Quilt while you're ahead

ironing board cover

ironing is a little bit nicer...

the hottest day of the year...

and I'm painting furniture.

Don't ask.

boys, boys, boys

I'm looking for a good time...

 

boys, boys, boys,

 

get ready for my love

 

I'm exhausted already and summer has barely began...

Help.

sometimes it's just a case

of right time right place

 

if you want to snap up this delicious bowl

 

and dishes.

 

Or perhaps you prefer fauna to flora...

Peaches

 

Pattern by Kim hargreaves in her latest book "Breeze"

 

Hook size 4.25mm and 3.5mm.  Rowan handknit cotton shade 355, 2 balls.

 

For my good friend Kirsty.

 

Because she asked very very nicely.

what's your trick?

 I was sitting at my desk earlier, staring at the wall and pondering what to do next.  Mr M and the boys had left for the day and the empty hours stretched endlessly and ahead of me (irony, people, smell the irony...).

What to do? how to get started? The wall stared back as I sat drinking green tea in my 'drama queen' mug. (Drama queen? Moi?)

Working on a WIP? nah.  Too virtuous.  Today was a day dedicated to shameless me time and self indulgence; finishing a WIP sounded too much like 'work'.  I was having an ill timed case of sewing-block.

Pants.

So I folded some laundry - which was completely way and above the call of duty and helped sweaping away the last crumble of guilt at having so much time on my hands - and then I sat down at my computer and 'surfed'.

I find reading craft blogs a double edged sword... there's so much talent out there that it can be kind of crippling and self-destroing to look at it all.  Today though, it worked. 

I grabbed my box of scraps, turned my machine on and just went for it. The top and the bottom come from an old 'cutter' top I got off ebay; they're stained and have holes, they're crooked and faded, but they deserve love too and as long as they'll last they're going to get it - all be it under a very hot dish, love hurts after all.

 

The scrappy border is just that... scraps.

So how do you get out of a creative schlump? How do get back on the saddle again? How do you ride it out?

(Today my inspiration came from http://ayumills.blogspot.com/)

granny's cushion

actually it's not granny's, it's mine. 

 

In my studio I have a very old office chair which - let's face it - has seen better days.  The armrests have fallen off and it doesn't go up and down anymore.

But.

But now it sports a brand new cushion.

 

My lumbar region is extremely happy.

And I've fallen under the granny squares' spell.

'A' is for skirt.

Ta dah!!!

 

I finally did it.

Not brilliantly, but I did it.

 

And it fits. Eventually.

In the words on No 3.... "ME DID IT"...

(loosely based on Amy Butler A-line skirt pattern.  No lining.  Fabric is called 'Riviera' by FreeSpirity)

... life itself,

rushing over me... *

 

 

and how's your day coming along?

* Bruce Springsteen, who else...

stock 1

I hadn't quite realised how depleted my 'stock pile' (grand name for a couple boxes of stuff which is most of the time a 'present pile') was till I look this morning.  Oh dear.

Let the work begin.

 

Surprise suprise.  A bag.  How original of me.

But how girlie is the fabric?  Don't you want to run through a field of barley with a straw hat and a long flowy skirt?

No? Just me then.

Fair enough.