Moments that Mattered in 2013

When I read that Lloyds Bank were sponsoring a competition to find out moments that mattered my initial instinct was that I wouldn’t be able to enter as 2013 had just been pretty awful and I would rather just move on to 2014 . Obviously that was the most ridiculous response as a mere couple of seconds thought put a much more positive spin on things.

To me moments that matter could be either something that leaves a deep impact on you so you remember them for the rest of your life or something that seems pretty insignificant at the time but changes your life completely.

Back in March my husband was hospitalised and came very close to being no more. The moment that really mattered in this case was not the hospital experience but my darling hubby putting two fingers up to St Peter, yelling yahoo sucks and treating it as a fresh start. 

The next moment that mattered to me in 2013 was my little boy starting at big school! The feeling of cutting the apron strings is a bit bizarre but he settled in so quickly that it was hard to feel sad for too long. I have to stop feeling sad about each landmark event in the children’s lives but I am sure I just have to blink and they will be all grown up. Hubby has pointed out that they are unlikely to be able to afford to move out at 18 though, maybe now is the time to start saving up for their deposits!

My personal moment that mattered was I got my sewing mojo back! To some it might not be a big thing but for me sewing is a combination between a creative outlet and meditation. I really missed the urge to stitch and now I am ready to start creating again.

Happy (very late) New Year

Ok, I am exactly a month late to make that statement but I have been run off my feet and only just had two minutes to blog. We went up to visit hubby's family last week to deliver Christmas pressies (my father-in-law likes to do Christmas a month late, a remnant of the pub days) and I madly decided to finish the quilt that I had started two years ago.

As someone who has been sewing since she was tiny I have tried my hand at most forms. I’ve tried toy making to dressmaking to upholstery but I had never seen the point of cutting up perfectly good bits of fabric into tiny little bits only to sew them back up again. However, my Mother-in-law had been feeling quite down and missing my husband (she lives over four hours away) so I thought a quilt would be something lovely to make her as it could give her a hug any time she wanted it.

I spent quite a while reading what I could about the art of patchwork, had some fun fabric shopping and eventually chose a range by Moda called Park Avenue. It had a lovely vintage feel and was in a colour range that suited my MIL down to a tee. From what I read it is best to select a table runner or baby quilt as your first project so not to overwhelm yourself but being me I decided starting on a king size quilt was the way to go.

I chose a week that the children were staying down with their grandparents and sat down to make the quilt. The most surprising thing was just how long it took to cut all the pieces out! I didn’t even manage to get to the sewing machine as it took a whole day just to prepare the fabric. 

The rest of the week was spent taking these 

to this.

Then I put it away. I told myself I didn’t have the time and no cash to buy the wadding, binding and backing but to be honest I was a bit overwhelmed (for that read scared) at the thought of quilting the thing.

Fast forward a few years and I realised it was a now or never thing and gave myself a fortnight to finish piecing the top and finishing the whole quilt off. I will skip the basting of the quilt sandwich part as this is too traumatic to think about and skip straight to the bit I was dreading – the actual quilting!

I think the time pressure forced me to just going for it and to my surprise I loved it. I started off by using my walking foot to quilt straight lines on the window part of the quilt but I made the rooky mistake of making the gap between the lines far too narrow and it was taking me forever. After literally days of straight line stitching I had my fill of it so I dropped the feed dogs, changed my foot and began to meander. I was surprised at how quick it was and managed to fill all the blank space in a matter of hours. I think the free motion quilting I produced was far too dense (I got through over a km of thread) but I loved it. I managed to bind and label the quilt without too much of an ordeal and had the quilt ready with an hour’s worth of sewing time to spare!

 The Quilt in it's new home

My MIL loved the quilt and I am hooked. Quilt number two is in the planning already, maybe there is something in this fabric hacking!