Another busy day

I started to make a quilt using my friend Lorna's 12 FQ pattern from my Rural Jardin fabric. These are all the blocks made and stacked. Okay, that's enough of that quilt for today... Now what can I do?

Let's look at some old UFOs. Ooh, look at these sock monkey appliques.

They started because of this 5 inch charm pack I bought and loved. I didn't even know what sock monkeys were then!

I put them away in their labelled box, and walked around the house with itchy fingers again. Then I found another box labelled "sock monkey quilt". ??? I thought...

Ooh, it was quite heavy, what's in it? Oh my goodness!! A pack of 36 fat quarters with sock monkeys on them!!

Ooh, this requires some thinking. Next project.

What a mess! It's a partially made circular bag I started 3 years ago.

This is a much nicer view of the UFO. The stripe fabric is on one side, and the black fabric is on the other side. Reversible see???

All it needed was some handles. I made them, and now it's a finished bag.

I wonder if I will actually use it as a bag. It's very nice fabric, maybe I could reclaim it sometime...

The Stuffing Brothers

When Rosie gave me a sock monkey kit and book for Christmas, she bought one for herself too. (see my last monkey post).

We have both been busting to start our sock monkeys, but we are not allowed to work on them if we are not together. We finally got together for a few hours last week, and this is what we got up to. This is the first sock, we have drawn on sewing lines to make the legs and main body from one sock.

Sewn and cut out above.

Ta-da! Here is Peejay turned right side out...

Would you believe two Peejays?

The next sock is a little scary... first we cut out the tail...

then the mouth..

Both our mouths are different, we need to decide which way up the mouth will go - you can see in the book there are so many variations.

Arms have been made, so has the tail.. Okay, let's go and stuff.

I think Rosie found it hard to stop stuffing, the sock just kept stretching to fit in more stuff.

What a fat monkey!

Mine was splitting himself if I tried to stuff too much in (the sock was laddering).

We found that Rosie had too much stuffing in her Peejay, so we took some out, and put some into my monkey.

Rather like Blood Brothers, this makes them Stuffing Brothers.

I can't wait until we meet up at quilt group this week so we can do some more on our Peejays. Now that we don't need our machines for a while, we can work on them at quilt group.

So cute... I want to make more... I need more socks!!

When is a PIG not a pig?

When it's a pair of socks!!

Folks from the U.S. may recognise these socks... but to us Aussies, I am speaking double-dutch!

During the Great Depression of the 1930s a lot of people wore these socks. They were your average work-socks.

People couldn't afford toys, so they made their own. But they couldn't afford to buy materials to make them either... so the sock monkey became really popular.

Rosie gave me this gift box containing Peejay for Christmas. I haven't been allowed to start it yet - Rosie bought one for herself too, and next week we are getting together to start making the little guy!! yay!!

Here are some other ways one might dress up their sock monkey. Rosie gave me an entire book full of pictures with ideas. I plan to combine the pictures with the line drawing instructions given to me by my good friend Jan...

I can't wait to turn this PIG into a monkey!!

NB. a PIG is a Project in Grocery Sack (you know, still in the bag you brought it home in..) This one has been sitting around for 2 months twiddling it's thumbs-to-be (or NOT thumbs actually, as this monkey will have none).