Busy Lizzie

Well my first ever quilt is finally finished. I've finished some other things in the meantime but this poor thing has been living in the wardrobe with its binding half finished.

So I dug it out and finally finished hand sewing it down - and I now have a new lap quilt. :-)

Something  I can tick off on my Finish - A - Long list.

A Tah -dah! Finally!

Crafting time here seems to be in very short supply nowadays - I was starting to get seriously worried that I wasn't going to finish ANYTHING on my Finish - A - Long list, despite it being fairly modest.

But here is my tree skirt!

That bias binding was definitely a pig to sew on though - for some reason I made it 1.5 inches wide BEFORE I folded it over. I only realised this after I had started attaching it with a 1/4 inch seam and realised it was never going to flip over to the other side fully. Lots of unpicking and then a 1/8 inch seam. I only discovered that that hadn't fully caught both layers of the binding once I started machine stitching the binding. Cue lots more unpicking in various areas and stitching down (and then finding the binding hadn't caught on the back, and more unpicking and restitching). I quite like the very skinny binding:

But I'm never doing it again!

I ought to wash it, especially as I used spray baste, but as the (non quilting) backing fabric and binding did this to my machine:

I'm going to wait until it has been under my Christmas tree once! I'm not convinced that a box of colour catchers would keep the top from turning very pink.

This quilt is full of mistakes - but you know what? I have certainly learnt a lot from all those mistakes, far more than if it had gone right. So although I may have cursed many times whilst making it, I am kind of grateful for it (but only kind of - I am glad it is a get-it-out-once-a-year-and-lie-flat-on-the -floor-covered-in-stuff quilt!)

I also finally finished my Dad's socks

 (They have been washed and shaped, but they look a bit sad  - I can now see why people have sock blockers)

It was a good job too - it was his birthday at the beginning of the week, and I was madly weaving in ends on Saturday morning to make sure I got them in the post on time (I had 12 ends on one sock - not sure how I managed that one). What is really crazy though is that I actually finished them bar the grafting of one toe and weaving in the ends, at the end of January. A pattern seems to be emerging here. Hmmm.