Finally.....My Own Bell Tent Carpet

After robbing Mums 4m bell tent carpet for the last 4 months it was time to invest in my own.

I'm sure there is money to be made in bespoke bell tent carpets (imagine the colours, patterns etc) but at the minute there is only one on the market and its a crappy black (looks like every single hair and piece of thread would show up) so I followed suit of making my own.

Two weeks ago I grabbed myself a bargain on Ebay, well I did have a little bit of help.

I saw an Outwell Utah 6 carpet newly listed for 99p and seen as it was probably the biggest single piece I was going to find I got Mum to ring the seller and offer £40 for it - she's much better at conning people than me ;-)

Amazingly the seller accepted and two days later it arrived. Since then it has been sat in the living room waiting for me to complete the quilt and get round to sewing and cutting it to size.

I planned to cut the extra piece on the left in half vertically and then sew it underneath the remaining extra bit, making it more or less 4m square which would then be trimmed to the shape of the tent.

As it was nice and sunny after work today - after a week of torrential rain - I thought it was a good time to start.

I tried to lay it out in the living room to start cutting the section off but I really dont have enough room and didn't fancy trying to ram all that carpet through the sewing machine after the Mr Men quilt fiasco so I decided to go try figure it out outside.

Now I just had to ask the OH for help to take the tent and carpet outside so we could pitch it on the buildings communal garden (I say that loosely it's really just a patch of grass) and begin.

Errrrmmmmm, well no, he most definitely wasn't going to help. He said why dont you just measure 4m x 4m and the cut it into a circle in the living room - MEN!! That was not going to work, for a start the carpet wasn't that big and the bell isn't even really a circle and the room was no way going to be big enough, even with all the furniture pushed to the edges.

So off I trot downstairs on my own and begin pitching the tent.

At least I know I can do it on my own now :-)

As soon as it was up some of the residents came wandering over to inspect what I was doing. Most of the people who live in our building are quite old and I'm pretty sure they dont know who the Mr Men are.

One old lady asked if it was a child's play area - psssshhhh ;-) When I said 'errr no it's a tent but has Mr Men painted on it', she then proceeded to tell me about her time in the scouts as a child - grrrr leave me alone to get on with it!!!

Next came an elderly man, he wanted to know what I was doing 'No I'm not sleeping out here tonight, I'm just cutting a piece of carpet to fit the tent'. His reply 'carpet in a tent, well haven't times changed, when I was a boy........' Arrrrgggggg!!!! Why was everyone trying to tell me about their childhood.

The next, and thankfully last, distraction came from another elderly man. I was inside the tent trying to ram the carpet under the pole when I heard knocking. I went out and looked up three floors, where there was our jamaican neighbour who is usually very slow moving on his zimmer frame. Today he was bouncing up and down with his hands waving in the air and his thumbs up - at least somebody appreciated the tent, and he couldn't tell me about his childhood from up there so I could finally get round to doing the job :-)

After laying the carpet out it turned out I wouldn't have to sew anything - YAY!

All I needed to do was trim a couple of extra bits off from the front and back. Oh and the big extra piece on the left of the carpet.

It's really easy to cut and still looks neat with raw edges so I was soon done...

....and I have an extra piece I can use in the inner tent when I use that - £40 well spent.

Now I just had to haul it back upstairs and put it away - I would have slept out there if I didn't have the fear of hearing about more residents childhoods. 

As I had saved a lot of effort not having to sew the piece on the side and seeing as the offcuts were quite big, I made a piece for the entrance and a mat to put muddy shoes on. 

And because the sewing machine was already out and ready to use I made yet another canvas bag to put it all in :-)

Quite a productive Friday night I think!

My Very Own Mr Men Quilt

After bugging mum to death it turned out I was most definitely NOT going to be able to steal her Mr Men quilt which would look lovely inside my tent.

So I gave up bugging and set out to make my own. Last week in Bude I picked up some fabric to go with the Mr Men quilt cover I already had.

My plan was to rip the quilt cover in half and save one side to turn back into a quilt cover backed on plain fabric and use the Mr Men from the other side to make the blanket like quilt. 

Here's the quilt cover all finished...

...complete with button holes and everything ;-)

Next came the quilt/blanket and the Mr Men got sliced and diced into 16cm x 16cm squares.

Now I just had to do the patterned fabric, only 182 squares to go.

After cutting them out after work for about three days I took over the living room to lay them out in my final design (after much deliberation, a few phone calls and emails for opinions - sad I know!)

Next came stitching them all together. I took the first two from each column and stitched them right side together, one after the other in a strip.

I just carried on this way until I had all of the horizontal squares sewn together in lines - well after I changed my first mistake of stitching Mr Clumsy the wrong side up...

but I undid it and put it right! - naughty Mr Clumsy....

and my second mistake came when somehow Mr Daydream moved over a square to the left from the original pattern...

...but I carried on anyway and soon had all the squares together.

Next came the quilting part - if I could just get the batting sewn together to the right width!!!!!

Eventually I got it through the machine and then layered it like a sandwich with fabric on both sides. 

Now just the easy part of quilting it - yer right!!!!!

After every single swear word was used, two needles were broken, a spool of cotton was wasted as it kept puckering, the sewing machine sliding across the table every two minutes and the living room looking like a cotton wool and pin factory I finally got every square outlined.

All I had to do was trim the sides and add the edging and it was finished. 

Ta da!! 

A bit higgledy piggledy but it was my first go at something so big and I'm sure it will keep me warm.

Now to try it out camping in two weeks time :-)

Up North

On Friday me and Jamie took a trip 'up North' to Leeds to visit Grace who has moved there for work.

So nice and early we set off to Exeter airport ready to board the plane for the staggeringly long 1 hour flight!

After having most of our clothes removed, our bags rooted through and half of our toiletries taken off us we managed to get get through to departures and board.

As soon as the seatbelt sign went off it went back on and we began our descent into Leeds Bradford. 

Our first stop was Harewood House so Grace could go back to work and me and Jamie could explore the 18th century building and grounds. 

A few photos of inside, that I honestly didn't take as cameras aren't allowed. 

We also visited an exhibition - Marcus Adams: Royal Photographer. On display were photographs of two generations of the Royals during their childhood years.....

As we walked around we learnt how Marcus Adams devoted his career to the photography of children. Then at the end came the shocker of his self portrait....not sure I would want him hanging around with my children....

Next we went to check out the gardens...

and then on to the bird park where we saw penguins...

This dude looked like he was checking out his house and considering some DIY! 

 Or maybe he was considering relocating to get away from the invader heron...

Then on to the headless parrot and the bird with a ball bearing on his head...

 ...they have strange birds up North!

Talking of strange birds, it was time to go back, get ready and head out for a few drinks.

After a ridiculous amount of cocktails in a rock bar we went dancing....if you can call it that...

NOTE: Highly selected photos used! There are much much worse ones which I have been told cannot see the light of day.

The next morning, well afternoon, after we had slightly recovered and had breakfast we headed into Harrogate to have tea at the famous Bettys.

Jamie was slightly disappointed that she paid for an empty cup....

...but the posh tea soon arrived and put her out of her misery. 

The tea apparently tasted really good so she decided to buy some from the shop, however still feeling delicate she failed to see the weights and prices so paid a fortune for a bag of leaves - ooooops!

Afterwards we strolled around the pretty shops....

and then headed to the Yorkshire Dales to visit Bolton Abbey.

And go for a walk in the Valley of Desolation - oo errr!

Where even the sheep looked ruined!

 We found an unusual tree full of coins so I added my own :-D

And then we headed back over the river to leave.

On the way back to the house we stopped off to pick something up for dinner.

Now feeling hungover and after a long walk I was in need of carbs and grease so I did wonder what exactly we were doing in the greengrocers -  even though it was very pretty. 

It turns out we were having turkey salad for dinner?!?! And although I dont eat salad at the best of times it was very yummy, particularly followed by crisps, chocolate and ice cream ;-)

After a quite night in watching TV and relaxing we were ready to get up early (well I'm not exactly a morning person but I was ready-ish) to head into York. 

We saw the place that Guy Fawkes was born.

And looked around the wiggly roads and pokey shops.

We found a bear shop....

...where the abused Charlie bears were back to haunt me.....but luckily this time the bear police were there to keep them under control.

Next we went to the City Art Gallery to have a look around. 

The permanent collection was really good but there was also an exhibition displaying ceramic pots by the artist Gordon Baldwin. I didn't like the pots much and had a much better time reading through the visitor comments book - I wasn't alone in thinking this...

Some were more imaginative.

I was sitting down on the sofa area when reading these, getting annoyed by the video of the artist talking about the pots on repeat, and so this has to be my favourite one....

After going for a walk on the city wall and having a roast dinner it was time to head to the airport. 

We got there an hour before our flight was supposed to leave, so we had plenty on time to use the self service check in machine and have a look around the shops - didn't we?!?!

Well no it turns out we didn't. 

All the compter systems were down so three different flights worth of people were queuing up waiting to be told what what going on. 

There were only about 30 of us but the staff af the airport couldn't organise their way out of a paper bag. With about five minutes left before we were supposed to take off we were getting worried as we still had to go through security, where we were most likely get half stripped, our bags rummaged through and things taken off us.

I went up to ask and the woman at the desk rudely told me that she had already done the Exeter flight manually - oh well er SORRY (sarcastically) it would have been very helpful if you actually told us what you were doing. 

Finally we checked in and headed to security, which didn't go as badly as we thought, although they did have their suspicions that Jamie was smuggling diamonds and checked her stash of Swarovski jewellery. 

Afterwards we had to navigate our way to the gate, via building sites and through closed shops.

Such a pretty airport.

When we finally made the gate a nice lady kindly announced to the whole plane waiting in a queue 'now the last two passengers have finally arrived we can begin boarding the plane' - CHEERS!! I put my head down to avoid the evil glares and noticed the back of the boarding pass!!

Hmmmmmmmmm!!!