Saturday 29 December 2012

Christmas

I have been so busy with Christmas and all the children at home, that very little has happened in the line of 'proper' sewing.  I did however, finish these cushion covers just in time for Christmas.





 When I was in Salt Lake City in January, I met some local ladies when we attended a Handiquilter course together.
Classes were held on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning and we then had a break (free time between 2 courses) before the next course started on Monday morning.  Stuck in a hotel room with no way of transport and not familiar with area (coming from England) for 2 days would have been very boring, but Julie, one of the local ladies, offered to take us on a quilt shop hop on Saturday afternoon.
I bought one of the patterns for the Christmas cushion covers on this trip but was disappointed that the other patterns in the series were sold out and wondered whether they would be available at any of the other local shops as the designer lived in the area.  I showed the pattern to Julie and she announced that the designer is her neighbour and proceeded to call her to ask if she has any patterns lying around at home and she did!  Julie then drove all the way home to her neighbours home to pick them up for me and drove all the way back to my hotel to get them to me!  How incredibly kind is that and how lucky?

 On the Sunday, Susan, another local lady on the course volunteered her time to take us to Park City, where we stopped at some outlet stores and a mall before having a late lunch at The Cheesecake Factory.  Hooray for Julie and Susan, lovely friends in Salt Lake City.

I also finished the yo-yo pumpkin men for next year, I thought I might try and make a snowman and a Santa too at some future date.




Oh the newly discovered delights of Pinterest!  I have found so many wonderful pictures on here and have created my own pinboards with ideas for future projects. What did I do before Pinterest?
I remember ..... wrote down the web address and a big long description of what I liked there in a little notebook that I kept next to the computer, and because there was so much written in the book, I could never find the exact thing I had in mind later.  With pictures saved on my Pinterest board, it is so much easier and quicker to find things. Only trouble is, I spend so much time looking at everything on Pinterest, that I don't have time for reading anymore!  So, I have made the decision, to only look at Pinterest once a week, and not spend hours drooling over all the wonderful quilt pictures out there.

I have so many ideas in my head right now and am trying to plan which projects I would like to do in the new year.  So many unfinished projects, so my aim is to finish 2 unfinished projects before tackling each new project.  Top of the list are my finished quilt tops that now need quilting.  I will post pictures of these when they are 'in progress'.


Plans for new projects include starting a "Dutch treat" quilt, all done by hand, so this will be my take with on travels project.  All blocks are sewn by hand in recessed (reversed) applique.  There are 196 blocks, no 2 the same.  Very exciting, I can't wait to get started on this. These are the fabrics for my 'Dutch treat", I am using a mottled caramel colour for the foreground and 15 shades of "Suede by PB Textiles" for the background. I have cut all my pieces this morning and plan on marking the designs out tonight and then bag it up all ready for sewing.



I am also planning on making a quilt to be raffled to raise funds for a charity called "Hope Asia", I will post details of this later, I am going to do foundation pieced star blocks for this, but am undecided about the fabrics for this at the moment.

For now, my children are all at home, so sewing is a bit low on the priority list, but I wish everyone a very happy Sewing Year for next year ;-)



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