New Year, New Projects

Do you have any new year resolutions? I don't really go in for that sort of thing but I do have one goal that I have set myself for this year and that is to make a quilt. I love quilts, I'm absolutely fascinated by them and I'd really like to make one for myself. 

With this months Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine came an little booklet featuring 20 blocks made with Amy Butler fabrics. I decided that this might be a place to start, that if I made the blocks featured it would be a way of gaining some experience of  sewing the shapes involved in quilting and would also give me lots of blocks to make a quilt with. 

A new project requires new fabric, right?

I bought these lovely fabrics from the Quilt Room in Dorking.

I'm going to try and make 1 quilt block a week. I know that may seem like a small target but there's always something else happening, isn't there? I've actually managed 2 this week (mainly because the kids having started all their clubs yet!)

This second one is not quite right - perhaps one of you might be able to tell me where I went wrong? Basically, the purple strips should have met in the middle as a square but to do that, the edges of the block would not be square (I know they're not exactly square in the picture but I'm sure you know what I mean). 6 strips of fabric sewn together is not the same length as one strip so I don't know what I should have done differently. This is the picture from the book

Sorry, I can't rotate the image!!!

As a first attempt I'm really pleased, even if it's not quite as it should have been! If you do have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

In other news, I'm working on 2 projects for......next Christmas! Never too early to make a start, eh?

I hope you've all had a great "getting back to normal" week. I'll be linking up with Handmade Harbour, join me there if you can. Thank you for all your lovely comments last week - my husband was thrilled to hear that others were experiencing cupboard envy!

Love Natalie 

Happy New Year!

Can you believe it's already 5 January? It's a wonder we've made it through Christmas and New Year at all, what with the weather having been as awful as it has been.

I've had a wonderful Christmas having spent lots of time with the family and I've also been very lucky on the crafty front.  Not only did I receive a KitchenAid for Christmas but I was also encouraged and helped along the way to buy a new sewing machine. I decided on the Janome 525s which is the machine used in the Great British Sewing Bee. Having read lots of reviews I decided that if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me!

So this is what my New Year's Eve looked like

You can see my gorgeous new sewing machine in the forefront of the picture, and in the background you can also see my lovely new craft cupboard. My wonderful husband built it for me the weekend before Christmas.  Consequently I have had great fun clearing out all my crafty cupboards and drawers and sorting everything out. It's amazing all the little bits and bobs that you find that you've kept along the way for future use.  This is what it looks like today after a good tidy up

What to make first with my new gadgets? I made a cheesecake for dessert on New Year's Day with my KitchenAid and I made a knitting needle case using my new machine. I actually recycled the lovely material I had previously used to make a cover for my old machine. 

I followed the fantastic tutorial that can be found here  http://www.guthrie-ghani.co.uk/blog/knitting-needle-case-tutorial. In the past I've been baffled by the instructions to make a knitting needle case but these were so clear it was really, really easy to follow and I'm definitely going to make some more as gifts.

I did squeeze a little bit of last minute crafting in immediately before Christmas. First of all, a pincushion for my mum who had told me that she was still using the same one that my brother had made when he was at Playschool (he is now 32 years old)

I made it using a kit from www.thelittlelavenderpatch.com.

I had also been working on quilting a duvet cover for number one son. He had a duvet cover which he really like the colour of but unfortunately it was determined to always slip off of the duvet on the inside.  I had grown tired of always having to put the cover back onto it so I used some wadding that I had in my stash and handquilted around the circular patterns to hold everything in place (one of the reasons I have upgraded my sewing machine is because I would like to try quilting). I then topstitched all around the edges to hold everything in place securely. I'm really pleased how it's turned out, in particular I like the fact that having quilted around the circles on one side, you're left with a nice circle swirly pattern on the other side of the quilt. 

I'll be linking this post up with the first Handmade Monday of the year. I'm really looking forward to catching up on what everyone's been up to over the Christmas and New Year period. Join me there if you can to get some inspiration for the months ahead!

Love Natalie

Christmas Catch Up

Well, Christmas is nearly here and due to a mid week interruption (just a little birthday mind you) I've not done a huge amount of crafting. Because I was without a computer for a little while, I think I missed showing pictures of a few things that I have made lately. So, a little catch up:

A baby jacket and booties for the friend of a friend.

Santa hats, made by number 3 son.

A personalised lavender bag for friend to give as a christening gift.

Christmas decorations made by my 2 favourite cubs.

A rubbish photo I know but this is the Christmas decoration that I made for the host of Dressing Gown Day.

Now it's all gone a bit Pete Tong - I was a lucky girl and got an iPad for my birthday, and I'm finishing a draft post using IT rather than the laptop. I have no idea why the new photos are so big! Anyway, these are the lovely Christmas decorations made by sons 2 and 3.

And this.......

is the beautiful cake made for my birthday by my ever talented sister in law. Thank you Sarah!

I shall link up with Handmade Harbour today for the last time in 2013.
Merry Christmas everyone, and Best wishes to you all for the New Year!

Love Natalie

Dressing Gown Day 2013 featuring Mini Baileys Cheesecakes

It being very nearly Christmas, this Wednesday saw the return of Dressing Gown Day, a day for an elite group of ladies to take the day off, eat, drink and be merry - whilst wearing their dressing gowns!

A fabulous day was had by all! Despite the fact that a couple of us had to make a quick nip out to accept a delivery on behalf of a friend, school calling to report a sick child, family members being admitted to hospital......we took it all in our stride (the hot chocolate helped!). And how could our spirits be dampened when a rather special person paid us an unexpected visit:

In the words of Buddy the Elf - "Santa! I know him!"

Look at their little faces!
I received a lovely pair of Christmas rubber gloves, beautifully modelled her by number 3 son:

I baked some goodies for us to nibble on during the morning - white chocolate cookies, quick and easy sausage rolls and mini Baileys cheesecakes. I only had to share the recipe about 10 times during the morning so I thought perhaps others might like to know how to make these delicious little morsels.

They're so easy!
You need a pack of shop bought shortcrust pastry, a packet of soft cream cheese, 3 tbsp icing sugar and as much baileys as you want to taste.
Using a mini muffin pan (I have a Pampered Chef one) make pastry shells. I haven't made these cheesecakes for a while so learned a valuable lesson myself: next time, I'm going to put a baking bean in each one whilst they are cooking because they do tend to rise up in the middle a bit. When the shells are cooked, leave them to cool. Meanwhile, make the filling - mix the cheese and icing sugar together, and then mix in Baileys till you have the required taste. All that is left is to pipe the filling into the shells. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture before they were gobbled up but I'm sure you get the idea!

I'll be linking up with Handmade Monday - the penultimate one before Christmas!

Love Natalie

A new link up!

I've linked up with Craftastic Monday hosted by Sew Can Do today so welcome to any new readers joining me from there! I love these linky parties although it can be time consuming looking at everyone's blogs!

Handmade Christmas Wreaths

I attended a wreath making workshop a couple of weeks ago and I'm so pleased with the result!

All of the materials were provided, and the instructions of how to turn wire, moss and holly into a decoration, and great fun was had by all.

There was a lot of "ouch-ing" because of the holly, despite the fact we were all wearing gardening gloves of some sort, but the end result was worth the pain.

How are your Christmas decorations coming along? Ours are all up and we're ready to go - there is at least one very excited little boy in my house!

I'll be joining up with Handmade Monday so join me there if you can to catch up on the Christmas craft goings on.

Love Natalie

It's been a long time!

In a fight between 2 of your children, who will come off the worse for wear do you think? I'll tell you who - the laptop! Which was unceremoniously dropped on its head. Consequently we have been without a computer for the last couple of weeks. The children have all gone without electrical entertainment of all kinds for the time it has taken to repair the laptop, which has been interesting to say the least, but finally, thanks to a very clever and helpful friend, we are back online! Most importantly, the children can do their homework again but equally important - I can blog again! And order the Tesco shopping to be delivered, but there's no need to talk about that.....

So now I need to catch up with myself. As it so happens, I have been suffering the perils of tonsillitis for almost the same amount of time as the computer has been broken so I'm ashamed to say that I feel I have done very little crafting. But it is such a hectic time of year, am I really surprised? What I may lack in crafting, I have made up for in Christmas planning so I can report that I have written all of my cards and wrapped all of the presents so that's something. I've also made it through son  number 1's 12th birthday, the celebrations for which included the most gorgeous chocolate cake I've ever tasted, courtesy of Auntie Sarah.

Since my last post, I've also finished the shawl I was making for a friends Granny. Apparently, when you reach the dizzy age of 99, you don't have to wait till Christmas to get your presents, so she is already in receipt of her gift and I'm assured that she loves the colour and is thoroughly warmed by it.

 I just knitted garter stitch, increasing 1 stitch at either end of the row until it was big enough. It was a beautiful colour yarn that has striped well. Since I am hopeless at crochet my mum very kindly crocheted around the edge to tidy it up a little.

What do you think? I realise it's not at all technical, but very effective none the less.

I'm sure I have much more to report but I think that will do for now! I will enjoy catching up with Handmade Monday - I have been reading blogs but I've been unable to comment - so join me there if you can.

Love Natalie