Out of My Comfort Zone – Part 1

Last year when I got my new super duper sewing/embroidery/quilting machine (big birthday present and Christmas) I realised that I needed to step out of my comfort zone of tried and tested blocks to learn something new and perhaps push myself a little harder!!

I’m absolutely no good with ‘YouTube’ tutorial sites I need someone standing over me to say ‘’Noooooooooo not like that! Like this!!’’.

My lovely local fabric store (Fabric HQ in Stoke Mandeville) has a ‘social’ quilting session twice a month, but you can guarantee that family or hospital/doctors/dentist/opticians appointments always fall on those particular days. The shop does do courses but there’s been nothing new that I fancy recently.

So putting on a brave face, and rolling up my sleeves, I embarked on a ‘learn something new quilty each month’ as my New Year’s resolution, at least I could keep to that or could I???

The New Year got off to a bad start after my husband decided to slide on the ice in our back garden whilst feeding his racing pigeons and ended up in hospital having completely torn his quadriceps muscle!

Fortunately it was in his good knee, having had a total knee replacement the year before on his other knee.

I managed to get a bit of hand sewing done, whilst at his bedside, as what should have been an operation and out ended up being caught up in the Christmas and New Year Holiday Celebration Weekend and he ended up being in for nearly a week!

I was so happy to loose myself testing a couple of patterns for my good friend Lyn Butler, taking my mind off playing nurse to my husband once he was back home. A lovely infinity heart table topper and a tablet rest. All her patterns are in her UKQU shop, and I think she believes if I can do them then anybody can!!

Unfortunately I over stuffed my tablet rest and it now resides in my hallway as a doorstop!!!

I also discovered a little booklet in a quilt magazine that had a calendar block for each month, so I finished January with a new skill of covered corners on a snowball block.

February saw me testing again for Lyn, with a thread tidy, which is lovely, useful, and sits on the window sill by my chair.

She also had me testing an Easter Bag and Easter cones! Somebody mentioned chain piecing on a website so I thought I’d give it a go, not too successful, and I hastily consigned the pieces to a box for further contemplation! The calendar block for February was a lovely little winged heart.

March saw me tidying my sewing area, (I’d either lost something or I was bored!!!) where I discovered that I’d now got a huge pile of scraps, so I decided that I could make a scrappy striped cushion cover with some of them. I also found out that I could sew the wadding together out of my wadding scraps for this!!

The previous year I’d subscribed to a Box of Delights, from The Bramble Patch, whereby each month you received a box containing fabric, a pattern and notions but mostly when they had arrived all I had done was stroke the fabric and sigh wistfully over the patterns, so I pulled one randomly from my pile of boxes and found myself embarking on Redwork for the first time, and managed to use my new light box!

More testing in April for Lyn, this time it was a disappearing 16 patch, as well as a Christmas Table Runner.

My Box of Delights choice was Autumn Leaf Dinner Mats with a cutlery pocket. These are in use every day!!

I then found I had major printer problems, so I was unable to print the EEP patterns for the March and April calendar blocks, but a trip into school in May enabled me to get a print of them both, along with May. Paper piecing Daffodils for March, which I thoroughly enjoyed It was an Umbrella for April and a windmill for May!

My random pick from my pile of Box of Delights for this month was a tote bag, and that accompanies me everywhere now. This pattern has been used to make a few more bags as presents too!

I was on a roll with my New Year’s Resolution and the year was now racing along what will the second part of the year see me up to I wonder??