Bear With...

Trying to see if I can still log into this wretched neglected blog...

Busy as a Bee (sorry)

It's a funny thought but I'm supposed to be moving house on Friday.  We still haven't exchanged contracts but the removal men are booked and what feels like 90% of the house (but is probably nearer 10%) is in boxes in the hall way.  I suppose it's a 50/50 chance at this point...

Anyway, before I could face the horror of packing up my workroom, I knew I had to catch up on a few bits and bats.  For the first time since I joined my two sewing bees, I had COMPLETELY NEGLECTED an entire month.

So, with no further ado, here is my "Squirrel at the Wheel" block for Quiltification (I hadn't realised but judging by that tutorial we appear to share a lot of orange stash):

And my chicken block for Just Jude Designs:

And the last two blocks for my village knitting group's quilt bee, Teresa's Pinwheel and Morning Star II.

Oooh, after the summer "holidays" I've had, I can't lie, it's been lovely to get a bit of a stitch on.  I'll have to start putting it all in boxes tomorrow though.  Wish me luck!

Mi Gerddaf Gyda Thi, A Translation from Welsh by Ms T. Magpie Cat

(Edited February 2026)

Every so often I get a notification that someone has found the translation I did below, and that they would like to use it for some event.  I can't tell you how flattered I am by that, every time!  

However, since I don't always manage to respond to comments in time, I though I should stick an edit up here for clarity: you are ALWAYS welcome to use my translation.  It would be nice if you wanted to credit me for it, in which case, my name is Helen Ryan.  I hope whatever event or occasion you use it for goes well, and I would love to hear about it! 

 Thanks again - original post follows below.  :D 

--- 

I do sometimes do things other than sew or mope about my cat.  Such as look at beautiful shops like Buddug, and develop a terrible need for things like this plate:

The poem (just the first verse) on it is rather lovely too, and they translate it as follows:

"I will walk with you across distant paths
Flowers and dreams will bless our journey
Into your eyes I will gaze and holding your hand
I will walk with you whatever may come"

I was very taken with it, and although I can barely speak a word of Welsh, I found an audio recording of it (I've since lost the link, of course) and it is just lovely.  The full text is here:

Mi gerddaf gyda thi dros lwybrau maith,

A blodau, cân a breuddwyd ar ein taith;

I`th lygaid syllaf i a dal dy law:

Mi gerddaf gyda thi, beth bynnag ddaw.

Mi gerddaf gyda thi pan fydd y lloer

Fel llusern yn y nen ar noson oer.

Addawaf i ti'n ghalon i yn llwyr:

Mi gerddaf gyda thi drwy oriau'r hwyr.

Mi gerddaf gyda thi drwy weddill f'oes,

Pan fydd yr haul ar fryn neu'r dyddiau'n groes;

A phan ddaw'r alwad draw, pwy wyr pa awr,

Mi gerddaf gyda thi i’r freuddwyd fawr. 

So then I looked for a full translation of the whole poem.  What I found was...   

I'll be honest, I am not feeling that translation AT ALL.  A bit too much of the golden dreams and starlight and not quite enough of the simple, sincere feeling I had from the bare translation.  But it's a poem that rhymes, and I felt like a translation of it should rhyme too, and so with the help of Google Translate and my wonderful friend who is a native Welsh speaker, I decided to have a go myself. And here is what I have ended up with:

I will walk with you though the road be long,

And set forth with a flower, a dream, a song.

I take your hand, look in your eyes and know

I will walk with you anywhere you go.

I will walk with you when the full moon's light

Is like a lantern in the coldest night.

I promise you my heart, entire and all,

I will walk with you as the shadows fall.

I will walk with you all the years ahead,

On sunlit hills and when the sun has fled.

And when our call is heard, its hour unguessed,

I will walk with you through the lands of rest.

I don't know if it's better or not, but I like it more.  If anyone should happen upon it and decide they want to use it for anything, please do so with my blessing!

Not quilting, not cats, but I was rather proud of it so I thought I'd share.  Have a lovely weekend!

Hobbiton double wedding ring. I may be nuts.

One of the things I do when I'm a bit sad or overwhelmed is disappear into Peter Jackson's films of Tolkein, so recently I've been watching a LOT of the Hobbit.  It's not hard to explain why it's a comfort (provided you don't watch quite to the end).  It's got magic, and swordfights, and several outrageously hot sons of Durin, plus a Bowman, and beautiful scenery, and cosy hobbit smials.

I dunno about you, but I certainly would.

And while I was thinking about Bag End something struck me.  Hobbit architecture is mostly based on circles - rings, if you will.  I've never attempted a Double Wedding Ring quilt but it's been on my bucket list for a while, as I suspect it is for most Quilters.  It's one of those things You Should Do.

What better quilt for snuggling under in my own pseudo-smial than a nice hobbitish double wedding ring?  I dug out all my green and yellow scraps, those being the preferred colours of hobbits according to J.R.R, and got stuck in.  Paper piecing is a very soothing pastime so it's doubly perfect for me right now.



...I am vaguely thinking of piecing in one plain gold ring in the bottom right hand corner.  Is that too geeky?  Oh, who am I kidding.  As if there were any such thing.

International Cat Day

Seems like a good time to return to my poor, poor neglected blog.  There are, as ever, lots of reasons why I haven't been posting but one of them is more important than all the others:

This is Deeley, and she was The Best Cat.  For 14 years she was my best friend, and then on 20th July she was hit by a car just outside our house and suddenly I was stroking her side and sobbing as she took a last few breaths.

It is very quiet around here without her loud meows and chirrups, and a bit cold too without her sleeping on our bed, always rolling in so close she nearly pushed me out of it.

Many years ago I had the idea to get a little black cat tattoo - in fact I planned to do it on my 30th birthday, but then I was 8 1/2 months pregnant at the time - but I never got around to it.  The day after Deeley died, I went to a very nice, friendly tattoo parlour called Painted People and made my appointment.

So now I have a little reminder of her on my left shoulder, just under my collarbone.  I'm pleased with it, of course, but I'd rather have Deeley back.  Her ashes are in a little wooden box on the sitting room windowsill, in a sunbeam where she liked to sleep.  She was The Best Cat.

LADDER STITCHED HEXAGONS. Invisibly tidy! A revelation! Who knew??

Going with Flo

Ta dah!  A quilt top, finished, for Siblings Together.  I learned a fair bit from this one, I think - not least the differences between what "a 1/4" seam" means on various sewing machines.  In retrospect, a block that required precisely matched seams may not have been a sensible choice.

There are, certainly, a few places on the quilt where four blocks meet in perfect synchronicity:

And there are a few places where it looks more like this:

I will admit, my perfectionist heart sank when I started pinning blocks together, and for nearly a whole row I wrestled with trimming and easing and generally tweaking to try to make everything exactly as I had imagined it.  And then I remembered a very wise lady whom I worked with several years ago.  Her name was Tracey, and when things didn't quite turn out as planned, she was often known to say (in her wonderfully soft, soothing voice) "Go with Flo.  She's a good girl, is Flo, she'll see you right."

So I did, and I'm glad of it.  It's a beautiful quilt top, with all the quirks and individualities of the people who made it.  The pattern still shines out just as I hoped it would, and I think the effect is fresh and friendly.  I am hugely grateful to the very skilled and very generous members of the ST2 bee.  And it has the Moosh seal of approval too.

It's also HUGE - that's it spread out over our super-king sized bed - and I've never quilted anything this big before.  There is every chance that I won't finish it before the Siblings Together retreat...  but if I don't, I can comfort myself that I have at least contributed.  A while back I dug a few finished quilt tops out of the midden of my workroom that I'd completely forgotten about (I KNOW) and asked if anyone would be willing to quilt them up for ST2.  The very wonderful Sue stepped up and has finished all three!

This one was a sort of scrappy, inverted Irish Chain quilt that I put all my most cheerful scraps into and then forgot about.

This one has a ton of Denyse Schmidt Shelburne Falls in it.  I was finally making something for ME, and I painstakingly devised a block, then set it on point, and just as I was finishing up the top I realised that there would've been a vastly easier way of creating the same effect without having to deal with a million bias edges.  I promptly fell utterly out of love with it, despite the fabrics.  Whoops.

And this last one is entirely made of Madrona Road, intended as a showcase for the range back when I briefly dabbled in selling fabric.  I still really love this range.

But more to the point, isn't Sue a hero?!  I got to do the fun bit and then she's made them actually useful!  Three cheers for Sue!  Fingers crossed I can quilt up that beast at the top and we'll make it 4 finished quilts for the retreat.  Wish me luck...

Raining sunshine

Gosh, the responses to that last post have been WONDERFUL!  I now have sixteen blocks on my design wall, waiting to be assembled into a quilt top.  It's my birthday on Tuesday and I think since I have so many blocks already it's the perfect excuse for a whole day of sewing.  Who knows, I may even get it quilted now that I've discovered the joy of spray-basting.  (Did you know?  I did not know.  Spray basting!  It's so quick, and so flat, and so much better for my knees!)

I tried it for the first time on a quilt I've just finished as a commission for a lady called Claire - or rather, for her young daughter.  She'd already bought a beautiful felted mobile of fluffy clouds with falling rainbow raindrops from my very talented friend Peppercorn Crafts, so when she wanted a quilt too, I immediately thought of Dashwood's new Rain or Shine collection designed by Stephanie Thannhauser and raced off to Simply Solids with an excuse to buy it at last.

I think it's worked, don't you?  Nice and simple, to show off those lovely jolly prints.  I mixed in some new mini pearl bracelets and some of my very precious hoarded Aneela Hooey cats from her Hello Petal collection, since I noticed some of the clouds in the Rain or Shine fabrics had text that said "raining cats and dogs" and I knew Claire liked kittens.  What kind of person doesn't like kittens, after all?

I bound it in some navy stripes to keep it from getting too sugary, and may I say I'm getting quite good at this machine binding malarky.  Look at that corner, eh?  A lot better than they used to be!

I found 2 yards of a pretty blue blender called "Stonehenge" at good old Abakhans and decided it looked a bit like a slightly cloudy blue sky, which worked with the theme.  Then I got carried away and added a few squares to the front too, so that I almost didn't leave enough to cover the back...

I love the smiley sunshine and the little rainbows of Rain or Shine, but honestly my favourite fabric in this one is still those little white cats.  This square is my favourite - I always thought "Tiddles" was the traditional cat name, but "Tibbles" is much better.  It makes me think of Tybalt, the King of Cats from Romeo and Juliet.

By the way, I'm calling this quilt "Raining Sunshine" after the theme song of a rather wonderful film called Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  Trainboy was OBSESSED with that song for months, and remarkably enough I can still stand to listen to it.  Occasionally.

Siblings Together II - my block for June!

Is is really June already?!  Apparently so, and now it's my turn to be "Bee Mama" for the Siblings Together II bee that I'm a member of.  I've been pondering my choice of block for a while, and then I saw a quilt on the Moda freebie quilt patterns which gave me an idea.  (Sadly I've since closed the tab in Chrome and for the life of me I can't find it again - oops)

So, for June's block you will need:

9:  5"x5" squares in shades blue, grey, black and white

2: 2"x 14" strips in red

2: 2"x 16" strips in red

I'd prefer to avoid florals, but plains are fine.  Tonal or blender fabrics are ideal!

First job is to sew the squares into a basic nine-patch, nothing fancy.

Now comes the exciting part - for me, anyway.  I don't get out much.  Measure a line across the top row that is 2.25" above the horizontal seam and... SLICE IT.

Do the same for the bottom row.  Remember, 2.25" from the middle row.  You may notice your detached strips will be about 2.5" wide, which is not a mistake!  It will all even up once sewn.

On your cutting table you will now have something like this:

Add in your first set of red strips and trim up the edges if necessary.  Now you have this:

Time for more slicing!  Place your cuts as before - one along the right-hand row at 2.25" from the vertical seam, and the same along the left-hand row.  Again, your detached strips will be 2.5" wide.

Add in the next set of red strips, which will definitely need a little trim.  My finished blocks ended up 15.75" square, which seems a very odd number but there you have it I suppose.  Feel free to press your seams however you like - entirely your choice.

  

They are quite fun to make.  If my bee-mates could manage one I would be very pleased to receive it, and if any of them could stretch to two, that would be even better.  A 3x4 block quilt would be about 45" x 60" which is plenty big enough for the bee requirements.  And don't they look smashing put together?

Have fun, and if you've any questions, please ask!

Finally, some sewing!

It has been PROPER HECTIC around these parts for various reasons including but not limited to:

• foster kittens
• sick foster kittens
• one foster kitten who refuses to use a litter tray
• grumpy foster mama-cat
• 2 house cats deeply confused and upset by the sudden presence of kittens
• broken cars
• new cars
• house being put on the market
• viewing other houses
• sobbing hopelessly over the thought of leaving my lovely, lovely village

That last one is the kicker, although we have good reasons for relocating.  It will all be fine.  It will.

All in all I have not sewn much, and I have felt the loss keenly.  I'm pretty sure I've never taken so long to complete a monthly Bee block as I have this month, but it was worth the waiting for because these were really, really fun to do!  They are for my Siblings Together II bee, and the pattern is by Patshyn Catrin.

She asked for bright, fresh colours for a tween/teen girl, and I discovered I already had several almost perfectly-sized scraps to make these, so pretty much the only remains went into the ticker-tape bucket for making cards and collage!  Just what the doctor ordered.

It's half term next week and the kittens are returning to the rescue centre on Wednesday so I shall be trying to eke out any sewing time available before Friday.  I can't really begrudge the time I've spent away from the machine though... not to faces like these:

From L-R, Harper, Holmes and Hopkins.  Hopkins is the dopey bugger who keeps getting sick and missing the litter tray BUT he is also dangerously cute and basically my favourite, so he gets a pass.  They all have homes to go to and I will miss them dreadfully, even if Deeley and Marsha won't.

S'nice where we live.

Trainboy is off school sick (as you can see - they have a rule that you have to keep them off school for 48 hours if they puke, even if they are right as rain the very next morning) so we put on our sunhats and walked down the canal from Marsden to Slaithwaite.

And very lovely it was too.

Bee block for May

This month for my knitting group's quilting bee we're making a Box Kite block.  Yet again I was not especially impressed with the cutting instructions I found on the site we're using to choose our blocks, so I thought I'd have a bash at a quicker method.

The block is basically 2 sets of 4 HSTs and one square.  The blocks we're making are 12.5" square, so I started by cutting one 4.5" square for the middle.  So far, so good.

Then for the HSTs, I used the following method.  I cut a square of white and a square of print at 5.25" and laid them right sides together.  I drew a diagonal line across them with vanishing marker, and sewed .25" on both sides of that line.  Like this:

Then you cut along that line, and fold out your new HSTs.  They'll be a bit too big so you can trim them down to a perfect 4.5" - line up the seam against the 45° line on your quilting ruler to make sure everything's as straightened up as possible.

Two lots of those makes 4 HSTs.  Another two with a different print and you have 8 HSTs as required, so now all you need do is arrange them into rows and sew together to look like this:

Boom!  Looks nice, doesn't it?  We're 5 blocks in so far and some of them have been right buggers; it was about time we got an easy one!

Cheerful cotton zipped pouches with spotty linings! On sale tomorrow at the Marsden Mechanics Craft Fair.

That's the etsy shop stocked, time for a new project!

Padded hangers for bridesmaid's dresses

A commission for a friend of mine.  I tell you what, she's going to have the most outrageously stylish wedding, she's got phenomenally good taste.  :D

Two finishes in one!

A wee while since, my lovely friend in Amurrika, Lauren, told me that she was going to be an aunty soon and she wanted to commission me to make a baby quilt.  Two baby quilts actually, since her brother and his wife were expecting twins.  

We discussed designs and such - the parents are librarians, so she wanted something that suggested books, and the babies were apparently Very Wriggly, and were referred to as Joey and Roo, so she fancied some kangaroo references too.  Thoughtfully, Lauren also considered that babies are not known for their natural cleanliness, so she asked if it could not have a white backing.  She even posted me a few fabrics to include, so I could get a better idea of a suitable colour palette.  I footled around in photoshop with some pictures from Google images and mocked up the following: 

It was deemed a go-er and so I set to.  Unfortunately, no-one had informed the Babies that I am not the fastest worker and they arrived about a month before I posted these off... they stayed in the NICU for a little while but are home now, and hopefully these quilts will arrive with them shortly.  

Here they are on my bed!

And here are some closeups: Right

...and Left.

The fabrics include some with Dr. Seuss characters and some Hungry Caterpillar fabrics, which I feel are books no baby should be without.  But not all books are storybooks!  My second-favourite part of making this quilt was finding this fabric, featuring cute animals doing SCIENCE.  And even better, several of them are in ladies' clothing:

Science Cat!

Science Dog!

Since the twins are both girls, I don't see any harm in getting the positive role-models in early.  No gender stereotyping here, thank you.

I found the loveliest backing fabric at the wonderful Simply Solids shop, one of my new favourite places in the world.  It is dribbly rainbows that rather nicely complimented the loopy free-hand quilting I wrestled with... not all my stitches are regular, I will admit, but damn it I tried and they definitely improved over the course of both quilts!

Finally, my very favourite part of making these was the applique kangaroos.  Because they mirror each other, like twins!  Two little kangaroo sisters sleeping quietly in their rainbow libraries.  HOW CUTE IS THAT.*

As ever, I am annoyed with myself for not finishing these before the babies arrived, but Lauren has been very understanding.  I hope she'll like them.  :)


 *VERY CUTE.  Do not argue with me on this.

HAA HA HAAaaaa aaaahh omg this is killing me...

...I do so hate the quilting bit.  Ah well.

Hurrah!

on Saturday I bought this book, and when I got home I looked at it and thought "I'm an idiot, I'm never going to find time to knit those slippers". And then today, I got a surprise parcel in the post from a wonderful friend... with these slippers in. I even love the colour! :D

This year's version! (I have to make a new one for Trainboy every time he grows out of the previous T-shirt) #blog #magpiecat

Deeley helping me sew the binding on baby Brian's quilt. #caturday #blog

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