10 things

• I am not feeling the running love at the moment.  I am finding it hard, I'm getting tired of my usual routes, and I ache.  But I am still running, and for that I feel very proud of myself.
• I just found out my next placement is in A and E.  As someone who has watched every episode of every series of 24 Hours in A and E obsessively, this is one of the most exciting things that's ever happened to me!  I start in a month's time.
• I am so sick of this rain.  We are fortunate not to be living in an area that has been wrecked by floods, but oh. my. word.  This rain just goes on and on.  And on.

• I have enjoyed another run of good books lately: Where'd you go, Bernadette, The Ship of Brides, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and my current read, Man Belong Mrs Queen.  I am panicking that this run of success is going to grind to a halt after this book.  Four great books in a row is pretty lucky.  Can my luck continue?
• My mother-in-law had a landmark birthday, and to celebrate the extended family plus friends all gathered together in central London for a magnificent cookery lesson at La Cucina Caldesi.  I learnt how to make pasta, and I am now scouring eBay for a pasta attachment for my KitchenAid.  It was a wonderful day.
• My sister's baby arrived and I am now an auntie for the seventh time.  I made my new niece a little quilted blanket out of some Ed Emberley fabric I bought years ago and never used.  I think it was waiting for R's arrival.

• My next exam is a drug calculation exam.  I need to get 100% to pass - you can't have nurses getting drug calculations only 90% right.  I like maths though, and I like learning formula and practising sums, so it's not too daunting at the moment.
• If you haven't already found them, take a look at the Metropolitan Police helicopter crew on Instagram and Twitter.  They take the most incredible arial photos of London, as they're travelling to and from jobs - often on just an iPhone.
• I have been cooking dumplings often this winter.  They cheer me up and help me to forget about the rain.

• I am listening to Sophie Ellis Bextor's new album, Wanderlust, and loving it. 

No man's land

No more tree - my sewing and knitting corner restored to normal

I am always happy to see the Christmas tree come down.  It is never up for very long - this year was an all-time record from the 19th to the 27th.  The lights and excitement that come with the tree are very welcome, but the displacement of regular furniture and the cluttering up of empty surfaces with tinsel and ornaments makes me feel hemmed in and chaotic.  The moment when we pack everything away always reminds me of this book I used to read to the children when they were very little.

The removal of the tree heralds one of my favourite parts of the year: the no-man's land between Christmas and the resumption of school/university/work in early January.  Long lazy days where we might catch up with family or friends, or we might idle around the house, just the four of us, playing with new presents, watching TV or reading.  The house is full of good food so I do very little cooking after Christmas lunch - everybody helps themselves to leftovers, creating eccentric, tailor-made meals involving smoked salmon, brioche, fancy chutneys and cheeses and bits of stuffing (not necessarily all at once).  When I do feel like cooking, the amount of stock, made on Christmas day from the joint, means that it is almost always soup.  I love soup.

Today I went running (with new Christmas-present headphones), had a nap in the sunshine, watched some Friends with Olivia (who received the entire 10 season box-set for Christmas - very exciting!), ate some of the mulligatawny soup I made yesterday for lunch, did a few more rows of stitching on my kantha quilt, and read a little bit from two books I received as Christmas presents: Eat, the latest Nigel Slater book, and A Handbook for Nurses (published 1920).  This afternoon Graham and I are both going out and meeting up later at the pub.

A Handbook for Nurses - such a wonderful present

Really, what could be nicer than all this?  These days of Christmas no man's land are very special days indeed; that tipping point between the end of one busy year and the start of the next.

It's quilt time again

I don't have time to make quilts any more.  And yet mysteriously there appears to be another quilt-in-progress on the sofa this morning.

I have been yearning for a Kantha type quilt for ages, and last night I just snapped and  pulled out my sewing machine, grabbed a fairly random selection of fabrics off my shelf, and began cutting and sewing.

Kantha quilts are traditional Bengali quilts, made from large blocks of bright sari fabric, stitched together with tight rows of running stitch and other embroidered motifs.  They're all about colour and embroidery.  They are also made without wadding - just from layers of cotton cloth.  This is one of the reasons I wanted to make one, because even though I used the lightest wadding I could find for my quilt, it is still too warm on top of a duvet.

My new Kantha quilt is simply a top pieced from a mixture of vintage and quilting cottons, and a back of plain, unbleached calico.  No wadding in the middle at all. I sewed the top and back right-sides-together and left a gap for turning, so there is no need for binding either.  The top is nice and bright and true to the Kantha style in shades of pink and blue, but I left the back deliberately plain because I think when all th embroidery is done, it will show off the stitching beautifully.  Plus I love the way that plain calico shrinks and puckers when it is washed - it will really add to the wrinkly, faded feel of my quilt.

I have no doubt at all that I will spend years doing all the embroidery; the quilt is massive.  But I can use use it in the meantime, because it doesn't need binding and there are no pins in it.  I spread it out over my side of the bed last night, and I wasn't too warm at all.  It made me smile this morning too, when I woke up to to rain and wind lashing against the windows but sunny pink fabric spread out over me, as if spring was already here.

Winter blankets

I want to share a really good project for December's Making Winter post.  For the past few days I've been making two sorts of winter blanket - the blankets sit piled up on the arm of the sofa, waiting for someone to curl up under them for some TV watching, or colouring, or knitting, or drumming.  In the summer they will come camping with us.  We all have quilts, but the quilts tend to just live on our beds - these blankets are more portable.

In an ideal world I would live in a place which is home to a choice selection of charity shops which sell old 100% wool blankets for just a few pounds.  The reality is that I live in a big city where the charity shops specialise in nasty poly-cotton duvet cases from 1988.  No vintage or thrifted wool blankets round here sadly.

So I raided my airing cupboard for old baby blankets instead.  I had two cotton aircell blankets bought for C over twelve years ago, and hardly used (I was a dedicated fan of Grobags when my children were babies).  To turn these baby blankets into something suitable for winter warming I simply added bias trim to them.  One in a selection of leftover pastel prints and the other in deep purpley pinks and dark blues. 

It is extraordinary how the trim changes the whole appearance of the blankets.  They are proving very popular.

The other blankets have been made from fleece.  Ikea sells plain fleece throws in a few different colours for just £1.59 each.  These throws are perfect for all kinds of sewing projects.  I've used them several times as both wadding and backing for quilts, I've used them as backing fabric for babies' bibs, and I've made cushions from them.  The simplest thing to do though, is to applique onto them.  For C's and O's Christmas stockings I've made them each a quick and easy blanket, using the Ikea fleeces as a base.

For C, who loves dogs, I cut out the pictures from a piece of dog fabric I had been hoarding, and simply stitched around the dogs onto the fabric with my machine.  For O, whose preferred colour of the moment is purple, I cut out long oval shapes from all my scraps of purple fabric and attached them as flower petals.

If you are lucky enough to have vintage 100% wool blankets in your airing cupboard or your local charity shop, then either of these methods would work very well with those.  Neither type of blanket takes very long to make - the whole point of these is that they can be whipped up in a couple of hours, unlike a quilt which can take weeks, months, or even years to complete. 

You don't want to hang around when people need to get cosy on the sofa as a matter of urgency.

The sleepover dolls

O is beside herself with hysteria very excited to be going away for her first sleepover with a friend this half term.  I do hope her friend's mum knows what she's letting herself in for - the girls have already told us that 'the last thing you do on a sleepover is sleep'.

So to mark this important childhood milestone I decided to make the Sleepover Pals from Hillary Lang's beautiful Wee Wonderfuls book.  The pattern is for three cute, squashy dolls in a triple sleeping bag.  I decided that as O's friend has a younger sister, I'd make the three dolls for the three girls, but make three separate quilts rather than the triple sleeping bag - that way they each have a doll and quilt to keep afterwards.

I am ridiculously, insanely pleased with how they've turned out.  They look just like the ones in Hillary's book, which is very gratifying, and the matching quilts make me very happy indeed.

The pattern came together very quickly and easily.  Each doll took me about an hour to make from start to finish - including the embroidered faces.  Each quilt took me about the same amount of time.  The quilts are made from twelve 4" squares layered with batting and a flannel back, sewn around the edge, turned right way out and top stitched all the way round to close the gap.  I did them this way because I just couldn't find the enthusiasm to bind them - this is a much simpler solution.

I love this book so much - Hillary's writing is really clear and funny.  Her enthusiasm shines through on every page, and each project has full sized pattern pieces and delicious, crisp photos.  I can't wait to make more from it.

O is enchanted, and I am enchanted that she and her friend and her friend's little sister, are still young enough to be enthusiastic about this sort of sewing.  Long may it continue, because I love sewing dolls.  After I'd taken the photos I wanted, O set up a tea party for the three sleepover girls.

I don't know about you, but I think these sleepover dolls don't look like the sort of girls to tuck themselves up nice and early and get straight to sleep.  They look more like the sort of girls who will stay up late chatting, nibbling chocolate, reading magazines and books to each other, giggling and doing each other's hair.  I'm sure they'll all have plenty of fun.

10 things

• Graham's birthday quilt is finished.  A week ahead of schedule, which means that it took me five full-on weeks from start to finish.  I've been remarkably modest with photos of it so far (ahem...) so here are a few more.

• He loves it.  Phew
• I've given it to him a week before his birthday, but I'll still take it back off him on Birthday Eve and wrap it up!
• I made Baileys Choc Chip Scones this afternoon.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The recipe is from Ruth Clemens, a finalist in the Great British Bake Off last year, and goodness me, what a recipe!  They actually taste like Baileys.  So good.
• O and I went to see the Royal Ballet's production of Giselle yesterday.  It's only on for another couple of weeks, but if you can manage to get tickets then do.  It was incredible - so romantic that it actually left me in tears at one point.  And I have never seen or heard a standing ovation quite like it at the end. 
• Now the quilt is finished, I am in a frenzy of excitement about what to make next.  Pyjamas for the children are top of my list.  And then some shirts for me, some more cushions for the house, and some bits and pieces for my poor neglected Etsy shop.
• Maybe I should reverse that order and sort out the poor neglected Etsy shop first?
• I have been trying (really very hard) to read some Virginia Woolf.  But sadly it's proving unreadable.  So I may have to fall back on the Cal Patch book, which finally came through on my reservations at the library, and which is proving well worth the wait.
• I came back from the supermarket, and without being asked C unpacked and put away all the shopping, and then made me a cup of tea.  I thought back to those seemingly endless toddler years and wished I could go back in time and tell myself that this day of genuinely helpful children would come.  I don't think I would have believed myself though.
• We're all loving The Human Planet - genuinely some of the best television I've seen in years.  I do like a nice bit of quality tele in the evenings.

Quilted leaves

All I see these days - in my waking hours and my dreams - are leaves.  Fabric leaves, scattered on the quilt, piled up on the arm of the sofa, under my needle, and drawn onto squares of fabric - waiting to be cut out.

But ten minutes ago, I finished.  The leaves are done.

I took the two pictures above at lunchtime today, when the sun was streaming through the windows and I was curled up in the armchair, with my lap full of quilt, stitching as fast as I could.  There were still a few leaves with pins in them, waiting to be stitched.

And below, here it is in it's full unfolded glory.  Taken with the flash, at nearly 11pm, but still looking damn fine.

Tomorrow I'll be adding some machine quilting to the green and brown borders.  Then over the weekend I am going to make and attach the binding.  I'm aiming to have it all done by Sunday night.  Wouldn't that be good?  That would make it five weeks from start to finish.  But I mustn't get carried away - I'm not quite there yet.

I counted the leaves.  Of course I did.  There are one hundred and thirty one, which represents true love on a major scale.  Very appropriate for his Valentine's Day birthday.

Good things

Good things on a sunny Friday:

• Quilt progress.  I have sewn dozens of leaves already, and am not sick of them yet. This is promising.

• A backlog of Americana and Food Programme podcasts on my iPod to keep me company while I sew.
•  A lemon drizzle loaf cake for the weekend.

• This really lovely spice mix, from Anna.  I've been adding it to everything I can think of.

• But mainly spiced raisin bread.  This is the last of the midweek loaf, and today I made another so that we can have spiced raisin French toast for brunch this weekend.

Good times.

Quilt progress

It's as if I am destined to make this birthday quilt in a record quick time.

On Friday a delivery van arrived with a fat parcel full of fabric for the quilt back.  All the way from California to East London in four days - amazing.  I bought the fabric from Fabricworm - who has an incredible selection of gorgeous fabrics.

This is the Village Path pattern in Saffron, from Anna Maria Horner's Folksy Flannels collection.  I especially wanted this particular fabric in this particular pattern and colour, because I knew from making O's strawberry quilt that flannel on the back of a quilt is very cosy, and the colours of Anna Maria Horner fabric are incredibly saturated and rich.  Just what I wanted, and worth ordering from California to get exactly what I wanted.

The fabric arrived just an hour and a half before I had to pick up C and O from school - just enough time for me to cut it, sew it back together the right size, and then layer and pin the whole quilt on the front room floor.

The colours in this picture above are awful - you wouldn't believe that I took this picture in front of our huge bay window at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon!

And then last night, with everything layered and pinned, I could start quilting the leaves onto the centre panel.

I've cut dozens of leaves from scrap fabrics in greens, browns, yellows, reds and oranges, and I'm attaching them by quilting their veins, through all layers of the quilt, in perle thread (thank you to Dragonfly for all her late night perle thread advice last night!).  I had a tiny bit of green perle thread in my embroidery box, so I've made a start on the green leaves.  I've ordered a whole load more thread in the other colours I need from Cotton Patch.  I draw the veins on with fade out pen, and then just stitch over the lines.  Already I prefer sewing the simpler oval shaped leaves to the more spiky maple and sycamore style leaves!

Once I've sewn on all the leaves there should be very little of the cream calico panel left showing.  I'll add some quilting to the borders and then think about binding...but I shall ponder more about that later.  For now, there's a quilt to be finished.

Unrealistic quilt expectations - again

I am doing it again. Making myself unrealistically ambitious promises about a quilt.

I haven't got a great track record in making quilts quickly.  The first one I made took just under five months back in 2008. This is the family quilt, which all of us share.

The second one I made was for C. It took a fairly respectable four months.

I sneaked in a quick quilt in an evening...

...but was then back on form as the simple Kaffe Fassett quilt I made for myself took eight long months.

The strawberry quilt I made for O took a shocking eighteen months.

And feeling both inspired and impressed by Florence's beautiful (and rapid) Christmas quilting, I finally got round to completing a half-embroidered label and attaching it today. A mere four months after I finished the quilt.

 

And now I've finally embarked on a quilt for G.  It is his birthday on Valentine's Day, and I've declared that I will have it finished by then.  That's just six weeks away!  What was I thinking?

Mind you, I do (kind of) believe myself this time.  I cut and pieced the basic top over two mornings last week, and today the wadding arrived in a great squishy parcel from Cotton Patch.  The backing fabric has been despatched from America, and while I wait for it to arrive I am cutting out dozens and dozens of leaves from leftover pieces of scrap fabric.

Because with only six weeks to make it, I have decided that not only will I quilt it by hand (it seems mean somehow, to give G a machine-quilted one, when everyone else has a hand-quilted one - even in the interests of speed), but I will also applique loads of leaves onto it as part of the quilting.  I know.  Madness.

I have to finish it though - I can't break a birthday promise!  So I'm ordering some films from LOVEFiLM and stocking up on podcasts.  Let's see what has happened by Valentine's Day....