Tuesday 30 January 2018

Book Review: This Is What Happened by Mick Herron


This book was awesome. Yup I led with that. If you like crime thrillers then you must read this.

Maggie Barnes leads a life that not many would notice. No ties to anyone, deadbeat job, keeps to herself. Which makes her perfect to be recruited for a spy job - which goes wrong and leads to her being a safe house for two years.
There are so many twists in this book, not too many, enough that leaves you thinking - hold on-what? Not everything is as it seems but I can't say much more without giving the plot away. It is also not a spy-book as the blurb indicates - it is a psychological suspense that involves some very interesting but flawed characters.

Thanks to Hachette for the review copy of this book.

Sunday 14 January 2018

Fox(ish) Quilt


To start my crafty 2018 off, I decided to challenge myself. I have an amazing friend that I have known since primary school and she is having a baby pretty soon! I wasn't able to fly up for her baby shower so I decided to make something to send up.

They have not found out baby's gender so I decided to look through my fabric stash for inspiration. I had a bunch of orange/yellow/grey fabrics and a teeny scrap of fox fabric left so I squeezed three triangles out of that and made the other fabrics work around them. I wanted a relatively simple design so I went with rows of half-square triangles (it's a thing!), separated by some solid grey.

Once I had pieced together the quilt top I used a woolen blanket as batting and went to work with the quilting. This is the part I struggle with which is why in the past I have only done simple stitch-in-the-ditch quilting. I have issues with the back piece puckering and I get super frustrated hauling a huge and heavy quilt around my machine. However, I have been inspired by my friend Holly and her queen-sized quilt and I followed her lead and quilted random patterns on each triangle. I didn't really have any plan, which you can probably tell, but I challenged myself and I enjoyed doing it.







After I finished quilting each triangle I trimmed it to shape and added the binding. I handstitched it because it looks neater and I have a terrible track record of not catching the binding when I try to machine stitch it. 

I love the way this quilt turned out and I think that more will be on the horizon. I hope this quilt will keep bubba warm once it arrives. I love giving baby gifts!

You can check out some of my previous quilt attempts below:

Rainbow Chevron Quilt

Windmill Quilt

Vintage Sheet Quilt

Triangle Cot Quilt

Grey Stripe Quilt

Cross Quilt

Vintage Sheet Quilt #2




Monday 1 January 2018

2017 Makings


I though that I would flick through my camera roll to see how many of the things I made have been documented this year. Turns out there were quite a few. Here they are:

Size 1 Bunny coat

Size 3 Bear coat

Size 3 Bear vest

Size 3 tiger dress-up coat

Size 2 unicorn vest

3-6 month size baby vest

Mother and daughter coordinating unicorn jackets

The lining of the mother/daughter jackets

Size 3 vest

Size 2 Dinosaur coat

Size 3 pony coat

5x 0-3 month baby vests

6-9 month size baby coat

Size 4 Dino vest
Yellow floral dress for me


Crochet giraffe for my nephew

Door mat

Door mat #2

Tree stump cake for my nephew

Pirate ship cake for Addison

Custom crochet baby blanket

Fox hot water bottle cover

Cat pot plant holder out of a Coke bottle

5x sets of tiny wooden villages

Bird string art
I'm glad that I managed to document these projects, I have definitely kept busy although I found that the first half of the year held a bit of a creative slump for me. I think I jumped from crochet to sewing because I needed some quick projects and that helped kick start my creativity again.

2018 will be another creative year for me, I have plenty of ideas in my head, I just need to find the time to do them. May this year be creative and fun for you too! xx