Happy New Year

I know it's not quite new year yet, but have a lovely 2014 when it comes.

My new years resolutions mainly concern unfinished or yet to be started projects, namely:

• my blue woolen dress
• Lindsay and Rich's housewarming (!) quilt
• Stephanie and Sandy's engagement present
• a quilt for myself (but I need to go to Paris in February first to get the fabric)
• my tweed bag with leather handles
• two tweed make up bags

If I can get all of these and more finished in 2014 I'll be very pleased!

It must be Christmas time...

Well, not quite, I suppose Christmas time is over but it still feels festive as the tree isn't down yet. This year I didn't give too many homemade gifts, but I did make some make up bags for my colleagues. 
This bag was for a colleague who has lived in Russia for a year so I thought the Matryoshka would be perfect - I hope she thought so! This one is also lined with the fabric that the doll is made from - it's my favourite Liberty fabric apart from the lovely pink I bought in London. The other two were made with buttons, I forgot to take photos of them but I was pleased with how they turned out.

Otherwise I haven't been crafting enough, I realised that I have a sewing basked full of unloved, unfinished projects. I suppose my new year's resolution will be to finish them - in particular my dress!

My mum and sister have also put in their orders for little bags, mum has one already actually but it isn't made with nice fabric really, just some random Liberty lining and Harris Tweed that happened to match. I've got some beautiful pale pink tweed I've bought especially for my sister that I'll use for Mum's too - they'll be lined with my special pink Liberty fabric. Hopefully I'll get round to making myself one too!

Next project? I've got my eye on a pattern for a lamp shade - using more of the pink fabric from Liberty of course. I'll keep you posted!

PS- the new Janome is beautiful! I love it...sorry Lidl...

So long, farewell...

 I have finally fallen out with the sewing machine for the final time. I am beyond sick of ripping seams (even if I do have colour co-ordinated nails, fabric and seam ripper....). So I have purchased a beautiful new Janome, I shall update with whether I prefer the Lidl machine or my new Janome in due course...I suspect that I might already know the answer....

Can you tell what my favourite winter colour is?!

Don't you forget about me

Well, I must admit that my previous post was actually written before Christmas and I just didn't get round to posting it. I've made a resolution to stop with the royal chat (until July at least - you must admit it's incredibly exciting to know that male or female this child will be a monarch) and focus on my sewing a bit more.

Other than the beginnings of a quilt I haven't really had a lot of time to sew. I did start going to a class but gave up after a few weeks as I just didn't have the energy. However, a good friend got married in August and I made her this as a gift - it's another Harris Tweed and Liberty combo (I don't know what I'll do when I finally run out of tweed!).

Mum and I went to the Creative Stitches and Hobby Craft fairs yesterday - we're now back to being committed crafters (blogger wants to correct this to crofters...). For now anyway. Hobby Craft isn't really our thing; too many card crafts which we're just not into. The Creative Stitches hall however, was heaven. I wouldn't say that there was a huge number of stalls that impressed me - I would say though that the few that I liked had some lovely fabric and haberdashery items.

My favourites were definitely Jo Avery's stall - from which I bought an embroidery sampler pattern - and Favourite Fabrics who were indeed true to their name. I've included some photos of my purchases - I love Michael Miller Eiffel Tower fabric which I've bought in different colours in the past.  


The prices at the fair were pretty good - I've bought from Favourite Fabrics online before and of course buying at Creative Stitches meant we skipped the P & P. The non Eiffel Tower fabrics above were £2 which is awesome given the blue flowery one is almost double the size of a FQ. The Michael Miller fabrics were £3.25 each which is very reasonable.

I now have a rather large stash of fabric so I'm really going to have to start quilting a lot more! These are just some of my FQs - I'm thinking a baby pink and blue quilt might be next.

At Christmas I finally managed to get a Cath Kidston sewing box in the John Lewis sale - it's not even nearly big enough for all of my thread and FQs but I love it! I particularly adore the new line of haberdashery that JL are selling - it's all 'heritage' and I really want to get some of the pins just for the cute boxes! I succumbed to the dressmaking notes notepad - it's currently being used for working out quilting measurements.


Speaking of quilts this is one strip of about 5 from the quilt mum and I are working on just now. We've got our own little system now of who does what and who is good at what (Mum - cutting, ironing, sewing, buttons, binding. Lynsey - threading the machine). At the moment we're just about to square off the strips and cut the strips for in between. I'm thinking this will be pretty awesome when it's finished. I adapted measurements from a quilt over at Oh, Fransson! - the larger quilt was too big and the baby quilt too wee. So hopefully this will be just right.

Finally, I found this in my fabric basket - what was I thinking?!

Since you've been gone

I know things have been rather quiet for a while, but it took me a rather long time to get over the loss of my beautiful Kate and William mug. It was a rather traumatic summer. Of course I spiralled into a deep depression following the end of the jubilee celebrations (and all I have to say about it is that Kate should not have matched her dress to the chairs on the boat) and then had the anxiety of learning of the illness of poor old Phil. Following that Harry sent my blood pressure soaring (not in a good way), and of course young Kate just made things worse. 2012 was not really been the best royal year.

HOWEVER, I have added not one but THREE new mugs to my collection. One, of course, to replace the late Kate and Wills mug, one to celebrate the jubilee, and one to celebrate the Queen's coronation. Marvellous. With any luck a new mug will be added to my collection in July.

I've been sewing a bit too, but that's not as interesting as my collection of royal memorabilia.