First finish

I finished my first quilt yesterday.

It's far from perfect, but I am still proud of it. I loved making it, from beginning to end. I had a huge growl of frustration when I cut the binding - I was all excited because the quilt was almost finished then suddenly I was standing ironing almost 10 yards of material and wondering if I'd ever get done. As it turned out, hand-stitching the back was possibly the most therapeutic part of the whole quilt-making process. 

Other than getting the finished quilt out of the tumble-drier and snuggling it, of course. 

It's now wrapped around its new owner. He put it straight on his bed - seeing him snuggled down wrapped in soft, quilty  goodness did make me smile. 

I've affectionately named this quilt the 'So Fluffy' quilt, partly because of the deliciously soft and fluffy vintage chenille squares from Alora's Adorables, and partly because it's one of The Barista's trademark sayings. The squares are boxed by Kona solids in pinks and greens, but please don't ask me which ones because I bought them from a real shop, not online. The background is Kona Snow and the binding & backing are Honeycomb by Kei fabrics, padded out with a patchy stripe of the Kona solids to make the backing large enough. There might by an little elephant hiding on the back too

I'm linking through to Lily's quilts too, so if you've hopped over from there, Hi! Pleased to meet you!

 

 

 

Lammas

August first. 

Lammas. 

Time to celebrate the beginnings of harvest, of things coming together, progression, career, health and well-being. Particularly apt for me this year as I'm searching for a new job, a permanent job at last. My time of preparing is done - my time to grow and flourish is about to begin. 

Yes, I know. That was very profound and lyrical and a little bit icky. 

Being icky won't stop me lighting a candle tonight to welcome this new phase of my life along with the new phase of the year. I'll be burning bay leaf (for success), rosemary (for mental alertness) and cardamom (for eloquence) whilst opening my heart to strong relationships with those I love and a calm confidence through my job applications. 

Wordless Wednesday

Really, really needed my coffee this morning!

Two that make me smile...

and Damascus, just because...

Wordless Wednesday

 

I was helped, as always, by my little green friend. 

The start of something new.

I fell in love with a pile of vintage chenille pieces recently at Alora's Adorables on Etsy. I was madly impatient waiting for them to arrive, but arrive they did and as soon as I saw them I suddenly know what they were waiting to be made into.

The only thing was, I needed plain fabrics to go with them. Time for my first trip to find The Village Haberdashery - not easy when you discover there's no tubes running due to engineering works, but it was even worth getting there the long way round. That and the amazing farmer's market just round the corner from the shop. 

The ladies were really helpful, especially to this total novice who had no idea what see needed other than the colours. Thank you both!

Home again now and don't the fabrics just look edible? They remind me of ice cream sundaes in Italy when I was little. 

Legacy jeans quilt

It's been the most glorious weekend, weather-wise and life-wise. It seems England has actually decided to have a summer - and on Wimbledon weekend too. The gods are definitely feeling extra kind this year.

I spent my weekend alternating between the garden and my sewing. The garden is starting to look like a garden. My pots are filling with plants donated from my mum's beautiful, exuberant garden, from my old garden by the boat and from the unfortunately irresistible plant stall just outside the tube station (not that those ones are donated). All this has been helped along by a huge number of pots that the goth-girl's bf found for me insanely cheaply.

As for the sewing, my Nan's ancient Singer is working again and I re-taught myself how to thread it. Why do I forget that so quickly and so repeatedly?

I've been dabbling with making a quilt from old jeans for weeks now and haven't really got anywhere with it. When I drag my knitted blankets out into the garden to sprawl on they seem to magically cling on to dried grass bits for weeks afterwards, so something more obliging was definitely needed. Then I saw this and loved it!

So I asked the hoards if any of them had old jeans they didn't wear anymore and ended up with two pairs of blue denim, two black pairs and an egg yolk yellow pair. Perfect! 

I cut seven inch squares from the denim jeans, included pockets and seams and everything for texture, and hand sewed them together. The black and yellow make a great contrast and I love the contrast from the little bit of vintage shirt fabric that I grabbed when I ran out of yellow.

I plan to add two more rows of denim squares around the outside which will bring the final size to 5' square. Any larger and I wont be able to stretch my arms far enough to fold it easily.

This is where I've got to so far.

I'm going to add the names of all the lovely people who donated their cast-off jeans to one of their squares too. 

The family keeps on growing.

Yes, our 'little' family has another addition. It seems June must be the month for doubling the number of inhabitants in the house.

Meet Damascus, a total impulse buy (courtesy of gothish-girl and her adorable bad influence of a boyfriend). He's the cutest, most fascinating little bundle of greeness. He was sitting in his ficus plant hiding from the world when we wandered by his tank in the shop, but he came right down to the front and grinned at us. I swear he actually was grinning as he showed off twisting and balancing on the thin glass ledge at the front of the tank.

I went my usual gooey self when faced with cuteness, but insisted that we couldn't possibly fit more pets into May Cottage. However, two wide-eyed humans insisting that the little chameleon adored me and needed cuddles only added to the irresistible cuteness and I crumbled.

Word of warning - never impulse buy a chameleon! Bad move! They take lots of TLC and a fair bit of effort to look after.

Word of warning 2 - don't believe all the websites that tell you chameleons don't like to be handled. Damascus positively sulks when put back in his enclosure. He clings to my fingers as hard as he can then when finally disentangled and put down he curls up and turns a dark, grumpy brown that fades immediately into his bright, happy green as soon as he's picked up again.