I loves yez all! And something new…

I truly do (heart) my readers - HAPPY VALENTINES DAY, you sweeties! Especially to my lovelies who have saved content from my old blog for me. *sniff* a gal couldn’t have nicer friends.

IN CASE YOU’RE WORRIED about nuking your own blog - let me just re-state that it is actually much more difficult to do than you’d think! My problems happened when I was working too tired, doing behind the scenes stuff on my domain - and on most blogs you just don’t have access to the code to do it.

And if you’re smart (ha!) you’ll BACK UP your blog (and indeed, your whole computer) regularly, using one of the many handy dandy back up programs around. A quick search of tucows.com will give you a few options to choose from in free and shareware. (Just scroll down past the paid ads first, ok? The free stuff is down below.)

And in the worst case, you’ll often find that your blog posts have been cached on google - that is, they are stored from being looked up, and you might be able to grab some back. Tanya the Art Butcher and Susan in Stitches even went so far as to retrieve some for me - awww!

And now for the something new - I have finished one of the things on my to-do list! Heeeeeeeeere’s my brand spanking new journal cover. It’s made from mostly the Chez Moi for Moda “Fresh Air” fabric that I wish I’d bought more of - but at least now I get to look at it every day, rather than leave it in my stash.

I started by piecing nine of the 5″ charm squares into a nine patch., which I then cut into quarters and stitched back together. (When inspiration is TOTALLY lacking, start simple!)

Then I realised that wasn’t quite big enough so I added some strips left over from another project I’m in the middle of. (I sure hope they’re left over and I haven’t mis-cut anything for that project, or I am going to have to get VERY creative!)

Next, I quilted it with lots of pebblycircles. I used dense free motion quilting because a journal cover has to stand up to a lot of abuse - and also because I really love the thread and wanted to see it.

Once that was done I trimmed the edges, then cut a heap of 2″ squares. Inspired by a long ago article in Threads magazine by Bird Ross, (“The Incredible, Reversible, One-Technique Jacket” by Bird Ross (No. 40, pp. 30-35 - oh my gosh, that was published in April/May 1992!*) I finger pressed the squares (with the right sides out) on the diagonal to make triangles. These make the binding - start stitching with free motion stitch, stop and add a triangle wrapped over the edge (the diagonal is on the raw edge of the quilt) and stitch over it. Then you go back and stitch over it another few times if you want to.

Oh, somewhere in all this I decided that some torn strips should be zig-zagged on top of the quilting, too. And I really wasn’t kidding about “ruining” a new journal by scribbling on the first page - now I’m free to mess up the rest of the book with ANYTHING. How liberating!

Then I grabbed the journal and folded in the short edges of the now edge-finished “quilt”, and sewed along the top and bottom edges. Not only does that hold the book in the cover, it’s a really useful place to put loose bits and pieces of things… so long as you don’t forget you stashed them there….

Once the cover was on the journal, I decided it needed something more on the spine - so I free motion zig-zag quilted some more of the binding squares over the top.

I’m pretty happy with it!

I did use up most of a reel of King Tut thread, though. But using pretty (and easy to quilt with) thread makes me happy, so that’s ok.

I also got the free motion quilting done on the other project -so I can now start cutting *that* up - pics soon!

* If anyone still has issue #40 of Threads and is willing to send it to me, I will MAKE YOU A JOURNAL COVER in whatever colours you want.

I now don’t lend my Threads magazines out, ever…

And guess what? One of my FAVOURITE tv shows in back on tonight - Grand Designs! WOOOOOOOT!

Later edited to add - the buggers showed us a 1998 episode. WTF?