These curtains will be the death of me!

About ten years ago I decided I needed new curtains for my bedroom so I went shopping.  I couldn't find the drop length I needed anywhere and custom made were too expensive!  But I did find some tab top linen look curtains in IKEA and thought I'd remove the tabs and add curtain tape.  I washed them first.  I'm glad I washed them first because they shrunk 15cm!!  This then made them too short for my windows grrr!  I should have taken them back to IKEA for a refund but I decided to add a different fabric to the top and make them look as though they were intentionally that way.

I made one of the curtains and for many reasons didn't finish the second.  Well now I'm redoing my bedroom and I need curtains!  I thought it would be easy enough to finish the second curtain but no, it wasn't to be.  I'd cut the lining too short which is probably why I gave up on finishing them ten years ago.  When I went shopping for new lining the type, colour and size were different so I bought enough lining for a pair of curtains and unpicked the first ready to start all over again.

I cut all of my fabrics and hemmed the linings.

I am so glad I have extra long tables for cutting and pressing because these curtains are long and heavy!

I went crazy with the pins!

I finished one of the curtains and hung them to check the length.  My lining is waaaayyy to long!  Which makes me wonder if the original lining would have worked ha ha!

So here is one curtain temporarily hung.  I need to fix the top because I didn't use enough hooks and clearly the bottoms need a lot of attention but luckily, I still like them so I will persevere.  My back, shoulders and arms are killing me though and the thousand odd dollars I was quoted for custom is now looking like a good buy!

I finished painting the side of the deck for the engagement party.  Jim will be in charge of sprucing up the grassed area and we have a bit more work to do on the deck.

I finished sanding and oiling the outdoor furniture.  We need to buy more furniture and I was going to try to find some on Facebook Marketplace but after doing all this work I'm wondering if brand new would be better!

I've painted polystyrene foam letters.  Oh boy were they a pain in the bottom to paint!  But they were cheaper than wooden or carboard ones!  Never let it be said that I'm tight with money but uh...I'm tight with money!

And I bought some fake food for the picnic rug display. I can only begin to imagine the bugs if I use real!  I want to make a French stick out of paper mache next.  I don't know how successful I'll be but the YouTube videos I saw made it look easy enough.  Famous last words!

I've been busy!  But no quilting...

A bit of this and a bit of that

I'm supposed to be making curtains.  So what am I doing?  Not making curtains that's for sure! The curtains need to be finished so that I can start decorating my bedroom.  After that, I'll be decorating what will be the guest bedroom which is covered in all of my stuff from my bedroom.   So if I'm not making curtains what am I doing??

I bought some beautiful wool from Abbe and she told me how to blend my balls of yarn so that I didn't end up with bands of colour. I couldn't work out how to do this without ending up with a billion yarn ends to sort out so I just started crocheting this shawl and hoped for the best.  In fact, at first, changing the balls every now and again was working so I thought I'd get away with it.  But clearly, you can see from this picture, that it was a failure.  Abbe had offered to redye the shawl but I thought "How hard can it be?"  ha!  Famous last words!

I didn't want to do the stovetop method of dying in case my shawl ended up like a triangle of felt so I did it in a bucket.  I had to stir that shawl for thirty minutes!  Thirty minutes is a long time when you're bent over a bucket!

The instructions told me to wear gloves and I did.  At least I did until I started rinsing the shawl and then I turned into an idiot and forgot the gloves.  Nail varnish remover, hand sanitiser and lots of scrubbing later I was almost back to my normal colour.

The shawl has been washed (it dyed the towels I stupidly put in with it) and dried and it looks better.  Not perfect but I think I'll get away with it when I'm wearing it.  I suspect that'll be the last time I ever dye anything!

I've been working on my Santa picture.  You can't really tell how much I've done until you turn it back to front.

I think at the rate I'm going this will be for Christmas 2030.

I hemmed some pants.  Exciting stuff.

Ooh and exciting news!  She said "YES!"  My firstborn son proposed to his girlfriend and they'll be getting married in just over 16 months of dieting time. Me dieting that is.  Either that or I end up on their wall for all eternity forever being mistaken for a washed up whale in their wedding pictures.

Jâc and Erin are having their engagement party in my garden so I've started sprucing it up.  This involves doing all the odd jobs that I've been putting off for way too long.  First on the list was to paint the side of the new deck to match the old deck.  I was going to do two coats but I realised that I'd then have to redo the original deck so I'm sticking with one.  Win win!

I'm also finally getting around to sanding and restaining the outdoor furniture. I've sanded one table and it came up well but I'm over doing it!  I need to find some get up and go!

You know though that it's going to rain after me doing all this work and we'll end up inside the house!  Yikes!  There's plenty to do inside too!  I'd better get cracking!  

Fun at retreat and a finish at last!

I did all the grocery shopping on the Thursday before retreat and then wondered where I was going to put my sewing and clothes for the weekend.  There was certainly no room for Judy's stuff ha ha!  But we managed to squeeze it all in.

This time retreat was at Gisborne and so there were lots of different projects on the go.  

This is Annie's dragonfly.

Judy had cut six panels into triangles and had started to place them into a hexie design on the wall.  It looked interesting...

And turned into this magnificent quilt top!

Barb and I were up to no good on the sofa.  I'm slouched and in my pyjamas but, hey, I was comfortable!

Barb was stitching these hexagons together.  She got quite a few done.

 

This was my view as I stitched the binding down on the back of my camera quilt.  And I also embroidered the label and stitched that on too.

This project is Debbie's Alice's wonderland sampler quilt almost finished.  The walls at retreat are great for displaying quilt projects.

This is one of Rosie's projects.  She spent most of her time embroidering balls on a Christmas quilt.

This is another of Judy's projects which started life as a panel.

Kate was working on these foundation paper pieced circles.  She even started sewing them into the back ground.  It looked very complicated!

Here's one Kate brought with her to take to be quilted at Hummingbird Quilting 

After finishing my camera I worked on my Santa cross stitch.  Debbie read my instructions and told me that the print gets washed away after it's been stitched so that put my mind at rest because I was worried about the printing showing underneath the stitching.  My view was of Gail's Kaffe diamond quilt project.

We had a lovely time and it's a bit sad that we're not going back there until May next year.  Still, a few of us are back to Ballarat next month so that's something to look forward to!

After finishing the camera quilt I had to find some way of removing the sticky residue from the fabric from leaving masking tape on it too long during the heat of summer.  I did a search and all kinds of scary liquids were offered up as a solution but I thought I'd try heat.  I used an appliqué iron  which gave off heat without flattening my quilting and a soft toothbrush.

It worked!

Then I found a hole!  It was a tiny hole that I made bigger while I was investigating it.

I stitched a simple patch on top of it.  All fixed!

And here it is all finished.  The lighting is terrible so it looks a bit dull but it's finished at last woo!

 

Hello and...Goodbye

My son's friend recently had a baby girl so I decided to quilt this lovely panel for her as a gift.  The panel is one of a range of designs called Bed Buds by the Devonstone collection.  Not only are they really cute but they're the perfect size.  All too often panels are thin and you have to add to them to make them decent sizes.

I have three panels and I was going to quilt them all at the same time.  I loaded a king sized sheet on the frame and started with the bunny.  I needed to get it finished quickly so once it was quilted I cut it off the frame hopefully leaving the sheet intact ready to do the others.

I used the sheet for binding too.

And messed up the end join in the binding!

And messed up the end join in the binding!  Oh did I already say that?  Ha ha!  

Third time was the charm.  I've only been sewing bindings for thirty odd years.  You'd think I'd know how to do it by now!

I embroidered the label and turned it into a heart shapes appliqué.

Ta da!  Expertly held by my husband, Jim.

I'm going to retreat this weekend and I'm hoping to finish the camera quilt at long last.  I was about to machine sew the binding onto it when I noticed a section of the quilt I'd missed quilting.  Oops!  So I quilted that on my domestic sewing machine which reminded me why I love my quilting frame!

I then stitched the binding on and prepped the label and I'm all set for retreat.  I'll be taking my new Christmas cross stitch and you never know, I might actually do some of it!

And finally, the goodbye.  

Rest in peace little Minnie.

You’d better watch out

You'd better not pout.  Santa Claus is coming to town!  

I was gifted this cross stitch and I decided to start sewing it whilst watching My Kitchen Rules through the PC because I forgot to record it on TV.

Because the Aida has been printed I don't have to think while sewing this.  I don't have to count stitches or anything so it's very easy and will be the ideal project to take to sit n sews or retreats because I'm less likely to go wrong while I'm drinking socialising!

There was a note on the packaging saying No hoop and I thought that meant that the package didn't include a hoop but after hooping it it left a very prominent hoop mark so that might be why there's No hoop!  I've now attached a border around it and it's in a frame so that should cause less damage.  

Although I am enjoying the ease of the printed fabric you can see the colour through the stitches so I'm a bit concerned about that particularly when I stitch the white beard on top of all that pink and red printing.  Ah well.  It'll either work or it won't. 

I rinsed off the blue markings off the camera quilt and had that sinking feeling when I noticed the water was turning black!  I quickly washed the quilt and then dried it and the colours didn't run.  Phew!  I quite like the way the quilting crinkled after the wash.  I'll be attaching the binding next week ready to finish at retreat.