The Treehouse

Nostalgia

What seems like a gazillion years ago now, my Mum taught me how to make Granny squares. Now, knitting and crocheting were something of a challenge for me at a tender age as I was a left hander learning from right handed teachers. Things like starting off a row in knitting were a complete mystery and purling - well, that was just impossible! I did eventually crack the knitting thing and moved on from simple knitting and purling to making lacy patterns and aran designs with twists and bobbles and such. I loved all of that. Sadly, my children are no longer 'into' woolly clothing items so I don't knit so much now. 

I made less progress with crocheting than I did with knitting. I never progressed beyond the Granny Square...and even then, I had to have Mum start the thing off for me...that circle in the middle and whatnot - it was all Greek to me. I've been promising myself for quite a number of years that I'd get back into crochet...the worry of that circle has been putting me off though. This week I finally bit the bullet and entered the sewing shop in town and requested a crochet hook with which to make Granny Squares. Quite how I exited the shop with not only the hook but also a pattern and some yarn to crochet a bag I do not know. The lady in the shop is really nice and very helpful. Perhaps a little too nice and too helpful for my purse! Anyhow, I thought it best to revise what I already had learned many years ago...and teach myself how to make that darned circle in the middle! I am delighted to say that there was great success and I managed the circle and got the square going...that wool, it was just hanging around - ideal for practising with but it will never be made into a blanket or whatever...it was quite cheerful to look at on this rainy, rainy day though.

Feeling buoyed by the success with the circle making business I decided to have a little read of the bag pattern. You can hear it coming can't you? Yes, I made a huge gaff here because I have absolutely no idea how to get beyond the first row of the pattern :o It is beyond my skills, I do not understand the lingo at all. Here is what it says...

Make 33ch.

Round 1 : (RS) 2dc into 2nd ch from hook, 1 dc into each of next 30 ch, 4 dc into last ch. DO NOT TURN, but continue to work back along the other side of the chain as follows: 1 dc into each of the next 30 ch, 2 dc into next ch, ss to first dc. (68 sts)

Now I can read a knitting pattern and see in my head what's taking place - I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON HERE. I am fine up to the point it tells me not to turn the work and then I've lost it completely - am I supposed to going backwards, is that the answer? I'll have to pay the lady in the shop a little visit tomorrow and own up to being a complete crocheting nitwit 

I thought I'd post a pretty picture of my Tail Feathers block...just to show how far behind I am :o I only do it in the evenings while listening to a spot of tele and even that tailed off somewhat during another recent dose of tooth problems. I am resolved to catch up with it though. I need to press on with the crocheting mind you - I've promised to teach Catherine how to make Granny Squares...thank goodness she didn't see the bag in the shop and want to make that :o

Chocolat Charms

Once upon a few years ago, I went mad and bought a pack of charm squares just because they were pretty! Last summer I spied them lurking in my fabric drawer and felt guilty. I had just had a little spend on some new fabric and there lurking in the drawer were these pretty squares. I determined that they should lurk no longer and so, while I was awaiting delivery of the new pretty fabric I decided I would put my time to good use and turn the Chocolat charms into a little lap quilt - a quick, cheap and easy project. Or so I thought. I stitchted them all together - they looked lovely. I showed them to my husband. He thought they looked lovely and asked me how big the quilt would be when it was finished :o It is finished I said. Oh, it would look super if it was twice the size he said. I pointed out that I was trying to use up stuff not buy more. Anyway, he was adamant that it should be bigger. I scoured the internet in search of another charm pack and thought I'd found one. I managed to order the wrong pack - a pack of Chocolat charms yes, but the flannels and plaids. Very nice but not the required item. I again scoured the internet and managed to find another pack of the right charms. So, this quick, cheap and easy project took over my life and turned into something much larger than I intended. Once the squares were all stitched together, exhausted by scouring the internet for more charm packs and something to bind with, I abandoned the quilt top and it lurked in my little pile of unfinished items until a few weeks ago when I was overcome by a sudden urge to rid myself of unfinished projects - there were 3 in my pile. Now there is only one - a cat quilt (McKenna Ryan pattern) which is intended for my sister...eventually!

This quilt is really simply quilted around the border with a stipple design and the rest of it is held together with those really pretty cream buttons - foolishly I thought that the buttons would be quicker than quilting the whole thing...how wrong I was! I like how they look though so that's ok, it was worth the time and effort :)

In between all this finishing off I'm diligently working on my Tail Feathers quilt which is coming along beautifully...there is a lot of stitching to do each month but I enjoy that - it's time that's the enemy!

Lovely post day...

my jigsaw has arrived home and I'm delighted with it - my theme of course was birds, lol!  I need to get a frame for it and then it can go on the wall in my craft room. Sadly, one of the jigsaws went astray in the post so I have a blank piece, I'm hoping I can persuade a certain fellow jiggy-er to fill in the blank for me!

Top left - Dorothyanne, middle - missing thanks to Royal Mail, Top right - Michele106

Middle left - Magpie, middle - Moi! Middle right - KJJC

Bottom left - Netty, Bottom middle - rebekah22, Bottom right - Meg Baby

Thank you for all the beautiful work ladys, I'm absolutely thrilled with my birdy jiggy :D

Pesky quilt is finished!

I was determined to have this finished this weekend, not because there's any particular rush -just because I'm itching to get on with the ORB quilt and about a dozen other things, lol! Anyway here is the pesky quilt hanging on my washing line (there were no handy slaves to hold it up for me). It's waiting for its binding to be put on in the pic but I've since sewn that on with lovely mitred corners and am now going to sit down in front of the tele and do the hand sewing...after a celebratory bit of Toblerone :D There's a bit more quilting on here than I originally intended, it was well worth the effort though, it feels lovely - I used one of those multi-coloured embroidery threads, it had just the right colours...pale gold through to a chestnut type colour . The gold triangles in the corners are stippled all over (freehand, no paper pattern) and the snowball blocks each have the four stippled hearts on them. The 9 patch blocks have diagonal lines going through them  -  making it so that the middle one has crossed lines and finally, the applique is quilted around. 

Back to the strippin' tomorrow after some jobs then :D

Quilting and Crying...

I've been finishing off some UFOs this week and last week in between making my Old Red Barn Co. quilt. I had two almost finished quilt tops in my drawer that I'd fallen out with in one way or another. The first one was from a pattern in one of the lovely Australian magazines that I have a small addiciton to - I made it at the beginning of last year I think. The corners were triangles and there was some complicated way of attaching these triangles which confuzzled me - I sewed on the first one and decided I'd done it wrong and...away it went into the cupboard never to be seen again until last week. I dug it out attacked the corners, designed a little applique for the borders, sewed on some more borders and hey presto it was completed...now I'm working on the quilting. Problem was that it was such a long time since I'd started making it that I'd lost the pattern - hence the need to design some applique for the borders and then to come up with a quilting design for the snowball blocks. I thought I had that licked as I had a plastic template but it turned out to be an unmanageable design for free machine quilting - enter large pause while I ripped out the messy looking quilting and contemplated a different design - I've made one up, I've tried it out tonight and it looks really quite good so tonight, I'm a happy quilter! I cut out a heart shape with my Cricut, drew around it four times, sewed around the heart shapes and then filled them in with stippling - I think it just about shows up in the picture. Just another four blocks to do in this fashion and the applique to quilt around and the corners to stipple on and it'll be ready for binding - yippee!

The second abandoned quilt top only really needed borders sewing onto it but it had been such a troublesome piece of sewing for something made only from charm squares that it also ended up in the drawer. I'm happy to say that it now has its borders attached and is awaiting quilting and finishing. I've got some nice buttons to sew on instead of quilting the main bit and then I'll just quilt the borders - I want it finished and being snuggled up in!

I am in an all-fired rush to get these finished as I bought the fabric to make a winding ways quilt and I won't allow any start on it until these two are finished. I found a gorgeous new shop just 30 mins from my house where I can actually see the fabric before I buy it now - fantastic! The shop is full of luscious stuff and the lady who owns it is incredibly friendly and helpful - she even had patterns for some designs from France that I'd been lusting over in a recent magazine...they will make their way home with me soon :D

Of course, all this sewing activity has meant a bit of a downturn on the reading front. I read two books from The Sisters of the Quilt series earlier this month which I thorougly enjoyed, they've been posted off for the next person in the ring to enjoy now. Then I read a very quick little number called Crewel World - also a bookring, which I was really looking forward to - it was a quick, cozy read which was ok. The detective heroine reminded me of a gentle version of Agatha Raisin!

Next book was PopCo by the author of The End of Mr Y, I just finished that one this morning - it was good with a nice moral side to it that I liked and which took me a bit by surprise because I was anticipating something else altogether.

I have a few more rings to read and then it will be back to Eve Dallas and the lovely Rourke!

On the tele front - I decide to indulge in this week's episode of Grey's Anatomy...this is where the crying comes in. I cried just about the whole way through it. Not sure how much more strain I can take on the Issy and Alex front, I've been wanting them to live happily ever after for the longest time. Foolishly, I then decided to polish off the last 15 minutes of Ghost Whisperer which I've been viewing intermittently since Wednesday - more tears. I'm hoping that the exit of poor Jim means that Prof. Payne will return from deepest darkest wherever because I miss him and that new guy just isn't cutting the mustard at all. I really need to record some light hearted viewing and then get around to watching it because I was really soggy and red-eyed by the time the chicks got home from school :o

Stripping along...

I'm in a 'sewing phase' at the moment :D You have to pretend that there are no pink birds in that fabric there...this will be a quilt for a boy :o The colours are lovely, I'm planning on giving my sewing machine a good workout today in the hopes of getting the top pieced together. Bit naughty really as I have two quilt tops awaiting quilting :chuckle:

Evidence of crafting...

I joined in the Arty Farty Jigsaw swap on UKS for the first time - it turned out to have some rather challenging (for me!) themes, I did my best and this was the result.

Top left was my take on the Wizard of Oz - I had all sorts of ideas but ended up doing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'. It was all appliqued and embroidered on my sewing machine - turns out that a rainbow is really not so straight forward a shape to make up out of your head as I thought, lol!

Top middle is butterflies and time - I don't think the stamped background shows up very well - it's clocks. Butterflies are made from vellum and shrink plastic.

Top right is tattoo art - I was totally stumped with this one and settled on a bird theme (surprise surprise!) I like how it turned out.

Middle left is Women, again the background on the jigsaw piece doesn't show up well which is a shame. I saw the technique on Wendy Vecchi's blog - she rubbed distress ink pads onto the Tim craft sheet and then instead of squirting with ordinary water, she squirted with water with added perfect pearls and then inked up the stamp with that mixture. It's works really well for a very subtle finish that takes the blandness out of a plain background but without being too overpowering.

Middle is Birds (me!) and some more Wendy Vecchi stamps, Tim inks and perfect pearl squirting oh and a heap load of stickles on the birdie!

Middle right is Icons - I did the millenium wheel and hunted around until I found a penny that was issued in 2000, big printed Union Jack for the background, stamp of the wheel and a ticket from our flight on the wheel.

Bottom left is Scotland - more Wendy Vecchi stamped background, a map of Scotland on shrink, pretty castle picture, thistle pin and Robbie Burns verse.

Middle bottom is Favourite Book - impossible for me to choose one so I went with the one that I've probably re-read the most times which is The Eight by Katherine Neville. There is a lovely image done with shrink on there of chess pieces being moved by anonymous hands.

Bottom right - Paris and some nice stickers and transparencies and a bit of paper lace.

Looking forward to seeing what arrives back home now :D

I'm waiting for some fabric to arrive so I can start on a quilt each for the chicks - I wish it would hurry up! In the meantime, I decided to have a rootle around in my fabric drawer and I turned up some material that I took a huge dislike to after buying it (very persuasive shop assistant!). It has lived in the drawer since purchase and I realised that it either had to be re-homed or used, otherwise it would remain forever in the drawer. Crazy Mom has a Quilt-a-long for 9 patch squares going on and I thought maybe, just maybe I could cope with this fabric if I chopped it up so small! I did quite a bit of cutting tonight and have plenty of strips cut and I put together 8 blocks. I was determined to hate them but when they were done I found I rather liked them! The photo doesn't really do them any favours to be honest as it's with flash under electric light however, to prove I've been productive - here they are. Actually, looking at the photo they look absolutely ghastly - they look nothing like that IRL, lol! On the quilt a long the idea is that you make a 9 patch per day, so 7 per week - it started at the end of April so I have some catching up to do - I am determined to rid myself of these and several more disliked fabrics so that I can justify new investments :grin:

I have fabric ATCs to make a start on next - really excited about those :D

A lovely day...

a bit of crafting and a shopping arrival - perfect :D

It's Catherine's 12th birthday on Thursday - I really don't know how that happened at all, where did all that time go, it went in a flash and it seems to be going quicker and quicker each year. I asked her what would she like for her birthday...she is truly her Mother's daughter, she gave me a list of books! Anyway, here is the card - I am super prepared this year, presents are bought, wrapped and hidden and now the card is made as well - just need to work on a cake on Thursday morning. We are off to the pictures on Thurs evening to see Night at the Museum II - Catherine's request, we're looking forward to that (and I can sneak in a Starbucks while we're there :D )

This stamp reminds me of Catherine - even more so now than when I bought it because she's has had her hair cut in the same style (she's never seen the stamp though!). I am in love with Coredinations card - I might have mentioned that before and I do plan to buy that white pad with coloured core as I'm so enjoying this black pad with coloured core.

After a lot of cricketing in between now and Saturday, we are off to London for the weekend - I am looking forward to Kew, the chicks are looking forward to the Dungeon and John is looking forward to not working bless him. 

I forgot to say my favourite book for last month - I read an awful lot of easy reading and thoroughly enjoyed it...I was indulging myself as I managed to trap a nerve in my back again and that just wasn't nice at all! Anyway - last month's favourites - The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid, a new author to me and I loved this book and the Sookie Stackhouse series - ate those all up in one go thanks to Carole and now am needing more!

ooh...a layout!

It's been a while since I did a layout - quite a long while actually but finallly, here one is! Using oldish stash too - bought this lovely Crate paper on a whim, because I liked it and consequently it's sat unused ever since. I was going to do some lovely stamping with my new Tim stamps and then happened upon this packet of Crate in my bag which was perfect for the job I thought. The flower and the leaves are cut with Sizzix dies from Grungepaper...which I've developed quite a fondness for. They're subtly sparkly but that doesn't show on the scan of course.

Anyway, here is Catherine's hand on her 11th birthday, post manicure - we had to go for very pale polish because the next day was a school day! A bit more Martha Stewart punch playing on here as well - I like those a lot, and they cut much easier than the Fiskars Threading Water punch. Those little letters are Maya Road - I like those rather a lot too and will be looking out for some more of their chipboard letters.

     

Some cards...

used up my last notecard the other day and managed to find time to make a few more last night and tonight - some inspiration from Jennifer Maguire and Wendy Vecchi!

This first one was a bit of an experiment to see if the Tim watercolour technique would work with clear stamps - it did! The little butterflies and dragonflies were from Hobbycraft a while ago and the card I have had for years, it was a packet in a kit and I just never could work out what to put in the hole! I have 4 more to use up.

The second one is the first of 3 inspired by one of Jennifer Maguire's designs. On all three I put my new Martha Stewart punches to good use. Also the background uses my new roller stamp thingies from Stampin Up - I really like these very much, especially embossed with Versamark and clear embossing powder. The stamp is a new one to me by Crafty Individuals - bought to feed my birdie addiction!

This time the chequerboard punch and a lovely new flower stamp by Crafty Individuals...snuck in a bit of sewing on this one too!

More wheelie stamping, this time in distress ink and a tree stamp by Hero Arts and another gorgeous Martha punch - I'm really not sure which is my favourite one!

This last one was inspired by a piece on Wendy Vecchi's blog - I love the Red Pepper ink pad which is strange as I'm not really keen on red at all! Dug out my Rhonna flourish stamps again for this one and a bit of sewing :wub: