Jumping right in

I've taken the plunge! It's so long since I took part in a QAL and as I'm finishing my City & Guilds course in early June I think I need something new to join in with. I love the blocks in this quilt, so even though I promised myself I wouldn't make another big quilt for a while I think I just have to try. I've bought the book for my iPad, using the Kindle App, so now all I need to do is to decide on fabrics and the layout.

Is anyone else joining in with this?

Sugar Block Club

I've now finished the first four blocks for the Sugar Block Club. I'm not buying any new fabric for it, just adding in more scraps that 'go' with the fabric I've used so far. Luckily, I think I have enough of the backing fabric to be consistent throughout. It worked for the last BOM that I did, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. The turquoise looks a bit out of place in just the single block, but we'll see what happens as the blocks progress.

Soppy but happy!

Number Two Son and Ruby.

A mini birthday present

In my first term of the City and Guilds course, we learnt foundation piecing and were challenged to design our own. I found a photograph of a Mini car and launched into action. It wasn't easy and I had to work through many problems, but in the end I got it done and that was that. The sample went into my folder as a top only.

Earlier this year I made a circular fabric weaving as another sample and decided I liked it so much that I finished it, planning to give it to Christopher for his 60th birthday this month. However, I then broke my wrist and decided to give it to him for Valentine's Day as a thank you for all he was doing for me.

So I had the problem of what to give him for his birthday. I still find rotary cutting difficult, so making something from scratch was out. Then I remembered my Mini. I can manage quilting for about 15 to 20 minutes at a time, so this was do-able.

I hope Christopher likes it, but I'm going to have to take it away from him again as it's turned out so well that I'm going to use it for one of my assessed pieces.

How strange that the blue shows up as green in this photograph.

If you look carefully at the red quilting - the bottom row shows it up best - you can see that I have quilted CR, Christopher's initials.

Birthday celebrations

Christopher will be having his sixtieth birthday next week and also retiring from his job, so the celebrations are now in full swing. This past weekend we went back to where we used to live for the weekend. We stayed with Number One Son on the Friday night. Doesn't it make you feel very grown up when you're being entertained by your own children!

On Saturday we had a family lunch at a nearby gastro pub. There were fourteen of us - sadly one niece couldn't make it, but the rest of the family were there. It was great to catch up with everyone. We all changed around places a couple of times so that we could all chat with everyone else. The food was lovely too.

Number Two son turned up with some birthday balloons and as part of C's birthday present - from both sons - they gave him a dragon onesie! Like a trooper he put it on straight away.

He must have liked it, because he wore it again on Sunday! On Sunday morning he went out for a run with the running club he used to belong to and then he had arranged drinks and nibbles in a room in the adjoining hotel. There were about forty friends there, with lots of silly speeches, songs and poems. And another cake. Altogether a splendid start to his birthday.