A lovely gift

I belong to two Patchwork  Groups and on Monday we held the last meeting before Christmas of the Meriden Group.
One of the members, Wendy has made loads (hundreds I imagine) of Project Linus quilts. She has made lots of different designs which usually require squares and rectangles in certain sizes. She is very systematic with cutting and storing the difference pieces.
On Monday Wendy surprised me with a bag of “scraps” - her description of the contents of the large bag she was gifting to me. I was amazed when I got home to discover the “scraps” looked like this:

Squares, rectangles and 1.5” strips, all beautifully arranged in labeled bags!
My goodness I shall have fun with these next year. Lots of different colours so I think I’ll use a lot of them in RSC2020 projects. I’ll have to think of some suitable blocks.

A great gift, thank you, Wendy.

Using every little scrap!

I love using up scraps and leftovers - and that includes fabrics, yarns and leftover food. I do draw the line at mixing them all up together though - I won’t be presenting leftover mince turned into bolognese sauce with yarn spaghetti, or ravioli made from 2.5” fabric squares!

So, joking aside, I am trying to use up odd balls of yarn to make baby clothes for Refugees. I had a whole ball and a tiny bit of the same variegated pink yarn and about three quarters of a ball of variegated blue and lemon yarn. I got one cardigan and an angel out of the pink (with a small amount left over).

I made four sweet little hats out of the blue and lemon one. There was a tiny bit left over so I made an angel starting with the blue and when that ran out I finished it in the pink with about 15cm left over.
Very satisfying!

Oh dear I’m not technical

Further to my last blog post, I made 9 Christmas puddings which will last for a few years in the freezer.
Then a photo of using up stash yarn. A baby cardigan for our local Refugee Group and just enough to make one last angel for Church tomorrow.

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It’s beginning to look like Christmas !

A great day today, a lovely start to Christmas. Firstly, our Church’s Christmas Fair in aid of two charities. I was helping with the Chocolate Tombola, great fun and we did well.
Then I won the Christmas Hamper, chock full of goodies which I’ll let our GD unpack when we have a family get together in the 8th. December.

Then I went to St Nicholas’s Church, one of our two Parish Churches for the Annual  Christmas Tree Show. Three categories: schools, children’s groups and adult groups.

Here’s my vote for the Adult Section, the Inner Wheel’s Save the Bee, a topical concern  in the UK. 

And the School’s one I voted for, the Infants school my children attended, I then taught at and then our GD attended.

Then I made our Christmas puddings using my Grandmother’s recipe which was HER grandmother’s!  My Nana was born in 1884 so it’s unique. Two washing up bowls of mixture.

Antidote to a dreary, wet and grey November day

We are having so many dark and dreary wet days which is not surprising as it’s November in the Northern Hemisphere. Some areas of the country have been flooded so I shouldn’t grumble.
Yesterday I boiled up the weekend’s chicken carcass for stock so this morning I turned it into red lentil and vegetable soup. The kitchen smelt wonderful, warm and inviting.

A large pan so we will get several servings of hearty soup.

Later on I did a little in my sewing room, pin basting the Chinese Coins quilt top that I recently finished. I think the colours are jewel like so perhaps Jewels will be its name.

Another Scrap quilt finish

I love making Crumb blocks, very often as a Leader and Ender type exercise, cutting them to 4” and 4.5” sizes. These are stashed and every now and then I use them to make a Baby Quilt.

Here’s my latest, definitely for a baby girl:
I alternated Crumb blocks with a variety of scraps.
Finished at 40” square, my favourite size for a baby quilt which can be used at first as a Playmat.

A close up of a few of my blocks, many of them include some favourite bits of fabric that have their own story.

The little girl is a scrap left from some old fabrics a Quilter friend in New Zealand was purging. Over the years it’s been used in several of my quilts.

I love the strawberry fabric I had for this backing. So pretty.

A host of little angels

Like last year my church is knitting little angels 👼🏻 to be dotted around the town just before Christmas with an attached label sending Christmas greetings from our church,

I knitted a lot last year and have knitted 35 this time. All looking very jolly.