The Sewing Dilettante

This weekend was the first in a long time that we didn't have visitors or weren't ourselves away, and it was such a luxury to be at home with nothing much to do! We had glorious weather, so we spent a lot of quality family time outside, soaking up the sun. Otherwise, I had zero plans beyond relaxing and recouping from the past few weeks of visiting and entertaining, so I was glad to have some hand sewing at the ready for a cozy evening on the sofa on Saturday. I've been following the  Saturday Night Craftalong  hosted by Lucy of Charm About You on Instagram for a while now but never had the chance to participate, so this seemed like the perfect time to join in with my teeny, tiny hexies . Just for fun, I started sewing them into multi-coloured daisies. When I wound up for the evening, I had a pile of zany and colourful mini flowers. I'm still not quite sure what I'll do with these, but it occurred to me that I might be able to use them in combination w...

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind, mainly because things are crazy at work. I'm in the process of changing positions at the moment, so my days seem to pass in a haze of phone calls to various HR individuals, countless emails dealing with logistics, and a panicked flurry to tie up loose ends at the old job before moving on to the new. Just as well I had some fantastic blogging/patchworking events to look forward to this week! Monday morning I was invited along to my first blogging event ever, and boy was I delighted! The lovely Judith organized it all, and Fiona kindly hosted us (despite just having had surgery!) There were only five of us altogether (including one non-blogging daughter), as several other Northern Ireland based bloggers couldn't make it, but it was lovely to meet a few of the bloggers I've been following and put faces to names. As ever these days, I had my hexies to hand, so I worked away on those while we chatted about ourselves and our projects, at...

I spent this morning in a quilter's paradise! Remember that friend I mentioned, for whose son and daughter-in-law I made the Double Irish Chains quilt? Well, she (Mrs. L.), my mom, and I whiled away a couple of blissful hours in The Quilt Patch , an amazing little shop that looks deceptively small from outside but which actually houses an amazing selection of brightly coloured cottons, baby fleeces, quilt kits, charm squares, jelly rolls, and pretty much any quilting tool you can imagine. Mrs. L. is currently working on a wedding present for a young lady getting married in October with a Halloween-themed wedding! The quilt Mrs. L. is planning is, appropriately, black and white, and we found some amazing spider-web print black cotton for the backing as well as a couple of lovely ash grey and marbled black fabrics for borders. For my part, I picked up a few fat quarters in colours to match my earlier purchases , another few in white to add to my hexie quilt , and a lovely, soft p...

Well, I've been away in Montreal for the past week or so with work, sweltering in the record-breaking heat and humidity! Despite my enthusiasm about all such weather here in North America, even I found myself a tad bit cranky, especially after four nights in un-airconditioned student accommodation in the atmospheric but suffocating Grey Nuns Residence at Concordia University. I don't know how the nuns ever survived summer in this place, but, if their name is anything to go by (the term 'les soeurs grises' in French means both 'grey nuns' and 'drunken nuns'), alcohol might have played a key role. Then again, as one Montrealer informed me, this is the hottest, most humid summer they've experienced in 800 years! Anyway, as you might imagine, I was delighted to get back to New Hampshire and my parents' air-conditioned house for a last couple of days of family time before heading back to Ireland. That's where, on Sunday afternoon, I sat practic...

This is exactly how I feel right about now! It's been an exhausting couple of months with work, and I'm feeling pretty worn out. Luckily, I've got a couple of weeks of recuperation planned back home in New Hampshire, where I plan to sleep solidly for a day or two before re-emerging into the world a new, revived woman! I'm also hoping to finish my Double Irish Chains quilt, make amazing progress on my hexies, and, in a related activity, trawl the local craft stores for interesting fabric, quirky haberdashery, and other fun goodies. I'll let you know how I get on! xx Tina 

After a particularly hectic couple of weeks of work, I decided I deserved a little decompression time last week. So, I took a whole afternoon off, plonked myself on the couch and spent a blissful few hours watching daytime tv and working on some long neglected English paper piecing. Several months ago a friend had introduced me to the humble hexagon, and I was hooked, especially as they're so easy to make and so portable. Don't get me wrong, I love my Pfaff, but sometimes I like not having to faff around - excuse the pun - getting it down from the spare room and setting it up to sew. Sometimes I want something I can just whip out of my sewing bag at a moment's notice and work away at to my heart's content with nothing more than a needle, thread, and paper hexagons. Obviously, the urge comes and goes.... in my initial English paper piecing frenzy, I made up ten hexagon 'flowers' with the intention of (eventually) turning them into a quilt for an as-then-unkn...