Quilt No.6

If you're a friend of ours who has recently had a baby, you probably ought to stop reading now...
 
2010's quilt number six has been completed, it was inspired by this.

I'm delighted to say that it's made entirely from fabric I already had in my stash, even the batting I used was made up from the leftovers from this quilt.  The size (34" square) was dictated by the size of the piece of blue flannel fabric I had for the backing, but it was worth working to accommodate it, because it's made the quilt wonderfully soft.

The letters at the bottom are the baby's initials (if our friends didn't give up at that first line, they've really blown it now!)

Jim had to stop me trying to deliver it to them this evening, it can wait till tomorrow...

Next I have a few cushion covers to make, a beach bag for my sister and some clothing. I ordered tracing paper for my pajama bottoms pattern from the UK a fortnight ago, but due to the volcanic ash flight disruptions, we haven't had post for over a week now.

As always there MUST be somewhere in Cyprus that sells tracing paper that's wide enough, but I'm damned if I know where it is!

A productive weekend

Wow! What a weekend! Here in Cyprus, we have been waiting for the "switch" - the sudden permanent change in the weather to summer, and right on schedule, it seems to have arrived. 27c this weekend and brilliant blue skies.

The newly arrived warmer weather has also awakened our productivity. On Saturday we did one of those jobs we can't work out why we didn't do six months ago, we painted the fridge! Yes, we *painted* the fridge. Until we arrived here, I didn't even know you could paint fridges! It's amazing the skills that military life equips you with...

When we arrived on the island, our house contained a military issue fridge, the exterior of which bore the scars of several years use in a humid country, it had started to rust and the front looked filthy. This photo doesn't really show how bad it looked...

We were stuck with it, and no amount of cleaning improved its appearance. I bought a tin of fridge paint several months ago, but worried what I'd do if the results weren't good - I didn't want to end up being charged for a replacement when we move out! So the paint sat in the cupboard... and then this weekend we finally cracked..

Just look at the improvement!! I am a fridge paint convert, the entire thing only cost €3 to do!

As if the fridge transformation wasn't enough, we also kitted ourselves out with gardening equipment and planted our first few pots on the patio. It's amazing how a few bits of colour and life can transform a space...

A weekend of painting and gardening... I had forgotten how good it can feel to do normal things, the kind of things you don't do when you live in military quarters and move every two years...

And then to top it off I even managed to fit in a little bit of quilting, this project is one of the things on my sewing list - a present for a baby who was born last week. It should be finished by midweek...

Hope you had a productive and creative weekend...

Simple pleasures

M'mmm... houmous! I loved the stuff before we moved here and now I live in a place where its practically the national dish, so surely its rude not to eat it at least three times a week. Put it on a plate with homemade bread and well, is there anything better?

This week we have mostly been...

● Watching the Red Arrows on exercise. They have been flying over my office every day... Hopefully I'll have some photos for the blog by the end of the week.

● Watching the grass turn brown.. everything is starting to die off, summer must be on the way.

● Talking about pots... we're doing the big garden container purchase this weekend, our little garden transformation is underway...

● Enjoying evening walks on deserted beaches. It's not dark till 8pm... wonderful.

● Thinking about sewing projects. I need to make cushion covers for my sister, a quilt for a friend's baby, pajama bottoms for me and I also want to have a go at this, but I only have two weeks till the deadline... why is there never enough time?

Hope your week is going well so far...

Quality time...

It really has been the most wonderful day. My sister and my niblings joined us for the day, we had a long walk, lunch by the sea and the most rarest of things happened... the sun shone. The phrase "quality time" is a little overused when it comes to families, but nothing sums up today better.

Then with the clock ticking on my sister's departure, and the sun lowering in the sky, we finished by doing something we do all too rarely. We threw down a quilt on the lawn and started taking photos.

As always some family members were reluctant to comply, but eventually everyone had their moment in front of the lens. Even the dogs played along (briefly)...

 And the doggy outtakes...

Afterwards, we worked out that its been 12 years since my sister, my mother and I had a proper photo taken together, and 7 years since my mother and my niece and nephew had a decent posed photo together.

It's so important to capture the moment, and isn't digital photography wonderful for letting you do just that...

What we made today...

More bread sticks - this house is starting to look like a bakery! Today's two batches fresh out of my mother's oven, were cheese and garlic, the garlic butter made by Jim. I know we've seen them before, but they do look great...

And an almost complete quilt top. I bought the charm packs for my mother for Christmas to get her back into quilting. She took classes 20 years ago, did some very fancy sampler squares, but never actually completed a quilt.

The pattern is made in exactly the same way as my value quilt, but this time half the fabric is cream  and the squares have been arranged to give a zig-zag pattern. I think it might actually be my favourite quilt yet, which is unfortunate because its not mine!

The fabric is Moda's Arcadia. I either had a lucky guess, or a moment of genius when I ordered it from Cyprus, as it matches all the colours in my parents kitchen, where it will eventually live...

Moonpig wall

This is my parent's new Moonpig wall. We also had one of these in Canada....

...and now have an even bigger one in Cyprus.

Moonpig make personalised greetings cards. I've been a customer of theirs for about 6 years, first discovering them through a friend who was doing their PR. With birthdays, anniversaries and Valentines, we have amassed quite a collection in that time - The dogs have even had a few cards sent to them!

So rather than binning them after the event, we've hung onto them, added some scrapbooking paper and simple frames and made a feature wall that just keeps growing...

I must say, I also take particular pleasure from the fact that a Moonpig wall absolutely, totally violates the "six picture hooks in a room" rule that the military tries to impose in quarters...  we'll be using toothpaste, filler and paint to cover our tracks when we move out!

Bread

We are halfway though our trip to the UK today and there has been a lot of bread making happening at my parents house this week. My family are (nearly) all enthusiastic bakers.

Several years ago my sister and her husband went on a bread making course that transformed all of our approach to bread. The Bertinet method differs significantly from the bread making style that most of us have learned. Instead of kneading bread down, the bread is folded and lifted to catch air in it. The recipes are very simple and most bread is made from just flour, yeast, water and salt - no fat.

And of course it's all made by hand and without a breadmaker.

My mother now makes bread several times a week (the pizza and olive bread sticks are hers) and Jim has recently joined the family movement with some really great wholemeal and seed loaves.

Having become converts of home baking, we spend a fair bit of time talking bread in our family (that and dogs!) and a favourite topic is the ingredients of a shop bought sliced loaf, there's a lot of extra preservative stuff in commercial bread, and most factory produced baked products are never given the time for the yeast to mature properly. It's no wonder really that some people have adverse reactions to it...

But anyway, I did say that we are "nearly" all skilled bakers.... My father and I are the exception! My dad, who can turn his hand at anything practical, enters the kitchen only to repair things, and I am just lucky to have a husband whose culinary skills and enthusiasm eclipses my own - I am however a very appreciative consumer!