An unhappy start to the new year :0(

The first few weeks of 2014 certainly have not been kind to me, I've had the most diabolical cold I've ever had the misfortune to catch which made me really poorly for well over a week, although thanks to the power of echinacea, sumbuccol, honey, lemon and ginger mine only lasted 9 days whereas my poor hubby who unwisely poo-poo'd my attempts to stop my cold in its tracks is now into his 3rd week of it and still rough. Then to add utter insult to injury the muscle in my shoulder went into spasm, I have never experienced pain like it, and have to admit I think it may have been worse than labour! Thankfully though I have an amazing Osteopath who worked hard on it and a very understanding GP who gave me kick ass pain killers and a tot of diazepam and it finally seems to be easing, but by gosh was it painful.

The weather here in good old Somerset is still diabolical and it is still raining! So many places are completely flooded out, some have even become marooned on islands of high ground amid metre deep floodwater unable to leave without the aid of a boat. I'm beginning to think that if we have much more rain poor Somerset will sink without trace beneath the waves never to be seen again and will become England's first Great Lake!!!!! 

Water, water and more water, far more water than you can shake a malacca stick at!

The upside to all this rain and pain, is that I've spent lots of days at home, sleeping, watching daytime TV, (what an eye opener that was!) and of course crafting. I finished the minion mittens to his masters exacting specifications: they had to be flip over at the top so he could use his fingers and he wanted his thumb sticking out, the minions had to be smiling and he wanted one of each, so with these instructions in mind I set to and brought a pair of minions to life...............

I handed them over in trepidation while little H with his very exacting standards inspected them carefully then he looked at me very very seriously and I was dreading hearing the words "I don't like them" but to my relief, he grinned from ear to ear and beamed, "I love them Mummy" and gave me a big sloppy 5 year old type of kiss and a fabulous great big hug, the kind that are reserved especially for Mummies :0) xx

I also wanted to try my hand at some patchwork, I used to do hexagon English paper piecing patchwork when I was about 18, it was my babysitting project that I took with me every time. If I dug around in the cupboard above the stairs I'm pretty sure it's still lurking in there, half finished, somewhere.

I had a bag of oddsies of fabric that I had saved for such a project, so whilst stuck at home not wanting to spread the evil cold about I decided to give it a go. I didn't really have much idea of what I wanted to do, all I knew was that I wanted a new cushion cover to replace the tatty one that kept letting the feathers out, so I just spread it all out on the floor and made it up as I went. 

I stitched all my squares together, and added a border and corner pieces. It looks great, the colours and patterns work well together and I was happy to leave it as it was and make it up into a cushion, then my friend showed me her Belle and Boo book Craft Book and I fell head over heals in love with Boo the rabbit. Its inspired from Mandy Sutcliffe's books about a little girl called Belle and her toy rabbit Boo and is absolutely delightful (yet another book to add to my 'I want' list) 

I particularly loved this picture of Boo

So here's the cushion cover so far:

And then decided I just had to add Boo as an applique onto my cushion. And Ta-Dah.........

Here's Boo!

Isn't he just gorgeous! I made him out of felt and flipped him to face the other way and he has made my average patchwork cushion simply AMAZING.

I'm almost finished now, I've just got to finish constructing the cushion by adding a back panel and stitching the two together and my scratchy old feather cushion will be transformed into something really rather special, all thanks to a lovely fluffy bunny!