Polly's New Blanket - Learning to Sew Patchwork Curves

Life's pretty good at the moment.

I'm pretty much on top of the housework, I'm hitting 10,000 steps a day and I have a new dog. 

Anyway I've decided that this year would be all about learning new skills and learning to piece curves for patchwork. I've had a subscription to love patchwork and quilting magazine for a few years now (thanks by the way Netty and Keith) 

Luckily the magazine come with free templates etc so I used those to draw straight onto the fabric. It saved a lot of time and meant I didn't have to spend a hour on the Internet trying to find a decent template. 

Piecing them together was more tricky than I expected. Obviously I piece a lot of curves for dressmaking but this was a whole new kettle of fish. I used about four pins per quarter circle and swore a lot. 

Fabrics wise everything was from my stash , there's a right mixture if bits and pieces in their including some of my favourite fabrics . Living with boys I tend to use a lot of dark colours so I really enjoyed making this pink explosion for Polly. 

Quilting wise I kept it simple and just did some straight lines , I was going to do free motion quilting but I couldn't get the bloody tension to work properly and after I'd unpicked some of it once I wasn't going to risk doing the whole thing just to have to undo it if I hated it.

Luckily because its a teeny weeny quilt it didn't take very long to quilt at all. In fact I did all the quilting in the adverts of love island. 

Naturally I couldn't get a nice picture of Polly sat on the blanket , I tried bribing her with treats but it didn't really help. To be honest most of the pictures were of her bum and then of course their was the one of her pooping........ 

So yeah this is the best I could do. Polly spends a lot of time in her basket as its her "safe place" and normally she doesn't look as happy as this but see just been for a walk so she was living her best life. 

That or she was thirsty? We are still having trouble getting her to realise that the water and food bowl is just for her. 

I finally have access to a tablet! My tablet went squiffy last week but luckily my kind neighbour Chelsey had a tablet she didn't use so I'm using that. So far I love it its HUGE so I can actually use the screen to type rather than having to plug in my keyboard! So cheers Chelsey love you!!! 

In other news! 

Lil man has his voice back!! 

Much love 

Frankie 

Xxx