JANET CLARE CUSHION .....

With all the busy chaos and excitement of the Christmas and New Year period, I completely forgot to show you my latest sewing endeavour. Having learnt to make my first patchwork cushion under the expert tutelage of my pal Josiekitten, I have now made two on my own. The very bright spotty dotty cushion shown two or three weeks ago, was a Christmas gift for my younger daughter, whilst this very contrasting colour scheme will work wonderfully well in my elder daughter's sitting room.

I have only recently re-discovered my love of sewing and along with it an absolute adoration of the fabric designs of the very talented Janet Clare. She uses one of my favourite colour palettes and has produced some wonderful designs. My favourite has to be her 'Hearty Good Wishes' prints, but alas, these seem to be no longer available. You could say, I've missed the boat!

Running a close second, comes the 'More Hearty Good Wishes' collection; again using the same colour palette and very similar designs. I have managed to snaffle a couple of charm and mini-charm packs for future 'stitchy' indulgence!

For the cushion, I have used the 'Nocturne' collection of prints. Everything is so understated and muted. I just LOVE them! I've learnt to keep a close eye on the seam allowances in order to maintain the same length of strip. This is essential if the cushion is to arrive at 20" in diameter and with the squares lined up precisely. Practice certainly is the way to go!

The actual pattern order is a time consuming job. Any amount of re-distributing, swapping around, starting again and turning around takes place before I'm finally happy with the layout of the squares.
Then it's sew, sew, sew!!!!! I love it!

CHRISTMAS IS IN THE AIR.....

Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! I do just love, love, love that first spell of snow of the winter. We travelled across the county to take Oscar for his hydrothrapy on Saturday, which s when I snapped the photo above. Once back home agian, I have hibernated for the rest of the weekend. Very relaxing! I've pottered and crafted and re-planned all my schoolwork for the coming week. Yes, I did say RE-PLANNED!! I was running late, as usual, and left my laptop running with my memory stick still in the drive while we took Oscar. On my return, my coming week's plans and most of those dating back to the beginning of term had mysteriously disappeared. I have no idea what happened, but it is very, very annoying, to say the least. I have searched my laptop and they are nowhere to be found. Silly Snoops that I am, I had not backed them up. I do usually, but do it periodically. Lesson to be learnt there!

Anyways, I left school a 'happy  bunny' on Friday, looking forward to the weekend and the forecast of more snow. I left my bright little 'term time' home neat and tidy. Would you like a look at where I spend my days?

It's usually messy, noisy and busy!

On Saturday morning we opened the curtains to .......

The sky brightened cnsiderably, as we travelled across country.

I decided to get some sewing jobs done today. I had two very special items to make. I had bought the small pieces of felt several weeks ago, but not found the time to get started. Guess what I made.........

Two very special Christmas stockings, for the two new members of the Snoops clan! Now I just need some little presents to put in them. I think Oscar was rather impressed.

I'm afraid I have no knitting to show you this week. It's not that I haven't picked the needles up, I have. It's just that I have several projects on the go, that I would really like to finish before Christmas. Rather than put a concerted effort into one, I have hopped and skipped about all over the place this week, knitting a 'little bit of this' and a 'little bit of that', but not a sizeable chunk of anything!!!! Never mind, there's always next week. See you then.