I've made my first quilt (almost)

A while ago I was given some old fabrics (curtains, bedsheets and a dress!) from my mother-in-law, so I started making a quilt! As I began, I thought "this is easier than I thought it would be", but then I got to the actual quilting bit and the unpicking began! I've had to simplify my design to match my skills, but as a first attempt I'm pretty happy with it. Here's the process in pictures:

The benefit of using second hand fabric is that I didn't need to wash it to pre-shrink it (yes, I just hung it on the washing line to get a nice photo!).

First I had to decide on a pattern for the quilt, so I drew up some options but here's the one I settled on.

I then drew a square template to cut my pieces from...

...and cut out all my squares.

I then had to sew them all together - at this point I was getting a bit full of myself as I managed to do it fairly quickly.

Next I decided to sew a border on:

...and then it got tricky. I decided to go for a fairly complicated free hand quilt pattern, but quickly realised I'd been way too ambitious as the quilt started to pucker and the bulk of it got wedged in the sewing machine! So I spent a few days unpicking the bits I'd done and then I just quilted along the lines between the squares instead.

So it's almost done - I just need to sew the bias binding round the edge of the whole thing! The back is a bit of a mess, but I've learnt from my mistakes and will do things slightly differently next time. I've already bought the fabric for my next project - a Christmas table runner:

And now for something a little different - we bought Natalie a nice wooly hat because we're going to the Lake District next week, it looks very cute! She's been wearing it on our bedtime walks (which normally end with her falling asleep!)

Finished!

Pete finished his case study last night and got it bound today!! What a weight off his (and my) shoulders!! We can get a bit more of a life as a family again now!

Natalie's tag blanket is finished! I got Pete to sew the last corner together in the end because I didn't want to mess it up (and he's good at that sort of thing), and then I quilted it this morning and gave it to her to try out - I think she likes it!

I harvested our chili's from the garden - they look great, not sure how hot they'll be (and I'm a little bit scared to try them in case they're 'blow my head off' hot!).

Tonight we've got our community group over for dinner and to say goodbye to John who's going overseas soon - we'll miss you John! As a special treat I've made a massive pavlova...yum!

I'm sure it wont be long before that get's 'finished'! (oh dear, I sound like Pete, sorry about that!)

On a different note, Natalie's birthday buddy came over with his mum today and it turns out that it's not only Natalie that loves the taste of her feet - Harry had a little nibble too!

We're looking forward to my sister's wedding on Monday - on the London Eye! Can't wait! I've tried Natalie's outfit on and she looks very cute:

It'll be nice to see Nicola and John again, and to meet Natalie's new cousins!

foot in mouth....

Natalie's doing really well at eating, she loves carrot, swede, and baby cereal!

Potato she's not so keen on, and she makes a face as if I'm feeding her a lemon when I give her potato to eat (it makes me so sad, I love potatoes!!).

We gave her some diluted fruit juice too which she didn't like at first she eventually got the hang of drinking it.

However, Natalie's got a new favourite thing to eat, even more than carrot....her right foot!

At every opportunity she grabs it and shoves it in her mouth. Yesterday she managed to get her big toe in her mouth and her second toe up her nostril - what a talented daughter I have!

Here are some pictures of a present I made for my friend's birthday last week - I really enjoyed making it, I may have to make one for myself too!

Pete's been working really hard over the last month on a case study he has to submit to university in order to graduate as an architect (along with taking some written and oral exams). He decided not to work on it on Sunday but to spend some time with me and Natalie so we went for a walk in the woods near home. It turned out to be a really nice walk, we're thinking of doing it again on Christmas Day after dinner (yes, I know - I'm already thinking about Christmas!).

I cant wait until November when all of Pete's uni work is finished and I get my husband back! It's been pretty tough having him at work during the day and then working in the evenings and at weekends too - I know he's looking forward to getting his home life back too!

I've noticed recently that Natalie's become very interested in the labels on her toys, so I decided to use some of the many ribbons I have collected over the years and make her a tag blanket:

It's not quite finished yet - I need to sew up the corner that I left unstitched so that I could turn the whole thing inside out again (I never know how to do this neatly - I think I'll have to do some research to find a tidy way of doing it), and I'm going to quilt the square to hold it together better, but I think she's going to like it!

I finished sewing the vests today, I think they turned out pretty good!

Natalie seems to love them too!

We went to the cinema yesterday to see 'The Tree of Life' - what a weird film!! After two and a half hours neither me nor Lucy had a clue what the film was actually about! There were lots of scenes of suburban american life, interspersed with clips of stars and planets, volcanoes and dinosaurs stamping on each others heads - plus, there was hardly any dialogue which didn't help! Oh well, it got us out of the house and it was nice to see Lucy and Harry.

Tonight's dinner courtesy of the Sainsburys magazine! Looks yummy, I'll let you know how it turns out.

Cutting and sewing...well, just cutting so far!

I almost got Natalie to giggle yesterday by holding her hands and making her dance. I've gotten close before with a game of muslin peek-a-boo but the dancing seems to be funnier - I'll persevere, she is playing very hard to get!

Today I decided to decorate some of Natalie's vests with some appliqué fruit. I got the idea from a book I was given at Christmas (Making Children's Clothes) - I haven't quite got to the stage of sewing the fruit onto the vests but here's what I've done so far...

Natalie was having lots of fun on her baby gym today, kicking and grabbing, while I was cutting out the fabric fruit, and I noticed it had gone all quite so I looked down and she'd fallen fast asleep! I hope she's not narcoleptic!

I'm going to go with her just being so energetic that she got exhausted.