May so far

In my last post I was about to leap into a whole lot of kiddie sewing. We had a busy weekend and I've only just been able to make a start on it.
High on my list for kiddie sewing are Pathfinder vests for the younger twins. These are the brainchild of Twig and Tale. I love the creativity and nature-ness of their patterns (Odie's leaf blanket was one of theirs).
The patterns are PDF which means you do have to print out pages to join together —

But it was all very straight forward. There's a feature in their patterns that you can click on to just show/print the size that you want - wow - that is so cool!

Making a start

Haha - do you think I have enough fabric??!! I may have bought this for a bush shirt for myself years ago - I think there might be a few pieces of kiddie clothing in this length!

Cut out and ready for Step Two tomorrow!

Yesterday I got the cot sheets made for the youngest fellow. After making a couple of these sheets earlier in the year I now have the exact measurements for his mattress so they sewed up pretty quickly.

Just like bag making; cut out the corners.

A couple of french seams, casing and elastic

Three sheets ready for winter

A friend asked me the other day if I had any sneaky projects on the go that I hadn't written about.

No, of course not I said.... but then I had to stop and remember if I had shared about my lockdown quilt. I think I mentioned ages ago that I wanted to make something to commemorate this point in time. At that stage I didn't have anything firm in my mind. There have been some lovely projects shared by generous designers in recent times and I had the idea that I wanted to incorporate them all, somehow.

I'm thinking a medallion style quilt. Below is a really rough idea of what I may do. The geese are there to increase the size so that the maths works for the next round.

This will be the centre —

Lockdown pillow. This is a design by Ellie's Quiltplace, from the
Lockdown Quilters Facebook group.

Followed by a round of bubbles. Keeping to our bubbles became our way of life for about 50 days here in NZ. It was a term introduced by the government which became part of our everyday vocab. 

After the geese, or whatever I use to increase the centre size, there will be various blocks. Stitched, pieced or appliqued, all patterns or ideas gifted by the fore mentioned generous designers. 

Both of these are Michelle Ridgeway designs. Stitching and creating to keep us
from becoming basket cases!

Now there is no way this will be finished during lockdown but I will keep chipping away at it as time allows. Oh and a rule I have set myself is that it all has to be made from stash - no new fabrics allowed!

At midnight tonight New Zealand moves into Level Two status; down from lockdown level three which we have been in for just over two weeks. Level three was slightly less strict than L4 - we were allowed takeaways (!!) and online or click and collect shopping. I was able to get my car serviced this week but walking around closed shops while that happened was a bit boring. I also took the wee dog into the vets for his 6-monthly check-up. He was whipped out of my arms and taken inside, and I was told to come back in an hour. I guess I hadn't thought it through but I didn't really expect that to happen! Poor little guy was quivering being taken away from Ganma as he doesn't really like going to the vets! 

So tomorrow our bubbles are allowed to burst. Social distancing still has to happen, good hygiene practices need to continue but retail and so on can all open, although they will all be operating in a different way with registers of customers and so on. Chiropracter daughter is finally allowed to see clients. No gatherings of more that 10 people, even in our own homes. Hmm.
A far cry from our very strict Level four of a few weeks ago. New cases continue to be minimal and no community transmission to speak of has occurred for some time. Just hoping, with our closed borders, that this continues to be the case.

Hope you're all doing ok,

'til next time,

happy stitches,