A not very well thought out baby quilt.

Baby quilt... not two words I thought I'd be writing on my blog. Friends who I have known since school days (I finished senior in 1978!) are to be grandparents hopefully by the end of this month. The baby's parents are the indie band members from The Grates. They have a little café called Southside Tearooms conveniently up the road... and we meet up there often. I have yet to have a bad coffee there...

Anyway, the baby shower was yesterday and I had some gifts; a new one and three preloved ones that were a great hit 10 years ago... they asked for used things especially. I also decided to make a quilt out of a remnant piece of quilting cotton I bought a few months ago.... it is so soft and the pictures are so cute. So here's the not very well thought out part.... I bought some cotton batting from Trad's. I left it doubled up and then pinned the backing fabric, batting and the quilting cotton together. I sewed white thread on the dotted lines on the quilting cotton (still classed as quilting right? right??). Very simple.. if I had more time (i.e. more thought put into it) I would have like to sew around the trucks. After a row or stitching that was difficult to push through I changed the length of the stitch to 3mm and then it was much quicker.

I didn't think about binding it... I've never thought about quilting at all as I think the little pieces

would drive me crazy but I do appreciate the thought put into them and the time obviously. Thoughts however do not bind a quilt.

This was the selvage cut off the edge of the quilting fabric.. I used this to make some non bias binding and put it on the short edge. This was tricky as half of it was white and the other half was blue but cut roughly as I didn't know I was going to need it (the not well thought out part again) and so on some bits I only had about 2mm to sew down. I went slowly and did it.

The next part was the long edge. I didn't have enough fabric to cut binding (nor the time) but I decided to roll the extra width from the back to the front and make it self binded (new word/term?). As you can see above, it is also the selvage but had a nice rib pattern on it so a little different. This fabric was $2 per metre stretch cotton sateen from East Coast Fabrics from my stash. I really like it but realised it would probably be a bit much in a dress and now I have just enough for a straight skirt, I think.

The photo above shows the blue binding (the white stitching is deliberate and goes with the white stitching of the 'quilting'). It also shows how I didn't really think about how the corners get finished till too late so they are not mitred just raw!

This is the underside with more poorly executed corners, but the blue looks a nice contrast with the pink, green and yellow. All in all I am pretty happy with it. Patience was thrilled with it and at first didn't believe I had made it and asked to see the label as a joke, but I did put a label on the underside and showed her.. then she believed me.

When I was half way through making the quilt I also made a pavlova, my new go to dessert. I have always been a bit shy of making pavlovas but I found a great recipe and they work out perfectly every time. I'll put that in the next post.

Paris, river cruise 2022 - photo bomb!

(this post has been in my drafts since July 2022 due to life circumstances. I'm just going to write just a little and then just show some photos) My friend worked on a Superyacht for many years and through this connection was offered a friends and family deal on a river cruise in Europe. It was a deal too good to miss even though it wouldn't have been a first choice for me for a holiday. She had done this trip before but during the winter taking in the Christmas markets. We were going in June 2022. We decided to have 5 nights in Paris (where I'd been 5 times before) and 2 nights in Amsterdam where my friend lived for 2 years in her youth. We flew into Frankfurt... not because we wanted to but because these were the only flights we could get but we worked with it. Remember great deal! So ok, a short (5hr), fast ride on the ICE/TGV trains got us to Paris eventually (one was late which missed the connection to the earlier TGV but there was one a bit after). We knew that w

YFASMA - Fabric shopping in Athens

I promised this post in March! Fabrics from Euro1 per metre! I didn't buy anything in this shop but there was some lovely fabrics. I did buy the green and pink one above on the right. A satin finish rayon. It is lovely. There was a lot of lovely fabrics in this shop. It wasn't cheap Euro 8 p.m. but I didn't have a lot of room in my bag and I wanted something I would really love. I also didn't buy anything in Paris this time. I did buy the fabric for a table cloth just across the way from this shop. I also bought some orange/white weave linen fabric for Euro 4 p.m. at another shop, which I think I'll make some summer trousers with. As I was going to the airport, I saw this dress on the platform and I really liked it. Very easy to do too, I went to the Benaki Museum while in Athens. There is actually 2 locations. In this one I saw lots of Greek and Cypriot cultural crafts. This was a bridal bed in Crete. There was lots of clothing, embroidery and gold jewellery.

The saddest dress, then a few more.

Well hello. It's been a while. It was 8 months from the last post to the previous one to that and it's a bit longer this time. The last day I wrote was 10 Jul 2021. On 12 July my son and I were finally seeing Tim Minchin after booking it before we went to Europe at the end of 2019. It was going to be April 2020, but changed a few times and although it was a school night (year 12 for Alex) we went for dinner and sat in the show. My Mum had gone to hospital that morning and my sister was still at the hospital with her. Just after interval I got a message on my phone, "get to the hospital now". So we raced out and to the hospital where. although it was a lockdown and no visitors allowed, all 10 of us were allowed to see Mum as she was end of life. I won't go into the whole thing but Mum didn't die that night, but because of lockdown, we were not allowed to go and see her until a week and a half later when we were allowed just to discuss palliative care. By the n

Sew Darn Tired

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