A visit and some sewing.

On Tuesday John and I got up early and headed up the MI to visit my brother Alex and his partner Karen. I'd been meaning to organise this trip for a while but work and life got in the way. We stopped at one of the services for coffee and a croissant for breakfast. The day was sunny and the trees were starting to get their leaves. It was a pleasure to be travelling, even the lengthy road works couldn't annoy us. Alex and Karen live on narrow boats in a marina. They each have a boat and they are moored next to each other.  Here is Karen in front of her boat. Her flowers always look beautiful.

When we arrived Karen was sorting out her central heating, which had developed a fault. Fortunately there was a heating engineer on the marina and he helped to sort out the problem. Whilst that was happening John, Alex and I chatted and had coffee on Alex's boat. Fortunately the heating was sorted out fairly quickly. Once Karen joined us we exchanged presents, including the William Morris tote bag I'd made for Karen. It turns out that Karen loves William Morris fabric as much as I do.

We went out for a leisurely lunch at a great restaurant (sorry I didn't take any photos) The food was really good and the conversation flowed beautifully. We even had the lady at the next table join in when the conversation turned to music. Back at the marina we went to Karen's boat for tea and more conversation. It was great fun. All too soon the day drew to a close. The weather forecast was for rain and so before it got too late we headed home. Unfortunately the weather decided it needed to rain heavily for the whole journey which was vey tiring.  We were very pleased to reach home.

On Wednesday I did some sewing on the trousers I'm making. I need to turn the hems up and add the trouser clip and bar to the waist band and they will be finished. I also did a little stitching on the cat cross stitch. Unfortunately the stitching I did doesn't really show as it was white or cream thread against a white background.

Today I was interviewing during the morning. We finished about 1 p.m. and I decided to get my machine set up and work on one of the stegosaurus blocks for the dinosaur quilt. I started by sub cutting all the pieces of fabric need to make a block. I carefully labelled all the pieces so that I didn't get confused. There are just so many bits. The block finishes at 10.5 by 21.5 inches.

The instructions are clearly written and there are diagrams which make it even easier. Quite a lot latter I had one completed block.

I'm very pleased with the block. It took time to make but there wasn't any problems when making it. I was very pleased I'd taken the time to label everything as it stopped me making any mistakes.

Tomorrow. I'm interviewing again in the morning but I hope to do some quilting tomorrow afternoon. I need to make the quilt sandwich for the pinwheel baby quilt and get the quilting done. I also want to add the binding to the other pinwheel quilt I made a little while back. It would be good to have a couple of finishes.

It's now eleven p.m. and I need to go to bed. If I stay up any later I'll need a nap tomorrow afternoon and I won't get any sewing done.

Take care

Lyndsey