I made a quilt!

Well, it's only five inches square and some of the stitching is in the wrong place, but it's still a quilt. It's got batting in the middle and a binding and everything! I like the little boat pattern. It's supposed to be a mug coaster, but I like it too much to spill coffee on it. My lovely neighbour took me to her patchwork class and taught me the basic techniques, it was great fun and now I want to make more quilty things.

Oh, I also made a little hat for an egg. Here it is. I saw the pattern here, and added a little scallop edging. I don't really eat boiled eggs, but this makes me want to eat them just so I can use the cozy with its bright colours. I made it from embroidery floss!

It's a busy few months for me. Every day for three months, my little car Jim is driving me forty miles to Gloucester so I can learn to be a chef. Today is only day four and I'm enjoying it so far but I suspect I'll be exhausted by the end of it! Plus I have Portuguese exams in less than a month... So if I fall behind and don't post for a while, you'll know the reason why not.

Thing #2 - a fabric flower

Yesterday on Thing A Day, bittyandbunny posted some gorgeous fabric flowers. When I saw them I immediately wanted one for myself, so tonight I set about making one. Here it is. I want to make another one, a huge oversized black one.

The fabric was some nasty polyester lining that I was never going to find a use for - nice to figure out a way to make it into something I like.

Some swap goodies I made.

I recently did a Craftster swap and my partner has received her package, so here's some of what I sent.

A wallet made from a tube map and some vinyl. I made myself one too!


A passport cover and matching tissue holder. I liked this Ikea fabric.


A wrist pincushion. I didn't realise at the time that the pincushion was out of focus... oh well. I loved this... had to force myself to give it away.


A set of placemats (they're folded up, the birds are actually in the corners of the placemats). These took me ages! I'm such a beginner at embroidery... but I enjoyed doing them. The pattern was from Sublime Stitching.

I haven't received my package yet... I hope my partner sends it soon.

Last minute Christmas stuff

Today I have been mostly finishing off a few last minute Christmas bits. Here's some Kleenex cozies. One of the star & spotty ones will be going to a Cath Kidston-loving friend - Cath Kidston has lots of stuff with a similar star print and polka dots. The boring brown check one is for my dad, and one of the brown ones with the little flowers is for my mum. That fabric is from Liberty and I LOVE it. It's gorgeous to sew with. I want to make a few purses with it too but I'm trying to find orange zips to match the flowers in the print.


That Matryoshka print is my favourite fabric at the moment, but I only have a fat quarter so I'm using it sparingly! In fact I'm so stingy with it that I didn't even cut off the selvedge for this tissue holder.

Next here are some crochet snowflakes for my mum. I found some crochet cotton in Lidl that had silver lurex thread running through it and immediately thought of snowflakes. It was about £5 for a huge ball that will make about a million snowflakes and is nice to work with, although I'm not used to using such a tiny hook (1.5mm).

I wanted to starch them to make them nice and stiff for hanging on the tree, but I didn't have any starch so I boiled some rice and used the water from that - it worked a treat. About 100g of rice and a kettle full of water, boiled for about 20 mins, gave me more than enough liquid to starch these and bottle a load of it for another time. The pattern is from the Lion Brand website - HERE - and is very easy. You might be able to see the sparkle a bit better in this photo, but I couldn't seem to get a decent picture of it.


Finally here are some bottle cap pincushions that I made a while ago, but keep forgetting to post. I love these things, they're so handy and they make lovely little "extra" presents for people.

As we're going away early on Monday, tomorrow morning we're having a "Christmas morning" and opening the presents! Well, the presents that are here anyway. Lots of mine will be in Ireland and Richard's got money from his parents so not a lot to open for him really. I've never really grown out of the whole Christmas morning excitement, so I can't wait!