Singing Kitty!!

As you may remember we have two lovely Tonkinese boys:

Tonkinese are a breed in their own right though they started off as a Siamese/Burmese cross. They have huge personalities and naturally as lovers of such characters we are suckers for all things feline.

One of my favourite adverts at the moment is the one for Three with the fab singing cat Bronte who sits in her little owners bicycle basket belting out "We Built this City On Rock And Roll":

I was delighted when I was asked to review an iPhone 5S case resplendent with Bronte's cute face:

The case is really nice quality, fits my phone perfectly and does not interfere with the signal - I had an issue with my old case causing the signal to drop out - I've had much better coverage since swapping to my new case.

If you haven't seen Bronte doing her thing you can check her out at #SingItKitty

Do beware though, every time I see the ad I can't stop singing "We Built This City" for a week #earworm!!

Hugs,

S x

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My Biggest Sewing Project Yet - A Ta Dah!!

As soon as I learned to quilt I knew I wanted to make a king size quilt for our bed. I was a little daunted with the size of the task and so it's little wonder that this Ta Dah has been a year (or more?) in coming:

I began by starting to collect half metres of fabrics I liked. Lots of Cath Kidston-esque prints from Sew La La (she has a lovely selection of really well priced cotton prints) and a smattering of Tanya Whelan and Tilda:

After lovingly gazing at my growing stash for a few weeks I began to cut the squares. I wanted just simple 6" squares to let the prints do the talking. 324 of them in all.

I spent many afternoons sewing them into nine square blocks and after I had done that I ran out of steam and shelved the project for a good few months!!

A few weeks ago I came back to it - I had decided early on to use the quilt-as-you-go method, I really hate the quilting part mostly because it's just so tricky to manage anything other than a pretty small quilt with a domestic sewing machine.

I used white sheets cut into squares for the backing - sandwiching cotton batting between each nine patch and plain white square. I then quilted each 6" square on the block 1/4" in from the seam. Thirty six blocks took me several happy afternoons in the cabin.

(My industriousness was halted temporarily when I decided I needed to get my sewing machine serviced - I was spending the same about of time detangling and retreading as quilting and so I contacted the manufacturer Silver Viscount and they advised me that they could service it.

They provided a fab service, collecting, servicing and delivering my machine for £50 and taking less than a week. After it's service my machine is running much better).

There are a couple of ways to quilt-as-you-go - I used this method. I used very narrow sashing and trimmed the seam allowance to match and so there are no gaps without batting or ridges and you really wouldn't know it hadn't been quilted all in one go.

One of the other advantages of this method is you can buy your batting as you go. I wanted cotton batting and it cost £60 but because I bought it a couple of metres at a time I hardly noticed the outlay.

An evening and afternoon saw the binding hand sewn on and then it was All Done!!

I decided with all the patterns on the quilt then something a bit more plain was in order so at the weekend I made a couple of raspberry cushions to replace the floral ones we had:

It's had a wash and I haven't pressed it as I like the crinkly, vintagey look (the big creases will drop out in a few days).

All in all I'm very pleased with it though will be waiting awhile before accepting any "orders" from certain members of the family!!

Hugs,

S x

 

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Well Hello There....

I really don't know where this year is going - it's just flying by.

I meant to blog much more regularly this year and here we are, almost a third of the way through the year with just a handful of posts done.

So what have we been up to?

In early February I spent a lovely day with my dear friend Ashley from Country Rose at Unravel Knitting Festival - there were some really lovely yarns to tempt us with:

I was quite restrained on the shopping front, just buying a few FQ's and trim and a lovely beaded scarf knitting kit:

We had a lovely girly, yarny day together and we even met a celebrity!! Lynda from The Great British Sewing Bee!! She is the mother of Sarah from Crafts From The Cwtch who we know via Instagram. I was a bit star struck to meet Lynda as I love the Sewing Bee!! She is really lovely and so I am most definitely TeamLynda now!!:

I'd been inspired by the Sewing Bee to make the dress I'm wearing in the photo above, I was quite pleased with how it turned out:

In other news I've had shingles. This was the third time, I had it when I was little and then just after W was born in 2000. Each time just a little patch on the bridge of my nose which has been very itchy and unsightly but thankfully not painful. A bit of antiviral cream and it's cleared up thank goodness.

We're thoroughly enjoying the wonderful sunshine we have had these last couple of weeks - it really lifts the spirits....

Pop back tomorrow for a bit of a Ta Dah!!....

Hugs,

S x

 

 

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