I'm overthinking this!

I want to make a few Christmas quilts.  Maybe they will be done in time for next year???  I thought simple half square triangles would be good so I gathered my Christmassy fabric and started cutting HSTs.  Having made two different sized ones I then wondered what I was going to actually do with them!

So out came the graph paper and the coloured pencils!  Using the size HSTs I'd made I came up with this.  It's ok.  It'll probably look fine in the Christmas fabric to be honest but it's a bit...blah.

Then I drew more lines on my pattern and liked the look.  But, of course, it's exactly the same as the first one but with lines so that's no good.

I added more HSTs in some of the white space.  It's ok but not what I was looking for AND do I really want to make all those HSTs??

I changed the colours seeing if that would help.  This reminds me a bit of a Hunter's Star quilt.  I'm not sure though but I do like how it changes the design so it definitely doesn't look like two blocks just plonked down next to each other.  This design is probably more effective if I used the same fabrics throughout and I intend on using a mixture of fabrics although they are the same colour so would that work?

My pencils were blunt by now and my patience was stretched very thin so I've put it on the back burner for now.  This is how I left it. Next Christmas it may still look like this ha ha!

Phew! Just made it!

My son and his fiancée enjoyed their engagement party so all the hard work was worth it!  The rain held off and we were able to have the picnic themed party in the garden as planned and on the day I had a lot of helpers and it looked better than I had imagined it would!

Here is the picnic blanket scene I thought of and one of my helpers put together for me while I buttered a pile of bread slices for sandwiches!

So now that the party is over I started decorating the house ready for Christmas.  I started with hanging the stockings by the fireplace.  My youngest son thinks he's so funny messing with my HO HO HO!

My sons' partners both had different family plans for Christmas day with one of them going home for lunch and the other going home for dinner so for a while I thought we wouldn't get to meet up on the actual day.  My husband and sons have been shift workers for a long time so it wouldn't have been the first year we've celebrated on a different day.  As long as we do it it doesn't matter when it is!  I attempted to persuade Jim to take me away for the season but he wasn't keen and then we were all invited to Bree's house to celebrate with her family!

That meant I had to make gifts! And I decided to make stockings.  I went to Spotlight and, of course, the Christmas fabrics were depleted and they didn't have what I had in mind so I bought homespun.

I used a paper template to cut out my eight stockings.

Then I cut out cuffs.

I made toes and heels.

Then cut out eight stocking linings and stitched them together.  Eight lined stockings essentially means you're making 16 stockings!  Did I tell you it was now ten days until Christmas?!

I found batting that was just the right size for my stockings.

I used masking tape to mark where I was going to quilt them.

The masking tape was easy to follow and it helped stick the stockings to the batting so that I didn't need pins.  The tape was reusable too although it was getting very fluffy towards the end!

This is my design wall.  I'd used it to display engagement phots during the party and I haven't taken it down yet.

So I had to use my design dog floor.

I quilted all the stockings stitched the toes and heels on with a fancy decorative stitch and sewed the stockings together.

Then I went on a five day holiday to Cairns!  No pressure!  I was embroidering the family's names on the cuffs while I was away.  Do you like my messy bed?

This was my view!  It was a lovely trip.

We arrived home on Tuesday evening and I was too tired to even think about sewing so the next day, Christmas Eve, was a very busy one!  I had to sew strips for hanging loops, sew them and the cuffs to the tops of the stockings and then sew the linings to the whole thing.  I pinned the linings whilst watching TV!

They came together pretty quickly and I sewed up the hole for turning before giving them all a good press.  

Ta da!  Even though I couldn't find the fabric I wanted I think they turned out quite nicely.  I filled the human ones with chocolates and the doggy ones with treats.

We had a lovely lunch at Bree's family Christmas and after we'd gone home the family posed with their stockings!  How lovely!

My family are coming here tomorrow and we're having the beautifully laid Christmas table with gorgeous Thai takeaway!  This has been the easiest Christmas ever!  The only downfall is that there are no leftovers!  What's Christmas without leftovers!

I have no idea what I'm going to work one next but I think putting my sewing room back together after the party is first on the list!

I'm on a roll!

I finished the Christmas bunting! The engagement party is rapidly approaching and I've finished most of the to do list.  There are a lot of things on the list that will need to be done on the morning of the party but I have plenty of volunteers on that day so I'm not going to panic.  One of the biggest considerations is the weather as we're having an outdoor party.  If it's raining we'll have to move the outdoor picnic themed party indoors and it won't be quite as effective!  Not only that but I have to clean the house just in case!  Yikes!  I need a magic cleaning fairy! 

That also means that I can't decorate for Christmas because the Christmas theme doesn't go with the picnic theme!  Therefore once the party is over I need quick and easy Christmas decorations so I'm not exhausted and cursing whilst putting up the decorations.  With that in mind, I decided the Merry Christmas bunting would be perfect.  It hangs in seconds and looks very effective.  Almost as though I've made an effort!

After blanket stitching all around the letters I then stitched them into rectangular flags.  I also prepped my string.  It was at this point I could see that an 1/8th of an inch stitch around the edges of the flags would finish them off nicely.  I did my best to ignore that little voice telling me to sew it.

And then I gave in.

I used my design floor to work out the gaps between the letters.

I glued, pressed and pinned them all in place.  That magic cleaning fairy needs to come and dust my fireplace! It was at this point I shifted my bunting and knocked everything off the ironing board and, of course, the pins flew everywhere!

Sewing the string onto the flags was quick and easy after doing all of that prep and I was happy with how nice and flat everything lay.  I'd learned my lesson after the willy nilly way I sewed, unpicked then sewed my Happy Birthday bunting!

Ta da!  I'm very happy with the result!  And looks like the magic cleaning fairy didn't do to bad a job on the kitchen either.  Well, as long as you don't zoom in that is...

I also added to my Christmas stockings.  Bree joins us this year.  She's Alex's girlfriend and a very welcome addition to our family.

Christmas is coming...

And apparently the goose is getting fat.  I'm not sure about the poor goose but I'm certainly getting fat!  I went to retreat in Ballarat last weekend and I believe I ate my bodyweight in chocolate!  It was delicious though!

I've been thinking of making some Christmas quilts for my living room as I have a banister dividing the room because it's one of those 70's sunken living rooms where they put up the banister in case you fell to your death down the one step.  I'd tear it out myself but my husband loves it so I do my best to disguise it with dust quilts hanging from it.  While I was at retreat Spotlight was selling the Christmas fabric cheaply and as I had a 30% off voucher too I bought 13 metres of fabric for very little money woo!

I decided to make napkins for the Christmas table first.  I used a pattern by Shabby Fabrics and added the little trunk part.  I'd left all of my turn through holes and threads to do at my Tuesday sewing group.  All the ladies saw were half circles with this weird thing sticking out and they were so polite ooohing and ahhing over them.

They were amazed once I folded them into trees!  I probably could have taken a better picture!

After that I decided to make a Merry Christmas bunting.  I cut the fabric into rectangles.

Then cut the letters out using appliqué paper.

I used my machine to blanket stitch around the letters.  

Four down, quite a few more to go!  Why are there so many letters in Merry Christmas??

I don't think I'll get around to starting the Christmas quilts and, in fact, I need to look at a lot of pictures for inspiration first anyway.  That might take some time.  I'm thinking years of time...

And here I am, the quilter, hemming pants.  Sigh.

I finished the second bedroom curtain to the stage of the first curtain.  They'll be hanging until I feel enthusiastic enough to hem them.  But I got the hard heavy lifting part done at least before I had to empty my studio for the engagement party.

Oh la La!

I finished the baguette!  I'm not sure the French would like to claim it as one of their own but I am quite impressed with it considering I have little sculpting and painting skills!  I've always looked at those short  pottery video clips where they create a trinket bowl or something with a bit of flattened airdrying clay and and after a few smooshes here and a smoosh there there's a work of art in front of them and I thought "I can do that!" Well this baguette has certainly cured me of that idea!

The theme for the party is sunflower picnic because my son proposed to Erin at a mystery picnic and her favourite flowers are sunflowers.  A mystery picnic is a great thing to do if you ever have the chance.  You're given clues in order to pick up your food and after you've filled your basket you're directed to your picnic site.  And you don't always have to get married afterwards ;-)

The baguette was a very important part of the picnic display because once Erin realised what was happening she kept saying "I'm holding this ***** breadstick!" So I had to include one and I couldn't have a real one or it'll be covered in ants and other bugs within minutes of setting it out.  Although, that would have been far easier!  Ha ha! 

So this is how I see the picnic display looking.

There's another thing crossed off my to do party list.  What's next...

Curtains maybe?

Quick cushions

The theme for the engagement party is sunflower picnic.  I bought a cheap blue throw to use as a picnic blanket and saw some sunflower yellow cushions so I bought those and hoped to buy some blue cushions as well but I couldn't find any.  So I bought another blue throw and used that to make cushions.  As these will probably be one use only I wasn't going to spend hours on them (says she after spending days painting letters that will be thrown out after use!) so I folded the throw into quarters and cut along the folds willy nilly with scissors.  I ended up with four pieces of fabric that looked like this picture.

I then folded it up like a pillowcase and stitched the edges closed leaving the centre open.

Because I wasn't going to do a great job of hand sewing that opening closed I then used the lining from the first set of curtains to make two cushion inserts.

And I had a huge bag of stuffing I've saved "just in case".

The stuffing probably took longer that making the whole thing!

I put the insert inside the cover and hand stitched the hole closed.

Ta da!  They turned out nicer than I'd hoped.

I then made a couple of square cushions.

And that left me with these two long strips and I wasn't going to waste them so I stitched them together and cut out another square cushion.

Ta da!  These are lumpier and bumpier than the ones I put a cushion inset inside.  But they're ok.

They've been useful already!  My son's girlfriend hurt her ankle.  She was feeling very sorry for herself.

I started my paper mâché baguette for the picnic scene.  I boiled some torn up toilet paper and made a pulp.  After straining I added glue.  I saw a video where the gluey pulp was then rolled out and wrapped around the tube form but when I tried the pulp stuck to the rolling pin and not to the form! 

So I grabbed handfuls of it and squashed it onto my form.  It took forever to dry!

Once it was dry it looked like a pile of pulped up toilet paper stuck on a form so I bought some of that ready made filler you fill holes in your walls with and smeared that all over.  I bought a real French stick at the shop so I could attempt to copy one but before I had a chance to use it my dog stole it and ate it.  I didn't kill him.

But I had realised that the real bread isn't as smooth as I was trying to make it so that was good because it made things a bit easier.  My next task is to paint it and I'm very nervous!  I hope it all works out!

How are the curtains I hear you ask?  Well I can't actually hear you ask because I don't even know if anyone even reads this but I'll pretend!  The curtain was too long originally so I shortened it but luckily hadn't sewn it.  And it was too short.  It's still too short because I've lost the will to finish them!  I'll do the second curtain and hang that and then I'll hem them whilst they're hanging.  Fingers crossed that  they'll be just right!