And two weeks flew by!

Some would say that I'm obsessively hand quilting away on my Nearly Insane quilt. I prefer to say that I'm consumed by the quilting. Utterly and entirely!

I took a quick snap when I moved the hoop the other day - apologies for the poor quality - flat battery - used phone camera and all that :-) At last count I had quilted 58 of the blocks in the centre (and some of the zig zag border). I must confess that I'm starting to stress a little that I won't have the quilting done by my (self imposed) deadline! Wish me luck friends, I'm going to need it!

Today has been the last day of my kids's school holidays. Amy and Camo have both had a lovely time - and in very different ways. Camo has been to Mannum with my Mum, and to Yalpara with Marty, and on Thursday last week Camo, my dear friend Chris and I went to visit our lovely friend Prue at her farm.

We had the nicest and most relaxing day - Prue provided a lovely lunch, and then we settled in for a little stitching together. Camo made a new friend of Prue's son (never mind the 15 odd year age gap) and settled in for some TV time.

I took some happy snaps - once again with my phone camera. But still nice for friends from afar to see a little slice of Australia.

And what was Miss Amy doing while all this was happening? She was living large on a school trip to the snow - Mount Buller to be precise. Doesn't it look delightful?

She learned to snowboard for the first time - and she and her friends were entered into the SA Interschool Snowsport championships. Can you believe it that Amy placed third?!? How amazing is that? And her school won the gold group medal. We're so proud. And you can bet that she'll want to go back again next year. How fun!

Well, that's my update for now - I'll get back to the hand quilting, and hopefully I won't take two weeks to get back to you. Chatter soon!

Setting up the next project :-)

It's not that I'm going to be ready to work on another project any time soon ... but this endless hand quilting can become a little tiring ... so I started to pull (and order) fabrics for the next project I'd like to work on.

Two of my dear friends Prue and Chris are working on the Civil War Love Letters quilt, and seeing their darling blocks come to life inspired me to consider working on my own when I'm done quilting.

Rather than the scrappy selection I've gone with on my last couple of quilts, I have decided to just use a couple of fabrics, and you can see the ones I'm leaning toward in the photo above.

Far left is a fabric I'm considering for sashing strips - I'm not certain of that one just yet. The red, pink and mustard colours are for the blocks, the cream print is my 'background' fabric, and the fabric at top will be used in the border. A very unusual colour combination for me, but I think it'll look great in the blocks.

The hand quilting on my NI quilt is progressing nicely - sadly though it doesn't make for good blog fodder :-) I'm thinking I may do a little piecing next week just to keep my hand in, and hopefully that'll mean I have something interesting to share! Chatter soon ...