Sunday 25 September 2011

Dudley

We first met Dudley about a year ago. He was hanging around our block of flats, making friends with everyone he saw and inviting himself to their homes to drink water (straight from the tap) and sleep.  Dudley had a certain charm to him, despite being ginger, and he was persistent; if Dudley decides he’s coming in, he is coming in!

After several months of Dudley (Dudders, Dudmeister, His Dudesty) coming to the flat at every available opportunity, the neighbours in the block got talking about him. “Where does he come from?” “Is he homeless?” “Should we call the relevant authorities?”

We were inclined to suggest that he live with us, but we decided to do the responsible thing and find out the real story about Dudley before taking such a bold step. At first he was reluctant to go, but in the end we got him into the car and we were on our way over to West Oxford to uncover the truth.

The truth is that Dudley is an incredibly fluffy cat called ‘Ginger’ who belongs to a celebrity chef and cookery writer called Sophie, who lives nearby. Sophie said that Dudley likes to have lots of friends to visit and kindly allowed us to keep having him over to visit but ‘please don’t feed him’.

So nowadays we see him more as a friend who comes over and struts around the flat, desperately longing to be taken seriously but generally failing on account of his being inexplicably fluffy.

Here’s my picture of Dudley which I did using a lot of orange pastels.


Friday 23 September 2011

My first baby quilt

A few weeks ago, I completed my first ever quilt. I made it for a freind whose baby is due in a few weeks' time. She told me that the baby's nursery is decorated in yellow and green so I made the quilt in those colours.


My boyfriend Rob said that I was almost dribbling with glee as everyone admired the quilt at the baby shower. I deny everything, I am extremely modest (as evidenced by the fact I've posted pictures of the quilt here where anyone in the world with access to the internet can see it).

If you're interested in how to make one the same, here's the first of the 4 videos I followed to make the quilt:



part 2: http://youtu.be/MjPaLYcrJ24
part 3: http://youtu.be/x2akVq9m2NE
part 4: http://youtu.be/6Pmy-MlV9I0

Annoyingly, in a selfish attempt to promote her probably awesome quilting business, 'Jenny' (if that is her real name) uses an industrial machine to do the actual quilting bit (which is where, once you've assembled the top, the padding and the backing, you sew right through and all over to hold it together) but there are other videos which show you how to machine quilt. I followed this technique, where you just stich over the existing seams: http://youtu.be/Dt0Zq-DBBkI

Though a novice myself, I would happily answer any questions anyone has if they want to attempt such a feat. TTFN.