The First Week of August

 It is amazing how much more productive I can be when I stay home.  Who’d have thought?

The first sewing project I worked on was the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  It didn’t take too long to piece my two split nine patch blocks.  These were actually completed on Saturday morning, before the big sewing room tidy up.

I cut out two hexy flowers at the same time and pieced them yesterday at my patchwork morning.   Rather glarey, aren’t they.  I channeled my inner frugalness, as the orange floral vintage sheet fabric was left over binding from my Crossroads quilt.  There was the join in the binding, so I decided to leave it in place.  You often see pieced small pieces in vintage quilted.

Just for fun, and to use up some of my tiny scraps, just now I have pieced another crumb block.

Here is my little collection so far.  They are quick and easy, and use up those scraps that most people would throw away. I really should do more.

I have decided to give the Fishy Business blocks a miss this month, as I want to use orange in next month’s fish.  I’ll catch up next month, by swapping colours.

This is how much is left in my orange scrap box.  The bright one at the bottom will be ideal for the fish next month.  Now, everyone has a different definition of a scrap.  Most would call mine crumbs, as I don’t add anything to these boxes less than a layer cake sized piece of fabric.  Most other colours are jamb packed, so some more crumb blocks will be a great way to use them up.

Of course, I finished off the little HST Baby Quilt.

Once that was done, it was time to turn my attention to the little blue sampler stitchery.  I couldn’t resist adding a red front door to the house.

This is what the finished article looks like in Gail Pan’s book.  I felt that it needed something else.

Time to make an almighty big mess on the dining table.  Yes, can you believe it, it was all tidied away before the afternoon was over.

This is kind of what I was thinking.

Then I remember that I have a box of Mum’s laces and trims and found this little cutie that might just work. 

Honestly, I could open an Etsy store with the amount of laces, trims and old linens that I have.  We won’t go there.

I’ve have this lovely vintage coathanger for years and would like to use it as the hanger.  That will dictate the size.

This is where I was up to yesterday.  The fabric that the stitchery is worked on is a linen offcut from my doyley quilt that I made a few years ago.  It already had a hand stitched hem on the bottom.  The two toned ric rac has been added to the bottom of the stitchery.   The narrow lace under the stitchery is also an offcut from my doyley quilt.  The green huckaback hand towel off cut with its lace edging, surprisingly, also comes from the quilt.  Fancy that!  It’s good to find a use for them.

I’m looking forward to having a play with the embellishments.  I think I will use a thin wadding and just do a facing type edge.  I don’t think I want a binding and would have to work something out at the bottom with the lace edge anyway.

I have done a tiny bit more today, but the light is too bad to take a photo. 

As you can gather, I managed to achieve my 15 minutes of stitching each day.

What else did we get up to?

Can you believe that I actually tried not one, but two new recipes?

The first was a recipe I came across on Instagram.  It was a one pot wonder chicken and rice dish.  It was cooked on the stovetop and ended up rather gluggy, hence no photo being shared.  However, it tasted great.  I reckon that I will use the ingredients/flavours and translate it to an oven baked risotto, using aboria riced.  That should be a success.

The second was a whole orange cake, also from a recipe I came across on Instagram.  Let’s call it a middling success.  It wasn’t a boiled orange cake, rather the orange was just chopped up in the food processor.  It rose rather unevenly and is a tad dry.  It was still very tasty and there is none left.  However, I think there are probably better recipes out there.  Actually, I have had one for years, that my old next door neighbour gave me, that I have never made.  I should give it a whirl.

That pretty much wraps up all I have to report for the week.  Now to see what next week brings.

Finally, a Finish

 On Saturday, Lou put out a challenge that we both “dust off our quilting frames” and get quilting.  My first reaction, while having breakfast, was “Oh Loo-ou!”. Then once I did a couple of other things I was brave and headed into the sewing room to start to have a tidy up.

A few hours later, Monique had been excavated.  Now, this photo was strategically angled.  We won’t look at the other side of the room.  LOL. However, quite a bit of tidying up and putting away did take place.

The quilt I was going to play with was the little half square baby quilt that I finished piecing up at Scrub Stitchin’.  This was to be my Chookshed Stitchers’ Challenge for May, after I was unable to find my NZ fabrics.  Our impromptu trip to the UK put paid to that, so now was its time to shine.

This little quilt has transpired to be something created from not much.  The feature fabrics are a partial charm pack that I purchased quite some years back at a market stall for $3.  The white is from stash.  I always have a supply of white.

I stitched the HST blocks as a leader and ender while at Scrub Stitchin’ in 2022.  They were trimmed down shortly thereafter, and then languished in the “To Do” pile, getting carried over month after month……until Scrub Stitchin’ this year.

In some respects, it was a good thing the quilting was delayed, as I found the ideal backing fabric on our recent trip north in an op shop.   To my delight, it was wide enough that I didn’t have to piece the backing.  I also found I had a batting off cut that was just the right size.  Everything was falling into place.

Once loaded on the frame I was using up the last little bits of bobbin for the basting and first partial pattern row.  All was going swimmingly, until the last little curvy bit.  At least it ran out beside the quilt top, and not in the middle of the stitching.  Other than that, it all went rather well.

By late Saturday afternoon the quilting was completed.  What a bonus.  I definitely didn’t expect to have a quilted quilt and a somewhat tidier sewing room when I hopped out of bed that morning.

Sunday morning, after baking a cake, saw me back in the sewing room to finish it off.  Keeping on the “it was meant to be” theme, I just happened to have four 2 1/2 inch by width of fabric white strips cut out.  Just the right amount for the binding, which I attached by machine.  I’m feeling quite comfortable with this method on donation quilts now.

And showing the cute backing fabric, which was just the right colours.

This turned out to be a very cute little baby quilt.  I really like the way the twisty lines worked out.  It will be donated, once I get a few more quilts made.

Another one to tick off the list.

Welcome to the Isle Man

I’m finally getting back to our recent trip to the UK in May and June.  Gosh, where do I begin?

Our final destination on our trip was the Isle of Man, where we were to watch the TT motorcycle races.

I’ll start by sharing a map of the island to put things in perspective.  It is located bang smack in the middle of the Irish Sea and on a good day, from the highest point, you can see Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales.   It is about thirty miles long and thirteen miles wide.  The course of the TT motorcycle races is marked in red and is 37 3/4 miles long, travelling through towns, villages, country lanes with walls and hedges alongside, to the open mountain section.

We stay in Castletown, towards the south of the Island.  The capital is Douglas, with Ramsey, Peel and Port Erin being the other main centres.

We always stay in the same little row of cottages.  In fact, the last minute availability of one is what triggered this trip taking place.  They have recently been sold and we were the first guests under the new management.  

This time we were in “Ard Lee”, the middle one.  A coat of blue paint has freshened them up and there has been some minor changes in the decor inside, other than that, they are pretty much the same as they previously were.  I’ve given a little tour of one back here on a previous visit.  

For transport, we were very fortunate to obtain a hire car, given how busy the island gets.  Firstly, we had a little Hyundai i10 for two weeks.

Before having to swap to a Vauxhall Corsa for the last week.  They were both good little runabouts and most importantly, were small.

Once our accommodation and transport were under control it was three weeks to just play it by ear.

Mick’s birthday was on our first day, so we treated ourselves to dinner at the local pub and I had to make a meal of Queenies.  They are a small scallop found in the local Manx waters.

We arrived on the island a few days before the motorcycle proceedings started so had some time to play the tourist.

This was our sixth time to visit the Isle of Man and way back on our first visit in 2007 Mick became friends with Al, a local that lives just down the road from where we stay.  We have stayed in constant contact with him ever since, so it was nice to spend time with him.  We didn’t tell him we were coming…..let’s face it, we didn’t even know ourselves until just a couple of days before, so it was a bit of a surprise when we knocked on his door.

It has been a fun ongoing challenge to find places that we haven’t visited previously.  It has been surprising how much there is to see on such a small island.  Al really loves his island and does a lot of walking, so took us to some of his favourite places.  We were fortunate to have good weather on our first walk.  Notice I’m even wearing a T-shirt.

Our first walk was all around the Port St Mary village in the south of the island.

From there we went Scarlett, on the coast just near Castletown for another short walk.  We just loved this old stone wall.

Mick really liked this stile.

The aim of this walk was to show us the old lime kilns built into the side of the coast, so the lime could be shovelled into the kilns from above and the burnt lime could be loaded onto boats.  Such amazing stonework. 

The coastline is so scenic with the spring flowers, mainly pink thrift.

It was a really enjoyable morning.

Later in the day Mick and I went out to have a wander around St Michaels Isle, or as the locals call it Fort Island.

The island is connected to the main island via a causeway.

It also has a rugged beauty, with the wildflowers on the rocky terrain, complete with nesting birds.

The fort dates back to 1645 and was built to defend the island during the English Civil War.

There is also the ruins of St Michaels Chapel, dating from the 11th Century.

It was a very enjoyable day of exploring……and enjoying the nice weather.