For the last two weeks I’ve been spending most evening hand sewing the binding onto my floral quilt.
It’s taken two weeks because not only did I have seven meters of binding to sew, but I also find hand sewing hard going on my middle finger – the eye end of the needle manages to make it sore and even bleed very easily – does anyone else have that challenge?
With the binding finally attached the quilt is finished…
Last week I asked your opinions on the colours to use with a some jungle fabric I wanted to make a baby quilt out of.
It was all but unanimous that I should use red, gold and green.
I set about pressing my fabric before I cut it, only to find the jungle fabric had been folded for so long it had developed white lines bang in the centre of each fat quarter.
I now couldn’t cut sufficient pieces of the right size for the pattern I wanted, so I decided (after much anguished thought) to make a smaller quilt of 5×4 6″ squares where every other square was jungle fabric. I could have made the quilt bigger with more other fabric, but I wanted the jungle print to dominate.
Still not convinced I wanted to add more than red and gold to the mix, I cut out some red and gold squares and arranged them with the jungle print on the green fabric…
I then tried chucking in some black and white polka dot to reflect the zebra colours and a bit of red and white polka dot for the hell of it…
Now I know you almost all voted for red, gold and green (and I do think including green looks better in the photos) but in real life the gold and red only are winning my vote…
However, what I’m thinking would look even better (even though this was supposed to be a mega simple quilt) is having red and gold pinwheels rather than squares.
So that’s where I’m up to a week later, still staring at the fabric and wondering what the heck the quilt is going to end up like.
And while I’m staring, I’ve got a quick question, what colour thread would you used to piece these colours together?
Finally – almost two years after I started it – I’ve finished the patchwork for the top layer of my quilt.
Last time I showed you it was looking like this…
The final border was made up of six inch squares. It took quite a while laying them out and ensuring the patterns were evenly spread and no two patterns that were the same touched…
I then numbered ever square, because every time I do chain piecing I manage to mix the order up.
Pleased to say I managed to keep them in order and they’ve all been attached now.
Next I need my lovely lovely friend to help me put the quilt sandwich together – far to big to do on my own – and I don’t mean this lovely lovely friend…
Over at Beads and Barnacles Pippa’s been getting organised with Make Nine and Use Nine grids. She’s inspired me to make a grid of nine projects I want to frog or finish this year. I know I’m a bit late in the year for posting my UFOs, and I know I usually just list them, but a grid makes a nice visual reminder and is a manageable number. So here’s my Frog or Finish Nine for 2019…
We’ve already discussed this this year – it’s the patchwork quilt.
Two project bags that just need handles.
A Santa sack that just needs sewing up.
An almost finished cardigan that I just need a friend’s opinion how the opening should sit to finish.
A crochet top that has to be frogged – my thumb’s too sore to crochet these days 😦
A pair of socks.
A too boring shawl that needs frogging.
A shawl that needs blocking – it’s always so damp in Dartmoor, I never want to deliberately make something wet just to dry it off.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll recognise this UFO – I’m still wrestling with myself; I don’t seem to like it enough to finish it, but can’t quite bring myself to frog it!
In truth I could finish 7/9 of these in and evening if I frogged number 9. Let’s see how long it actually takes me.
Welcome to my Sunday Sevens : A post were I share seven or so photos of my week away from the blog. Sunday Sevens was invented by Nathalie at Thread and Bobbins.
Since we’ve had Harry, we’ve started to re-explore the old dog walks we used to do when Mr Hicks was young and spritely. Last Sunday we walked along the river at Fatherford – haven’t been here for several years…
Lots of lovely trees to play hide and seek behind.
After our walk I managed to fit in a little patchwork…
Unfortunately our afternoon walk on Monday was disaster. While walking with a friend who has a young and incredibly excitable dog, her dog took her feet from under her and she broke her ankle. No pic to show you – well it would have been mean to start taking pictures.
Tuesday evening a friend’s daughter came round for me to turn up her ball gown.
It was so lovely – I really should have taken a pic of her in it! Doh!
On Wednesday we had the first snow of the winter. Not a lot, but enough to stop the school buses running and for my friend’s boys to bring their sledges on a dog walk.
With the weather turning colder, I made some soup to warm our cockles…
Roasted butternut squash and garlic ready to be liquidised.
Thursday we had more snow – most of which was unpredicted and fell just as it was getting dark and people were travelling home from work. (I would have said ‘rush hour’ but if you’ve ever been to West Devon you’d just laugh.) Lots of people in the South West were stuck in their cars overnight. Fortunately we were tucked up safely at home and on Friday we had a lovely snowy dog walk on the moor…
In the evening we walked to the pub, only to remember half an hour later that I’d forgotten to move the casserole to the bottom of the aga. Fortunately my lovely next door neighbour had come in her car, so gave me an emergency lift back home. I caught it just as it was about to completely dry out and start to burn. Here’s my share rejuvenated just before we ate it…
On Saturday we rounded the week off with more snowy dog walks…
So that was my week; sewing, cooking, looking after an animal and not going to the ball. Just call me Cinderella.
