My Mother will be proud…

Either that or have a fit of the horrors… But to be honest I’m having a hard time deciding which LOL…
Let me explain…

My Mother and I are very different. She is a “keeper” and I am a “giver-away-er/minimalist”.
Mum likes to keep everything sentimental to her, or anything that might have a future use. (Which is a lot)
And I like to run with the minimum possible.
I find it cleansing to throw/give things away. (Not everything. But a lot)
Growing up Mum would never let me throw anything away. Which used to drive me absolutely bonkers!
It’s only now that I’m an adult am I starting to really appreciate it though.
Because I periodically can “raid” my special things from her house that she’s kept of mine from when I grew up (usually the stuff that didn’t get past her when I was trying to purge my stuff).

Haha, yes, I just admitted that you can be right Mum… don’t let it go to your head 😉

Anyway… having 2 small children & a husband who has some mildish hoarder tendancies, obviously I’m not in full control of how much stuff we have;
But it drives me CRAZY when my cupboards are not tidy or start to get full to bursting and when I can’t see clearly what I have. Or it’s not organised into some kind of usable system.
It literally makes me grumpy and feel weighed down if I have so much stuff that I don’t even know what I’ve got, or can’t FIND what I’ve got when I want to.
I get it from my grandmother.
Possibly grandmothererS.
(Not the grumpy part Nana, – just the tidy part LOL ;))

Now I’m not saying that I’m not sentimental.
I am.
More so now than I’ve probably ever been. But I just find that I need to put limits on that and what I keep. Especially as we move so often.
It’s just not possible to keep everything!

This week (you may have guessed from my “other girl” post) we are having a big clean out. We’ve lived in this house for nearly 2 years, gone through a lot of growth (literally – having another baby kind of growth!) and it has been getting a bit full to the brim. Especially Neil’s shed (aka the dump zone).
So we have been culling.

And in my cleaning out I found a box of my favourite clothes that I’d kept from when the girls were small babies. This is EXACTLY the thing that I am sentimental about. I have given away the majority of their things, but I have saved all my/our favourites and these particular ones I could never part with them.

But it’s a box of clothes taking up valuable space in my cupboard!
And they are essentially items that will be unusable for the next 25 years, assuming even that my girls ever have baby girls themselves! That’s a long time to hold onto them.

So what’s a girl to do but turn them into something usable…
aka cut them up and make them into a quilt. (Sorry if that gives you the guffaws!).

May I present to you my first completed project of 2012 – our “Happy-Snuggles” quilt…

Ooops – need a taller person holding it up so that you can see it in its full glory…

“Ohhhh Mr Fluuuuuutttttteeerrrrrr…..”

That’s better!…

I’m not sure who loves it most, me or the girls…

Yes, obviously I have a love for pink, blue & green LOL…

I have to admit that this was the hardest and least enjoyable quilt that I’ve ever made!…
Both technically and emotionally…
Despite my desire to have a memory quilt that I can stare at with pleasure AND my desire to not have boxes of “unusable stuff” hanging around in my cupboards, it was still incredibly hard to cut these precious clothes up.
Very very hard.

I was also extremely scared that I’d stuff it up and regret it, especially never having made a memory quilt before, or quilted with these kinds of fabrics. They’re not the easiest to work with and there are no second chances!

But once I’d got over that and got going it didn’t take me that long.
It was a complete pain in the neck (the front & back were both stretch thanks to fleece and knit fabrics – WHAT a complete pain to baste & to quilt!!)
But it was fast, so that’s something.

It is however the quilt most full of love & memories, and by far the snuggliest quilt that I’ve ever made.
All the well-washed stretch knits on the front make for such a soft soft finish, and I used fleece on the back for full snuggle effect. This time I didn’t use any batting since I was using fleece, because I thought it would be too hot for our climates here otherwise.

It contains clothes such as:
The outfits I bought the girls home in the hospital in.
Clothes my Mum, Neil’s Mum, our Sisters-in-laws or I have bought for the girls.
(I think there’s only one piece of clothing in there that wasn’t gifted by family).
The first personalised t-shirts I ever made for the girls.
Clothes we bought on Hannah’s first trip to England (we found clothes much cheaper there so stocked up a bit)

And it’s the first quilt I’ve ever made that has snaps, a zipper, sequins, buttons, lace applique, ruffles, textile vinyl, lots of pockets, denim and stretch knit on!

If you don’t count the backing then it’s the first quilt I’ve made entirely from recycled materials too…

So there you have it, the first quilt completed yesterday on the first day of the year –
I started the year as I plan to continue… sewing that is! Heheh
Don’t you just love fast projects!!

I’ve told Hannah that this is now going to be our “happy-snuggles” quilt and that it has super special “happy special powers” to cheer us up when we feel blue. She took me so literally and could not wait to have her first snuggle when she fell over and hurt herself just literally as I finished it…

My Mum bought Hannah that “I replaced the dog” onesie when we moved to Aussie and had to leave our dogs behind. It was a little bit of a sore spot at the time but looking back on it it’s pretty funny so it had to be included in there! LOL…

So I’d say that that there makes all the conquering of “sewing with knit” fear and pain of trying to quilt that mother worth it! – Daddy cuddles and a new quilt, what could make a 3 year old any more happy – Bless!
One I’m sure that we’ll be enjoying for a lifetime to come…

Oh a side note I’ve had people ask me (regularly) how I find time to craft and also especially how I find time to take photos during daylight while looking after the kids.
Well to be honest I don’t find it that hard – the secret is to including them and making it fun….

Wanna see what really goes on behind the scenes at our “photoshoots”?
(Unbeknownst to me Mr Flutter went a little snap happy. I’m not used to not being the photographer…)

wow go the crazy hair!

Yep there you have it – my simple secret is that we get very silly together in amongst getting the “serious” shots 😉

Ok finished my ramble now… I think maybe I should make another new years resolution of trying to make my blog post shorter 😉 haha…
The curse of being able to touch type LOL