On a roll!

Wow, two completed projects in two days, I'm on fire baby! Although, my husband calls it procrastinating from the task of making my custom order king size chenille quilt, two pillowcases and two european pillowcases. I call it "prep". Just needed to check the size of squares would work for the euro. Me, a procrastinator, I think not.

One of those days....

This morning I woke up and decided I was going to make this little cushion. I have a huge custom order quilt and pillowcases to make over the next couple of weeks and thought I wanted a nice little project to get me back in the groove. You see, it's been quite a while since I have actually sewn something. I realised today when looking for my safety pins and found them in the tin I took to the handmade expo in November, that it has been that long since I made a quilt. Whoa.



After lots of swearing, calls out to my crafty friends, (thank you sooo much Marg!) broken feed dogs (fixed by my handy Mister!), and countless cups of coffee, my little cushion was born. Phew. Now you can all bask in her glory (just don't look too closely at her dodgy stitching!). I think I now need a lie down!

Quilters, help me!!!

Last year some time I had a little play with free motion quilting, and it worked perfectly, very first go. I am trying (desperately!) to do it again and it is just not working! I don't remember doing anything particularly special, (darning foot, drop feed dogs, set stitch length to zero) so I am at a loss to know what I am doing wrong now. The thread at the back keeps bunching up like this,


no matter whether I lessen the tension, or tighten it. The machine has just had a service and everything else is running fabulously, obviously I am the one at fault. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, this is doing my head in!!

The sell off continues...

I almost can't believe I've put this baby up for sale. I did have grand ideas of doing her up and actually making a quilt or two with her, but after years of her gathering dust, I think it's time to part ways. Sigh.

Friday French Favourites

I'm just going to leave this picture here of the first tarte aux framboises that I had in France (Monte Carlo to be exact), and let it speak for itself.



Friday French Favourites.

Friday French Favourites

Wow, this seems to be all I can manage to blog over here lately! I did just pick up my sewing machine from her little tune up yesterday, so hopefully that will help get me motivated to actually craft something!

Anyway, Friday French Favourites! Today I want to show you another one of my favourite little spots we visited while in France, the Moulin de Fourges. Before we left for France we had booked a day trip that did Monet's garden in Giverny in the morning and the Palace of Versailles in the afternoon, with lunch included. I'm imagining a little pit stop at some roadhouse type thing and then we pull up to this pretty much in the middle of nowhere.



It was just beautiful. They have taken this old mill and turned it into a restaurant and we all sat down to a gorgeous three course lunch, with the wine positively flowing! It really was a very welcome surprise.










I would highly recommend doing those day trip things when visiting somewhere new, you never know what sort of places they will take you to!

Friday French Favourites

Friday French Favourites again!

Today is that iconic grand lady herself, la Tour Eiffel! I came across some gorgeous old prints on flickr from 1900 which are just fabulous. Enjoy!








And a final one of Mum and I.



Au revoir!

Cats...

What is with cats and freshly made beds?!

And in other news, I'm taking part in a little 30 day photo challenge over on my photography blog if you're interested in that sort of thing. Thought it might help get me back in some kind of blogging rhythm. Day 1 is a self portrait, eeek!