I am so proud. My daughter has learned how to use a sewing machine. Here she is sewing away, totally oblivious to the fact that I have taken this photo. She had a day at my patchwork group, Quilt Time, sewing angel outfits and a rag doll each for her two girls. She is now making them Christmas stockings and draft excluders!

I have just finished my 2010 Christmas Journal and am taking photos and writing journalling for 2010, but do not think it will actually get finished until the new year, as at the moment there are so many other things to do.

This page shows me returning from the shops with a sledge full of shopping, and Emily and I sucking icicles in the garden. Actually it has been good that it has taken so long to finish the journal, as as I have been putting it together I have been able to relive the memories I have recorded. I think every Christmas I should get out all my Christmas Journals and re-read them.

Family History Scrapbooking

This is the second photo in my Furness family history scrapbook. It shows the Rivelin Hotel where my gt--gt-grandparents and gt-grandparents lived and where my grandmother lived until just after she married.

The facing page below shows photos of my great-grandparents. Unfortunately the photo of my great-grandfather is really badly worn.

This section of the page shows a bit of my great-grandmother and some of the embellishments I added to the page.

I am really enjoying this project, but as usual, there are not enough hours in the day....

Its never too early to start your Xmas Journal, or finish it!

Last Christmas was unusual as my daughter and her family moved in with us at the beginning of December, so I thought I would get my Christmas Journal and the date labels made well in advance so I could just write the journalling and stick the photos in.

I even made my own Journal with a patchwork cover and tie fastener.

I stuck Shimelle's Manifesto in the front cover, and was ready to go.

Unfortunately a lot of the photos I had taken were inaccessible, as the memory card in my camera would not allow me to download the photos, and as the house was totally disorganised due to the family moving in, I could not find the lead from the camera to the computer, so could not download them. When the family moved out at the end of April, not only was the lead missing, but also the camera!

Last month they both turned up and my son-in-law downloaded the photos for me, so, one year later, I am ready to do my 2010 Xmas Journal. I have temporarilly added the date labels, journalling and photos to check I have all the photos I need and that the journalling is the right size - which I have, so am now leaving it until a quieter time in the year to add all the embellishments etc.

After all, I have got to make my journal and date labels for 2011 in the next few days.

Anyway, it gives you some idea of what it will look like when it is finished.

Papercraft Workshop

I signed up for a Samuel Tayor workshop at the Papercraft Show in Harrogate in September. The workshop was using stamps to make an icon holder.

The wooden icon holder was dry brushed with white acrylic paint and then I used blue and purple paint to stamp the images. Finally the large design was printed with glue and flakes of glitter were added.

This was how the inside was decorated. I was not sure when I made it what I was going to use it for, but I used blue and purple as I liked those colours best. The workshop included stamping a saying in the centre of the middle panel, but I was not keen on that idea, so did not do it. I hate making things and then not using them, but could not think how I was going to use this project, but thought I might put a photo in it at some time.

Then a couple of weeks later my 3 year old grand-daughter took this photo of me with my grandson. Its fair to say I hate having my photo taken, but I really like this photo and the colour I was wearing just went perfectly with the icon holder.

It now has pride of place on my mantlepiece where I can see it every day.

Not only does Emily take a really good photo, she even manages to make me look thinner. Thanks Emily x

It's Easter

Made a start on my Easter photos. We were in America when these photos were taken, and we missed the very hot weather England had in April. Obviously the girls enjoyed it.

Isn't it lovely to play in water when it is really hot?

I am trying to sort out all my embellishments, and found a lot that went with my colour scheme for these pages. The pile does not seem to have got any smaller though.

Grandma has got her sewing mojo back

There is no stopping my grandma now the weather has turned colder and she does not have to work in her allotment so much.

A good friend gave her two pieces of curtaining which she has turned into four bags, and she used some strips of fabric left over from another project to make a bag for someone she works with who has been pestering her for one for ages.



Project Linus had had a polar bear cushion panel donated to them and she has used some other fabric with polar bears on to make it into a lap quilt.

She also cut some boat and dolphin fabrics into squares to make another Project Linus quilt. As you can see I have thoroughly inspected them and refused to get off them when she wanted to take a photo. Well it is my blog, so I should be included.

I hope she now makes a start on catching up on her scrapbooking. She has only got to the end of April with Emily and Katie's book and June with Louis book, so there is plenty for her to do. I would not mind having a long walk either!

Project Linus Quilts

Hi Everyone

Grandma was away on holiday last Sunday, that is why she did not do her weekly blog, and then old age made her forget where she had put her camera, so she could not download any photos for this Sunday. Anyway better late than never.

She has been finishing off two quilts for Project Linus. She did the piecing, quilting and binding, and I did the checking to make sure there were no loose ends.

All those trees and nowhere to do a wee! Apparently they were all blocks which were left over from the Quilt Time Project Linus Day last February, so I am glad she had finally used them all up. This cat quilt is also made from left over blocks.

I think it should be a dog quilt next time.

Tag x

Starting Point

My friend Joanne set me a challenge she had seen on www.shimelle.com. Shimelle gave us a Starting Point layout and we had to make a page using that layout. As I always work in two pages that meant twice the work, but I enjoyed it and it made me get more scrapbooking done than I expected to do this week. The photos I used are of my grand-daughters at Graves Park, and the paper was some Joanne had given me as a Christmas present and the leaf punch used was one she had loaned me.

Katie loves playing in dirt and apparently the bucket she is hugging above contained some dried dog poo (although her parents did not know that at the time). That's my girl!

I picked the black out of the background papers for the central strip and leaves, and although I would not have thought of particularly using black for a girls page, I think it works really well. Thanks Shimelle (and Joanne) for the inspiration.

Playing Pirates

I have had a couple of lovely days today and yesterday. This morning I was looking after Louis and we were playing at pirates. He's too cute to be scarey.


Yesteday I had a day to myself and managed to do some scrapbooking, hence this blog being two days early! I managed to use up lots of scraps. The left hand panel of flowers was a piece of card I had saved which had had the flowers punched out of it. I saved it because it was an unusual shade of pink, but it just happened to match a single sheet of background card I also had. It is so satisfying to use up scraps.

Terrible photos

Sorry about the quality of the photos, the flash has really taken the colour out of the pages. It doesn't help either when I do not remember to turn them around before I download them! Another senior moment.

Anyway the background paper is blue and purple and is a lot darker than it appears.

The photos below gives a better idea of the colour on the right hand side, but even that is quite a bit paler than the original. Will have to try harder with these photos.

Katie is 2 today

Today Katie was 2 years old and her Mummy, Daddy, Emily, Nanny Ketland and Grandma Reaney took her to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster. At the end of a very busy day we all enjoyed an ice cream.


Katie's favourite part was playing with the sand on the paths and picking up stones. She was not very impressed when we took her away from them! But as you can see from the dirty face and ice cream mouth, she had a good time.

Katie's Birthday Party

Thank goodness the weather was nice for Katie's 2nd Birthday Party. We had a really lovely day. Beth provided a wonderful buffet lunch, even though she did leave the sausage rolls in the freezer! Katie could not wait to try her mum's buns, though she was only interested in licking the cream off the top.


She did a great job of blowing the candles out, with a little help from Emily of course.


Emily looked very grown up, and was always on hand to help Katie. Well that is what a big sister is for isn't it.

Happy Birthday for Tuesday Katie.

I've bought more fabric

While on holiday in America earlier this year, I bought the tulip fabric, as the friends we visited live in an area where tulips are grown and the last couple of times we have been to see them the Tulip Festival has been on, so I wanted some fabric to remind me of it. I also saw a quilt in a quilt shop that I really liked, so bought green and black fabric to go with it. The only fabric I did not have was another patterned fabric. I went to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC on Sunday and looked for a suitable fabric. I finally found the apple fabric.

OK you are saying what have apples got to do with tulips. Our friends live in Washington State, where Washington Red Apples come from, and there is an apple farm just down the road from their house. So you see there is a connection.

Now I just have to work out how to make the quilt block in the quilt that I saw in America!

Two more pages

I pinched this double page layout from my friend Joanne (http://daisy236.blogspot.com). She had done a page called Christmas Lights. It is not always easy to find layouts for three or more photos, but I liked this and was able to use up lots of orangey scraps.

As the next page only had two photos, I added the LOVE banner in the top left hand corner. I used a small piece of whie card for the background, then an orange piece on top, leaving a gap at the top to thread ribbon through, and added Cricut letters to the orange rectangles.

Thanks Jo, you are an inspiration. Sorry about the quality of my photos, I either seem to get a reflection of the flash, or a washed-out effect. Will try better next time.

My new bag

My creative friend Joanne made this bag nearly a year ago from a Moda Bake pattern, and she seems to use it all the time, so I thought I might need one too. Well you can never have too many bags can you. I usually have a really tiny bag, but wanted something that was big enough to take a packed lunch in, but not overly big.


I have made two pockets inside the bag, one for my phone and the other for my purse. It's first official outing will be when I go to the Festival of Quilts in August.


Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I have used blue fabrics. Thanks for the inspiration Joanne.

I had not had a sewing day for ages, but managed to get one last Friday, when I made this. Hope I can squeeze another one into the summer holidays.

Day at the Beach

My cousin and I decided to take Emily and Katie to Sandsend for the day. We stopped at a car park overlooking Whitby and had a picnic lunch, which the girls loved.




We all paddled, built sandcastles, sailed boats, flew a kite and generally had a great time. Sylvia and Emily went and bought us all an ice cream.


Well, I was supposed to be sharing an ice cream with Katie, but she had other ideas. She gets her love of chocolate and ice cream from me, so I guess I cannot complain.

The only bad bit was the car breaking down at 5.30 and having to wait for the AA to recover us at 11.30 p.m.

Meeting the family

"What an ugly lot!" This is Louis meeting his grandad, grandma and great-grandad for the first time. Obviously they are so boring he might just as well sleep through it all. As you can see, even dad was exhausted.

Think mummy must have got her feet up somewhere.

Louis - again

These photos were taken just after Louis was born. The top left hand one was taken my his Dad on his mobile phone and it was the first photo was saw of Louis.

The embellishments used to decorate the page were a card kit which I had bought at a papercraft show.

Little Mother

Well I did not manage to do a blog every Sunday. Last Sunday I was at a quilting workshop and I have spent all this weekend picking over 15lb of blackcurrants, so blogging has taken a back seat. I promise to try harder in future.

Emily is totally besotted with Louis. These photos were taken when Louis was only a couple of weeks old. She could not wait to hold him.

I love this photo of both their hands.

Obviously Louis feels quite safe with Emily nursing him!

Hello Louis

I cannot beleive it is so long since I did any scrapbooking and did my last blog, but what with holidays and family committments, time just seems to fly by. Anyway, these are the two pages I have just finished for my new grandson Louis.



The blue ribbon down the left hand side of this page says "It's a Boy".

He is a real cutie. I cannot believe is over four months old already. He seems to change every time I see him. Now I have got back into scrapbooking and blogging I am now going to try and update my blog each Sunday.

Quilt Time workshop

Finally finished a small quilt I started at a Quilt Time workshop last summer. Things just seem to take longer these days. Anyway the workshop was run by Penny Walsh and we had the choice of making five different designs of small quilts, all in the American tradition.

This pattern is called Jacob's Ladder and is a pattern I have been intending to make up for years but never got round to, so this was the ideal opportunity. I also liked the colour pallette, using old looking fabrics.

Hopefully this will be the start of completing some of my UFO's.

Meet Louis

Meet my new grandson, Louis, born on the 9th February, 2011 at 7.14 p.m., weighing in at 6 lbs. 15 ozs.


Unfortunatly he was born on a Wednesday, and "Wednesday's child is full of woe" seems very appropriate for this photograph.


Both his mummy and daddy are very proud of him ...............



.......... and Grandma is making sure she gets lots of cuddles.

Back to basics

It is long time since I did any knitting, but when Emily was given a new doll by her Uncle David and Aunty Aimee at Xmas, I had to start knitting clothes for her. My good friend Kath loaned me some of her patterns, and Emily decided Lucy would look good in this outfit.


Both Emily and Lucy loved the outfit. In fact Lucy does not want to take the clothes off.