Bags of fun

I am very conscious of bleating on about this wedding malarkey, but it is absorbing rather a lot of my active and creative time at the moment. I sense that I am going to bore you one way or another - either by telling you all about it, or censoring it entirely and have nothing to talk about. So I shall tell you about a few things.

There are 13 kids between the ages of 1 and 6 coming to our wedding, plus 3 very new babies. I am concerned that everybody has a good time; that's the parents, the kids and those who are neither. So I figure let's keep the kids entertained.

We decided to do party bags for them. Party bags that they would get at the beginning of the day, that contained things to keep them occupied during the day. Things like:

Colouring in books...

I did want to just buy some, but I could only find expensive rubbish, so a bit of a google search for colouring pages, some coloured card, and a whizz up and down on the sewing machine... hey presto!

Pens, now I have to get pens.

Easter Knitting

This Easter weekend, I have been mostly knitting.

I have been thinking about starting my first proper knitting project and thought a simple cardigan for the boy would be a good place to start. It was either that or socks, but my trips to the local yarn shop are always slightly fraught as Mil is not a great one for shopping... I think I just went 'Cardigan, I'll knit a cardigan' with that crazed and harassed look of a mother to a two year old. I then realised that I had better make a very tiny baby cardigan first in case I make a mess of it and waste a fortune spent on yarn. There seems to be a steady stream of babies being produced at the moment so should it be a success it will not go to waste.

So here I am making a thing, a real item of clothing, and I am having a ball following the pattern.

This is the pattern, and this is the yarn.

I have also been eating quite a bit of chocolate... yum.

Buttercup Bag

I did a bit of bunting making over the weekend for the wedding (which is in 9 weeks - ARRRGGHH) and was struggling with using some fabrics I had acquired that I wasn't too keen on. With the bunting, it is more about an overall effect and the fabric I use needs to be nice enough, but not too nice. This led me to suffer that fear of using something nice, not wanting to tear through the loveliest things in my stash but, as I realised this weekend, sewing the fabric that doesn't do it for you is no fun at all.

So, I was in desperate need of a sewing project that would revive me, and when I saw this buttercup bag pattern over at made by rae last week I printed it out immediately, and it had been sitting on my sewing table until Monday night when I gave over to it.

I struggle with starting projects, and need to remind myself to get stuck in, but once I'd started with this one there was no stopping me. What a lovely pattern... thank you Rae.

In making it up, I have totally fallen for the floral fabric, which was a charity find. The colours are really warm. And a bit of jazzy green lining... lovely.

And these are the fabrics sitting on my table at the moment... not sure why I am going all woolly just when the sun is coming out? It seems that although I am embracing spring in all other areas of the house, it hasn't quite reached my sewing space... I'll see if I can't do something about that!

A quilt, a quilt!

Yesterday Brendan, Mil and I hopped in the car first thing, and drove to Herefordshire, eating a picnic breakfast en route, to go and meet the latest arrival in our family - my nephew, and Mil's third cousin... all boys!


And as far as I can work out, babies means quilts, and so I made a quilt... My first ever quilt! I'm pretty pleased seeing as it is a first, and I am looking forward to making the next.


All the front fabrics are American Jane Recess, and I have been coveting these for a while. The backing fabric was an old duvet cover I picked up in a charity shop.


It was a good day, the baby was a cutie, and the bigger cousins got to do some hanging out.

Sun and Sewing = Fine and Dandy

I find that there is so much going on at the moment in life, and it can be easy to get bogged down in the mechanics of it all. A lot recently I have found myself running in and running right out again. Taking no time to actually enjoy life.

All the things that are making me busy are good things... things that make life better, like making our house a home and keeping fit, and earning a living, but they don't half get me worked up into a tizzy.





Yesterday I did some sewing, the first in what feels like forever, and whilst Mil napped, I sewed and ironed and measured and I was totally calm, even when I made a mistake... and the sun came out.




And, before I ran out to run in a race (bananas, I know) we sat in the garden, Brendan had a glass of home brew, we admired the tulips and Mil watered the plants.


Life is okay...