Something for me

Back in February last year I found out I was going to get promoted at work (yippee!) so I treated myself to the new Amy Butler bag book and some lovely Amy Butler prints to get me started.  Full of enthuisam I cut out my fabric and interfacing ready for the fun bit of sewing it all up.  Then I found out I was pregnant, a whole load of other things took over and the cut out pieces spent the next ten months or so on my sewing table :(

Once the Little Monster was here and all my windows had curtains the right length (they had been hanging pinned up for about 2.5 years!) I finally got round to finishing my bag.  I've made quite a few bags but this is the first 'good' one I've made for myself - a recycled jeans gym (now toy) bag definitely doesn't count.

I really like this bag :), Its a decent size and was very straight forward to put together; I've made a couple of Amy Butler's patterns before and they are lovely to follow.  When I'm not lumbering around with my enormous changing bag, this has been my bag of choice in recent weeks.

Back to the Real World

So the Little Monster and I have returned to the real world and we don't like it very much. Mummy land is so much more relaxing, less stressful than work and nursery. I feel constantly sick and nervous whilst she's at nursery. I'm a bit of a control freak at the best of times but not knowing if she's got a full tummy, a clean bottom or having a cuddle when she needs one is really hard. She has been my world for the last year and I've been her's, nursery are taking really good care of her but I just don't want to let her go. :(

The Quilt, the story continues.....

Never has a quilt been so long in the making. Having decided to try and make this a single (ish) bed sized quilt for when the Little Monster goes into her big bed I kept making wonky log cabin squares until I ran out of fabric - like all mums, my spare time is very limited so this was a very (very, very..) slow process.  I ended up with 24 x 21cm square blocks which looked awfully busy when laid down next to each other and nowhere near big enough.  With a little bit of inspiration from the web (this is my very first quilt) I decided to add some sashing but had no idea how much would look right despite much sketching out on square paper. I ended up laying them all out on a single duvet cover so I could play around with sashing widths.  This really helped me work the sashing out but more importantly gave me my first glimpse of how the finished article would look when I was really losing my enthusiasm.


When I started piecing the thing together (I'm not very good friends with it right now) I found that I had clearly been 'a little tired' when I'd made the first eight or so blocks - having a newborn will do that to you! So they were a whole lot more wonky than I expected and I had to add a little fabric here and there from the left over scraps to help square the whole thing up.  The quilt top is now finished (hooray!) and I've even made the quilt sandwich, secured with safety pins as suggested by blogland.  Thinking I was now on the home straight I jumped into the quilting only to find that straight line quilting, which I'd assumed would be the easiest method for a complete beginner, was a total nightmare on my basic little sewing machine.  As I tugged and pulled the bulk of the quilt through the machine I thought I must be missing something, that there must be an easier way to do this. I had a google only to find that there isn't :(, that I'm not on the home straight at all and that I've got a whole lot more nap times working on this quilt.  On the plus side I really do like how the top has come together, I hope the Little Monster likes it too.