Two posts in one day!

Just adding that Fitbit told me I did 15,142 steps yesterday - the furthest I went was down to what used to be Fahly's stable (now K's workshop).  100 steps perhaps.  All the rest was going to and fro in the house, moving stuff.  Then it had the nerve to tell me that I had done NIL steps of actual exercise!

Anyway, a quick update on how today went.  Forget the baking - no photos as disaster area in kitchen.  Our top (small and cheaper to run) oven is on its last legs but occasionally I try to use it for baking to save money on running the big oven below it.  However, today's effort to cook some Plum Muffins ended in failure when they burned (they were cooking v. slowly, so I turned up the temperature.  A big mistake of course.  K then told me not to be daft and turn on the bottom oven for the biscuits, which I did.  I then made a double quantity of Cornish Fairings (ginger biscuits).   Unfortunately, the "5 tablespoons of golden syrup" was translated by my hand to 3 very generous heaped dessert spoons of syrup, and that made them spread when they were cooking, and they were still malleable when I took them out, and some got  "shrinkled" up as I put the pallet knife under them!  I had baked them to take to my Patchwork class, so I told the girls to just shut their eyes and eat them, as they did taste delicious.  They enjoyed them but I shall have to do some PROPER ones next time!

Today I trimmed the rather large Random Quilt.  I noticed a couple of rows of stitching (quilting) I hadn't done in one corner, so sewed that, and then sewed all the binding I had cut last week, folded it in half and ironed and had it all clipped on by the time I left.  I shall machine that in place tomorrow and then I can slip stitch the back in place and sew in all my ends. That was quite satisfying.

I ordered up the backing for the Baltimore quilt, which I thought was a wall-hanging size piece (though had I thought when I was buying a metre of this and 2 metres of that, and 22 x fat 1/8ths that it was a lot of fabric for a wall-hanging!!)  Just shows you that your brain goes walkabout sometimes . . . It is going to be 70" square!  That's nearly 6 foot square.  Blimey.  A spare for our bed then!!

At this rate I shall soon be able to start on my Heirloom quilt, which I will work on very slowly and carefully making NO MISTAKES (I hope!)  I want to do a couple of small projects like table runners or similar first though, and have promised darling son Danny a quilt for his bed.  Fortunately he wants something very simple - a black quilt with a lime green Space Invader on it (applique, done with a pieced block of squares) and then smaller ones in the corners so hopefully I can get away without having to quilt it all over . . .  I will see what my Guiding Light (my patchwork teacher) has to say about this idea.

Rose:  you asked about my sewing machine.  It is a Janome 230 DC and I am REALLY pleased with it.  It's got plenty of embroidery stitches (have yet to explore those yet as I've been too busy quilt making with it.)  Mine was on offer with a free quilting extension table which I also use regularly.  It's easy to use and does everything I need it to - though for the quilting on my big Random quilt my teacher loaned me her Necchi Artisan 30S.  OMG - just looked up to get the right design number and saw the price!  Yikes - if I'd known that at the time I'd have had KITTENS using it!  Especially the day it stopped working and I thought I'd broken it (turns out the connection plug had worked loose from the machine).  I hope this helps anyway.