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.