Time

October 17, 2013

I keep making lists, afraid I will forget the millions of things that I want to do, the ideas that come to mind and that I physically don’t have the time to do straight away. I would need a day of at least 48 hours and enough energy to accomplish everything I want. Will I ever have enough spare time to play with ideas, try new things and just slow down? Probably not for the next foreseeable future. For what I know, I can only make the most of the very few hours a week when a spare moment just happens unexpectedly. And that, believe me, requires a lot of energy and concentration and determination. I always have to be prepared, spend no more than 5 minutes thinking about how much time I’m more likely to have and what’s the best way to use it.
As it stands, and if I’m lucky, my happy time consists of 3 lunch times a week, about 30 minutes each, 2 slots of about 2 hours over the weekend, during Olivia’s nap, and the evenings, when most of the time I’m too tired to do anything but watch TV or fall asleep on the couch. That would give me a maximum of 5.5 hours per week, excluding the evenings. Is this enough? I don’t think so. But that’s what’s available to me right now, and that’s what I have to work with. And it’s ok if my to-do list will keep growing and things will have to wait. I do get frustrated sometimes, but I’m managing my spare time to the best of my abilities and living hoping that this 5 hours per week will become 5 days per week one day.
Do you have enough time in your day to do your things? How are you managing your time? xxx

Autumn harvest

October 16, 2013

A new seasonal illustration available on my etsy shop (here).

41/52

October 14, 2013

It’s week 41 and still very glad I’m keeping up with this project.

This is you, waiting for the train while munching on nuts

This week you:

Waited impatiently at the airport for papa to come back from his trip. And when he finally arrived, you were more interested in showing him the cheese crackers you were eating.
Kept dancing during dinner time at Nando’s. They had the music on and you couldn’t help it. So cute, but also so distracting.
Learned to drink from a water bottle with a sports cup. You managed to pour water all over yourself at your firts attempt, but then mastered the technique like a pro.
Collected all the acorns we could find on the nursery playground. Forty minutes later we managed to leave and go home.
Enjoyed going around town using the public transport. And asked if it was our stop at every single one; you couldn’t wait to get off!

And from last week, I love the marvel on Everdeen Kate’s face from You and I. And those blue eyes (and super cute drees)!

If you are curious about this project and want to know more, you can check Jody’s blog @ Che and Fidel.

All my previous posts can be found here.

Plum cake

October 11, 2013

What do you do when you’ve got tons of fresh plums recently picked at the farm? You bake a delicious plum cake! I did the baking while my little was having dinner the other night, and that should prove to you that this recipe is very easy to do, as per my usual standards.

What you need:

2 eggs

160g sugar

1 lemon (juice + zest)

2tbsp olive oil

2tbsp water

250g self raising flour

1tsp baking powder

10 plums (diced)

What you do:

Mix all the liquid ingredients, then slowly add the dry ones, apart from the plums. Pour the mixture in a silicone cake tin (I used a 20cm round one). Add the diced plums on top. Preheat the oven at 175degC and bake for approximately 45min.

Enjoy!

Simple Stripes Cot Quilt

October 9, 2013

This year’s approaching change of season has posed a dilemma in our home; should we buy Olivia a bigger sleeping bag or should we buy proper bedding, meaning a duvet, for her cot? She moves a lot when she sleeps, sometimes we found her in the morning with her head where her feet should be or, even worse, with her legs trapped within the bars on the side of the cot. Bearing that in mind, we opted for a bigger sleeping bag, and when I say big I mean 18-36 months! It’s huge; I can almost fit in it. But that made me realise that she has quickly outgrown all of her handmade blankets and quilts that we’ve used and loved so much during the past almost two (!) years. So that so, I was determined to make her a new quilt for the coming winter.

The first ever quilt I made was done from a baby quilt kit that I had bought back in 2011 (posts and link here, here, here and here). I did make a few changes, like the colour scheme and the appliques, but the basic instructions were pretty much followed.

For this new and bigger quilt, I’m going more freehand. The pattern I have chosen is very simple and I got inspiration from Diary of a Quilter by Amy Smart. Her tutorials are so very well written and easy to follow. The one I picked is a simple stripes quilt tutorial (here). As tradition demands, I only used the tutorial as a general guideline.

First of all, I had a few scraps of fabric from previous projects. I put together the ones that I thought could go well together and quickly realised I didn’t have enough of them to make a cot quilt. So off I went to our local fabric store for some shopping.

I picked a bundle of 4 fat quarters in matching spots and stripes fabric in yellow and pink, 120x200cm of flowery fabric in a dark antique pink for the backing, the binding and some of the front stripes, and 150x150cm of wadding.

Because I’m always afraid I will not have enough fabric, or more likely I will make a mistake, I picked a bit more than needed. The idea was to make a 120x100cm cot quilt, but ended up with a 125x105cm quilt.

Overall I used 9 fat quarters each of which was cut in 4 equal pieces. I then cut 4 stripes out of each: 4cm, 6cm, 8cm, 10+cm. And rearranged them, varying the pattern, to make a total of 30 blocks (with 6 blocks to spare…just in case!)

The initial design was to use vertical strips for each block, but after a laid out the entire quilt, I didn’t like the overall effect. And also realised, mistakes and imperfections would have shown more this way. So I went for a vertical+horizontal arrangement (as shown in the hand drawn picture below).

Then the fun part began! The sewing of each block was done following the pattern: 8cm+4cm+6cm+10cm. The best trick I learned from professional quilters was to try and be consistent with the seam allowance. In this way, errors and imperfections are minimised. I used a 1/4″ seam allowance, using the outer edge of my pressere-foot as guidance. Once the blocks were sewn, I squared them using a square template I cut from a sturdy brown paper sheet and ironed each block, making sure the seams were pressed in the same direction.

Once all the blocks were sewn, I arranged them in a 5×6 matrix, varying their position (vertical and horizontal), and also with seams pressed in alternating direction, for a smoother finish.

Once the top layer was ready, I sandwiched the batting between the top and the bottom and pinned the edges. As a note for next time, it would have been easier to used some washable spray adhesive to keep all the layers in place considering the size of the quilt.

Due to my inexperience and the simple features of my sewing machine, I went for a simple quilting pattern: crossed diagonal lines.

After sewing everything together and trimming the excess from each side, I started planning the final and most difficult step, the binding. Initially I wanted to directly use the fabric from the back (folding the excess to the top and sew it), but it wasn’t enough to do that. So I went for a simple machine binding technique using the same fabric I used for the back. The steps to do that are beautifully explained here, and this time I followed the instructions thoroughly.