a post that has absolutely nothing to do with anything

Last night I decided I would be adventurous and make sushi for dinner. 

I have never eaten it before, let alone make it, but I'm always game to try new things - and beside all the young ones in the office are eating it all the time :)) -how bad can it be?

Here is my roll of sushi rice, and my filling of crab meat, capsicum and cucumber, with a little bit of seafood dressing added for taste.

So far so good.

mmmmmm

Pretty frickin good for a first attempt, and tasted good too.

However.....my DH decided that he'd sooner have a steak, so to make them more palatable in the meantime he drenched them in apple sauce! 

It would have been funny, except I cooked that much rice we'll be having them for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next week !!!

Have you been adventurous this week?

Carole :)

Here it is all finished!

Well finally the moment you've all been waiting for. 

I have to apologise for the quality of the pics, it is dark when I leave for work in the mornings and dark when I get home and today the day is grey, windy and wintery, not the best for taking photos.

The big reveal of my funny mismatched quilt. I'm going to share the love with you :)

Here is the original pattern, scanned from the book, it's so easy anyone could just about make it blind folded!  (except me)

That is until I came along and stuffed it all up. I still can't understand how I managed to, I measured and re-measured absolutely everything. And almost everything was out. I can say with a certainty that this quilt is the biggest mis-match of a quilt I have ever made!

This is what it looks like now...

But you know what? I really love it! It shows off the brown French themed fabric right in the centre, and you can hardly notice all the "fix-up" bits of fabric I had to add.

And I decided to take the advice of those of you who thought I should embellish it, thanks for your ideas, I decided to cut circles from my left over fabric and sew them onto the small squares in the middle of the quilt. 

I'm pleased I did, they look really neat.

On the back I used the last of my larger pieces of flannel fabric.

It's a very snuggly throw - A very small bear and I tried it out!

Have a lovely weekend my lovely friends,

Carole :)

A right royal bunting...

Making buntings has been fun, I think I'm on a roll here! This bunting is 8.5 feet long and will get listed in my Etsy Store shortly. 

 

It's a fun bunting with 13 flags and 6 British rosettes.

Carole :)

Love is all around us...

Just for a change I decided to make a pretty bunting for my Etsy store. And I decided to use paper as I consider I am severely challenged when it comes to working with paper and need all the practice I can get! LOL

In pretty pinks and greens it is 5.5 feet long. It will be listed soon.

Carole :)

I have a funny feeling.....

Still working on my quilt. 

I have the funniest feeling that just because nothing matches on this quilt, no seams join, no nine patches are straight, that this quilt will turn out to my very very favouritest!

Just because!

Have a lovely weekend dear readers. 

Just because.

Carole :)

let me show you my gorgeous hoops

 Recently the QB5 group had a challenge where we each sent the others an assortment of things and we could make whatever we liked, we could use everything we were sent, or we could leave a few things out or we could add a couple of our own things to the mix.

Above is the selection I sent each of the girls, Linda, Patty, Nathalie and Margaret. (You'll find their links on the right - just look for QB5)

This is what the girls made...

 This is the hoop Linda made for me. it is amazing, Linda has made a wee fabric book with pages containing quirky stitcheries and little pockets with lovely vintage buttons and flowers! 

Then the next hoop to delight me was made by Patty. She used an old doily that used to belong to her mother and a beautifully stitched hanky. Very pretty and feminine!

I was so excited to see how everyone had used the package of goodies I sent them. The next to arrive was Margaret's lovely hoop. It has paper collaged round the outside of the hoop, I loved how she combined the paper and the fabric!

And the last hoop to arrive was Nathalie's, and it was well worth the wait!

Lady Peel was very well endowed with buttons and lace and stitching! She even has a lucky charm with her.

Then the last hoop to share is the one I made.

Thank you so much girls for yet another exciting and challenging swap. You have all made such a lovely job of crafting my hoops, they are all different, but with a sameness. I love the textures and I love how they have all "seen" something different from the things I sent them. Now I just need to find somewhere to display them.

What do you think? Aren't I lucky to have such clever girlfriends?

Carole:)

Rrrrrrrr me hearties!

Every fortnight at work our team has a shared morning tea. Mmmm nice you're thinking, well these morning teas also have a theme. Last week the boss was tasked with setting a theme and bringing the morning tea.

The theme was Pirates. Of course my challenge was to turn myself into a pirate using only what I had at home.

First off a good pirate always has a treasure map and some loot! An old small suitcase, some jewels, a shell or two and some chocolate coins.

The treasure map was made from some tissue paper Patty sent me which I stitched to a piece of handmade paper that had lovely tatty edges.

Then I decided that my head scarf and all the dangly bits looked great, but I needed something else? And then I remembered that all the best pirates have their very own first mate - a parrot!

Here he is above, resting after his big day out :)) I couldn't work out a way to attach him to my shoulder, so he had to be content with sitting on my headband! 

I had so many neat remarks about him that I hardly took him off all day! I did take my scarf off and all the bits that were attached to it. (I think people in the office are getting used to my quirky ways now! LOL)

 The boss made some lovely morning tea for us all, way too nice to want to eat - a chocolate cake trunk full of chocolate coins and sweets. Yumm!!

However, back home, this is what my sewing tables looked like!!

Not a square inch of room! All in the quest for fun :)) Bet you don't know what I spent the evening doing!

Hope you're having fun this week!

Carole :)

Thank you and progress report

Thanks to you all for the great ideas and suggestions for help with this quilt top. I read thru them all with interest, some I thought were very good ideas, and some made me laugh. So thanks!! 

 Can you guess what I've been doing? There has been a lot of this happening in my sewing room of late, my trusty friend the Quick Unpick to the rescue. In fact I think I've nearly worn the blade out!!

Just when I've rechecked everything and pinned and measured again and think things are falling into place nicely, this happens for absolutely no reason whatsoever!

I guess everyone has to make at least one problem quilt in their lifetime of quilting :) But it's beginning to test my patience!

So here is an update of where it's at right now. HA! And you thought it's be locked in a cupboard didn't you? No, it's starting to take shape, some sort of shape, actually I'll be happy with whatever shape I get out of it! LOL I love that fabric and it still looks gorgeous. Think I might do some minor embellishing too, thanks to those who suggested it.

Well must dash and do some more sewing to unpick! hahaha Hope you're all having a great weekend,
Carole :)

It's all about tearing your hair out!

Do you remember this fabric I bought recently?

Well my aim was to make a quilt using the brown fabric at the top as a feature fabric because I couldn't bear to cut it up into small pieces.

So I have been busy measuring and cutting and sewing and it was progressing nicely.

I am using a pattern from the book Two From One Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott. I was thrilled with the progress, the fabric looks gorgeous.

However, shortly after I laid the blocks out on the bed in the pattern things started to get ugly! LOL

It quickly turned into an exercise of frustration as I started sewing the blocks together and realised that no matter what I did my points weren't going to meet. grrrrrr

 

I went back and remeasured everything, all my squares and my seam allowances. The tiny triangles on the corners are too small. Even a blind man could see that! However, when I unpicked one it was cut exactly the right size.

I even emailed the authors of the book who emailed me back a very lovely email, but the bottom line isn't pretty. To fix the problem I'd have to unpick a LOT of stitching and buy more fabric and re-sew everything. 

I was thinking that maybe I should change the pattern some so that no one knows that I've made the grandest botch up of all time?

What do you think if I put all these blocks together, and maybe put the nine patch blocks round the outside?

Of course if you tell anyone I stuffed up big time, I'm going to have to hunt you down! LOL

Back to the sewing room......Carole :)

 

 

If you happen to be in Wellington this weekend......

The bunting in action

Remember the bunting I made for my boss?

Well today was her last day at work before she gets married and I got a chance to hang her bunting above her desk.

We had loads of fun making sure she enjoyed her day. We covered her desk in tinsel and paper confetti, and sneaked some into her handbag and draws, hung balloons and streamers and made large signs that notified everyone getting out of the lifts that we had a Bride To Be in our office.

And I decided to make a special bridal headpiece for her to wear in the office  :)))

And just before our very special afternoon tea, two of us discreetly disappeared down to the car park and wrapped her car in toilet paper!

It was a day of never-ending surprises and lots of laughs. (especially when she glanced out the window and spotted her car two stories below with bits of toilet paper blowing off it from it in the wind!)

Then before I went home she asked if she could keep the pretty bridal headband. I think she liked that more than anything else!

I hope she has a lovely day on Saturday!

Carole :)