A quilt!

A mini-quilt, granted! But it's a quilt nonetheless. And it's one that Romily (now 8 years old!) and I made together. She wanted a quilt for 'Big Ted', so we set about designing (a simple grid) and selecting the fabrics from my rather substantial scrap box. The fabric choices are all Rom's and I helped her learn to sew together squares. She struggled a bit with keeping the seams the same width and after doing a pretty good job handed it over to me (I didn't know quilting would be so hard, Mum!).

We piecing the top on Friday and I sandwiched and quilted it yesterday (I asked Rom to do the quilting but I think it was all a bit too much for her and she asked me to finish it).

Next time I think I'll let her sew together four large pieces of felt and call it a blankie - Romily doesn't seem quite ready for the rigours of straight line sewing :) Not yet, anyway.

It's been a long time between drinks. While I have been handquilting Romily's single bed quilt (see post from last June), I haven't been doing any crafting as I had rather a serious snafu with my MPhil dissertation. Not long after my last post, I had an 'annual review' by the Higher Degree people at the university. They gave me the bad news that my methodology didn't quite stack up with the evidence I had gathered during my research phase. While it wasn't quite back to the drawing board, I did have to rewrite about 10000 words as well as gather new data. This stumble set me back six months, but I am happy to report I submitted my thesis for examination in the last week of March. It's now out with the two external examiners and I should know how I've done within the next month or so.

Having this weight off my shoulders has been such a liberating experience. I am now free to tackle all those jobs around the home I've been putting off, as well as to do some writing for me (I'm working on my first screenplay!) and pick up the guitar. I've bought a fabulous Luna guitar and I'm learning my first chords. I'll start taking some lessons in the coming week and hopefully I'll be able to start playing some songs - I sing in a band and we've written a bunch of songs. I'd like to be able to play along on some of them, although the concept of singing and playing at the same time is likely to take a little while to master!

So, life is good, there are endless opportunities and I hope some of my future opportunities include more quilting and more crafting (and even Romily may decide to have another go!).

 

Finished size: 18.5x23"