15 Minutes with Kate

There hasn't been a huge amount of sewing going on round here since I'm currently playing "Let's do the annual Pyjamas house cleanout". That involves going through every single room in the house and taking everything out of cupboards, drawers and wardrobes and freecycling or chucking out things we don't need. I get to ask myself burning questions such as "Why am I keeping plumbing hoses for a washing machine I haven't had since 2001?" and "Holy Cow how can one person have so much underwear?".

But occasionally a gal needs to take a break from organising and when that urge hits I head for the sewing room. I spent some of Sunday cleaning out my scrap bins. There was some real crap in there. I got really serious and went through every single scrap and "retired" a lot of stuff I am never going to use. Ugly stuff. And now I have about half the scraps I used to have but it's all use-able.

Playing with my scraps inspired me . There has been a lot of scrappy talk in the Blogishphere lately and so I jumped on the bandwagon and started making blocks for a quilt. Because goodness knows I dont have enough unfinished quilts lurking round here that I could be working on. I need another project. 

 I made a couple of cards from scraps while I was at it. 

Remember the zebra cushion that pissed me off beyond belief a week ago? I dragged that out of the rubbish bin and finished it. My first finish for 2012 ! Now it needs a mate because it looks lonely. 

 I made some more selvage blocks . 

And since I've been fairly slow in the sewing department lately I should probably make some goals for this week so I'm aiming to :

Work on the binding for the Merry Go Round Quilt 

Finish Christmas Bunting 

Finish another Zebra Cushion 

Make another 20 selvage blocks 

I'm linking up to Kate's 15 minutes challenge this week. Pop on over and have a look at what other participants have been up to. Thanks for hosting Kate!

May the Craft be with you. 

The 15 minute Challenge with Kate

I mentioned I've been in a bit of a quilting funk lately. I've been ignoring the fact I made a public declaration to have 6 quilts finished before the end of the year. My uber cool quilting guru is going to do a custom job on the Dresden quilt and informed me last week that she can't do that until January so the number has been down graded to 5. At this point it could be one and I'd still be doubtful of a finish!

Sadly my quilting mojo seems to have been lost under a pile of quick to finish projects over the last month. And the trend continued this week. I keep telling myself I'll get those quilts. Plenty of time . 45 days to finish 5 quilts is eminently do-able. Right? Stop rolling round on the floor laughing please - it hurts my feelings . True blog buddies would buy into my fantasy and pretend that my dreams are possible.  

This week I played with a handbag 

I finished 5 selvage blocks (I haven't squared three of them up yet but lets not spilt hairs )

I made a  sunglasses case for my friend , Nat. 

And I did two more hand stitched hexie flowers for a quilt that doesn't have a time frame for a finish attached to it (But it was quilt related so I was kinda proud of myself !)

By Saturday I was sick of my own procrastination so I loudly announced to Mr. P I was going to work on the Merry Go Round quilt. And then a friend called with her own quilting emergency so my afternoon was taken up with helping her sort that out. Epic fail on getting any MGR done!

Sunday dawned bringing new resolve. I unplugged the phone, turned my front door "Welcome" sign to "Go Away " and planned to get busy. 

You know those moments we all have where you think you calculated your yardage wrong and you don't have enough to get what you need out of what you have? I had a moment like that making the final 7 blocks for this quilt. Thankfully as so often happens- since I am a maths idiot - I was wrong. 

Finished! I was hearing trumpets and angels at this point. Until I realised all those blocks had to be sewn into 14 individual rows . But I slogged on and got 10 of them done. 

The challenge for this week will be to sew them into a quilt top where the seams actually match up. Pop on over to Kate's for a look at other 15 minutes of fame. 

The 15 minute Challenge with Kate

Holidays and a lack of crafting generally have meant I've been absent from Kate's challenge for a couple of weeks. I could have linked up but you would have been  reading a post titled "15 minute challenge with Kate" that was completely blank.  

I haven't been feeling the quilty love lately, however this Friday has been set aside as "Major Quilting Day" so I can make some progress on all of the projects sitting here poking their tongues out at me and whispering "There's no way you're going to finish us by the end of the year". Bastards- I hate it when craft taunts me.

Two quilts made their way to the professional quilter this week so I'm counting that as progress simply because I had to touch them to put them in the car. That's how desperate things are. But while quilts haven't been on the agenda, a number of other little  projects have been completed. Sometimes I have the attention span of a gold fish so fast and easy is good. 

4 paper pieced hexagon flowers - done!

I made myself a new case for my sunglasses using the cut up an old tape measure method for the closure at the top. Thanks Annie for the heads up on this- it's brilliant and I didn't poke my own eyeball out with sharp tape measure pieces in the process. Always a bonus.

The love of my life (my Ipad) got a cover.

I made making travel tissue holders. Thanks Erin. They are easy.

I got around to changing the cruddy old quilting blocks that I had in these frames to things that reflect my current loves. 

And I downloaded and printed every cute thank you card and Christmas gift tag available for free on the internet. Thank you various designers and creative people for making these available to people like me that cant design their own cute cards.


I think my period of  craftitis absentitis had officially ended. 

I wanted to send a shout out to the glorious Char at Cloth Stitched  who sent me a squishy parcel last week containing these beautiful goodies-just because she is amazing and while I had 8 million metres of the blue fabric in that design I didn't have a skerrick of pink. I really do have amazing blog friends. Thankyou!

To see more amazing people and marvel at their creative work pop on over to Kate's to oooh and ahhh.