Soooo pretty

Hillary Ann has been doing some beautiful, Christmas treats; one every day for the twelve days of Christmas but a surprise wedding appeared so she's ditched day 12 and exchanged it for a give-away - yay!

The princess fabrics are so gorgeous.  Grace would absolutely love them.

Christmas catch-up

It's hard to know where to start to catch up with all the news.  I think I'll just pick out the big bits of news and gloss over the rest:

1.  I crashed my car!!!

It wasn't my fault - honestly - I wasn't doing anything silly and I didn't do anything wrong but I did crash into the back of somebody and legally that means I'm to blame - damn!

As if it wasn't bad enough being without my car for a week and having to pay the £250 excess, I'm being sued for negligence!!!  (Sorry if any grammar police are out there, there may be an awful lot of exclamation marks in this post).  You have to ask yourself how it's possible that you can hit somebody at 20-25mph and within 6 hours they've contacted their solicitor to sue for "Extensive soft tissue damage to the neck and upper back" and "Headaches and travel anxiety".

There wasn't even a mark on her car.

2.  Mum was rushed to hospital 

I was out for dinner with people from work when I got a panicked text from big sister asking where Mum and I were.  I told her I was out for dinner but didn't know where mum was and then got a reply saying she had been rushed to hospital with chest pains and difficulty breathing.  Apparently she was ok but being kept in for observation until the morning.

So I came home and waited until morning, expecting a call to go and pick her up.  9am - nothing . . . . . 10am - nothing (call work and tell them I'll be in later) . . . . . 12pm - call the hospital to try and find out what's going on and they can't find her!  I called admissions - nothing, I called A&E - nothing, called the medical assessment unit - "Hmmm ... she was here but she was released ages ago."  By now it's 3pm and I'm really starting to panic because I have no idea where she is and I haven't been able to get through to big sister's mobile all day.

To cut a long story short she was picked up by big sister and is OK.  She'd picked up the nasty virus the twins had been suffering with and it had hit her heart but it isn't serious and with a handy tongue spray thingy she's doing fine.

3.  It hits minus 4 and we have no heating

The water board came to fit a water meter to the mains outside.  One man came and dug a big hole and then went away.  Two days later another man came and fitted the water meter and then went away.  It then snowed.

On Sunday we woke up to find that we had no water and the big hole outside has over a foot of snow in it.  So we called the water board and said that we had no water and we thought the main was frozen.  "That's not possible," the dumb lady on the other end of the phone said, "the mains are buried deep enough that they're protected from the cold."  We then spent a good 15 minutes (yes she was incredibly dumb) explaining that they'd dug a big hole to purposefully expose the mains and left it open.  "That's not possible" - grrr - "we would never do a thing like that.  It'll be internal.  Turn your heating off until the water comes back" - only clever thing she said, didn't realise that there was no water to be going through the radiators - "and thaw your pipes with a hairdryer."

Off went the heating and out came the hairdryer but all the pipes were warm to the touch - warmer than they should be if had water coming in from outside.  We called back and were promised that somebody would be out to have a look at it within a couple of hours.

5 hours pass.

We call back and are told that there is no record of us calling at all that day - double grrr.  Get the superviser and eventually extract a promise that somebody will be here within the hour.

Knock on the door.

The man from the water board has arrived - yay!  "The reason you have no water is that your main is frozen." Aaarrgggghhhh!!!!!!  We've now been without water for eight hours, without heat for six hours, it's minus four outside and the man is telling us that there is nothing he can do.  Then he comes up with the genius idea of boiling some kettles to see if he can thaw it out.  One problem - what are we supposed to put in the kettle - WE HAVE NO WATER!  Queue ridiculous scene of mum and I trying to boil snow.  We did manage in the end, the pipe was thawed, water returned to the house and all was well with the world (well my world anyway and when it's that cold and I'm that annoyed that's all I care about).

4. It's Christmas Eve Eve

So that's the last couple of disastrous weeks for you.  I'm now going to curl up with a big gin and tonic and try to forget that I have to work on Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas everyone x x x x

First set of Christmas presents

It's been an awful month. Ear infection which became labyrinthitis which was quickly followed by swimmer's ear. What on earth is going on with my ears?!? I'm typing with my head on one side so that my ear drops can soak in and it's very odd.

Through all the illness I've managed to get a good start on my Christmas presents. Meet Quack Quack and Bunny, they're made from Tilda patterns in Tilda materials and I just love them. They are for the twins but they're not quite finished. Quack Quack needs a hat and they both need faces but it shouldn't take long to finish them up.

I've also almost finished a quilt for my father and step-mother. It's all pieced and layered up, I'm just trying to do the quilting but the ear problems mean I'm struggling with straight lines. Hopefully I'll be finished in a couple of days and you can have a look.

Quilt for Boyfriend's parents

Being off work meant that I was able to get a big chunk of the work done on Christmas and New Year presents. This is another quilt all complete and ready to be shipped out to its new owner. It's for the boyfriend's parents. They live in Oman and we're going out to visit them at New Year. It may seem like an impractical present for somebody who lives in a country where it can top 50 degrees C in the summer but they're moving back to England at the end of January so it will be practical as well.

I'll have to practice taking pictures of quilts because you can't really see the fabrics but you do get an idea of the overall pattern. Here's a close up which shows off the colours better as well as showing you a glimpse of the contrasting backing.

I used a variegated thread for the quilting which looks lovely on the back but, yet again, my photography skills aren't living up to the subject matter. Hmmm, I may have to rope big sister in for some photography lessons ....

Babies Babies Babies

I'm still off work because of my ear infection so I got to spend the day with my sister and her gorgeous twin daughters. They are just the cutest babies in the world (in my completely biased opinion). That is Lucy on the left and Alice on the right.

Unfortunately, mum has already made them a beautiful quilt each that they get wrapped up in for naps and chilly walks in the buggy so there's no point in me making them one. I have found a really cute book by Tilda with stuffed animals in though, so I'm going to get going on some Christmas presents. Alice's first words were quack quack so she's getting a duck (it's actually a goose but I think she's a little young to quibble) and Lucy is getting a cute bunny.

A very productive weekend

As I mentioned before the boyfriend was here this weekend which gave me a chance to do some jobs that require two pairs of hands. First job was to put some shelves up in my room. The only things left to unpack since the move are all my boxes of text books and files. They needed some heavy duty shelves and these bad boys are about as strong as they get. Boyfriend could do chin-ups on them.

Second job was to finish off the quilt for Tamara, it should have been done weeks ago but I stupidly calculated the amount of material I needed wrong so I had to wait until I could get back to the shop for a top up. It's done now, though, I just need to find some way of getting it to her. Don't really want to risk the post because of the postal strike.

Here it is anyway, note boyfriends feet at the bottom, He comes in useful as a quilt stand too. It's made from the moda eclectic range and I stuck to two of Tamara's favourite colours. The quilting came out very well, I planned it so that the windmills look like they're spinning on the back but I couldn't get a good picture of it.

The Boyfriend is coming

I'm very excited because my boyfriend is coming to visit. I don't get to see him much because he's doing a six month secondment in London at the moment and is always too busy with work or studying for his exams to come up. I'm always too busy being ill or quilting to go down there!!! Only joking, we just haven't managed to get our act together for a while so I haven't seen him since 6th August.

He can tell me whether or not his mum will like the quilt I'm making for when we go out to visit her at New Year. Plus he can give me the 2 month supply of hugs I've missed out on - yay!

Christmas Show and Shopping Bargains

It was the Christmas craft show at the arena this weekend so I went along with my mum to spend too much money on things we didn't really need. It turns out in the end we both picked up some real bargains.

First stop was our friend Kim's stall showing off all her best products from her shop The Fat Quarters. She is a very talented woman with some absolutely gorgeous patterns and fabrics for sale in her shop.

That's her on the right with Debbie Johnson from Letters tied from blue. The cute aprons they're wearing are made using Debbie's new range of stamps and the stitcheries behind their heads are her designs too.

After a quick chat we left them to their selling and headed off for a tea and scone and some more bargain shopping. Mum bought some lovely bright red wool for knitting herself a jumper. 100% wool for £2 a ball definitely counts as a bargain. Then we found this stall that was selling fat quarters for £1 each or 12 for £10 so I went a bit crazy and bought 24. No idea what I'm going to use them for but I figure it's never too late to start a stash. I'm sure I'll find some projects to use them with soon.

Gift of Friendship Quilt

I've finally finished my second quilt. It's called the gift of friendship and I absolutely love it to bits.

It was supposed to have another border of hourglass blocks all around the outside but I decided it was too busy and distracted from the appliqué blocks.

Only problem is I just taped it to the dining room wall with masking tape so that I could take a picture of it. Unfortunately, when I peeled away the tape it's taken the paint off the wall. Considering it was only painted three weeks ago I'm going to be in trouble!

It would make a lovely gift for Tamara but unfortunately I love it too much to let it go so I'm quickly zooping together another quilt to cheer her up.

Welcome!!!

Welcome to my blog. I'm hoping to show off some of my quilting projects and spread my love of (some may say addiction to) sewing. I'm very new to patchwork and quilting so you can follow me as I learn and try to progress through some harder quilts.

Today I learnt of a give away by Lila Tuella. She's giving away a jelly roll (a roll of 2.5" strips) and a layer cake (a stack of 10" squares) of her newest fabrics that aren't available in the shops until next spring. They're beautiful and I'm just about to start a quilt for a friend who's broken her back. I think they would be just the thing for cheering her up.