A blog post a month, maybe?

^^^  I think the title says it all really!


I feel I may have pigeon-holed my blogging with the quilting thing.  I don't do an awful lot of it, if truth be told - so even if I did only blog about that, I'd still only post about once every 3 months!!

Anyway, inspired today by Maiden Jane's blog post on how she keeps her family organised - I fancy branching out into family blog stuff, and perhaps once I get in the swing of it I will blog about sewing as well !

Incidentally, we 'organise' our family schedules (and I use the term organise loosely, as I am VERY disorganised!) using a super Gruffalo theme family calendar.  I picked it up on offer from The Book People for £1.50 - bargain!

Five columns between the seven of us doesn't work especially well, but I share with the baby* and the boys and girls often share school events so it's not too tricky to keep track!  I also LOVE the stickers :-)

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Right, onto something crafty!  We've done so much over the last few months I hardly know where to begin - I think perhaps I will work backwards and maybe by the time we get to the Summer I can share projects from last year and this.

Over Christmas I finally got round to starting sock monkeys with the kids! 

I used the tutorial HERE, although I had browsed a few by then so I am not sure our method was verbatim, but it's a very thorough tute for anyone who fancies trying their hand but isn't sure where to begin.

True to form, we haven't finished them all yet haha!  They are quite involved when you have a number of small people to instruct through the different stages and stuffing, so only Benji's is finished to date, and I have a rather macabre bowl of stuffed monkey torsos and random limbs staring at me from the sideboard waiting to be completed!

 

They all stitched on the machine very competently, (Jake on the left there sewing his, and Benji middle and right) and while I did the majority of the hand-stitching for the limbs and muzzle to give them half a chance of withstanding all the 'love' they would get haha, the job of sewing on a smile and the eyes were left to the children!  I think he did a pretty tidy job, and they were all very pleased with themselves.

If I could start over, I would choose some 'proper' sock monkey socks, (we used a multi-pack of cotton/elastane blend ones from the supermarket) as after a day of being dragged about the floor and having his arms and tail twisted round sticky fingers I had to do some repair work as he'd popped open on some of his seams - eek!  Benji is pretty hands-on with all his cuddlies though, there's not many I haven't darned in some way shape or form now I think about it!

This is now a mammoth post - well done if you got this far - I'm signing off!!

Emma