Crafting together

Little Miss' sewing machine arrived as promised .  The company I used have been excellent when I bought both my and Little Miss' machines and both times we got great freebies too.

Monday...

Well sweetheart arrived home and I cannot tell you in words just how happy she was and kept hugging and kissing us until we yelled "stop!!" giggling of course.  She asked "why did you do this for me?", the simple reply "because we love you sweetheart" and for a second I thought she was going to cry.  Anyway we set about setting the machine up and it was easy and soon she was sewing away.  Her first project a pin cushion is coming along.

The freebies were a large packet of sewing scissors

and 50 large spoils of thread

I was very impressed .

I am quite happy for her to use my

machine too as it has some

fancy stitches

which her's doesn't and she 

seems very safe using both.

Well Imogen was a brat!  Two nights little sleep, yesterday I even had a mid morning nap on the settee I was so tired. Thankfully a check this morning and all appears fine on the house and
garden...my goodness she blew her worst at us.  Walking to and from the taxis , the only venturing
out I did Tuesday  , we were blown a bit I can tell you.   This long long winter is so gloomy , even the
odd daffodil or snowdrop still isn't doing it for me.  Dexter speeds out the door when he can't hold it
any longer and nips back in record time and leaps and I mean leaps back into his warm bed next to
the Rayburn!!!!  So to cheer myself up , I made some more random scrappy squares of fabric.  I am
getting quite addicted....I had bags of all sort of scraps, not big enough to make even into the squares
for the postage stamp quilting ( the small ones I posted a few weeks ago)  and then I had a "light bulb moment " and now I happily machine away these little scraps and end up with large squares of randomness.  I printed out some templates and dug out the dies I wanted and cut out these applique shapes.  All are destined for Spring projects as I am fed up with winter and want to look ahead to
brighter, lighter and Spring things.   I have very little Sping material things so thought some felties , cushions , even a garland might be nice .  The scraps are all machined onto a cheap scrap of  light cream fabric I had hanging about.  This helps to give the fabric scraps some thickness and strength which helps especially when using thinner dies.


Well here are the templates and dies I used and the appliqués shapes I made.

I found some bunny colouring pages free

on the Internet 

cut them out for the templates.

When I nipped into Aberaeron library last

week I used the photocopier and 

enlarged the templates 

on the photocopier by 200% 

which just cost 60p 

for 4 different shapes.

Butterfly

Huge bunny

I will use double sided fusible interfacing  to adhere the appliqués to the fabric or felt and then blanket stitch to secure the small ones but the larger one I will machine.

Here as promised ages ago are the yo yo makers and makes...we have been making these curled up more evening...they are quite addictive too, we have covered some buttons to add to the yo yos later.

And some of the charms that are for the gentlework and crazy quilt projects which I hope will Little Miss will enjoy and also help  improve her hand sewing which she loves to do but finds tricky at times.

The high winds kept the birds away from the feeders but now they are back  and feeders restocked   for them.  Another molehill overnight too.   The marshmallow suggestion was because they apparently don't like the smell??? How anyone would ever think of trying that idea is beyond me ..ha ha.. it came from one of the farmers too..hey ho , I'm told the dug up soil is great to reuse in pots etc, when I can walk on the lawn again I shall use it for that.

Wednesday we took pupster down to the beach at New Quay..a full day here without rain...can't remember when that last  happened but it has returned again on Thursday .

a fishing boat heading out

View from the top road at New Quay.

Yesterday  after some carpet cleaning 

I made a start on the dresser. All the China has been hand washed 

and that alone took ages.

It is starting to look nice and I 

hope over the next few days to finish it off .

The start of spring cleaning ...

has cheered me up ..seeing

Lots of nice bright colours reappearing.. 

Spring ornaments, fresh bright cushions

have replaced the Winter ones.

I even saw three newborn lambs when I had to go 

out yesterday... to me it seemed 

early as I remember most arriving late

February and then March 

last year.

Next week is half term..

I am ready for a few duvet days.

The children seem really tired 

after this term,

more so than usual.

We have a few days with plans

but mostly to just 

"Go with the flow"

as the mood takes us.

Perfect.