Looking back on 2016

This year, sewing has had to take a back seat and so I knew there wouldn’t be a great deal to show for my end of year round up. As you can see, quilts are conspicuous by their absence though I have two quilt tops waiting to be quilted and bound for Project Linus, but they will appear in next year’s finishes. This year’s sewing has been mainly bags and small quick projects, but I am pleased to have finished the blocks for the Morris Hexathon and hope to have this quilt finished early next year.

    

Sadly I no longer have “Not Our Cat” to be a furry pattern weight and help me with my sewing. Leukaemia and old age took its toll and his owners (our neighbours), knowing how much time he spent with us, kindly came over to tell us so that we were not left wondering what had happened to him. 

However, before he went he started training an understudy and so I now have “Not Our Cat 2” (from the same neighbours!) helping me pick fabrics and ensuring that all future projects will still have the black fur seal of approval.

 

 

 

Planning for next year, I want to continue to try to use stash (the cotton sheets and incubator covers I made this year were great stash busters), to finish the two Project Linus quilts and my Morris Hexathon quilt, and to find a new EPP block a month/week project. Though I think my first challenge for 2017 will be to try to resist the bargains in the sales that have now started.

P is for Pin

Usually when I am laying out blocks for a quilt I use sticky labels to keep the blocks in order, but these can come unstuck and are not reusable. In preparation for the Morris Hexathon quilt, I bought some flower-headed pins and some alphabet beads and spent an evening making a set of alphabet pins. The beads were stuck on the pins using Gutermann HT2 glue applied with a cocktail stick and I resisted the temptation to spell out rude words as I stabbed the pins into the ironing board to dry.

As I has some beads left over, I made a few more sets and took them along to the Christmas meeting of the Leeds MQG to contribute to the festivities.

Thankfully now I have run out of some letters otherwise I think I would still be making these. Though I now need to find a use for alphabet beads with no letters H, V or S.