January blues !

Its official - I dislike January. Now everything is back to normal doesn't it all seem flat ?

I plan to get out of this by doing some quilting. Trouble is I have such a lot of UFO's I'm not sure where to start. My plan is to get 1 finished by the end of January. I have a very nice rail fence quilt top up to border stage and after I've come off here I'm going to search through my stash for border fabric. I have a reason for doing this quilt which is this.

Jason snores - loudly !! Most nights I turn to my faithful ear plugs which do the trick - lol ! But some nights I like to give my poor ears a rest and so very often I find myself trundling down the stairs with my pillow and a quilt in hand to spend the night on the settee/sofa. Trouble is the quilts I use are a little tad too small and I want something longer to keep my toes warm. This rail fence quilt is quite long and will be ideal so that is the plan. That will be my next post hopefully.

Here's a little quilt I made from a charm pack some time ago.

I got this hand-quilted just before Christmas and it made a nice present for a lovely lady who Jason does computer work for. She was delighted with it. I may make myself another like this with another charm pack I have but not yet - need to get stuff finished.

And lastly a quick few photos on one of the ways I make bag handles. I used this method for the handles on Kerry's bag and I like how they turn out. I'm not sure if I've shown this before but anyway -

1. Decide on the length and width of your handles. Cut wadding/batting and a strip of fabric to

exact size.

2. Using a contrasting fabric cut another strip the same length but 1 and an eigth of an inch
bigger. So for example if you want the handles to be 2 inches wide cut the contrast fabric 3

and an eigth inches wide.

3. Layer as follows - wadding strip with smaller length on fabric on top right side up. Then place

your contrasting fabric along one edge face down. So your 2 fabrics are right sides together.

Sew along this edge.

4. Then line the unsewn edge of the bigger contrast fabric along the other edge and sew the 3

layers together. I use a little trick at this stage to turn the handle through easily and it's this.

I use a length of old selvedge strip longer than the handle and sew it along the top edge of the

handle before I sew the second seam. Obviously making sure it doesn't get sewn in.

This makes it quite easy to pull the handle through and once it's done just snip off the length of selvedge. I have one I use that is cut bigger and folded in half along the length and zig-zag stitched to make it stronger.

Hope this makes sense.

And I must say a big thankyou to Gina who was amazingly kind and sent a very generous donation to Jess's African Fund. What a love !!!

Off to get those borders done......