Patches of Destruxion

 Hello everyone! At the weekend, we took our kids on a day trip to Legoland Windsor, alongside my mother. This reminded me of a miniquilt I made for my Mum in 2017, so I thought this was a good time to share the story of it. In 2017, when I had gone back to work after the birth of my second child, my Mum travelled through from Essex to Oxfordshire one day a week to look after the two boys while I went to work. She did this for several months, basically until I went off on maternity leave again with my third (born November of that year). My Mum is an unashamed Adult Fan Of Lego and one of her favourite things to do with my children was (and still is) build Duplo and Lego with them. So when I decided to make a miniquilt for her birthday that year, Lego was an obvious choice of subject matter. I did some playing around in Pinterest for inspiration but ultimately decided my own design was definitely the way to go. First I built a small Duplo house for reference. Then I sketched it out to w

 Hello everybody! Looking at cosplay stuff has me thinking about my fandoms a lot, and I realised I hadn't shared on here the Star Wars mini quilts I have made.  There are two of them, both from a swap called 'May The 4th Be With You' hosted by Jen @justjoshincreates on Instagram. The idea is you make a mini quilt and get it to your partner in time for Star Wars Day (4th May). A mystery person from the same swap group sends you one by the same date. I participated in this swap in 2017 and 2018. The one in 2017 was my first ever miniquilt swap. I chose it for two main reasons. The first is because Star Wars. The second is this swap allows a decent amount of making time - it starts at the end of January with posting the finished package in mid-late April, so you get around 10 weeks in which to make it. This is important to me, as I was making everything by hand at that point, and that's slow. It's normal for swaps to only run for about 3 weeks, which is fine if you ar

Hello everybody! Yesterday we got the news that the woman who taught Sing and Sign classes to my three little ones is having to close down her franchise due to the pandemic making the business no longer financially viable. I am very sad about this, Helen is an amazing teacher, so full of enthusiasm and love. All 3 of my kids loved her classes and they have had a lasting impact on them They still watch the DVDs. My eldest made friends at school with a Hearing Impaired kid partly because he already loved signing and found it easy to learn more signs to communicate with his new friend. And I met so many lovely other Mums at the classes - they really helped me keep what little remained of my sanity during my maternity leaves. So I thought today would be a good day to tell the story of a cushion I made for Helen.  I made it to give to her in 2016, when I was going back to work and assuming I wouldn't be coming back to her classes (I was wrong, my daughter appeared in November 2017, so I

Hello everyone! One of the reasons I started this blog was because I wanted to tell the stories of pieces I made in the past, before I had a blog. Seeing as my Mum dropped off this piece at my house a few days ago, I figured this was a good a place to start. This was made in 1989/1990 from a long stitch kit made by Anchor. We were living with my grandfather in Maidstone, Kent at the time. My Mum bought this kit for me. It was the most ambitious long stitch kit I had done at the time. I loved everything about it. The old-fashioned dress and parasol, and the pretty, flowery vintage vibe was very me at the time. The kit provided canvas with the shape outlines marked on, pre-cut lengths of wool and an organiser card for them, and a chart. I had made 2 or 3 kits previously, but I am pretty sure this was the first time I had done French knots. The only thing I dislike about this is the small stitches in the skirt. They weren't on the pattern. Having finished the pattern