Playing

This week has been when I only have to work two days  (every other week I work 3), so I have had lots of fun playing with sewing on my days off.

I can't remember what I achieved on Monday, but yesterday I spent the day making these fabulously quick pouches for the little Lockets using this tutorial. I love the dense quilting on them.  Bizarrely my special walking foot makes straight line quilting bunch up instantly whereas my standard foot lets me quilt beautifully - does anyone else have this problem?

I am giving them to the children tomorrow for Valentine's Day and have filled them with Jelly Babies and chocolate so I know they will be pleased!  I bought Mr Locket a pair of beautiful cards from Celia and I can't decide which one to give him - maybe he will get both :)

I also made this pouch for my mummy so I hope she doesn't read this post before I get it sent to her.

I like the bottom the best - even if it does look strangely misshapen.

Today I wanted to play with half square triangles so I made a batch of 2.5" and laid them out in a couple of different ways.

I decided I liked the diamond best so I pieced this panel

and then quilted the life out of it - and I have to say I absolutely love it.

I love how the colours and fabrics work together and I love the quilting.

I had been going to make it into another pouch but it was such a shame to fold the diamond in half and lose the effect of it so now I have another mini quilt to bind.

Daisy has said she would like a quilt for her birthday in May and I'm thinking this combination of blues and diamonds would be perfect for her - but she is keen to play with other layouts too which will be fun, especially as she isn't normally all that interested in my sewing shenanigans :)

I really don't have time to go to work tomorrow!  I just have too much sewing to play with!

This weekend in the Locket household

It has been a busy weekend chez Locket but first I thought I'd show you a sweet photo of Daisy and Fred happily reading their new books......................

and then once we'd started playing Bob Marley to them!!!!

Methinks they don't appreciate Reggae!

On Saturday Dot's school choir were performing at music festival type thingy at another school. We were told to go to North Shields which is about half an hour away by car through the Tyne Tunnel. Oh good, I thought, I can go to Ring-a-Rosie to get some more sock wool while we're there. We duly arrived at the school as directed and were mildly perplexed that it was locked and ours was the only choir there - but I think most of us just assumed that we were the most concientious.

Not so. Unfortunately we were at the correctly named school but in TOTALLY THE WRONG LOCATION!! Dot's school had made a mistake and told us to go to St Jo Bloggs School, North Shields, when we really needed to be at St Jo Bloggs, BLAYDON - a further 30-40 minutes away! So Dot and I gathered two of her friends whose parents had dropped them off and gone and drove off to the new location.

So no sock wool shopping for me then :o(

But fortunately the second school was right next to IKEA so on the way home we popped in to refuel the girls with hotdogs and I spotted this fabulous green canvas in the fabric section.

Aha! I thought. That will go nicely on my little wooden sofa with my Amy Butler cushions. (And it does)

It also goes very well with my lovely bird fabric so here are the three cushions I've made this afternoon for the blue sofa.

(they actually look better in real life - less of a stark contrast between the pattern and the plain)

I also finished sock No.4 and very nearly understood Kitchener Stitch!!!!! It isn't perfect but it's better than any other toe I've done.

Meanwhile in Locketland, while Dot and I were being musical, Daisy and Fred were earning pocket money by cleaning out my greenhouse ready for the new season of seed sowing. And they did a really fantastic job with all my pots neatly stacked and all the rubbish and accumulated grot of a winter of neglect cleared away.


Fred even decorated the birdbath - apparently they hope that as Magpies like shiny things they will come to visit.

Then after doing their exercises this morning

they decided to earn some more pocket money by cleaning the car

and got busy with the soap and cloths

or so we thought...........................

ok, so Fred scrubbed the car with his coat sleeve and Daisy used a Bob the Builder flannel!

I hope you've all had a lovely weekend too!

Lucy x

P.S. Dot was also busy cooking double chocolate muffins and flapjack and helping cook roast chicken for supper this evening - she's a star!

And the winner of the 250th blog post is............

Aha! You didn't think I'd let you know straight away did you???

Of course not!

First I've got to bore you silly with some more Locketland News.

Well, I would, if I had any!

I've been busy all week making a present for a good friend's very late baby - I was panicking at the beginning of the week because I had only started making it when she was already a week overdue, but I am quietly confident that I will get it finished today and the baby is still not here!

I don't want to show you a photo of it until I have given it to my friend so you will have to wait - but I can tell you that it is very, very BRIGHT!!!

Instead I will show you some of my new-ish fabric purchases.


Like a lot of other people in blogland I have been unable to resist this gorgeous bird fabric and I managed to find some fabulous black prints to go with it - maybe a bag or a fabric scarf?

I also treated myself to these lovelies from FabricRehab


my favourite is the owly print - so cute!

Daisy and Fred have been having fun this morning playing with their Playmobil


The horse stable has been set up and raffle tickets written for the characters to have a chance of winning a horse - they had to buy the tickets of course. At 2p each. Not bad when the prize is a horse and 7 out of 20 tickets were winners!


Meanwhile Dot was busy in the kitchen making our lunch! How fab to have an 11 year old daughter!

And finally, the winner of the giveaway..................


as chosen by the lovely Mr Locket is......................

MONKEE MAKER!!!!!!!

I'm just hoping that this prize will tempt her away from knitting severed horse's heads!!!!

Starting to be Christmassy

Oh my goodness - it's only 3 weeks tomorrow until Christmas Eve!!!!!


Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhh!


There is so much to do and I seem to have left it all to the last minute again (no surprises there!) so I'm feeling a bit panicked.

The one thing that is making this a better year than normal is that I made the decision not to do any craft fairs - in fact I haven't done one since about May I think. Unfortunately I still have a fair few commissions to do but I've decided to prioritise those that HAVE to be done for Christmas and the rest can wait because I really want to make as many of the Little Lockets' Christmas presents as I can (along with a few others for friends and family too)

I'm quite happy today because I have finally finished this lovely Melly and Me ladybird


I say "finally" because I started it ages ago but then had that long period where my wrist was hurting too much to craft so it didn't get finished in time for the recipient's birthday so it has become a Christmas present instead.



The other thing I managed to finish and post was my Christmas swap present for Vanessa - this is the main thing I sent (along with a bag and some buttons)


I used the free Wee Wonderfuls Elf Stitchette - I just love that design!

I'm also pleased because I seem to be more organised about doing crafty Christmas things with the children. At the weekend Dot had the chance to go and spend the night at Granny and Grandpa Dog's house so Daisy, Fred and I made some of Michaela's mincemeat:

here they are displaying Fred's "ingredient sculpture"

and then we have the stirring photos


and then Fred decided we needed to have a "cute" picture too


And so I don't leave Dot out all together here is a photo of the Christmas card she designed and made for a school competition. She was getting stressy about her drawing "not being good enough" so I suggested that she use her talent for collage instead.


I love the way she has used all the different greens (lots of them from the Boden catalogue) and lots of Christmassy text for the snow.

In other Christmas-Crafty news, we have a little matchbox advent calendar that I made last year and in each day there is a chocolate coin and a little activity. The first one was to make mincepies and I left the task in the capable hands of Mr Locket and the Littles, but I don't think I will publish photos of how they turned out!!!!!!

Tonight we will be doing "fingerprint robins" so come back next time to see how they turned out!

P.S Do you think 9 Advent Calendars is a bit excessive????

Return of the Little Locket and More Minis

So, yes, she came back - and Mr Locket and I were very very pleased to see her!

So were the other little Lockets

(don't worry, I'm not going to go all "perfect family" on you - it wasn't long before they were all arguing!)

and her bedroom looked fantastic by the time I had finished with it - such a shame about the rest of the house though!

Dorothy has the smallest room in the house and it really is tiny but it is my favourite of all our rooms and I keep telling her that I am having it for a sewing room when she goes to University! I mean, who wouldn't love a room that has built in bookshelves like this..............

Dorothy is an incredible reader and has probably read more of the classic childrens' literature - Little Women, Heidi, Black Beauty, The Secret Garden, What Katy Did Next etc by the age of 10 than I have ever read - and the modern literature she reads is really impressive too. I just love lying on her bed looking up at her books and reading all the titles.

In mini-quilt swap news I can now show you the 9 of mine that have safely arrived at their new homes

Top Row: Annie, Lesley, Michaela
2nd Row: Katy, Lina, Est
3rd Row: Lissa, Jodie, Val

I now have 4 more in progress including this one for Kate

and this one for Trashy


which only leaves another 10 to start from scratch!

I spent a while this afternoon writing scarily complicated tables of all the things I need to make - commisions, mini-quilts, PIF gifts, presents and my Russian Doll Swap - I am now feeling rather panicked! I'm not quite sure how I am going to get it all done! And then there's the chaos and mess masquerading as our house and our jungle-like front and back gardens - not to mention the allotment - and at some point I really need to get a job - anyone got any good ideas?????

Lending out a Little Locket

I'm feeling a bit strange today as my biggest Little Locket is off on her first school holiday tomorrow morning and won't get back until Friday afternoon. She is so excited and I know she will have an absolutely fantastic time but I am still feeling a bit raw about lending her out to the teachers!

To help myself to cope with it all (I am sooooooooo soft!) I have made her a new cuddly to take away with her so that she had something "special" but not so "old and special" that it would be a total disaster if it was lost.

So may I please introduce Miss Maggie Moo


From the ever brilliant duo Melly and Me and their pattern Magoo (as Maggie is a girl we had to adapt the name obviously!)

I gave her to Dorothy on Friday evening and she loves her but what she doesn't know is that I have made her a "matchbox letter" in similar fabrics (inspired by this tutorial), wishing her a happy holiday from all of us and enclosing a tiny weeny torch so she can read her book if she wakes up very early (as she tends to do). The matchbox is in a little bag that Maggie is wearing while she patiently waits in the suitcase ready to be unpacked tomorrow evening so Dot should hopefully have a lovely surprise.

So it will be a strangely quiet week chez Locket but I am sure Dot will have an absolute blast!

PIF gifts and TLC

I was the very lucky winner of Anglesey Allsorts' recent PIF draw and a lovely parcel arrived in the post yesterday.

These were the lovely goodies she sent me, complete with the most fantastic label

and she really sweetly included a package for the Little Lockets

full of lovely crafty goodies - sorry the photo isn't very good - but there are transfers, bags of glitter and the most fantastic finger puppets to decorate - I can't wait the children can't wait to decorate them!

Thank you so much Vicky - we are all very, very grateful!

The other topic of interest for today's post is........................

TLC is a little club that we have set up in the Locket Household as Dorothy has left Brownies but can't get into Guides, Daisy has left Rainbows but can't get into Brownies and Fred is still too young for Cubs.

We came up with the idea a few months ago and made club badges and a sash each to wear them on and then I bought the supplies to make them all club t-shirts too but we forgot. So the first job on starting the club again today was to make the t-shirts

while the children made the sign and decorated their Ladybird Club Notebooks


Here is part of Daisy's design

We decided not to use the sashes anymore as they went across the ladybirds on their t-shirts so I very quickly (and very roughly) made them some little bags from the legs of old jeans to put their badges on instead.

One of the things we want to do in our "club" is earn badges like you used to do in Brownies (sadly this didn't seem to happen in Dorothy's Brownie group) using this book as inspiration

a copy of the Brownie Handbook I had as a child (Dorothy reads this cover-to-cover on a regular basis!)

and their ideas for Badges to do our own.

Today the children earned their "Sewing badges"

for all the stitching they have been doing recently and because we finished their cushions today.

here they are busily stuffing them - and the finished products are pretty cute too

When you actually read the rules of the badges we used to do you can see how much more was expected of us back then (crumbs that makes me sound so old!!!) For example, to get the knitting badge you needed to be able to
1.Choose your own pattern and, following the printed directions, knit a garment introducing two types of stitches.
2. Knit a pair of socks or gloves, or mittens with thumbs, using two or four needles.
I don't think many modern under-10s would be able to do this level of knitting do you? The needlework one is pretty hard too - they expect loads of different stitches - but I think the Little Lockets have definitely earned theirs!

We are planning to move onto the Cookery badge


and the Gardening one too (I need some incentive to get my seeds sown or we are going to have a very empty allotment!)

I'll let you know how we get on but I will leave you today with this gorgeous photo of the Ladybird Club Members modelling their new t-shirts


I absolutely LOVE this photo - it's amazing how animated they look when you get them to say "KNICKERS" instead of "Cheese"!!!!!