When you’ve got your favourite undies on……

the world’s a brighter place!  (one of my favourite songs by Fatcat and Fishface)

Just a bit of a plug for my fav undies.  I’m a cotton, no nonsense, no riding up kinda gal.  So these briefs made by American Eagle really fit the bill.  And because I’m such a bargain hunter, they fit the budget as well.

If you want some of these great briefs, go on over to Ecomoon and buy some.  Ecomoon has fantastic service and great products.  They also sell products for Mother and Baby, Toys, kids clothing and lots of other great stuff.  They are not a fly by night company, I’ve been buying from them for a coule of years now and get great service every time!

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How to make hard work…

Of a simple quilt.

Start by not following the measurements on the pattern properly.  Add in taking out one fabric and doubling up on anther instead.  Then run out of background fabric halfway through.

Then add a minky backing which makes it really heavy to quilt.

Gorgeous result, but boy it could have been so easy.  Now is use on the bed each night and on the couch by day

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Winter….

Cold and frosty Winter mornings.

Lots of snow on the Tararua Ranges..

Some days I wish the snow was further away!

Cameron isn’t feeling the cold, I can hardly get him to keep socks and a sweatshirt on most of the time.

Last years lambs are off to the butcher next week.  Yum.

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Watch out for Pirates!

The wee boy has been making a lot of stuff lately.  He’s constantly asking for boxes, raiding the scissors (we have about 8 pairs of scissors and can never find them) and using up all the sellotape     Today is was a Pirate ship.  Yesterday a Transformers dress up suit.  He’s very creative.

He was so happy that the boat actually floated!

The simple joys of childhood.

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In the words of Bart Simpson…

Today is going to “suck” and “blow” at the same time.

When the boss asked me yesterday if I could work all day instead of just my four hours, I immediately said yes.  First mistake.  In chase of the elusive dollar, the overtime is good. In term of having a life, it sucks.  In reality it means trying to feed the chooks and cows in the dark this morning, and the fire being out all day, coming home to a cold house and being in a rush to get the teens fed before they have to go out to Venturers.

Then to add to the mayhem Nathan tells me he has to be at school before 8am to go to Victoria University for an open day. Ian leaves for work at 6.30, so I get the job of dropping him off, in the opposite direction that my other morning job (dropping the wee boy at his school), in the middle of the time when I get Cameron ready for school, then drive back the other way, drop Cam at his school and drive to work. Joy oh joy.  So instead of sleeping till 7 and starting my day, I was awake at 6.15, making lunches (just mine and Cam’s, the teenagers are too cool to eat anything other than chips at school).  I am just lucky too that my after school carer could take Cameron at short notice.   Working blows!

I did get about half an hour to sew last night (okay a bit longer, but I ran out of motivation).  Meet the Gang cot quilt is finished.

If you don’t hear from me for a few days I may just be trying to regain my sanity

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So many things to sew….

And so little time to sew them!

In progress:

Meet the Gang – For Sale

Halloween quilt – For Cameron

Stitch in Colour Quilt – For me

Giant Star quilt – For me or Lilly

3 bee quilts to finish, all are ready for quilting

 

Quilts yet to start – but promised

Queen quilt for a friend

Single quilt for a friend

2 quilts for Scouts (Venturers) to raffle

2 queen quilts for my big boys

The Lorax quilt – for sale

Cat in the Hat – for sale

 

And then I’d like to make another queen size for a gift before the end of the year.  At the rate I’m currently sewing it’s going to be hard to get them all done.

 

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A handmade weekend…

Unfortunately for me it wasn’t at the Handmade 2012 convention in Wellington.  However Ian and I got some fencing done, post holes dug by us and all hammered together, so I reckon that’s handmade.

Now we have another small paddock for the sheep to live in.

All of the fencing is recycled timber from the fencing we took down when moving the house.  Only the nails were new.  Now we can see about bringing our lambs home and fattening them up for a few weeks before sending them to the butcher.  It’s 14 months since we last had a Beef done at the butcher, I’m so hungry for a steak and some decent casserole meat.  We now have to make plans for the next one to go.  It will be good to downsize on stock as we have no grass and are feeding out hay.  We did lose a bit of paddock when we shifted the house.  We can gain it back but it will require lots of fencing, which is very time-consuming (if you can’t afford to get a professional in) and expensive, even if you do it yourself.  Even after spending $50k on moving the house and all that involved, we still probably need to spend that much again to really finish things off.  But as we can’t afford to extend the mortgage any more, everything else will be a slow process.

Lilly has been a bit accident prone lately, she split open her knee about a month ago, it’s only just healing up now as every time it scabbed up she managed to knock it open again.  As well as that she managed to  give herself a black eye during gymnastics at school!  Talented aye?

I finished off the Retro Circus quilt.  Still need good pics of the back (black background with coloured variegated quilting), but I’m happy with the result.  I started this one quite a while ago but it got put on the back burner a I just lost the love for it.  Sometimes you just have to persevere though and it all comes together in the end.

 

 

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Entering the technological frontier…

For a long time now I’ve been resisting having Sew Vivid on Facebook.  But in an effort to increase sales and orders for more custom quilts I’ve given in and created a Facebook page.  Link below.  It is a page in progress as I’m not very Facebook savvy and find it quite time-consuming to get it all sorted.

I have set up some photo galleries of quilts.  I think I have the bulk of the quilts I’ve made there (except for a few that I haven’t taken pics off).  If you’ve bought a quilt off me and don’t see a pic of it there please let me know and I’ll hunt down the photos of any missing ones.

I hope to have a gallery of quilts available for sale soon   In the meantime I have space for custom quilt orders.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sew-Vivid-Handmade-Quilts-and-Gifts/370492689679592

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