Cake and stitching.

On Friday I finished the quilting on Buddy's quilt and Saturday morning I trimmed it ready for adding the binding. I had meant to start the binding straight away but I had a mountain of housework to do first. I needed to do some laundry and clean the kitchen, then a trip to the shops for some groceries. By the time I'd done all that I needed a little rest and a cup of tea whilst I did some knitting. Then I moved the heavy boxes from my fabric chest so I could sort out some of my projects.

I found the fabric I needed for the binding and I also found a small quilt top I had made that's suitable for a young boy. My 'It's a dogs life' quilt was also in the box so that came out ready for me to set up for quilting it. I  found the advent calendar that never got finished last year. It is all quilted and trimmed and just needs the binding.

What to do first? Well I decided to make my Christmas cake since it's only 6 weeks until Christmas. We like a heavy fruit cake and having made it I will 'dose' it every week with some brandy until it is decorated just before Christmas. The recipe is one I have made every year for the last 30 plus years. The mixture is very tasty and the smell when it's cooking is fabulous, it made the whole house smell like Christmas. The cake came out nice and flat which makes it much easier to decorate.

Today I got started on the binding for Buddy's quilt. I decided to attach it completely by machine. Normally I machine stitch the front and hand stitch the back. Since the quilt is for a dog it seemed the perfect time to test out a new technique, I didn't think Buddy would complain. The binding went on easily and the whole job was soon finished. I then popped the quilt in the wash with a colour catcher as I knew the deep blue dye would transfer onto lighter colours if it wasn't washed. It's now ready for Lucy to take home for Buddy and hopefully get a photo of him using it. I took a quick photo of the backing fabric.

Lucy loves the camerflage fabric. Having finished that I stitched the binding onto the advent calendar. I will hand stitch this later today.

I did eventually find my Christmas cross stitch but not in my fabric chest, it had somehow got into one of. my craft drawers . I thought I'd done some additional work on this piece but no my memory was wrong. This is how it stands before my evening of slow stitching.

The sky was very tedious to do and part of the reason for my slow progress. This is the piece I'm going to work on this week. There is still a lot to do on this project but it is always nice to work on a seasonal project in the right season.

I'm linking this post with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching.  This week Kathy is discussing being fearless and trying new things. I generally love trying new things but I haven't had a lot of time recently. I tried the machine binding technique today and I've been practising with my new machine. We are slowly becoming good friends.

Tomorrow is a work day and this week is ridiculously busy so not a lot of time for stitching. I will still do some knitting and stitching each day to help move my projects forward.

Lyndsey