She's crafty

(blog title courtesy of The Beastie Boys)

You may remember the state of my dining room cum sewing room last week? Well it has certainly had some use!


Miss Ella discovered the delights of my fabric scrap box and LOTS of precut strips of fabric and put together a little log cabin top (with minimal instruction from me) which she decided to make into cushion cover, complete with a pieced together back.


Her confidence on the sewing machine has grown so much; she's completely refurnished her dolls house with rugs and sheets and cushions, she even made me my own super hero "G" bracelet.


And her favourite, this tiny little monster cushion.


She has gone to town with all my scraps of fabric and batting....we even had a go at some fibre art wearables...


As for me, well I FINALLY finished my latest quilt. I call this my "my schizophrenic life" quilt and it is by NO MEANS the best quilt I have made. Mistake after mistake ABOUND.


However, I was determined to finish this quilt before I left.


This side of the quilt was begun way back in the terrible year that was my 40th year of life. Going through the whole cancer and no money thing was, to speak lightly, an incredible stress, and this quilt was begun as a way to focus on other things. A form of meditation and therapy if you will. All of the fabric was an attempt to use what I had (and I STILL have strips that I cut....hence Ella's creativity). I ran out of some of the off white cross pieces and all I could find was a "similar" white.

Anyway, as I was coming to completion we found out we were moving and I had to pack it away, pack up 2 houses and a family of 6 and move half way across the world. Somehow the quilt top came with me...and sat in a box for a good 10 months.

Scroll forward to about May this year and I suddenly decided that I was going to finish this quilt. I had always wanted it for our bed in VT, so I thought I'd piece together another quilt top as the back using the fabrics I'd been collecting in Singapore. In the end I was so busy in the month before I left that I only managed to finish sewing the back together the day before we flew out And I packed both pieces in my suitcase.


It's a totally different look to the front. And of course the two sides didn't match up in shape or size and I've spent the last two days adding bits here and there to get them to some kind of match (see, just like the two parts of my life!).


There are puckers, my lines aren't straigh and I've not caught bits in my binding and a MILLION other mistakes. Buy I do like that I can choose which side I feel like using, and with the weather cooler this week, I am looking forward to using it tonight.


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