First finished quilt in a year :)

In March 2014, I tripped over some pavement and fell on my shoulder ... hard ... dislocated it and smashed it in 4 places - ouch! I now have a metal plate and 9 screws and am still in physiotherapy. But this week I have finally finished my first quilt and that has made me very happy indeed :)

Sadly, it was a leaving gift for my boss - she was a lovely lady to work with and I shall miss her. I used two Moda Papillon charm packs and added some Kona taupe and aqua to mix it up a bit and to make the quilt a little bigger:

I free motion quilted it with variegated thread - in about 2 hours - and, although the movements were awkward at first, muscle memory is a wonderful thing and I was soon in my flow.

Here she is:

I enjoyed it all so much, I quilted this little lady too (Siblings Together charity quilt) and will be finishing her over the weekend:

Linking up to Amanda Jean (welcome back) @ Crazy Mom Quilts.

Oops ... I did it again! Absent blogger :(

I feel like I'm in a time warp lately. I wake up and the whole day stretches before me. I go to bed and a week has gone! How does that happen? And last week was a year - 12 whole months - since I broke my shoulder ... now that time has passed by very very quickly.

In that year, a lot has happened - DH retired, we left London and bought our forever home in Wales. I now commute to London - stay in a hotel for 3 nights - work in the week, come home at weekends. Family time has become very precious; we are having so many fun times. And this weekend was no exception. On Friday, we went to see Aunty G and took her to lunch for her birthday. I made her a Dresden Plate cushion:

On Saturday, we had a houseful and I made pudding:

DH created a wonderful meal of roast pork with all the trimmings - here we all are tucking in:

And yesterday and today, I have been quilting! DH and I basted our first quilt in a year and I set about free motion quilting it. I'm certainly not as fast as I was and I can tell you my little shoulder is throbbing today. But, oh what fun :) It's good to be back:

Hope you all had a happy weekend. Back to work tomorrow. I tidied up my sewing room so that I can get straight to it on Friday when I get home:

Two-timing, neglectful blogger! Tut tut :(

I am a bad blogger! I have been carrying on behind your back with a new kid (to me) on the block! I have neglected old friends and have shamelessly played with my new pals over at IG (we even have our own language #shameonyouGlinda) I am sorry. I am back ... and I am sorry. But words aren't enough - I promise to visit your blogs and read about your WIPs and finishes and take the time to leave you good comments. I will stop just looking at the pretty pictures on Instagram! It's not good enough ... forgive me?! 

Okay then, what have I been up to in the last couple of weeks? Quite a bit ... please stay and take a look. Some cosmetic bags for birthdays and Mothering Sunday:

I have made a few of these now using this You Tube tutorial from Debbie Shore. My addition is to interface the outsides with Pellon (and sometimes quilt the bag) and to add tabs to the zips, as taught to me by my friend Fran:

A couple of Pants Bags - this one for Jasmine's husband's birthday:

And this one for my first best friend; it's her birthday on Monday:

Love how colourful this is!

My little big sister came to stay last weekend. She doesn't quilt but she's very good at up-cycling furniture. Look what she did to my old table:

and my book stand:

But my biggest project had been making 16 'Home Sweet Home' blocks for the Siblings Together Quilts. Mary is collecting blocks for the boys' quilts:

and Hannah, the girls: 

I'm thrilled to have finished the top of my own Siblings Together quilt this evening. It's measuring up at 48" x 62":

And if that wasn't a busy enough few weeks, we went to the indoor ski centre on Monday and my poor SIL had a little fall :( she ended up with spiral fractures in her right shin bones and had a significant operation today:

So we get to babysit this beautiful boy for a couple of weeks - expect to see lots of cute Boxer Dog / next to quilt pictures!

Phew-eeeeeee! You're up to speed! Linking up with the lovely Lorna @ Sew Fresh Quilts and Sarah @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict. And if I haven't visited your blog for a couple of weeks, I promise I'll pop in and see you this weekend x

Instagram? Oh dear ...

I'm now on Instagram (glindaquilts) - something else to take up my 'spare' time because I really haven't got enough things to fill my day! It's great fun because it is so instant and very search-friendly ... yes, I'm in! I have 'met' new quilters already and am enjoying the variety. But ... and there is always a but ... it means I have neglected my blog, which I don't want to because:

1) Not everyone is on IG

2) I really like the linky parties

3) I like writing my posts, thinking about my creations and 'reaching out' to fellow quilters and bloggers

4) I love reading about the extras in everyone's lives and their thoughts on their creations - it feels more personal, somehow.

So, I will not give up blogging - stop with the groaning, now!! You know you love me really :)

Although I have been a lazy blogger, I have been an active sewer. I have also had visitors to my home and sewing room (dear Fran @PatchyRose and her most delightful daughter, Rosie) and have committed to making my charity quilt for 2015 for Siblings Together.

Here's what I've been up to and some quite a lot of photos. As soon as Fran and Rosie arrived, I became 'Auntie Glinda' to one of the loveliest little girls I have met. Look at the gorgeous gift they brought me:

We set to making Rosie a Gym (Pants) Bag; she chose all her own fabrics from my stash - isn't it fun seeing how others put a fabric bundle together?

She designed the bag, I just rotary cut the blocks. She did all the sewing, I just pressed and directed! Within a couple of hours, she had made this - clever girl and she was so happy:

The next day we set to work on my Siblings Together quilt. Please read this post for all the details on this great charity ... I'm so glad to be able to do my little bit. I had already made 24 half log cabin blocks from my scraps (think I started it in 2013) but had lost my mojo but Fran and Rosie spurred me on to finish it and we got the scraps out:

An 'action shot' of me:

And one of Fran, working on her 8 year old Insanity Quilt!

We all made some blocks and chatted away, listened to music .. the time went very quickly. Saturday night, after DH cooked us a fabby dinner, we settled down in front of the fire and watched The Sound of Music - one of my very favourite films. 

On Sunday, I helped Rosie sew down the rest of her binding on her first quilt - she had made this all herself from a kit I gifted her last year:

Oh, we did have fun (come back soon, ladies!) and that was two weekends ago. Last weekend, I finished the rest of the blocks - taking me to 48:

and started to sash them:

It's even brighter in real life!

And made a pencil case for a birthday boy:

As well as my Siblings Together quilt, my other WIP this week is a Dresden plate cushion for my Aunty G (she asked for greens and browns - think I've got a good mix here?):

Oh, if I only had more time ... what else could I do?? Linking up with the lovely Lorna @ Sew Fresh Quilts and Lee @ Freshly Pieced.

Bag for a boy ...

... and one for me too!

Any sewing is good, hey? Yes. So I'm not going to get any quilt-envy about what I'm not achieving. I made myself another Pants Bag at the weekend. All from scraps - oh my, do I have a lot of scraps?!

Even the lining and casing:

Voila:

My friend Carla @ Creatin in the sticks wrote a lovely post last week about the Pants Bags she made for the special ladies in her life. And the lovely Jasmine really loves the one I made for her last year but is worried her hubby will pinch it so we agreed he needed one of his own!

Dark greens are his favourite colours, so I went stash-busting:

Meh! Wasn't doing it for me so I just HAD to go shopping on Saturday and bought these FQs instead (well, it is his birthday soon!):

Far more suitable, methinks, and a little WIP photo:

Linking up with Lorna and Lee: 

Battle of pragmatism v perfectionism :)

This quilt - 144 HSTs in a variety of colours - was inspired by my friend's rug / mat for her new conservatory:

and I said I'd make her a quilt to match it ... as you do! After painstakingly selecting the right fabrics, matching the squares, making the 144 HSTs and trimming them all down to a precise 5.5 inches, I figured it would be a doddle to sew them all together into a finished top:

First mistake - I don't do random ... so I spent ages deciding which blocks sat best next to each other. Next step - an easy one, just sewing the pairs together. Second mistake - I am such a fussy perfectionist ... there you go, I've said it out loud. So, after a little bit of unpicking when my points didn't quite match, I had 72 pairs to start placing together in rows of 4 x 12 ... I remind you of my first mistake; this - again - took me ages. 

Having decided (finally) on the order, I decided to throw my usual caution to the wind and not pin! The first few blocks were displeasing on my eyes :( So, that was my third mistake - do not stop doing what you know you have to do when you are a perfectionist - so I pinned, pinned and pinned:

And last night, I finished the top ... yay! Do you know what? After all of the hours cutting, arranging, pinning, sewing, unpicking, pressing ... it is NOT PERFECT! Some of my points are not exactly 100% and some of my colours repeat too close together. But does it matter? The overall effect (I think) is delightful and I know that Mandy will love it when it's all complete:

I need to chill out a bit - less than perfect is okay, hey? I'm probably the only one who notices 'the mistakes' and it can stop me from enjoying the overall result. This hobby gives me an enormous amount of pleasure so from now on, I will be less perfect and more pragmatic - and you can (please!) hold me to that.

Linking up with Amanda Jean @ Crazy Mom Quilts and Sarah @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict. Hope you have a good enough weekend :)