Whoooooo Hooooooo!

For anyone who doesn't have their mojo at the moment, I think it's at my house and by the way - I'm keeping it. 

I started this quilt in September with a huge amount of gusto and enthusiasm. I  stole the idea from Thea who was working on her own  hourglass quilt at the time.  I loved how hers was turning out . She managed to finish hers in November.  You know when you see a quilt and think "I have the perfect fabric for that in my stash " and cant wait to start? That's what happened to me.

Along the way I made a mistake and kind of gave up on this quilt and it lurked  in my unfinished pile ...and kept lurking .. and in the end it was thumbing it's nose at me and screaming "You're never going to finish me loser ".   It was in good company - there were plenty of other quilts there to keep it company. At one point they were all yelling at me like an out of control football crowd. 

But as part of my "I gotta finish my WIP's" vow I dragged it out last month and now it's finished. I was kinda hoping for a May finish but I'll take June. 

Awwwww pretty!

I'm in love with this quilt and it's staying right here. Miss P snaffled the jelly roll race quilt on Monday for her place so I have room! I'm open to suggestions for names. I'm so crap at giving my quilts names. 

I'm hoping for two more finishes in June. I have a gorgeous project lined up in my head to start in July if I can pull two finishes off this month. And maybe if I can finish some more stuff I can write a decent blog post again !

Cue the Twilight Zone Music

I feel like I'm living in an episode of the Twilight Zone this week. 

On Thursday I managed to go to work with my undies on inside out and wore them like that all day without even noticing. I guess I should be grateful I didn't discover I'd gone to work commando.

On Friday my Dad ended up in hospital and it wasn't even anyone's birthday. He's OK now but I'm starting to suspect his forays into hospital are some weird pensioner plot to save money on his home grocery bill.

Saturday I discovered we had run out of tissues so I'm using toilet paper to blow my nose until Wednesday because I'm too lazy to go to the shops. We NEVER run out of tissues. Normally I have 43 boxes in my tissue place stash right next to no less than 89 toilet rolls in case there's a world toilet paper shortage, or a flu pandemic.  


On Saturday I managed to double delete my entire email inbox and I have no idea how I did it. It's like I had an electrical force field around me that sucked all the emails into the ether.  So if you emailed me in the 24 hours between Friday and Saturday and I haven't responded, I'm not being rude, some dumb arse deleted my emails. 

I spent some time Saturday morning pondering the fickle nature of life, and  decided to just go with the flow. If the universe wants to chuck weirdness at me I'm not going to fight it - I'm going to go right along with it. 

And so, I started making a quilt back for a quilt front that I hadn't even started yet because I'm one wild and crazy girl. 


And on Saturday night I discovered I am a mere 1.5 metres short of being able to finish the back and make my binding, so the universe really did have the last laugh. Not to be deterred, I ordered extra fabric online to finish it up and I'm showing what I've done anyway. 

Sunday dawned looking particularly foul so it was a good day to stay inside in my pyjamas (any excuse will do)  

 I cut 324 of these little blighters.

and even managed to get some of them sewn together into  a couple of rows

I also made a big run at my Selvage String blocks this weekend,  prompted in part by this pile of goodness sent to me by Sue at Craft The Final Frontier Thank you Sue. 

By the way my "big run " was 10 whole blocks. I better get a wriggle on because I'm planning to finish this quilt by the end of the month and at this stage I still have 96 blocks to make. 

After a while I got bored with that and went and tortured my oven . Mr. P got banana bread...

and I braved making whoopie pies for the first time since my oven was resurrected.

Finally!  Woopie Pies that don't look like pancakes or have the consistency of Chinese throwing stars. 

I've been meaning to show this pork belly off for about two weeks.  I've cooked pork about three times in my life and this was one of them. I think I'll be cooking it again because it was DELICIOUS! And it looks pretty too-like something out of a food magazine.

Last but not least, I'm at the "finishing the binding" stage for the Hourglass quilt. 

I started that tonight while I watched Downton Abbey. I wonder if I can pull off three quilt finishes for June? 

I hope your weekend has been fabulous. Mine was nowhere near long enough !

It hasn't all been Bella Napping

I stayed in my pyjamas all day Saturday (and Sunday) which made it even easier to have my daily Nanna nap. Sometimes I wonder how I last a whole day at work, in clothes fit for public consumption without falling asleep at my desk. 

On Thursday morning I finished the tumbler cushion and it went off to it's new home as a birthday gift for one of my favourite people. I really like the finish on this and I adore that fabric collection. It's the same fabric I'm making my grandmother's flower garden quilt out of. I know I did good because I made the birthday girl cry. Often that happens because I'm actually really sarcastic in real life but this time it was because I wasn't. I like to keep people on their toes. 

Saturday night ,because I don't have any semblance of a life outside of sewing, napping or working , I decided to stop ignoring the voices in my head that were telling me to make a colour wheel quilt .Of course I had to do it MY way so I made a colour bar instead.

And now the secret is out. The colour bar goes with this. An idea that I kind of , sort of, stole from Little Miss Sunshine from a conversation we had last week. I would like to point out that stealing ideas is the highest form of flattery. 

And this past week the top for the Contrary HST quilt got finished and basted. 

I started quilting but didn't get far before that went in the too hard basket. I decided to eat chocolate instead.  It's a damn shame that's not an Olympic Sport. 

Oh and Susan is encouraging me to start another quilt by sending me gorgeous patterns. Pop on over here to see what might be coming to a computer screen near you soon. I have the perfect fabric for this.Naturally. 

I'm linking on up to Kate's 15 minute challenge. I'm pretty chuffed at what's been rolling out of my sewing room this week and who knows how long it'll last! 

This is my 499th post so whatever pearl of wisdom pops out of my blog next is the big 500. Who would have thought I'd have so much to say?

Cue the Rocky Theme Music

This whole weekend has reeked of ground hog day. I've been working on WIPS. The same ones I've been working on since about 1983.

But by this afternoon , I was feeling like this.

Because I can move mountains of unfinished projects when I put my mind to it. 

I whipped up 4 Farmers Wife Blocks which gives me a grand total of 8. I keep reminding myself it's not a race. (and wondering why no matter how carefully I cut and sew I end up with blocks anywhere from 6-7 inches when I'm finished) 

I knocked off  the last 20 Hourglass Blocks. I was doing the happy dance and fist pumping the air. I'm going to be so glad when this quilt is done because I cant wait to see how it looks!

And here's the finished pile. All 64 of them. 

I finished the last of the Rainbow Log cabin Blocks too...

And laid them out so I can sew the top this week ...Scrappy and bright really makes me happy. I LOVE the way this quilt looks. 

My flower garden hexagons got a workout  after being neglected for about two months.  3 more done and another almost finished. I still have 36 to go....Fortunately, I'm not in a hurry.

Chocolate tarts rose like a phoenix from the ashes. This was meant to be chocolate fudge but I screwed it up so badly at the heating condensed milk stage that  I had to improvise so as not to waste 400 grams (that's almost a pound ) of very nice dark chocolate. The tarts taste divine and it just wouldn't be right if I didn't manage to mess it up somehow. Just one question? Why does my pastry always end up looking like it has leprosy? 

So I'm a happy camper ...I can finally see some progress and light at the end of the tunnel with projects that have been lurking forever , and I'm enjoying sucking the chocolate filling out of those tart cases. I'd call that a successful weekend.