Happy New Year!

Groan!  Yes, I know it is already nearing the end of January before I have gotten around to a Happy New Year post on my poor blog.  School holidays must have some kind of time-sucking vortex function, feels like it anyway.

I hope all my readers have enjoyed a peaceful and relaxing break over Christmas, or if not, at least nothing too stressful!  We have been pretty busy, doing the long-awaited exterior paintwork on our house.  Looks great, but not much time has been had for fun stamping stuff.  Luckily, I have managed to squeeze in a couple of crafting days masquerading as play-dates for my kids - Thanks to fellow demo friends Amy and Nicky for the inspired locations and great company.  I have taken some pics of what I made on those days, but still have quite a backlog from before Christmas to show you, so I'll get to that first :)

But, before anything paper-based, I feel compelled to show off my finished scrap quilt!  It's been a while in the making, given that I started it in the year 2000...  Here's the epic story.
When I was writing my science PhD thesis, I worked in Australia's biggest patchwork fabric shop for a mentally un-taxing income.  I've always sewn, having had a dressmaker mum, but I'd never made a quilt.  I figured that would be a good time and place to learn, and would provide a little light relief while writing.
Obviously, I haven't been working on it constantly, and the top was finished not long after my first child was born in 2001.  A while later, I added backing and batting, and basted it.  Then it sat, meanwhile I went back to work and then had child # 2, and did quite a few other things, like getting stuck into Stampin' Up!  I ummed and ahhed about the actual quilting, wanting to do it myself but not quite having the skills to do all that funky freemotion stuff.  Eventually, I just whizzed all over with nice straight lines of stitching. Phew!  Bundled away for a while longer.
Then, I thought I'd be brave and try some nice border patterns.  Every available different type of marking pencil/spray/chalk/paper pattern later, and quite a bit of unpicking, I've decided freemotion is something that I suck at.  So, it was decided at last to stick to simple, straight lines of stitching.  Decision made, and it was finished completely, bound and all, in a matter of the last few of days.  Did I mention that I stupidly decided to tackle 'something useful' like a king size bed cover for my first quilt?  No? (insert rolling eyes/facepalm smilie here).  I love it to bits, and am looking forward to dressing my bed with it, and passing it down to my kids as an heirloom one day.

 

It's very nice to have one of my "UFO"s (= Un Finished Object) done and dusted.  What do you think?