Christmas goes back in box

Every day seems to show a little improvement and I was really pleased to make it to Church yesterday, even though it felt like a marathon

Chris is taking down all the decorations as I write so more " getting back to normal" .

While waiting for the last part of the cross stitch I am working on, a quick search of UFO's turned up an almost completed Derwentwater Design of Pinetree Bay so I hope to complete it before January 1st.

When I am fully mobile and back cooking, cleaning and washing I will miss all this sewing time.

Saturday

Small progress today as I have managed to walk around the house with only one stick instead of two!

My cross stitch offered free in five parts by http://lesmarottesdenath.free.fr/index.php is almost completed up to part 4. Part 5 will be available on January 1st. I am so enjoying this cross stitch which is available in a number of different languages.

This is the completed work.
I have all the writing completed.

Happy Boxing Day

What a great day was spent with the family yesterday, eating [too much!] and playing games.
Richard and Jacq had prepared a wonderful meal and the girls were very excited opening presents.

Between the main course and the Christmas pudding we played the right / left game which allowed time for the food to go down!

Then it was back into the lounge to play pass the reindeer antlers. This game consisted of putting antlers on your head every time the music stopped and choosing a mystery gift for someone from a large bag, giving the gift and a hug to whoever name was on it. Great fun and I won a fish shaped USB stick which will look good in my Embroidery Machine.

After a quick drink it was onto the pass the jelly game, like pass the parcel but the gifts are all in a bag attached to string. A sort of jelly thing [ horrible to touch!] is passed around and when the music stopped you pull out a string and get a gift.. much fun and laughter.

We then HAD to eat Christmas cake even if we were full! Richard had made it and Eleanor [6yrs] had helped decorate it... yummy!

Coping with two walking sticks and struggling getting in and out of the car I forgot my camera, so hopefully some one took a photo and will email me it.

Some of the Happy Room sewing items I received.. should keep me busy for a while. 

Happy Christmas

I'd like to wish all my blog readers a very Happy Christmas and healthy New Year.

I cannot believe how time has flown since I last wrote here.
My knee replacement on December 5th went well and I spent five days in hospital. Going home was scary but I couldn't wait. Chris has been a rock, doing all the cooking, cleaning and washing and generally looking after me.

Friends from church visited and cooked us meals which was a real blessing. Sewing friends called and kept me amused. My best friend ' baby sat ' me when Chris had to go out the day after I arrived home. Thank you all so much.

We were up early this morning to have breakfast with the traditional pork pie ( goodness knows why this is a tradition!) then opening our presents. I have lots of fabric and sewing related gifts which will keep me busy in 2014.  Chris is playing with his new tablet!

Later this morning we are off to Richard and the family for the day. I understand he was up at 5am to put the turkey on, but the granddaughters were still asleep.

Yo Ho Ho. Diana

Knee Replacement

Home for the next few days.

This morning I am going into Hospital for a knee replacement, so may be away from my blog for a few days. The Hospital does have WiFi and hubby said "why not blog from the hospital" but I can think of nothing worse!

IAM Christmas party

Yesterday we had a full house for the IAM Christmas Party.

It was such a special day with tears of laughter for most of it!

The morning was spent chatting and working on last minute projects, then after a quick lunch we had show and tell.
Jenny had completed a really nice quilt, and painted a beautiful woodland scene. Penny had completed her Christmas London scene cushions. Maureen had four little bags made from charm squares. Clare  had made a lovely Santa sack, while Shirley had a wonderful selection of crocheted mitts she had made. Ann had Christmas tree ornaments and Dorn showed us how to make Candy Stick mice and Christmas stars. I showed my machine embroidery jacket and Amish Cross stitch.  Such a wide selection of crafty items.

We then exchanged gifts, the rules being to buy 7 gifts costing £2. It was amazing what people had managed to find and we all enjoyed opening the pretty parcels.
Next came the fun and games.  Starting with a game of Left/Right with FQ's being the items passing right and left at such speed we were all having the giggles it was hard for me to read the story!
A game of quilt Bingo followed, that I had found on the Internet, but we landed up with all of us needing the same answer to fill the cards, so the game was abandoned and the £5 gifts we had for this game were used with 8 rolls of Christmas toilet paper for another game of Right / left.. this time it was even harder to read the story as eight OAP's moved 8 presents and 8 toilet rolls around the table! Glasses were removed and mascara ran as we wiped away the tears of laughter!

Happy Christmas for the 13th year of the IAM group.

£2 gifts for everyone

£5 gifts for the Bingo 

Shirley's show and tell peg display

Opening the cards

Present opening

Laughter with crafty friends

Christmas postcards

12 of us signed up with BQLPC group to exchange Christmas postcards.
I decided to work on mine ahead of time and now the deadline to sign up for the exchange has passed mine are ready for the postman tomorrow. I also have the final PC ready to post for the birthdya swap.

11 PC's written and stamped ready for the postman

The last Birthday PC for Rosemary

The Amish Sampler

I have completed the Amish Sampler I have been working on since September. I have it pinned to foam-board and will get it laced as soon as I have time. Next step will be the framer. I am really pleased with the finished cross stitch.

I have another cross stitch in the planing stage, but not sure when I will get time to start it.

MK Gems exhibition of Machine Embroidery

This morning Chris and I went to an exhibition at Woburn Sands by the MK Gems group in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.

WOW WOW WOW it was wonderful and full of inspiration. I will let the photo's I took tell the story.

Love the setting

The black makes the ME zing

Worked in a large frame, love the bird

Some great ideas, including flashing lights

Just wonderful



love the different fairies



Table mats and table runner

A table full of great ideas

Such a pretty little bag

mounted on boxes

The flower is 3D

The 3D flower in the middle is great

Pretty use of colours

Worked in "glow in the dark" threads

Design by JuJu their Ninja set



Delicate colours for a lap quilt



Brenda had to have an emergency op this morning! Brenda being my Brother Innovis 4000D she packed up in the middle of me trying to ME 30 little angels to put on the festive table at church. Luckily Mike the engineer was at the shop and fixed it while I waited. She is purring away sewing out angels like there is no tomorrow. Bonus was he did not charge me!
.

30 Little Angels in the making

12 Days of Christmas and a jacket

I managed to sew together, quilt and bind my 12 Days of Christmas table runner. It measures 52 x 16 inches and will look nice on my table for the holidays.

For some time I have wanted to embroider on a sweatshirt or T shirt, so today I bought a zippered jacket from Asda for £8 to have a go. Decided this would not be too much of a great loss if it didn't work out OK.

I choose one of Anita Goodesign patterns for an eagle and I am so pleased with the result. I may go back and buy another jacket and do a Christmasy design!

The Eagle has landed!

12 days of Christmas

Machine Embroidery Day

Spent the day yesterday with a Machine Embroidery group at Bedford.
We decided to sew out the 12 days of Christmas in 5 inch blocks together with a larger middle block with the words 12 Days of Christmas.
Needless to say there was a lot of singing as we sewed to work out the order of the blocks!

As my friend Penny was away there was an empty machine beside me so I decided to use both of them, sliding back and forward between two machines was exhausting, but I did manage to get 11 of the 12 blocks and the larger block completed. This morning I sewed out the missing 12th block and now just need to put it all together.

Using two machines at the same time!

The central panel

Happy Birthday to me...

Woke this morning to a pile of cards, that had been arriving over the last few days, and some lovely gifts from family and friends.
Am I really 69 today? Do not feel that old!
A post card exchange group I belong to made for an interesting time as I had received 12 fabric cards. No idea why the photo is on its side.


Self portrait in the mirror



12 fabric postcards hanging on a ribbon

Christmas cards and postcards

I've been busy making Christmas postcards for a swap I am in with BQLPC yahoo group.
I think about 10 or 11 people have signed up for it [ sign up does not end for a few days] so I have managed to complete 12 PC's some in red and some in cream.

I also like to make a few special Christmas cards for frineds, and have managed to make nine so far on my embroidery machine. The design is called Christmas Classics from Anita Goodesign.

How are you all doing with making cards? getting ready for Christmas?

Drop me a comment and let me know.


12 candle postcards and 9 cards made on my EM



Birthday lunch

Richard and Jacq invited us over yesterday [Sunday] for lunch to celebrate my birthday.

After Church we dropped by friend Pauline's who is home from hospital [arthroscope] to say hello, she was busy quilting and resting her knee.

Then onto the family for a lovely lunch and birthday cake made by my son Richard. Then while we chatted the granddaughters did what most children seem to do these days...



Playing on their tablets!



The new furniture

A "lets just look" in a furniture shop led to buying two sofa's !

We had not even measured them to see if they would fit in our lounge, but luckily they did. I am really pleased with them and they are very comfy. Of course this has led to other changes, curtains, rug etc.. and I will probably make new cushions.

Gel Nail Polish help needed

Anyone any tips on removing Gel Nail polish? I thought I could use ordinary nail polish remover, but apparently not! I will have to remove my new nail polish in a couple of weeks when I go into hospital.

I've been "gelled"

My finger nails are not normally very good as they break easily but I bought a £9 offer on Groupon to have them manicured with Gel polish [ normally £21!]. I thought it would be a nice treat for my birthday next week, but discovered I have to remove all nail polish before I can have my knee replacement op the beginning of December. To make the most of my new fancy nails I had them done today. While in town Chris bought me my birthday gift which I will now have to wait until next week to get. We also went mad and bought new lounge furniture that will arrive tomorrow!

Here's a picture of my new nails with two of my miniature sewing machines.

Pretty new nails.

Lone Star Log Cabin opps!!!

Black strips do not match

Thought I would do a trial log cabin block for my new quilt, and was really too tired.. So opps I cut the wrong fabrics and the matching black strips are wrong, but I am pleased with the size of 1 1/2 inch strips and now need to make about 130 to 150 log blocks! I will work out the actual number as I go along. This is going to be quite an "I Spy" quilt with all the different black and white fabrics I have.

Yahoo group items

The BQLPC yahoo group [British Quilters List Post Card] run a yearly Birthday post card exchange list and there are four birthdays in November including mine! These are the PC's I've made for the exchange.

PC to Inge in Berlin



PC to Avril in Twickenham




PC to Sue in Poole

The Stitch Specialist yahoo group occasionally have a sign up for a RAK [ Random Act of Kindness ] and I have just received a gift from Patsy in Texas.. thank you so much.


RAK from Patsy in Texas



Lone Star in Log Cabin Quilt

4 sets of strips in order

Using the 45degree angle on my ruler

4 sets of 8 cut strips

I have been working on my Lone Star in Log Cabin quilt this afternoon.
I started by choosing six black fabrics and one red that I would use twice.
Cut them into 1 3/4 inch strips the width of the fabric [42"] and lettered them A to G [A and G being Red].
From my little scribbled plan I needed the following strips:

1 x A ; 2 x B ; 3 x C ; 4 x D ; 3 x E ; 2 x F ; and 1 X G

Next I joined then in groups of four ABCD ; BCDE ; CDEF ; DEFG
Using my ruler I made the first cut at a 45 degree angle [ marked on most rulers] and then cut 1 3/4 inch strips eight times.
Keeping everything in order I joined the strips together carefully matching the seams.
The final piece of the puzzle was to attach the white squares and triangles. Four 7 1/2 inch squares. One square 11 3/16 inch cut on the diagonals to give me four triangles.
Everything went together fairly easily. My next move will be to border the Lone Star and work out the size of my Log Cabin blocks that will surround it.


Lone Star completed











New Project in the design stage

About two years ago I started saving black, white and red fabric with plans to make a new quilt for our bed. I now think I have enough fabric and I'm "in the mood" to start something new.

I have decided to make a Lone Star on point centre with log cabins surrounding it.
Having played about with rulers and paper I have decided on the star size and think I will make this first. I intend to use the strip method and will cut 1 3/4" strips.
Next I will decide on the log cabin size.. probably be 2" cut [ 1 1/2" finish ] strips. If I have my measurements right I will need about 72 full size log cabin blocks and 12 half size log cabins.

WATCH THIS SPACE!

Some of my fabrics for the new quilt.

Friday heading home

As the Land Rover was completed yesterday morning we went out for lunch together and then shopping. Managed to get the last of the Christmas gifts I needed, so decided to go home today.

It has been an interesting few days here in Yorkshire, a lot of mist and rain, but occasionally some nice bright days. Looks like today will be nice for driving home.

While I have had lots of free time I have planned lots of quilt, machine embroidery projects and cross stitch samplers I want to make, now to find the time when I get home and real life kicks in!

Thursday at the Old Police House

Chris relaxes

Wow what a game and score!

Looks like today may be our last here as the Land Rover is nearly completed.

Originally the mechanic  said he might need it for two weeks, but we hoped with Chris helping it might be finished in the week... Looks like it is only going to take three and a half days.



A little progress on my sampler



Last night when I collected Chris the mechanic, Paul, said for me to follow The Land Rover home with a bucket to pick up any bits that drop off!! I do hope he was joking after spending about £2500 on it.

Plan to spend the morning on my cross stitch. It is nowhere near finished.