Little Life Update

I finally caught COVID, and while I am curled up on my sofa feeling sorry for myself, I thought I would check through things. I realised that I haven’t written anything on this blog for ages (gulp April 2021) and so much has happened! The problem is that Instagram is so much quicker and easier to update, whereas sitting down to write something in long-form takes (unsurprisingly) longer.

I really got into patchwork and quilting. I’ve finished two complete quilts now and have another one made and sandwiched – it just needs quilting.

The second completed quilt (after Lumen) was an exercise in being precise, which it turned out I wasn’t. I foolishly assumed that where my machine had 1/4 inch marked for the seams, was actually 1/4 inch. It wasn’t!

So the joins are a bit wobbly, but the quilt is not bad for my second one.

The quilt that is almost finished is for my nephew who loves dinosaurs (he gets that from his mum!). This time I checked where 1/4 inch was and made a tape wall, so I could get my seams better. I did, however, make a minor error in size calculation and didn’t realize that I was making a king-size quilt, for a 5-year-old…

Once it’s quilted I think it’s going to look amazing and my sister seems quite excitied at the prospect of having a huge dinosaur quilt to use as their movie quilt!

I also joined the London Modern Quilt Guild, and in doing so realised just how little I knew about quilting and quilt blocks. So my 2023 challenge is to make a sampler quilt with commonly used blocks. I designed this…

It gets more complex the further along the quilt you go. I have the fabric but am yet to start because I’m waiting for my new sewing cabinet to arrive, so I can sew comfortably.

This leads me to other life news, we finally moved house. We went from a tiny two-bedroom flat to a beautiful four-bedroom house (with a garden!!). We are still unpacking, and there is so much house improvement and DIY to do. But it really has potential. One of the downstairs rooms is going to become a craft room so the boyfriend and I have somewhere to work on our crafty endeavours. Hence the sewing cabinet I’ve bought. Also now that we have a garden I can get back into growing vegetables. So far I have planted onion seeds and hoping to see them germinating soon. The weather needs to warm up a bit more before I start planting anything else though.

As if the amazing life news couldn’t get any more exciting, the boyfriend won’t be a boyfriend for much longer, because we also got engaged just before Christmas! We had so much fun designing an engagement ring with Maya Magal a London based jeweller.

It made from recycled 9ct gold and an ethically sourced sapphire. Wedding plans are still very much in the planning stage, so watch this space!

I could write so much more in this little life update, but then it wouldn’t be so little. So I’ll save the other crafting for some future posts.