Wednesday progress

The middle of the week has come round again and this week I have some progress to talk about. This morning I cut the final length of the lining for the kitchen curtains. An easy job as it should only entail measuring the drop and cutting across the width of the fabric at the right length. Not today, as I pulled out the length of lining I realised there was a damaged area on the fabric so I had to cut this piece out and piece the length back together. It means there will be a horizontal join on one of the pieces but this should be hidden by the wooden surround to the window.  Having sorted that minor problem I then stitched the widths together for the fabric and the lining. The main window in the kitchen is a big bay so the curtains are double width. No point in showing a photo as it just looks likes the same pile of fabric as yesterday.

Next I cut, joined and attached the binding to the turtle quilt. I chose an orange solid for the binding. It's  not the same as the orange used for the turtles but it looks good and gives the pop of colour I wanted from the binding.

As you can see I still have some ends to finish sewing in. I did all the ones on the back but didn't quite finish the front. When I get back from Guides later this evening I'll finish the ends and make a start on stitching the binding to the back. I'm very excited about having a finish for Friday!

Having finished that I put the extra orange fabric aside as I need it to make my October orange rainbow scrap challenge blocks. I'm also going to make an extra orange hexi block to go with one of last years challenge quilts. I made 12 sixteen inch blocks so I could do 4 rows of 3 blocks. I have decided I want to make a large square quilt so I'm going to make 4 more blocks. I've got the orange scraps ready and also found out some lavender scraps. Then I need to decide the final two colours. That shouldn't be a problem as I have lots of scraps.

Next up for the day was preparing the conkers. Last month I collected a pile of conkers so we could have a game of conkers at Brownies and Guides. When I was at school we would turn up with our conkers and enjoy playing in the playground. Unfortunately due to health and safety most schools in England seem to have banned the game. I hadn't even thought about it but one of the dads was moaning that his daughter would probably never get to play conkers. So being ever helpful leaders Lucy and I decided a game of conkers, even a mini conker world cup was in order. We can claim it's a world cup as we have girls from quite a number of different countries.

I didn't dry the conkers or soak them in vinegar or any of the other ways to try and ensure they win. Instead I just drilled a hole and threaded the string through. Voila job done.

There are about 50 conkers but it all depends on how many girls we have tonight. I'm hoping that will be all we need.

Several years ago when Kathryn was at school she made a conker vase out of clay. It's quite big and heavy but looks good with dried flowers in it or twigs and small branches sprayed gold over the Christmas season.

It usually stands on the floor in a corner and is often a talking point. We seem to have quite a lot of pieces that our children produced for art or textile projects around the house and I just love it. They give a lot of pleasure as they take me back through the years to when they were at school. Do you have your children's creations around the house?

I'm linking this post up with Lee at Freshly Pieced  Go and see what everyone is working on, you'll get some great inspiration from their projects.

Lyndsey