Spring Cleaning!

Yesterday, the house got a right good gutting clean!  Everyone pitched in!  We scrubbed, wiped, swept & de-cluttered.   Ahhhhh!  There's nothing like a good spring clean to blow the cobwebs away (& there were many!).

The spring cleaning bug extended into my sewing room too!

I've been running out of room for my Pattern & Admin files and books, so I set to getting tough on my scraps!

I bagged up 2 bin bags full of unsuitable, fugly or pre-historic scraps & decided to chuck anything that was smaller than 2.5" square, unless it was an especially precious piece!

Putting my 2.5" Sizzix die to good use (there was steam practically pouring out of it!) I turned the 'too small to keep but still useful' scraps into mini charm squares!  I now have the beginnings of a 'Scrap Vomit' box (not much carrot in this vomit though! LOL!).

It's utterly bizzare what I was still keeping in all my scrap boxes.  Cut up tea-towels, ties, swatches from sample books etc.  I know what all these things could be made into, but alas, I just don't have the time.  I threw out stuff I'd been holding on to for years!

Here we have the 3" squares that get cut away when making handbag box corners!!  Like sorting through the photo albums in the loft (where you just have to stop and reminisce) I started putting these squares up on my design board & thought these random deco weight squares go quite well together.  These might just morph into a cushion or tote bag one day!!  Needlesss to say, these ones didn't make it into the bin bag in the end!!

So I've now got the space I need for my growing collection of ugly lever arch files!

And tomorrow, I'm hoping to get the paint brush out and give some of the 2nd hand furniture in there a makeover!

Oh, and I also found the old wooden spools I inherited a while ago ....



... some still with their original labels. Here you see them after I de-robed them of very old thread.  Tomorrow I'll show you what I turned them into!!

It's a bank holiday here in UK tomorrow!  Have fun whatever you get up to!

Miss January (almost)!

In the Brit Bee, it is my turn as Miss January to set the block requirements for my 11 Brit Bee Buddies. 

It is quite a daunting task deciding on what to ask 11 other very talented ladies to make.  Choosing the fabrics alone was mind boggling! I stewed over it for a long time, and finally budget restraints helped me to make my final decision!

SCRAPS!

I love scraps, and I love making things from scraps! So I raided and rummaged and gathered up 11 colour coded bundles of scraps and posted them at the end of December to the 4 corners of the UK (well to England and Scotland anyway!).

And you might well be asking 'And what did she ask them all to make with those scraps?'

Just take a wee look at these pics & more on this board on my Pinterest and see if you can guess!

That's right - log cabin blocks.  I can't wait to see what the girls come up with!

Well it is January tomorrow (yikes!).  

I hope you have enjoyed the good times in 2011, won out on some of the tough times, and have grown in your knowledge, understanding and appreciation of life and all it has had to offer you this past year.

Judith xo

Another Crazy Quiltalong!

I have tried to resist this one since I heard about it a few days ago, but today my resolve broke and I've signed up to another Quilt Along (I haven't finished the Lily's Quilts one yet! I must be mad!).

Aneela Hoey from Comfort Stitching is hosting a crazy patchwork quilt along. 

This QAL uses 2 of my favourite things - scraps and crazy patchwork.  Click on the button above to check out Aneela's gorgeous blocks.  V.inspiring!

She also has a tutorial on how to make the basic block. 

The QAL hasn't started yet, so there's still plenty of time for folks to hmmm and haaaa, rummage through their scraps, before buckling at the knees and signing up!