Pyjama Party Sunday

I've spent much of my week at various times on my hands and knees hand scrubbing every single inch of floor grout in my house. Real friends would have warned me when I excitedly talked about laying white tile last year when we renovated how much of a bitch that was going to be to keep clean. In fact real friends would have been here helping me clean the grout. I had planned to clean the grout in April and got as far as buying the cleaner and then ignored it until August.  I finally finished on Saturday with a marathon scrub of the kitchen and dining room. Nobody is allowed to walk on it. We've been stuck in the lounge room for the last 24 hours and I'm making Mr. P take a whizz out the front door so he doesn't have to use the hallway to get to the toilet. Cleaning grout has to be one of the worst household jobs ever. I dont plan on doing it any more often than I have to.

Yesterday I got all fired up about the idea of making a quilted purse from this super easy looking tutorial over at Kat's. Call it avoidance of the Flying Dutchman quilt if you like but I got me a hankering to have a pretty purse and by golly I was going to make one. And it was going to be the best darn purse in the history of purses.

Most of you know I have bag-o-phobia.  Some people are scared of spiders, or Friday the 13th , or murderers. I am scared of bags. Every single time I  make one I screw it up somehow. Either the handles disappear inside the lining at the turning stage or something crucial doesn't line up when I pull it right side out no matter how carefully I cut and sew and follow instructions. This time I was feeling confident and full of girl power. And it all went swimmingly  until I had to do the turning right side out part which appears to be my Waterloo.

In my first attempt -I sewed the entire top shut . It's pretty hard to turn a bag right side out when you do that. In my own defence I was completely surprised when this occurred since in my mind  I thought I was genuinely  following the instructions. Yes - I'm a complete dumbarse. I unpicked and decided to try again. 

In my second attempt (during which I sent Mr. P to the shops because he was looking a little bit deer in the headlights after my first attempt) the flap disappeared into the bag and decided it wouldn't re-appear without more unpicking . Which I dutifully did accompanied by some swearing. I'm not going to lie- I did contemplate using it as a flapless pouch and pretending that's the way it was designed.  

It was at this point I became paralysed by fear and  decided to go away and make cupcakes because sometimes they actually turn out and because I  felt like having a little whiny self pitying cry about being the only person in the universe that cant master basic bag making.

The cupcakes made me feel better so I ate 4 of them. 

I also re-upholstered the computer room chairs. I stripped the old upholstery off, bleached it , tea dyed it and then hated how it looked  so one emergency trip to Spotlight later  this is what I ended up with. 

I got some more Tis The Season stitchery blocks done. How pissed off does the snowman on the left look? 

I did manage to drag up the enthusiasm to actually cut the backing for the Flying Dutchman quilt and that's as far as I got. That deadline is getting closer and closer and eventually I'll be forced to do something to finish it. Or hand my nephew a pile of fabric that vaguely resembles a quilt.  He could super glue it together. It'll be character building.

Oh and that bag? I went back and kicked it's arse after my cupcake lunch. It's amazing what you can do with a staple gun and spit.

It seems I can make bags after all. 

I'm linking up to Little Miss Sunshine's Pyjama Party Sunday. Click the link below for a squizz at what she got up to this weekend.

P.S. I feel like I'm dying. Someone has generously given me a cold and accompanying fever. I'm just hoping it isn't flu but I seriously doubt I'm going to be up bright eyed and bushy tailed for work in 9 hours.