I started a new quilt

 Having finished the Happy Quilt it's the perfect time to start a new quilt. John asked me if I would make a lap quilt for a friend. She is disabled and uses an electric wheelchair to get around. She likes to go out and about visiting places but needs two able bodied helpers to go with her. John is very happy helping out and regularly organises outings. They usually travel by bus and there always has to be a cafe for tea and cake. Nearer Christmas their outing will be to go to see the Christmas lights on Regent street and Oxford street. 

Having finished work for the day I started pulling out fabrics. I decided that I would make the St Louis 16 patch block. I wanted to use two fabrics of the same colour but not pattern in each block. It was fun going through my fabric boxes. Soon I had a pile of suitable fabrics and it was time to start cutting. I want to make the quilt very colourful.

I got quite a few blocks made before dinner. I still have some strips yet to sew together and I need to cut more strips but here are the completed blocks so far.

I have a few blocks yet to sew.

I definitely need more blue fabric. Tomorrow I'll pull out the remaining fabric I need to make enough blocks for the quilt. I also want to make a new quilt for my brother. He has asked for a red quilt and I'm thinking of using this block. I have a lot of red fabric and also a lot of cream  which would make some great blocks. I'll start on my brothers quilt once I have got this quilt top finished.

I have ordered some more wadding for the Christmas quilt and I've been thinking out how I'm going to quilt it. It is such a colourful quilt I think I will keep the quilting very simple. If I have time tomorrow evening I will finish the advent calendar that I started at the weekend.

Tomorrow at work, I need to complete quite a few jobs as I'm away for the weekend with younger daughter and I have no intention of taking work with me.

It's getting late and I need to get some sleep.

Take care

Lyndsey

Catching up with some sewing.

The last seven days have been totally crazy! Far too much to do at work for one person, and home just as mad.  I've felt as if I've been on a conveyer belt, moving at speed, trying to complete one task after another with no respite. I think it has finally calmed down and I feel like I can breath again. The week has been an exercise in survival.  So how have I got through the week and kept a smile on my face. For me, this is when my sewing, knitting and other projects become extremely important. They help to keep me calm, give my brain time to reset and make me very happy. So let's focus on the fun activates this week.

Earlier this month I added the binding to the Happy quilt and slowly  over the week I managed to make time to get it all stitched down. I really like this quilt, it makes me smile. 

This quilt is staying home with us. None of us need a new quilt on our beds and we have quilts for snuggling when watching TV but you can't have too many quilts, can you? I really enjoyed stitching the binding down on the quilt it was so relaxing.

Having finished the Happy quilt I turned my attention to the Christmas quilt. This needed to be sandwiched and so I looked for a suitable backing fabric. In the end I had to join the backing fabric. I also pulled out my wadding but unfortunately even if I joined it I didn't have enough wadding for the quilt and so I've ordered some online.  I have a neat pile of quilt and backing fabric all ready for when the wadding arrives. The wadding I have will be used for smaller projects.

Since I couldn't get on with the Christmas quilt I pulled out a couple of quick projects to make.

At work, we needed an office advent calendar and this one will be perfect for the number of people in the office. The castle at the back of the photo is to make a dragon hanging caddy for grandson's pencils etc.  Over the day I got the pockets made for the advent calendar and made a start on the dragons.

I'd forgotten how long it takes to make the pockets for the advent calendars and had expected to complete it quite quickly. I'd also pulled out some fabric to make robins for Christmas and found the cat squares to make a cushion for my son and the duck squares to make my grandson a cushion for his room. 

I finished my sewing activities and then decided to make some stollen. It is delicious but I forgot to take a photo. Having had a delightful day sewing and cooking on Sunday I was well rested and ready to go back to work today. Monday is my admin day and I spent a couple of hours completing my yearly update training for cyber security and data protection. 

Here in London UK the weather is turning colder and we have rain forecast for the whole of this week.  We can't really complain as we have had a long run of dry and warm weather. The trees are slowly dropping their leaves and we are getting more birds visiting our bird feeders. When I take the dogs out for their morning walk at about 6:15 it is still fairly dark and it will be very dark in another week or two.

I hope everything is going well where you are. I'm sorry I haven't responded to comments recently due to pressure of work but I will be doing so this week.

Take care

Lyndsey

A weekend trip

On the weekend of 24 to 26 October John and I had a weekend away in Swanage. We were lucky with the weather which was warm and dry and we had a fun time. We had decided that we would stop at the tank museum on the way. The museum houses over 300 tanks from 28 nations. The world's first tank, Little Willie, is on display and the exhibition goes through to the current main battle tank of the British Army Challenger 2. There are 8 exhibitions to visit at the museum, we only visited the first one, the tank story 1915 to present day. There was so much to see! I had been asked by younger daughter and a couple of colleagues from work to take loads of photos which I did. I'm not going to show you all of them but I thought you may be interested to see a few. If not you can always scroll quickly down to our visit to Arne nature reserve.

Little Willie was the prototype of the first tank and it never saw service but the mark 1 did. Below is the Mark 2 tank. The side is cut away to show the limited space for the crew inside

This one is the Lanchester mark 2 armoured car

The early tanks were slow with many covering only 5 miles in an hour. This next one is the German Panzer 2. This was so small against the modern tanks. I got a little fascinated with the tracks as these had presented problems for the designers. The tracks help to spread the weight of the tank stopping it sinking into soft or wet earth as it would if it had ordinary wheels.

The German Tiger tank

and the Panther. Hitler ordered that the Russian T34 tank be copied and manufactured and so the Panther came into being. It was better made than the Russian tank but production was very slow and so there was never enough of them to make a difference to the fighting in the Soviet Union, Italy or North West Europe.

The Sherman Firefly was a British tank based on the American Sherman tank. It was fitted with a more powerful British 17 pounder gun.

and this photo is of the American Patten tank. This tank made me feel quite small. This became the main battle tank of America and it was used in Vietnam. One of the male visitors was American and he was excited to get his wife to take a photo of him by the tank

The final photo is of a UN armoured car. It really looked minute among all the large tanks.

I found the tanks fascinating and horrifying by turns. Fascinating because of their design and the fact that the crew fit into limited space sharing it with the ammunition. Horrifying due to the amount of damage and destruction they can cause.

When we got to our hotel in Swanage we took a walk to the town square along the sea front. It was windy but warm. After dinner we chatted and read in our room enjoying some delicious red wine before we settled to sleep. It had been a good day.

After breakfast on Saturday we headed out to the nature reserve at Arne. We had visited once before and this time we wanted follow a different trail. The leaves on the trees were changing to yellow and orange and there was still some heather in bloom.

The first part of the trail took us up hill and gave us a good view across country.

We then followed the path down towards the shore. Along the way we spent time watching various birds, little egrets, curlew, whimbrel and cormorants.  Once at the beach we followed the shoreline round to Poole harbour. The tide was on its way out.

I loved the play of the light on the water and so I took some photos.

This one looks like I took the photo at night.

The sea was so clear.

As we walked further along the shore we saw these little red flowers.

The cliff along here was liable to fall so we kept away. This site was good for seeing sand lizards but on this occasion we didn't see any.

Over the day we saw over 30 species of bird. A good day bird watching. In the evening we had fish and chips and sat on the beach to enjoy them, 

After breakfast on Sunday we took a walk to the town and enjoyed our walk back to the car. Several people were enjoying a swim in the sea. I haven't swam in the sea for several years. We travelled back home enjoying the country that we passed. 

We enjoyed our weekend away. Our next trip is in December.

Take care

Lyndsey

November already!

 I wish the year would slow down! October seems to have rushed by and now it's November. I realised I needed to start thinking about Christmas. There's a Christmas cake to make and presents to think about. When I opened my work emails this morning I had a flurry of invitations to Christmas events. No I'm not rushing my life away worrying about Christmas. I have a weekend away this month with my younger daughter Lucy and that will be fun. I'm hoping to do some walks with John and of course there are always the various projects I'm working on. So I'm changing down a gear and slowing the pace of my life down this month so I can enjoy my free time with my family and try to get everyone fit to enjoy the festive season. All family members seemed to have been unwell during October.

Over the last weekend of October, John and I had a weekend away in Dorset and we visited the  tank museum and also spent a lovely day walking at Arne nature reserve. I tell you about our weekend in my next post. I would do it now but I haven't downloaded the photos from my camera. Instead I'll tell you about this last weekend.

On Saturday we spent the day with older daughter and our grandson. We had a great time. When we arrived he was doing some painting so we both joined in. I managed to avoid getting paint all over my clothes. We then moved on to making pizza dough in preparation for lunch and then the fun of deciding what topping we wanted. In between grandson and I played hide and seek. After lunch John took over and played board games and memory games with him. and we ended the afternoon with stories. As we drove home I was very tired. Three year olds have endless energy and he kept going all day. 

Over last week I didn't get much time for any sewing or knitting. Yesterday I was determined to get the quilting on the happy quilt finished. That got done first. I'd kept the quilting simple with diagonals across the quilt in both directions. I like how it looks.

Next I went hunting for some fabric for the binding. I finally found a piece that  was big enough and looked good with the quilt.

Once the binding had been stitched on it was time to move on to the Christmas quilt. The binding will now be stitched down to the back over several evenings. I could have a finish by the end of the week. 

The first of the borders on the Christmas quilt had already been added but this meant the stars on the border were incomplete.

I added the second white borders so that the stars were complete and then added a slightly wider red border. I  had washed the red fabric a few days earlier as I was worried the colour would run the first time it was washed. I already knew that all the other fabrics in the quilt were colour fast.

The quilt top is now ready to be sandwiched and quilted. So far I have no idea how I'm going to quilt it. I have a little time to get this quilt finished but I want to gift it at the beginning of December. Now I need to check that I've got enough wadding and if I have any fabric suitable for the backing.

It's a good job these two quilts are almost finished. John has asked me to make a lap quilt for a lady that he organises walks for, in the local area. She is disabled and uses an electric wheel chair. I have fabric that I can use but I'm not sure I can make the quilt in time for Christmas. I've also promised my brother a new quilt.

Having finished knitting my grandson a scarf I am part way though making him a beanie hat which will have a large pompom. It should be finished this week. Older daughter has also asked me to knit a baby blanket for their second baby who is due in January.  I had started another cardigan for me when she asked me if I would knit the scarf. I'm not sure when the cardigan will get finished.

This week is much calmer so tomorrow I'll share the photos from our trip to Dorset.

Take care

Lyndsey