Presidents & Pencil Cases!

At one stage this morning, a rather well known President was not half a mile away from me! There's been quite a stir here in sleepy N.I. as we welcome 8 of the world's most influential leaders for the G8 Summit!

Something else I can't quite believe is that my kids have only 8.5 schools days left before the summer holidays start here!  Yikes!

So a few end of term pressies were rattled out over yesterday and today!

Pencil Case 1: Front & Back

Now that all my kids are in 'big school' there's no more making teacher presents! But there are still the last minute birthday gift and 'best friend swaps' to make!

Pencil Case 2: Front & Back

For all these pencil cases I chose pre-cut squares from my scrap-vomit box. Daughter no.3 loves an eclectic mix of colours and prints - let's hope her 2 friends do as well!

Pencil Case 3: Front & Back

I finished the cases off with Daughter no.3's fimo lolly pop zipper pulls!



That's another tick off the present making list!  Shirley the Cow got some attention today too, but more on that another day!

Have a good one!

Jxo

Repurposing!

Happy Father's Day to all the dad's in the UK!

As well as Father's Day, June is also a busy birthday month in our household. 

No. 1 daughter decided to make a birthday cushion for her boyfriend, inspired by this quilt in my early birthday present this book!

So we chopped up a few pairs of jeans, smaller pieces from shirts, and voila!



She did all the piecing & quilting herself AND put the zipper in (with a little guidance)!

She's chuffed to bits with her manly cushion!  Fingers crossed her boyfriend will like it just as much!

And when I eventually reclaimed my sewing machine, I got another Churn Dash block done for Sarah's Siblings Together Boy quilts ......

.... and the Bee Blessed BOM, Woven block (tutorial here).



Hope you are having a relaxing weekend! (With 7 excitable 14 years olds in my house today, I'm off to find a quiet corner somewhere!).

Jxo

In the Company of Angels!

It never ceases to amaze me how 3 women can spend an ENTIRE day talking about sewing, while driving, eating, drinking coffee, running in the rain, fabric shopping & gate-crashing my class!



Sarah & Di

That's multi-tasking at its best!  And the perfect way to spend a lovely day!  Thank you ladies!

And the sneaky peek I showed you yesterday?



A scented house gift for Di!

And for another angel, I've made these:



Terri is queenie in the Brit Bee for June, and she has a rampant mild addiction to star blocks! She has sent us all some solid and 2 sets of coloured prints to come up with some starry magic!

The red star is from the Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop book, and the yellow star is called Ribbon Star Block, by Lee of Freshly Pieced.

Unfortunately 2 of my outer points overshot in the yellow star, but I'm hoping T-Bone Angel will be gracious and forgiving!

In my other bee commitments this month, I rustled up an improv. log cabin for Hipbees Lynz, as per her requirements.



Lynz sent us some lovely solids and we had to sneak in a little bit of ourselves!  I went with some flowery Marmalade! Yum!

This really isn't the best photo of this block.  It is much straighter and nicer in real life! Honest!

You should check out the other Hipbee improv. blocks over in the Flickr group!  It's going to be a stunning quilt!

Have a wonderful Friday!

Jxo

A Salty Giant!

Yesterday I finished another quilt top!

70" x 70"

I love the simplicity of Jeni's design, using 8 fat quarters (I used Salt Air) and some yardage (Klona navy).



I will be teaching this as a one day workshop in the Autumn, so this will be my class sample.  I also got a pieced back made using the leftovers (no pics yet, sorry).  So I'm all ready to baste this baby at the weekend!

As for today, I will be a 'lady wot lunches' (& shops for fabric, and drinks coffee, and natters loads) with 2 lovely quilty friends.

More on that tomorrow!

Have a goodun'!

Jxo

Keeping Secrets!

There's been a lot of secret sewing going on around here lately!

In fact, there are 5 separate sewing projects I can't yet tell you about!  Here's a sneaky peek at one of them:

Something I can show you is the bundle of rainbow goodness that came through my door today!



A huge thank you to Cindy for the endless hours she has spent cutting up our chosen yards of rainbow colours, packaging them so beautifully, and posting them out all over UK & Ireland!  Enjoy a well deserved rest C!

I'm now dreaming of what I can make with these lovelies!

Happy Wednesday!

Jxo

The Blessing Bees!

Yesterday at Bee Blessed we made great progress on some of our WIPs!

This is the Funky Wrench Quilt for Siblings Together, all basted and ready for quilting.

And this is the Road to Tennessee quilt top, all sewn together! Isn't it fab!

The beautiful starflowers have now been trimmed, laid out and sewn into rows.  Not long now til this will be basted, quilted and bound!

Our youngest member of BB got her first ever quilt finished!!  The only bit she didn't sew was the binding!  A big 'thank you' to Cindy for donating the little pre-cut squares that went into this quilt!

And a big 'thank you' too to folks who have recently donated fabric and blocks.  We appreciate every single one! 

If on occasion you don't happen to see your block in a finished quilt, it might be because it was too small (i.e. finished under 12.5") or we had more blocks than we needed for one quilt.  However, we keep ALL the blocks that are made for us, and when we have enough odd ones gathered up, we make sampler quilts with them.  So please don't despair!  We make a huge effort to try and use everything we are given!

Of course there was lots more activity yesterday - squaring off blocks, sewing up rows, quilting and making binding! 



And to make our quilt labelling process much quicker, we got the clever peeps at Spoonflower to make us these!



Don't they look the business!!

And for anyone who is local to Belfast, I have updated the BB page with our Autumn dates (no meetings over the summer).  You are most welcome to come and join in the stitchery fun!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Jxo

Solid Tumblers!

I'm always a little late to the party when it comes to trends!

I tell my kids not to jump on every band wagon going, just because everyone else does!

When solids became fashionable in the quilting world I didn't like them.  I love pattern and scrappy, and the quilts I saw being made in solids just didn't do it for me!

But now that I've got used to seeing them around blogland (and I hugely admire the talent and creativity that folks use in designing around solids), I'm growing to like them more!

I recently bought some half metres of Klona in my LQS and just loved how they all looked together.  They were randomly chosen colours, but I got to thinking they would work for my month as Queen Bee in the Modern Irish Bee (June/July).

So out came my trusty Sizzix, and this time the 4.5" Tumbler die, and I whizzed those solids through!  Sizzix was smokin'!

There are 11 piles each with 22 tumblers. I'm hoping my bee buddies will each make me 2 of these blocks:



The 12th tumbler in each block is to be patterned and from the makers' own stash!  A little bit of them in each block!

To finish, the blocks are bordered in navy, so I don't have to sash them all!!  Tee hee!!

I just have to get a wee treat to pop in each package and these babies are ready to be posted out all over Ireland!

Jxo

P.S. thanks everyone for your great suggestions on how to solve my ironing board cover dilemma.  A smaller bodkin was supplied from my trusty quilty friend, and the cover finished in 2 shakes of a lamb's tail!!