The weekend seems like a long time ago now, distant memories of a shooting weekend up in sunny Warcop...
OK, I'm lying. It was actually snowing. At 0800 we were stood outside of the Armory collecting our weapons, gazing at the sky thinking 'I must be crazy'! For those of you who've never been out shooting in the snow, I'll tell you this - it's pretty darn chilly. Fortunately for us that's where the snow finished for the weekend. I got a little wet, but nothing too bad, but it was definitely chilly. Not only was I wearing waterproof trousers, but also my scarf and gloves.
Armed with several cups of hot tea I ventured out for the shoot. I was feeling pretty darn confident. A couple of practice shots at the targets and we come to the main shoot. I'm loving it - Ye haw! So I'm about to do this shoot where we stand a few paces back, watch for the target popping up, then have to run to the firing point, throw ourselves on the floor 'belt buckles down' and then fire 5 shots at the target. So I throw myself down for the first shot and clumsily the iron sight hits me right in the shooting eye with the recoil from my first shot. [Swear word] then my eye decides to to leak and I can see nothing! I came out of that with 15 rounds still in my magazine out of 65, but only 1 point worse off than my neighbour who had fired all of his rounds - bonus! But I was still shit. Never mind, I had a great time.
Sunday I got to take part in Clay pigeon shooting. This was by far the best activity of the weekend, but also my worst ha ha! I had 14 cartridges and I hit zero clay pigeons boooooooo... [sad face]. Still had an awesome time and I'm looking forward to more shooting later on in the year.
So I haven't actually done an awful lot of sewing. I've managed to fix a UFO that I started back in July last year. I'm particularly proud of this because I'd been having really awful fit issues and had ended up sacking it off to try something else. That's my Joel Dewberry Meadow Spirit skirt which I originally posted about here. Back then I had little experience of fitting garments, I just picked the nearest size and hoped for the best. So I've finally completed this skirt, but I'm yet to take some pictures for my blog, so I'll probably post that this weekend.
I've also started to make myself a Colette Zinnia skirt. I previously made one for my best friend for Christmas and I've been dying to make myself one ever since. You can find that here. I'm still on with this, doing a little bit here and a little bit there.
On top of all of this, and possibly for the last few weeks I've had a go at quilting. A friend of mine bought a quilt from the States for her baby to be from Etsy and it took something like 6 months to come. It was such an anti-climax as she's not so fond of it and it cost a fortune. When I saw it myself, apart from the designer fabric that had been used I couldn't see why it took so long to arrive or why it cost so much. So, I thought why not have a go myself?
Unfortunately, I've had a few motivational issues with it and I'd run out of materials to finish it off. But this is how I started:
To save time, I very lazily bought a couple of charm packs from eBay. (I won these at like 99p each woop woop!) I then stitched them together in rows and then stitched the rows together, pressing the seams out as I went. That is the picture that you can see above. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out.
At this point I should probably mention that I have absolutely no experience in this area, I've not even made a coaster! So I think I've done it a little wrong! So what I did next is sew the batting to the piece of fabric I was using for the underside (An old white Egyptian cotton sheet that I'd cut down). I've since found out that this is not exactly how it should be done! Finished article to be finished soon.
