The making of my gorgeous Miss Kate scrap Quilt part one.

Hello! It's been a bit busy here recently and we have all had a series of winter colds that have made us feel pretty awful. But the days are starting to get lighter and that means that Spring must be just around the corner, hurray! I love it when things start to green up and the snowdrops and daffodils appear. It also means calves and lambs being born on the farm. We are still waiting for our first calf of the year, due any day now, it'll be a few more weeks until we have any lambs. I'll share lots of pictures once they all arrive!

Last year I made a 'Swoon' quilt (Thimble Blossoms) using some of my favourite fabrics from the Miss Kate line by Bonnie and Camille. Now if you've made this quilt you know that you end up with some half square triangles and lots of other small scraps, impossible to throw away right! Well I pulled them out of their little box and decided to just sew and see how it went (not my normal style at all!).

Lots of half square triangles all squared up nicely to 2 1/2 inches using my favourite ruler for the job. This Quilt in a Day ruler really is great, you square up before pressing open, brilliant!

Then I had a bit of a think as to what to do next, and pinwheels seemed like a good option so pinwheels is what I sewed! I love pinwheels, I use them a lot, sometimes scrappy and sometimes not. The rest of the scraps and some extra fabric from a charm pack then magically became scrappy 4-patch blocks. 

Well ok, it wasn't really magic, it was a normal cut and sew and trim method! I played around with a lot of different layouts, I tried random, a variation on random but finally decided that a bit of order was needed. I find that with very busy scrappy blocks that sometimes it can all get a bit loud and to stop it dancing around and shouting at me a little balance and planning is required.

I must admit I'm more than a little in love with this, I knew I would be, those colours and patterns make me very happy. My hubby doesn't understand, we have 'some' quilts that we use and so now surely every other quilt I make is either to give away or to sell? Um, no. Not this one, it's mine, but I haven't told him that yet.....

I shall leave the story of my Miss Kate quilt here for now, next time its quilting and binding, yay!

Just another day

Today has been a gentle sort of a day, just what I needed as I woke up yesterday with an awful head cold. I spent most of yesterday curled up on the sofa under a quilt and I wasn't the only one taking it easy. This is Mia and she can fall asleep anywhere - quite a talent!

So back to today, I spent a lovely morning in my sewing room working on a new quilt. This is going to be a photo quilt with lots of gorgeous Tanya Whelan fabrics. I've made the small 4-patches and cut the larger squares and now just have the photographs to print.

I also had a trip out to the Post Office at Alston, this was the view on the way.

It's gorgeous isn't it? I love this journey at any time of year and today it looked amazing.

I've spent the evening planning how to best spend my day tomorrow. I have lots of photographs to print onto fabric and a very festive Christmas quilt to quilt, a Christmas cake to bake and a grocery shop to fit too. I'm a list maker and like to be organised and there's nothing like the feeling of ticking everything off a list! So I'm off now to colour code my plan of action for tomorrow!

It's been a while...

Well it's taken me a lot longer to get round to writing the second post than I had thought it would. It is amazing how time just slips away.

So while I haven't been writing blog posts I have been busy with other things, I promise! There has been a lot of sewing going on, not just quilts but bags like these ones too.

These have all been made using the most fantastic foam wadding, it's called In-R-Form plus by Bosal. It's amazing stuff, fusible, lightweight, easy to cut but my favourite thing about it is that it sews like a dream. You don't even need a walking foot, honest!

I have lots more to show and share, so I'm going to try to post twice a week from now on. Well maybe once a week, but I will be writing more, yay!

Welcome

Hello!

So this blog is something I've wanted to start for a while, I have lots of plans :)

But first I thought I would tell you a bit about myself. I'm Jo, a happily married mum to three grown up children. We live on a farm in the hills of Northumberland, it's been a fab place to bring up our family and isn't it beautiful!

I have always made things for my home, family and friends, knitting and crochet for babies and lots of patchwork quilts for every occasion. Making things makes me happy :) I love fabric and yarn, and am lucky enough to have a sewing/craft room to keep everything in, although it does spread out if I let it....

I've started this blog to share with you more of what goes on in my little corner of the world, the things I've been creating and also how I make them. So you can expect posts on family and farm life, patchwork and quilting, crochet and knitting, recipes and tutorials too!