Busy times

Hi there, I'm just popping by to show off some sewing and to sign off for a few weeks. We have lots going on here and I think I'll get on a lot better if I spend less time on the computer! I'll catch back up with everyone at the end of August.....and will look forward to finding out what has been going on. In the meantime I hope you all have a wonderful summer, I think for those of you south of the border, schools will be finishing in the next day or so and I hope your little ones get recharged over the next wee while.

I finally made my Fresh and Funky bee blocks for Lynette. Lynette set us off on our first project and what a brilliant one it is. She asked us each to make a house block and a person block (and more if we wished) using the very bright and cheery fabric she sent us. She set up a great tutorial and also explained a bit about what inspired her to make this 'Burbs quilt (its well worth having a look at the notes she made on our flickr group).

The beauty of these blocks is that there's room for each of us to personalise their person and house - so Lynette will have 28 or so blocks from around the world each with a personal touch.

I decided that my house would be a Scottish Castle (since our actual house isn't that interesting from the outside) - now we have a lot of castles up here. In fact there are 3 or 4 within 20 minutes drive of our house. But I decided to go for Fyvie Castle (managed by the National Trust for Scotland) as my inspiration. Its an 800 or so year old castle in Aberdeenshire, near where I used to live, and is a classic romantic turreted pink affair. And pink ideally suits the fabric Lynette sent. I tried to go for wonky as per our remit, but I'm not really sure that my wonky is a good kind of wonky - I really had to try quite hard to get those strange bits of wonkiness in there!



And for the person I couldn't resist a Scotsman in a kilt (wool tartan scrap) and tweed jacket (grey cord scrap). He's complete with proper Scottish ginger hair.....rather like my English husband in fact!



But, the colours I used for his jacket and kilt aren't exactly in keeping with the fabrics Lynette sent and he may just be too different to fit in with everything else so I made a girl block too. She's loosely based on me and made with scraps from the dress I made for my cousin Al's wedding (be warned, she is rather lurid!).



This project was so much fun. If I was doing something like this again I'd do the simpler person block first before tackling something like a turreted castle - but as always I'll just have to hope that I lean from experience and remember this next time. I seem to say this most posts don't I?!

We had a wonderful visit to see friends at the weekend. They have beautiful 7 week old twins who we hadn't met yet. It was wonderful to see them all together, a proper little family. These friends have been hoping to have children for such a long time and it brings us so much pleasure that they have finally managed - and what could be more perfect than a boy and girl at the same time?







I made each baby a blanket and picked out a couple of fabrics that I had boy and girl versions of, and then picked the rest of the fabrics based around these. As a result they are a bit brighter than I'd normally make for a baby but I do like them and they were very well received - the babies will certainly have lots of stimulation when they look at them! Oh, and I appliqued their initials on the back. I held my breath as I did the pink letters - just enough thread left to complete them, phew.





Well, that's all for now. Take care, have a lovely summer and I'll catch back up towards the end of August. Juliexxxx