I'm obsessed with hand quilting right now.

Seriously, I am! There are other things I need to do, but I'm finding myself drawn to the quilting hoop in any spare moment I have. I even laid the quilt out as best I could on the dining room floor so I could see how far along I am:

I'm further along than I thought I was, but there is still a long way to go. As long as I keep putting stitches in, it's all progress right? I do love how this quilt is coming along, and I know I'm going to love it when it's finished too.

And just a quick side note (and scroll on if you're not Instagram inclined) I seem to find time to pop a picture on Insta more regularly than I do here - it's just so much faster. So if you do want to see something more than my irregular posting on here, do pop over and have a look. There's a link in my sidebar.

Dog walking continues unabated. Every day actually, and sometimes twice a day. We're seeing a lot of our neighbourhood. 

My pictures never look as nice as we see in person, but I'll persevere. Also my friends in far places do like to see the landscape. Rowley continues to grow large - hopefully he'll stop growing soon - he's a lot of dog to walk. Especially when he sees something he wants to investigate.

My parents and brother were on holiday in Europe recently, and while checking on my parent's garden I found Mum's beautiful clivias in flower. The orange ones were abundant, but this much rarer yellow one caught my eye:

I'm trying to grow the orange ones at the moment - my green thumb hasn't really formed yet. When I have success with orange, I'm going to add yellow to my collection, they're so pretty.

And you know that I don't have very much exciting to share when it's newsworthy that I caved and finally bought an air fryer:

I haven't used it yet - it was only delivered yesterday. If I'm honest, I'm a little nervous of it, though my friends and family tell me that it's a life changing kitchen appliance. We shall see.

Painting bead heads for the mmmCrafts ornaments has continued apace. This past week amongst other orders, I had one sweet lady order 28 Mrs Claus heads so she could make ornaments for her friends. What a darling gift to make!

They were fun to work on, and because it's now school holidays here, I'll be able to do more stock replenishment over the next two weeks. We're heading for the busy season in my Etsy store, and I love it!

Last of all today, the sun in the sewing room caught the quilting hoop just right, showing the teture of my Lily Rosenberry quilt. I tried to capture it, but once again my eyes see things my phone camera lens just cant. This picture will give you an idea anyway.

I never grow tired of gazing at, and running my hands over my hand quilted projects. My sweet friend Jean says it's like there are little pillows between the stitches. And to me, that sounds just about right.

That's it from me for now, and I promise to check in and chatter again soon xox

Little things ...

Hi friends, this past fortnight I've been working on some little things, and plugging away on some big projects too.

I've hand quilted a bit more than normal, and I'm out into the border on Lily Rosenberry. In fact, since this photo was taken, I've moved right into the corner of the quilt:

It's so nice to have time to spend on hand quilting, it doesn't seem like I get a lot done, but when I spread the quilt out, it looks so good and I realise all the quilting adds up. I'll try and get a photo of the quilt spread out so you can see how far along I am. Hopefully the detail will show.

It was Nanna's 95th birthday today, and I went with some of the family to visit with her. She just loves when the babies visit especially, her eyes really light up. I made her a little something to have on her side table, I hope Nanna enjoys using it:

I see more of these little mats in my future, they're fast to put together, and fun to quilt. A good Christmas project I think.

And the last picture of the day, Rowley on a recent walk refusing to perform for the camera:

Rowley is about 18 months old now, so still officially a puppy. He's a big boy though, at 34kgs (75lbs) - sometimes onlookers could be forgiven for wondering who is walking who.

Off to bed shortly here, I've just spent some q-time with the hubby watching the F1GP while working on some more lodestar ornaments. And tomorrow I'll get busy painting bead heads to replenish stocks. Hope you've all had a lovely weekend, and chatter soon!

Spring, down south.

Hello friends! I couldn't check in with you last week as I just had nothing quilt related to share. Not a thing. Time in the sewing room is still scarce, but I do have some pictures I can share with you.

I finally hand stitched down the binding on the Moda Blockheads 2022 little quilt. I'm so pleased to have this checked off the list of UFO's. It's not certain what I'll be doing with it, maybe a small gift for someone, we shall see!

A small project I worked on was using some waste HST's and made a small potholder for a friend. It's quite cute isn't it. I got it to quilted stage, and she offered to bind it - who am I say no to that?

And I've almost finished hand stitching the binding on the four extra placemats for my tennis lunch buddies (whoops, apologies for the blurry picture). We'll be meeting up again next month, so it's good not to leave these until the last minute. Unlike how they were constructed - completely last minute ...

In fun news, I just got a new car, and my old one has gone on to new owners. I just love the colour of the new one, and so far I'm completely intimidated by all the new tech and gadgets. Here's betting it won't be long and I'll be feeling right at home ...

Dog walks are a constant, and the weather is just beautiful. Walking seems to account for most of my pictures at this time!

Tomorrow I'm going to the Royal Adelaide Show with Amy, her hubby and the girls, I'm looking forward to seeing the quilts and handicrafts etc. It's always a great time seeing Mary so wide eyed and enjoying the fun of the fair. And then on Wednesday I'm guest speaker at one of our local quilt groups, which will be super fun too.

Thank you for the continued comments and emails, even though I've been a bit of an absent blogger lately, I appreciate them all! Chatter soon xox

Finished!

I'm so thrilled that late last night I managed to get the last binding stitches in my Halloween Table Runner. And today there was enough light that I could take some pictures and get it listed in my Etsy store.

And of course this pattern works well with other fabrics too:

Hahaha, whoops, zero photoshopping in these photos :-)

I've also been working on some more of the lodestar felt ornaments by mmmCrafts, but I didn't manage to get a photo of those, and I'm sure you've seen them before anyway.

This afternoon while Marty and I walked the doggo, I took the opportunity to grab a couple more pictures - the light was lovely ...

There's our handsome boy <3

This week I plan to hand sew a bunch of bindings in place, and get some more of these lodestars made. Then who knows what's on the agenda ... but I'll be sure to let you know. Chatter soon xox

Sewing time!

It has been such a sweet relief to be able to spend some time in the sewing room this week. Not lots, but it was so great!

I finally quilted and sewed the binding on the little top I made from the Moda blocks a few weeks back. All I need to do is hand sew the binding on the reverse side:

I've positioned the quilt so you can see the fabric I used for the backing also - it's so pretty! And you can also see that I wasn't able to continue the border print right into the corners of the top, I only just squeaked enough out of my scraps to have this much. In fact if you look really closely - about an inch to the right of the larger corner square you can see a join which I tried so hard to pattern match. There are four or five such joins in the border - and there's not a lot of border fabric in the quilt as it's really quite small being made from 4.5in finished blocks.

I can see that I need to clean my phone camera lens - the picture looks fuzzy at the top - I'm so lazy with things like that!

Another job I checked off the list was to apply the binding to the second lot of four placemats I made for my tennis friends. Because I just didn't get the extra four made in time for our luncheon, they just ended up sitting around while I moved on to other things.

Once again, ready for the binding to be stitched to the reverse side. And I'll also spritz away the blue lines I used as a guide for the wibbly quilting.

And this afternoon I've started working on a Halloween themed table runner - I saw this adorable doggo themed fabric at the store again so purchased some more:

I must have used it all up last year as I can't find it - so I purchased a little extra :-)

In other news, I finished all five role play portions of the two assignments I have to hand in this week, and I'm almost finished all the questions, so I'm feeling really good about my studies right now. I'm almost half way through the whole course - it's going so quickly!

Now I'll catch up on some emails, so I'll sign off here and chatter again next week!

Hello there!

Hello there friends - my apologies for not checking in last weekend - time just got away from me and I realised I probably didn't have anything noteworthy to share with you anyway. And same for today if I'm honest.

Classes have started back again, and the units I'm working on this term seem to be quite intense. I've also been painting so many mmmCrafts bead heads for my Etsy store. This thrills me, as I'm saving up for something in particular, and when my Etsy store goes ka-ching on my phone I know I'm working toward my goals.

With that in mind, I bought one of those little light boxes so I could take better pictures of my listings, here are a couple of the updates ... Little Elves:

and the Twelve Days Series:

There are more, but I won't bore you with all of them. They're such fun to work on, and I'm looking forward to making some more of the 'people' style ornaments for myself sometime.

I've also gotten a little hand quilting done, and machine quilted the birthday project for my friend. I'm looking for the perfect ric rac trim for that item, so I can't bind it until that little shopping project is checked off my list.

Last of all, I just wanted to share a picture of a fabric I'm thinking about buying to make the dress pattern that I like:

Not a great photo, I just snapped it quickly so I'd remember it later on. I'll keep my eye out for a sale and come back to it. I think it's a linen cotton blend - I'll have to check. It'll be so pretty, and has some of my favourite colours.

I'll sign out here, I've been babysitting this whole weekend, so I know I won't be out of bed long. Here's hoping I have a more newsworthy post for you next week. Chatter soon! xox

Such a great week!

I had such a great week this past week, checking things of the list I made here and there. I've taken several new photos for Etsy listings, and using Canva to edit/make them interesting. 

I've still quite a few to do, and now that I've decided on how I'll present them I can do it at leisure. 

I also started to work in the pantry - this is a job that I always dread, and I pretty much find any excuse not to do it. My pantry is a floor to ceiling cupboard in the kitchen, and it's the same depth as all the other cupboards in there. IMHO it's too deep, and things get lost in the back. I'm forever watching organisational videos and instagram stories and just not coming up with good ideas that will work with what I have. I'll keep trying. 

I've now made up eight of the star decorations, I'll keep going on those too, but I'm going to make a Colly bird next for a little variety and to keep it interesting.

In stolen moments I've hand quilted a little too. On Insta I was asked to show a photo of my setup, and I was happy to oblige:

This is a cosy corner of my sewing room where I can just come and pop a few stitches in here and there when I feel like it.

What you can't see in this picture is that Rowley wanted to get in on the action:

He's such a sweet boy and always wants to be exactly right where we are.

Yesterday I started working on an Autumn/fall inspired Dresden Table Topper for one of my lovely friends birthdays. I've pinned it this afternoon and I'll start quilting it once I'm done here.

For this table topper, I'm actually using my Dresden Tree Skirt pattern, and instead of cutting away the centre opening I've appliqued a circle in place. I was thinking it looks a little bit drab, so tomorrow I'll get some pretty ric-rac to stitch over the seams and jazz it up.

I didn't get the pattern for the recent table runner written up just yet. I'll make another one or two up so I can take some in progress pictures for the pattern and I haven't decided which fabric I'd like to use. I'll get there!

So that has been my week, how has yours been going? xox