Books, books update!

Well, April was spent in the fascinating world of Bryson's 'Home'. He really did have me captivated on the first page with his little anecdotes of strange facts. I love the Victorian era and a lot of this book tells you about the style of living during this time, which I really did find fascinating, some of which overlapped my literature knowledge of this time, too!

May brought me the delicious opportunity to delve into the extraordinary book, 'The Crane Wife', by Patrick Ness. I am nearly, nearly finished and as usual with Ness, I am trying not to rush it but to savour the escapist experience whilst all the while steeling myself for the emotional impact he is going to throw at me! I am very excited as I have persuaded my family to take a trip to Hay again this year, where a certain Mr Ness will also be! I can't wait......

Here is a little peek what is on my bedside table, oh what to read next?

May update!

Well it has been a while, doesn't time fly by, not necessarily when we are just having fun either. We have busy on lots of fronts but mostly getting started on our house renovations! We now have the long awaited for, 'go-ahead' on our planning permission. So we have been putting some plans in place. We have a rather ugly oil tank in our garden which we are keen to get rid of, but of course this year, summer is late and we can't risk running down all the oil without any source of heating. Who would have thought we need heating in nearly June? So, we have installed a wood burner to get us through the summer(?)

We picked up a tatty surround from a local reclamation yard, which I am in the process of stripping, and is very time consuming. Hopefully by the end of the half term week it should be finished! I am not entirely decided what to do with it, but at the moment I have an idea involving wall paper.

I have a few days set aside for sewing, which I will elaborate on at a later date....

Another sewing project

Despite the busy weekend: a house full of excitable young teenage boys pumped up to see Iron man 3 and overdosed on sugar, you get my drift!
I did manage to assemble my prototype from another fellow blogger, a very talented seamstress, Ayumi's tutorial which is here, http://ayumills.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/tutorial-lunch-bag.html
As always I made some mistakes and misread the instructions but my scrap bag didn't turn out too bad. In fact I will be using this one which I call my scrap bag because I made it out do some off cuts from the baby quilt, until I make the real one. I would like to use some oilcloth for the lining in case of spills. I tried to insert some panels with a zip rather than the drawstring bag in the pattern, but this will need some tinkering with! Overall, I am a happy lady!
Thanks to Ayumi's for a fabulous tutorial!

Finished! A baby quilt!

My little baby quilt project has been a real delight to work on! I have practised so many quilting skills and I finally feel a little more confident with my quilting. It is far from perfect but to be honest how boring to have everything even, neat and mistake free! Nah, I really wish I could be mistake free but like I keep telling my children, "Practise makes perfect!" So I will keep on practising, as my binding definitely needs it!

I really enjoyed the free motion quilting and want to do some more intricate patterns but I will have to practise like mad before I would feel happy to share! Overall, I am happy with the finished article, and I hope my friend likes it too! Maybe I will get back to the real world as the washing won't wash itself and the kitchen doesn't cook food all by itself either!

Till the next time and the next project...

Progress made today

I did feel a little bereft that my big project came to an end and by being completely inspired by the fabulous BBC Program, The Great British Sewing Bee, I decided to try my hand at free motion quilting. I have a work colleague that is currently on maternity leave and I wanted to make her a little something for her baby. So, whilst out galavanting buying books etc, I also bought a tiny charm pack which I was delighted to discover was by a very inspirational blogger I have been following for a couple of years now. Aneela from Comfortstitching is a very talented lady and I thought her posy charm pack would go delightfully with some of my stash fabric. I have spent very little time planning, instead I just dived in and started stitching the squares together before adding in some of my fabric. I initially wanted to have the whole quilt with little squares but soon discovered that the Posy squares wouldn't stretch as far as I wanted. So the design became a Nine patch style, which I really like. So tomorrow I am planning to sew the borders and am thinking about putting in a little bit of piping but who knows what I will decide tomorrow.... I am also hoping to successfully manage to free motion quilt the whole thing, ah fingers crossed for me please. Till the next time,

VOILA! Time to reveal my new sofa!

Not that it will be much of a surprise but hey ho! Here it is in all it's finished glory! I am pleased as it turned out much better that I expected, but more over budget than I wanted! I think all in all this big project cost me about £60, but that includes quite a bit of fabric that I have left over to make other things perhaps! Not bad when we were looking at a grand plus for a new one!

So, now I have my sofa, off I go to get my book, no distractions thank-you very much!

See you again, I hope!

Book shopping and a big project update!

Eeeeeeeee, I am quite excited today as I have bought a new book and a used one for my collection!
I try to curb my book collecting addiction but when it comes to my favourite author, a Mr Patrick Ness, I just can't resist! I read the first chapter of his new adult book a couple of weeks ago and have watched his various TV interviews and decided on a whim, to purchase it.

The Crane Wife looks like an intriguing read and I can't wait to dive into the story written for adults. I also picked up a copy of Bill Bryson's 'Shakespeare' in a charity shop (less guilt there!) as I have been really enjoying his book, Home!

Unfortunately, I wish I had the time to lounge on the sofa, (mmmmm,) to read! I have two more cushion covers to make before I can do that! They are coming along, albeit slowly. I can't wait for it to be finished, but I do have another little quilting project in the pipeline. Today was a good day, even if it was a bit of an unexpected spend day!

Off to do some sewing,