me with it :) 

What's not to love about Mama Said Sew?

I finished up my last quilt for Siblings Together this afternoon! Woot! True to form it was too sunny outside to get a decent picture after weeks of being too wet to get a decent picture.

At least you can see the quilting.

I headed indoors to get a shot but that's not great either, sorry. I'm hoping that when we move Lynne will be my new quilt stylist and photographer...

Teen boy quilt finished size 50" by 70"

 I used some of my stash of Summersville to bind this one and backed it with the trusty text fabric from Ikea. I managed to forget to photograph the back but you've seen the print before on numerous occasions.

 Here's my final stack of quilts washed and ready for labelling before I send them off. I'll be adding the quilt Mum made to this pile as soon as I finish quilting it. Unfortunately Mum's still not up to manhandling fabric through the sewing machine so I said I'd finish it off for her. I'll show you pics of that next time. I've basted it ready for quilting :)

The leaning tower of quilts

 Hope you've all had a good weekend. Catch you soon x