Simple Tree Skirt Pattern

A HUGE thank you to all the lovely people who have ordered my Simple Tree Skirt Pattern over the past couple of weeks. There have been so many orders I've been really thrilled (and a little overwhelmed). Because I'm not super tech-savvy, when an order is placed on my website, I manually send the pdf out to my customers, which is great, but not super if someone wants to get sewing immediately.

I just learned that Etsy have an auto download for patterns now, so I've put my pattern over there for those of you looking to do a little power-sewing in the lead up to Christmas. You'll find the link over in my side-bar.

I've also put my Sewing Machine Mat pattern there, as I've had lots of interest in that one too - maybe people are working on Kris Kringle pressies?? Happy sewing my friends! :-)

ANZAC Biscuits

Finally I remembered to take a nicer picture of the Anzac Biscuits that I've been making lately. They are my hubby's very favourite thing, and he loves it that I try to keep some on hand at all times. This is a very traditional recipe, given to me by my sweet friend Norma.

Anzac Biscuits:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius.

One cup of coconut
One cup of plain flour
One cup of sugar
One cup of rolled oats
Quarter teaspoon of salt

Mix together the above ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

115 grams of butter
1 tablespoon of golden syrup
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Melt the above ingredients in a pyrex jug. One minute in the microwave should do it :-)

1 teaspoon of bicarb soda
2 tablespoons of boiling water

Mix the two above ingredients together in a small bowl, and then add to the melted butter mix. It will foam up nicely.

Add the melted butter mix to the dry ingredients and combine well. Roll into small balls and bake for 12-15 minutes. I place 12 per tray, and leave room between the biscuits for spreading. This recipe makes approximately 24 biscuits.

Note:
This is the recipe exactly as Norma gave it to me. I have made a few small changes to suit me (and my pesky oven). I set my oven to 160 degrees celsius as it seems to always run hot and burn things - but play with your oven and see what results you get. Also, hubby prefers cookies that are a little more crunchy than chewy, so I actually bake them for 18 minutes. Generally I add a little more butter to the mixture - not much - but I usually use between 120 and 130 grams. Just depends on how accurate I care to be when I'm chopping up the butter. And lastly, a couple of times I've forgotten to add the salt, but I don't think it really matters as I usually only have salted butter in the house - all balances out.

If you make them, let me know how you go, have fun!

Binding, check!

In stolen moments during the week, I was able to stitch the binding in place on Tilly's quilt. It's awfully cute, and I'm still in absolute love with the quilting pattern Lizzy used.

On the back of the quilt, just for fun I used a cute fabric from my stash. It doesn't really match the front of the quilt at all, but I do love a little whimsy. All that remains of the piggy fabric now are the off-cuts from the backing, so I'll cut the bits down and get them into the scrap boxes asap. You'll be seeing little white and brown piggies in scrap quilts of the future :-)

This quilt was made entirely from fabrics I've had on hand for a little while. It almost feels like a free quilt when you don't have to head to the store for any of the elements of the quilt - and believe me, that doesn't happen too often for me!

Thursday after work, I had to head to the store for a few bits and pieces for the guild meeting on Thursday evening. As is my habit, I headed into one of my favourite discount stores ... they often have Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, and I always seem to sniff them out ... but this time they had the most adorable Nutcracker people as well, so I had to bring one home with me ...

This time I got the one at the back on the right with the red crown. He's super glittery, love it! I'm getting quite a collection of them now ... but let's face it ... a girl can never have too many!

Chatter soon :-)

Checking in ...

Once again, it has been way too long since I've spent any quality time with my blog. It's not that nothing is happening here ... it just seems all so uninteresting... you know, get up, run around after kids, do chores ... maybe a tiny bit of sewing ... head to bed, then rinse and repeat. Having said that, fun things are happening, and often, but part of it is I'm just too darn flaky to take pictures - and having a teenager has taught me that if it's not in pictures (and preferably captured in a selfie) well, it probably didn't happen ...

Moving on ...

I did manage to take a picture of the Moda Bake-Shop project I put together to help out my sweet friend Lizzy. She has quilted it for me, and I'm delighted with the result!

Lizzy used a panto called Will o'the Wisp - isn't it pretty? Over the next week or so I'll get the binding ready and stitch it in place. I have a busy week coming, so I know time will be scarce. This quilt is destined for our cousin Lucy who has had a baby girl - she is named Tilly, isn't it a sweet name?

And on the weekend I quickly put together a couple of the Spiderweb placemats as gifts for Camo's two teachers. I can't believe that after today there are only five days of school left for him this year? It has gone so fast!!

I was so surprised to find that I don't really have a lot of Christmas fabric in my stash any more. I don't know what I've done with it. I either tossed it in a Feng-Shui attack or I've hidden it so well that I no longer have any clue where it is.

The Spiderweb mats are fun to put together, if you feel like you could use a few leading up to Xmas, I put a little tutorial HERE, so get busy and make some - they're super fast.

While I was quilting on the mats on Saturday, I had a moment of horror. My new Bernie disgraced herself in the most awful way. There was noise and a fracas in the bobbin region - accompanied by metal shavings and thread all over the place - no one likes that kind of quilting disturbance! Bernie II was quickly supplanted for her older relative Bernie I, and 9am Monday morning I was on Otto's doorstep with the offender in tow.

Well, let me tell you that Otto is nothing less than a God, by 9.40 the same morning he texted me to let me know that Bernie II was ready to be collected. I don't know exactly what happened, but something got chewed up and spat out. Let's just hope my girl behaves herself for a good long time now. Thank you for the rescue Otto!!

Hexies

Are paper pieced hexagons still the flavour of the month? They are in my house, and they seem to be the only thing I'm interested in stitching on at the moment ... so I'm going with it! I know I'll find the next big love of my life project soon ... or perhaps it will find me, who knows!

So here is where the latest section of my hexie project is at right now:

The green floral print in the centre of the block was not in my original plan, but when I saw it at Hettie's Patch, I knew it had to be part of this project, and I really love it. But I shouldn't really talk about a 'plan' as most of this project has just evolved - who knows where it will end up. I've been asked a few times about how big it's going to be ... and I guess it'll be as big as it is when I become tired of it. When I get a few more of the units together I'll share another picture.

I've also been doing a whole lot of spring cleaning at home too. Latest on my list of things to tackle at home has been the laundry - it was terrible for a while there, and is looking a whole lot better. My laundry room is an odd shape, so Marty and I have been trying to come up with ways to use the space better - so far we're still scratching our heads.

And I've also had something of an epiphany. My sewing room has become everyone's favourite dumping ground - it's looking really messy. It's next on my list of rooms to tackle ... and I have been thinking ... it's entirely likely that my missing sewing mojo is directly related to the state of the sewing room. It's not nice to be in there when I feel edgy about all the stuff laying around. Perhaps I need to get busy cleaning in there sooner rather than later?? I'll let you know if there's any progress in that department.

Lastly - I have not forgotten my promise to share the Anzac biscuit recipe that my family loves so much - I'd like to take a nice picture to accompany the recipe - as soon as that's done, I'll be on it. Promise!! Chatter soon :-)

My news, though a little late ...

This past week has been entirely wonderful - I learned on Tuesday that 'Mrs Billings meets a French General' had won an award at the Quilters Guild of South Australia's Festival of Quilts. Of course, I couldn't find out until Thursday what I had won, and had to spend a couple of days chewing at my fingernails in anticipation ...

So you can imagine how thrilled I was to learn that I had placed first in my category (Open Traditional) and that I had also won the 'Retaining the Tradition' award.

I am such a lucky girl, and I can't wait to put my new ribbons on the pin-board. Happy days!! And a hearty congratulations to all entrants and prize winners - this years show was of such a high standard. We have a lot of very talented quilters in our guild. Be sure to check out our guild's webpage to see pictures of all the prize winning quilts.

Monday Catch-Up

I've been using my sewing machine this past week (and a little more). Seams are being sewn, and that thrills me! Perhaps my passion for all things quilting is returning to me slowly :-)

So what have I been working on?

I put together a small quilt to help out my dear friend Lizzy. It was using this jelly roll:

I've had it sitting around for quite a while, so it was nice to put it to use. You can see by it's messy state that I'd unrolled it and rolled it up again - never sure what I would make with it. The pattern Lizzy selected was from the Moda Bake Shop, and it's called the Cross Terrain Quilt.

Our cousin Lucy has recently had a baby, and thinking this quilt would be perfect for her sweet baby girl, I decided to make it half size for a cot. Here is an 'over the ironing board in my shadow' work in progress shot:

And then finally, the finished top:

I did end up making the border a little differently to the original pattern, I just didn't have the stamina to cut up SO MANY tiny pieces, but I'm still happy with the end result. Lizzy has kindly offered to quilt it up for me, so I'll be thrilled to hand this one off to its new owner soon :-)

And just this morning I finally finished putting all the rows together for the Rail Fence Variation quilt top that Linda, Donna and I exchanged blocks for. I really like this top - it worked out a little larger than I realised, so I'm not sure at the moment if I'll add borders or not.

Between the three of us, we don't even seem to have too many fabric repeats in the blocks which is a lovely surprise. When I decide on the borders, I think I'd like to hand quilt this one - but of course I'm prone to changing my mind.

And last of all for today (and those of you who are my friends on Facebook will have already seen it), here is the result of my biannual trip to Ikea:

It's always such a dangerous place for me - all those things I didn't know I couldn't live without until I got there. I'm really looking forward to making dimensional gingerbread trees with those cutters - they'll look fabbo with the gingerbread house at Xmas time. Bring it on!!

Chatter soon friends xox

Hi friends!

Hi there everyone, have you missed me? Actually, you don't have to answer that, I've had questions and emails from all over the place asking me when I'll be blogging again, and it's so nice that you've all cared so much. The truth is, along with my sewing mojo, my blogging mojo disappeared too. I don't think I've ever neglected my blog for so long.

And just an aside, a big HI to any new readers visiting from the lovely shout out I received in Down Under Quilts magazine, I'm glad you've stopped by :-)

So, what have I been doing? Well, let me see what I've managed to capture on my phone-camera ...

I made this little table mat for my Nanna on her birthday last month from a couple of left-over applique blocks I had on hand. It was a fun little project, and I really hope she uses it on her table. Nanna is a bit of a bandit for putting her 'best' things away in the cupboard. I'll have my eye on her :-)

I learned how to make Anzac biscuits. My sweet friend Norma shared her recipe and assured me they're sooo easy. It wasn't hard to convince myself to bake some, they're my hubby's absolute favourites, and I've made four batches since getting the recipe. These are going in the regular rotation for sure!

My sweet friends Vicki, Wendy, Gail and I went on a mini-break weekend down to Middleton. We stayed in Vicki's sister's house which was so lovely - this is the view from the front window. We did bring our quilty pleasures along, but didn't really stitch a thing. We were very much diverted by shopping, and spent a good deal of time gazing out the window, glass in hand.

And why would we be gazing out the window? Because we were able to spend simply ages just gazing on the whales in the water right out front. Now, I'm no photographer, and there's only so much I can do with my iPhone, but let me assure you, we had spectacular views of many little groups of whales, and we were in the box seat. It was so special!

And last of all, it's entirely possible that a little of my sewing mojo has returned. I've begun putting Camo's aviation themed quilt together. After Mrs Billings, working with such big pieces feels like working with bed-sheets. But at least I know it'll go together quickly - and Camo is really looking forward to this one.

Well, that's it from me for now - I promise I won't leave it best part of a month before checking in with you again ... trust me!! xox