Christmas in March

Photo credit: Andrewbrnt

As is traditional after taking a long, unexpected break from blogging, I wanted to say thanks to folk who dropped me a note to check I was okay, and to apologise for not replying! Things got a bit sticky, mental-health wise, in the middle of November, and for my own sanity, something had to give. Since I’m not allowed to stop coming to work or food shopping or sleeping or hoovering the flat, and I had Christmas presents to make, that thing turned out to be blogging. I’m still suffering from crafting burn-out, I think, but I had a lovely time teaching crochet at the weekend, so hopefully I’m on the road to recovery.

Trying to catch up on everything that I’ve done since I last blogged is a bit overwhelming, and going back through my pictures doesn’t really help. There’s just so much, so I’m just going to pick something for now.

These are probably the Christmas presents that surprised me the most. My father in law loves his campervan, and my original plan had been to make him a paper-pieced picture of his van to go on a quilt. Sadly, my skills are not quite up to it, and the sample was a complete and utter disaster. On the plus side, that’s why you make a sample first. On the down side, I had 3 weeks to Christmas, and no present.

Never mind, internet patterns to the rescue! Some emergency Googling turned up the Coastal Cruiser pattern by Tula Pink, and I worked out that I had more than enough in my stash to put 2 of these together. I did the fabric pull, printed the pattern and cut it out and set a Saturday aside to get them done.

Then my father in law decided that he was free to come and help us hang new doors in the flat after all.

If you have ever wondered if it is possible to sew 2 over-sized cushions in a small-ish bedroom using a folding table to put your sewing machine on then I am happy to report that yes, yes it is possible. Not recommended, but possible.

More to the point, he didn’t have a clue what I was doing, only that it was ‘something crafty’. How crafty, he had no idea.

Sadly, I only have bad camera phone pictures of the cushions themselves, but I’m so chuffed with them that I couldn’t not post them.

There’s more, of course. I made quite a lot for people at Christmas, and I have pictures of most of it. Which is good, because since Christmas, I’ve barely picked up my hook. I did manage to finish one thing, which hopefully I’ll be able to post about on Friday, but for most of this year so far, crafting has been the last thing on my mind.

On the plus side, there’s still plenty from last year to tell you about. I’m going to take the silver linings where I can find them at the moment.

Hope 2013 is being good to everyone so far 🙂