I love Blogland!!!

Like most of you no doubt, I have quite a few blogs that I follow. Mainly craft or teaching based in my case. I have hundreds of tutorials, and links from the various blogs that I have visited/followed. All waiting for "someday". lol And one of my favourite time wasting activities (usually when working on my planning or some other school-related admin) is to click "next blog" on the bar thingy at the top of the screen. It is amazing what people will blog about!

I set up my blog so that I could share my projects with the others in The Sewing Room at MSE. As a newbie on MSE, you are unable to post links for sometime, but I could add a homepage to my profile and share my makes that way.

I also follow lots of the others that use The Sewing Room and the other crafty threads in the MSE forums. One such person is Penny


The painter of this lovely piece of work, which now graces my living room shelf (still hunting for the right frame for it)

When I saw it, it reminded me of my little family - the eldest holding hands with Daddy & the little one with Mummy, as is the usual case with us too.

So Thank You Penny!

2 down...

one more to go!!

I have finally finished two of the three quilts that I was making for Christmas! 2010 that is.

All quilted, binded, washed and ready to go! (I read somewhere that you should always wash a quilt before giving so it has that lovely crinkly texture and also you can check your workmanship is up to scratch lol)

I do still have one to do before I gift them however, as I want the nieces to recieve them all at the same time.

I will post pictures tomorrow as I keep forgetting to bring my camera home.

Why oh why!

I am back!

I have started a new job and although it is a job share and I only work 3 days, I seem to have no time for anything these days!

I left my last job after many years, because I didn't feel fulfilled covering other teachers and wanted to be back in my own classroom with my own class.

I was at home with my boys from July till I started this new job at the beginning of January and I have loved every minute. I never thought I would enjoy being a stay-at-home-mum as I have always worked. I had my first job at 14, serving tea and coffee to the Chairman's guests on matchdays at QPR. If it wasn't for the fact that I have a mortgage & bills to pay, I would still be a stay-at-home-Mum.

My new school as lots of issues & have OFSTED on their backs. The class room has very few decent resources. My classroom was left in a complete tip by the previous teacher and I have had a lot of sorting & tidying to do, as well as getting to grips with a new planning & assessment format to what I have been used to using.

I was observed yesterday and the outcome was not great to be honest. Previously, I was a "Good" teacher, working in an "Outstanding" department. Yesterday's lesson was just about satisfactory. That might sound OK to those of you that are not teachers, but to a teacher that is quite demoralising :(

The Little Fella has had a sickness bug this week and I have had to change his bedding ever night since Sunday in the middle of the night. On Monday night it had to be changed FOUR times! The Little Man has not been coping with me being back at work and has started wetting himself despite being toilet -trained since last Easter!

When I was observed, I had been in class for only 5 days. The children have had to cope with lots of changes -
losing their much loved previous teacher and gaining two new ones
classroom furniture being moved
routines changing
rules changing etc

However, none of that gets taken into consideration. If you are a teacher these days, you are expected to always be "good to outstanding". We are not allowed an "off" day. However - I am also a Mum, a person with a "real" life and a HUMAN being.

I am not a robot!





Hmm - I feel better now!

So, sorry to moan just had to get all that off my chest!

- my next posts will be more cheerful, I promise lol!

The Nieces' Christmas Quilts

All three are finally finished, have borders and are waiting quilting - so that is FIVE, yes FIVE quilts to be finished. EEK!
I am going to concentrate on getting the three Girl's Quilts done first - my two boys may have to wait till the New Year for theirs. lol

Can't believe that I finished the first one in September! Since then I dropped and broke my poor 40+ yr old machine. Thank goodness for ebay! We have also had all the usual childhood coughs and colds (and lack of sleep that goes with) that you get at this time of the year.

The first Post is here.

All the quilts use the same fabric and the patterns are from the Jelly Roll Inspirations book (with a few minor changes)

This one is "Pandora's Box"
For the centre squares I used my scrapes so each square is made up of 4 fabrics - not 2 as in the book. The border is some lovely shiny, lightweight denim/chambray that I bought from FabricLand with the intention of making myself a dress with. Luckily I accidently bought too much (looked at the yardage not the meterage) So I had just enough spare!

I forgot to take some close ups - but in a couple of the centre squares, There are some squares with the initial "B" on. I used some handkerchiefs that I picked up at a car boot back in the summer.

This one is on my earlier blog post
This one is called friendship braid in the book, but I actually used these instructions from The Moda Bakeshop. It isn't very clear in the photo, but I alternated colours in the rows. Purple/pink one side and Blue/Green/yellow on the other. I really tried to make sure that the strips were random but still managed to get clusters of the same fabrics together lol!. See if you can spot them!
This would be a great beginners first quilt - you literally are just sewing two strips together, like you would with a normal patchwork, but the results are much more forgiving! It doesn't show if you sewing is wonky or if your patches don't match up properly.


The middle border is made up of all my left overs. I had some wonky blocks from the other quilts so I cut them up too (that is why there are some diagonal strips).

I really want to have a go at free-motion quilting with these. Some nice Heart, Butterfly or swirls. But I am abit nervous about getting started now!

I ordered my wadding (decided on cotton in the end) from ASDing, as they sold extra wide (120 inch width) wadding by the metre. I can fit two quilts in the width, so need a lot less than if I bought the standard 90inch. I am very impressed with them. I ordered on the weekend, had an email Monday to say my order had been dispatched and despite the snowy weather, it arrived Wednesday!!!

So now I have no excuse for not cracking on! If you con't hear from me for a while - you know where I am lol!

The Little Man's Quilt

I would of liked to have left this alone - with no borders but the finished size was too small.

I had been umming & urring over what to do with it, trying various fabrics that I had to hand. Then I found this lovely car border fabric in my local quilting shop. (I had only gone in to buy some thread as it is the only place locally that I can still buy Guttermans since JL stopped selling it)

I think it finishes it off a treat! It was quite expensive - so I just bought enough to go along the longer sides so I couldn't mitre the corners. I have some other wider pieces with a landscape print on them left over. I may use them to make some pillowcases/cushions. I have got a plain red cotton for the binding on this one (and possibly The Little Fella's).

To quilt this one, I am going to "echo quilt" along the zig-zags, possibly in yellow thread, maybe red.

I have posted about this quilt earlier on my blog

The Little Fella's Quilt

This is the quilt I started on my Beginners Quilting Class at Tikki London. You can find my earlier post HERE. It finally has borders and is waiting to be quilted. I think I will quilt this one on the diagonal.

Hmm I am rubbish at the technical stuff -my photo is upside down and portrait.

Finally an update - but where to start!

OK lets start with this - a little gift I made for a friend in Germany.
It is a Nappy (Diaper) Pouch. I used the tutorial from the Noodlehead Blog. The only thing I changed was the strap. On the Blog she uses tape for the fastening strap, I didnt have any so made one from fabric. The fabric is from the Emergancy Bundles I bought from Fabric Rehab back in the summer.

I filled it with a wipes case and lots of little sachets and tester size bottles of baby toiletries. I hope it got there, as they haven't emailed me to say it arrived yet!