A Good Way to Start the Day...

An email from my sister, introducing me to the newest addition to our family.......

Followed by some tea in the increasingly rare sun....

And some hand quilting practice.....

I read somewhere that there was a woman who set some new sewers a task: take two peices of fabric that are easy to sew together, and working from one end, hand sew the fabrics together working towards the other end; as you work, you'll be able to see your stitches go from being uneven and ragged, to fine, straight and beautiful, or so the theory goes!
Having intended to hand quilt the Patchwork number I have been working on, given that it is already paper pieced and ready to hand sew together, I figure, why not go the whole way and do the whole thing by hand???? (i know, I know...madness!)
Anyhoo, I found this hand quilting tutorial, and set to work with three layers of fabric, a layer of thick wool for the batting, sandwiched between two layers of cotton.
Well. I tell you what, this quilting caper aint for the faint hearted. As you can probably see, my stitches are freaking everywhere. Messy, ragged, uneven, and I tell you what....they're not getting straighter any time soon.

I think it might be time to go out and buy that walking foot and just machine quilt the thing. This is all beside the point that I haven't even pieced the bloody thing together yet because I can't for the life of me figure out a design I'm happy with.

But in the meantime, I'm enjoying playing around with this:

It's called Fabric Matcher, and it's an online qilting store that has a tool where you can match fabrics to a hex colour, a picture, by pattern, by complimentary or harmonious colour scheme, and more, and when you find the fabrics you like, they'll sell them to you by the half yard. Lots of fun.

And just to finish up, here's a quick photo of my finished "one-skein-cowl-project-that-turned-into-two-skein-bizarre-scarf-thingy-project"

I just took that picture on the webcam, hence it's terrible quality. It's a little bulkier than I wanted, but its two layers of knitting keeps my neck super warm, and in the end, that's exactly what it's for.....!!

Hope you're all having fun, wherever you are!