Scrappy do


 Last Sunday, Mr Moog took the Minx out for the day on his motorbike. They went to a ride-in day at Beaulieu Motor Museum with hundreds of other bikers. Although I don't want to be an old worrypants, I must admit I never relax or feel at all able to settle to anything until they're home safe and sound again.

To distract me from myself, I decided to ignore housework and spent the day playing with my box of scrap fabrics. There was no plan and I had no idea when I set out what I was going to make. By the end of the day, I had a floor full of skinny trimmings and 48 little 4.5inch scrappy squares and it totally took my mind off things.

 

 I'm still not sure what they'll become, as I need to make more if I even want to make a lap quilt, but they do make me very happy.

 

There's been plenty more sewing over the past couple of weeks. I managed to finish my  English Paper Pieced apple cores and got them stitched together - through gritted teeth, I might add, thanks to me being a bit too generous with the basting glue. They were somewhat tough to stitch together but have ended up becoming a very sweet little scrappy cushion cover.

Another cushion received a makeover when I dug out some of the scrappy squares I made back in April, and combined them with some scraps of grey linen, from the Scrapstore. I'm so pleased with this one, which now sits on my favourite armchair.

Earlier this week, on my way home from work, I called into a local patchwork shop that I recently discovered, Jolly Stitcher, tucked away on an industrial park in Fareham. It's a lovely shop with a great selection of fabrics and yarn too.

 

I needed some thread and hadn't realised how hard it is to find a decent sized spool of 100% cotton thread on the high street these days. Hobbycraft had nothing bigger than 100m, and the same went for my little local sewing shop but Jolly Stitcher had a great selection. However, it must have had special magic magnetic properties as it attracted all manner of other things into the basket with it.

 

One of those things was a new rotary cutter. My old one was very old and I'd been unable to find a new blade for it and had started to struggle with accurate cutting. Well, the new one - an Olfa rotary cutter - is a complete revelation to me! I had no idea just how good a sharp rotary cutter could be and what a difference it makes to your cutting.

 

I spent Wednesday evening, once again playing with my scrap fabrics, cutting little 2.5" squares and then carefully piecing them together with my new 1/4" sewing foot. I'm surprised and delighted at what a difference these two new toys have made to my piecing.

By the end of Wednesday evening I had nine pretty little nine patch squares. By the end of Thursday evening they'd been joined together with some skinny charcoal grey sashing, with little strawberry print highlight squares and thus became...another new cushion cover!

 

This one is my absolute favourite and I still can't believe I did such neat and tidy piecing!

 

In other exciting patchworky news, I got my copy of Issue 1 of Quilt Now magazine this week - edited, of course, by the very brilliant Katy Monkey . Not only is it a beautiful magazine, with bucket loads of inspiring projects but it's also so exciting to see someone who I've known in blogland for several years, taking on such an incredible venture. It's been great to share her excitement on Instagram, where I've been lurking rather a lot lately.  

 

So, now we're onto today. After a busy day yesterday, hosting a little family bbq, and a bad night's sleep last night thanks to the heat, I opted to stay home and potter today, while Mr Moog took children and dogs to the beach.

 

I waded through a mountain of ironing, whilst listening to sewing podcasts, and once done I rewarded myself with a very quick bit of sewing, attaching flags to some tape to make 10m of bunting for my friend's upcoming 50th birthday bash. Of course, being bunting, it's a pain to photograph but here's a snippet.

To those of you who left lovely comments, and emailed me, after my last post about Minx's 'friend' problems, thank you so much! I'm very pleased to say things did settle down, almost as quickly as they erupted. Her friend, completely uncharacteristically, apologised and suggested they put the whole thing behind them.

 

Although Minx wanted to tell her to shove her stinky 'friendship' I talked her down off that little ledge and she went into school happily enough on the Monday, with a view that she may as well say yes and have a more peaceful last couple of weeks of term!

 

Here's her latest loom band creation - no signs of this little craft obsession abating just yet :)

Only three more days of work and school and then the summer holidays begin - bring it on!!

 

Moogs xx

 

p.s. Recipes!

linky link for my favourite falafel recipe - falafels (I added a pinch of cayenne pepper too).

 

Easy peasy tasty houmous:

1 400g can chick peas

3 tbsp tahini paste

3 tbsp lemon juice

1 crushed garlic clove

salt

 

chuck it all in the food processor and whizz until smooth - add more lemon juice if you want to. Yum!