I will conquer you Improv...

I've been improving!  OK, so it's a very gentle kind of improving.  Sort of following a tutorial improving.  But improving is improving.  And I'm not talking about improving as in improving, I'm actually saying improving.

This cushion is made following Mod Mosaic, a free tutorial by Oh Fransson!  It's a great wonkilicious tutorial, though I don't do wonk very well, as witnessed by the minimum wonkiness above.

this gigantic cushion was made for Jacob, to go with his quilt, so uses the same Scoot fabrics with white.  I talked about the making of this cushion a few weeks ago, saying I was going to use a 20" cushion insert and wanted it to be snug, so had sewn it to 21".  Good job I did, when I went to buy the insert, I discovered The Range doesn't sell 20" ones, I had to go for a 22" instead.

I hand quilting inside each piece with Perle 8, wonkily and improvly.

and backed it with whatever I had to hand!  Slight miscalculation on the backing front - the whiter fabric was supposed to go over the zig-zag fabric.  I can't think in 3d.

Baby blanket done, baby quilt getting there

Evening ladies.  I planned to write this post yesterday, then earlier today but work has been crazy busy, I've been staying so late I'm days behind on blog reading and emails so please forgive me, I'm not ignoring anyone.

I think I've mentioned once or twice (or hundreds of times) that my only brother is about to have his first child, so I've been frantically working away.  I managed to get the baby blanket finished on Tuesday and posted off yesterday.  Want to see?

I used a V-stitch for the main part of the blanket, just judging the width and length, then I finished it off with the same shell border I used for this blanket.

I couldn't get brown satin ribbon like on the previous blanket, but as I knew that my nephew will be a nephew, I went for blue.  It took ages to get it all in place!

Since I finished that, I've been hard at work on his quilt.  Hand quilting has commenced and I LOVE it.  I thought it would be laborious and tedious, but it's not, I love it!

I'm quilting it in perle cotton in 4 different shades and enjoying every stitch.  When he arrives, I wont be able to go down to see him until the weekend as my brother lives about 3 hours away.  He's due tomorrow so if he's on time, I'm going to be in trouble as I've still got 30 squares to go, then the binding to make and sew on.  If he's born next week, I might be in luck!

glasses cases

Good evening ladies!  First of all, a very happy Christmas / Channukah / Saturday to you all!

It's 6pm on Christmas eve here, I finally finished Christmas at 4, then went to visit my aunty before coming home for a quick blog catch up then some baked camembert in front of the TV with Mr CA.  The relief to have everything finished!  I few items got removed from my list, but I got most things done.

This morning I finished sewing up the glasses cases I'd been working on. I started this weeks ago.  One for my mum, one for the aunty I visited today, one for my dad and one for my FIL.  Here's the fabrics I started with.  Nope, sorry, can't find the photo.  It was here, but guess what?  Blogger stole my post!  I'd copied and pasted it into Word before trying to publish it, but Word stole the photos!!

I started embroidering the pink one.

But it wasn't working so I scrapped it and started again.  This is the red one - taken from a Grace layer cake.  I cut the first panel funny, out of the centre of the fabric (?!) so had to make the other side different.  I hand quilted around the flowers in a gold thread that made me want to scream, but I love the effect! This is my first time hand quilting, so there's another LANT!

I did the same on two green panels from the Grace layer cake.  I'd fused fusible fleece to the rear before starting and I love the effect.

I think I showed you the embroidered one the other day and I apparently didn't take a photo of the fourth, so here they are all sewn up.

This is for my FIL and is cross stitched using soluble canvas (another LANT!), I used a pattern from Cross Stitch Cards & Keepsakes.

My aunty's all sewn up.  I'd accidentally cut one of the panels too small - you can see it on the picture above, and no way was I starting again after I'd done all that hand quilting, but it meant it was really hard to sew up as the foot has to go over the front, back, lining and the two sleeves. I ended up hand sewing it.

My mum's didn't present any problems!

And I'm still not happy with the speech bubble on this one, but it's Christmas Eve so I'm not going to sweat it!

I finished a load of presents off yesterday but I don't have photos.  I did 18 sets of cookies in jar mixes, including patterned paper labels and lids, also a set of 6 candles in glass tumblers.  I also made two sets of Reinbeer, found via Pinterest here.

But only took one, really crap photo!  FIL's are random beers, my dad's are special beers from a local micro brewery.  My dad is Chairman of Nottingham CAMRA and real ale is very important to him!

I made a load of air-drying clay tags (LANT 3!), stamped with the names of the recipients, and once again took a really shoddy photo.

And finally I crocheted my brother a bath scrubby alien from this free pattern.  Yes, my brother is 36, not 6, but he'll love it!  I was going to make them for the dads too, but that can wait until father's day.  love the base:

Oh, you can see my hand in the window!  What you can't see is that my eczema has found a whole new lease of life and cracks have formed on my hands.  They bleed.  It's very painful. Damn you eczema. 

Anyway, that's Christmas done.  I don't know when I'll be back, but I suspect it will be pretty soon, for blog reading, if not posting as I'm not sure I'll have anything to post about!  Merry Christmas!