March 30th

Hello there friends, let me see if I can remember how to use this thing ... it seems like such a long time since I've written. And it is actually a while - just over a month!

I have been super focused on hand quilting Lily Rosenberry, I'm pushing hard to get it finished, and I feel like I just may be able to get it done. As soon as I'm done on the computer this evening, I'll get right back to it:

All the corners are done now, and I have only about one third of the last side to do between the blocks and the applique border. And then I'll do the final lines to the edge of the quilt, you can see a couple marked on the left of the picture above. Fingers crossed! I even had to order another reel of YLI taupe hand quilting thread. And that wasn't easy to find at all!

In other news I now have the pattern for one of the next quilts I'd like to make in my hot little hands:

I have admired this quilt for a LONG time, and know that I'll just love it! You'd think I'd have had enough of little berries, but apparently not, and I have a lot ahead of me. There will be no pressure with this project, and I will have a couple on the go for a little while.

Also during this past month's absence, my extended family and I went on a Pacific Island cruise. We had the very best time - please enjoy this selection of pictures, I'll just throw them up here (oops, they've come up in reverse order, but I'm sure you won't mind!):

Alrighty, I'm going to head back to the quilt hoop and get some more stitches in - I hope I don't abandon the blog for a month before posting again. I thought about it often, and then the thought would drift out of my mind. Does that happen to anyone else?

Chatter soon friends! xox

Feb 21st

Hello friends, here we are almost at the end of February, and I'm looking back over the last few weeks wondering what I've actually achieved!

I'm still plugging away at hand quilting Lily Rosenberry, I'm very pleased with how it's progressing after being at a bit of a standstill for so long. It's hard to share pictures that look different to previous ones, but here is a new view all the same:

I was so thrilled to complete my dolls quilt for the Instagram #dollquiltswap2025 - it's winging it's way to the new owner on the other side of the world, and I hope they love it!

My parcel in the swap arrived on Thursday last week, and I was so thrilled to learn that Angela Homicz was my exchange partner. She is such a lovely person, and the quilt she made me is just darling:

Her parcel also included some beautiful wrapping paper, a very sweet little lavender sachet, some lovely Lenox china which is local to her, and a sweet piece of fabric which my grandies will love. I feel so very blessed and cannot thank Angela enough for her generosity. Linda from Quilts in the Barn has done such a wonderful job coordinating this exchange and I was so lucky to be able to participate.

I'm heading back into the sewing room to work on my hand quilting some more before I head to bed - here's hoping I can be organised and chatter with you again soon! xox

Jan 26th

Here I am watching the men's tennis final at the Australian Open on TV, and remembering I really should pop something on my blog so you don't think I've forgotten about you.

This year I made myself a commitment that I'd get 300 days of hand quilting under my belt - I've gotten to 26 of 300 so far which I'm super proud of, but I won't be able to keep up that pace all year. We have another cruise scheduled, and other things that will get in the way, but here are a couple of pictures I've shared on Insta so far:

I've also completed the top of the doll quilt I made for the swap on Insta. It's now basted and ready for hand quilting, I'm thrilled with how it came together. I really hope my swap partner likes it - I plan to have it in the mail some time next month.

The flying geese units are one inch high, and two across, and the little applique panel in the middle is two inches wide and runs the whole length of the top. I think the applique vine is about an eighth of an inch wide. This project has been fun to make and shouldn't take very long to hand quilt.

I found a cute little dish at a local discount store, and thought it'd look nice on display in the hallway.

I put it on top of the Dresden Valentine table topper - it's one of my favourite little projects. A quick project if you'd like to make one for yourself for Valentines Day coming up soon.

And last of all for today, we planted some tomatoes again this year, hoping against hope we'd have more success than in recent years. This time we tried the Roma variety, and ohhhh my goodness, we have been overwhelmed!

This is what I picked yesterday - we've given away this much and more, and I've made passata and bottled it. I'm waiting on some more rings for our Fowlers unit before I can make more passata - hopefully they'll arrive this week.

Though it doesn't seem to be a lot for this month, I have been super busy, and based on what I'm seeing so far, this is going to be a super busy year in total!

Hope you're all doing well, and I hope to check in with you again soon! xox

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year lovely friends. Goodness, a lot has happened in the last three weeks, isn't it amazing how hectic life can become in the lead up to Christmas?

The tree was decorated early of course, which you've already seen, I love to take pictures of it - and I'm always sad when it's time to take it down. Usually I wait until the 6th, but I may do it a few days early this year, I feel ready to have less clutter around.

I've been babysitting, finishing up with work for the year, making up Christmas gifts, and all the other things I'm sure everyone else has been working on. I can share the gifts I made for my sweet quilting friends:

I thought I'd taken a photo of the table toppers but I can't see it right now (only little videos) but there were 18 smaller versions of the table runner I made recently. They're super cute.

For Mary and Hazel I made felt ornaments from the 12 Days series - Colly Bird for Mary, and Partridge in a Pear Tree for Hazel.

In the last days before Christmas I finally managed to get a gingerbread house made, I was struggling a bit with motivation this year, but finished it on Christmas Eve.

The house ended up on the coffee table in the lounge nook, and Marty put some pieces of Camo's old Thomas train set around it. There were dinosaurs on standby during construction in case of collapse due to my haste. 

You can see in the last couple of photos that the house has already started being nibbled on - and now there isn't a great deal left of it. I have an odd photo that I took across the room on Xmas Eve, you can see how large the house actually is:

We hosted 16 for lunch on Christmas Day and had additional visitors for the evening. Then on the 27th we visited with friends for Friendmas, I had fun working on a vegetarian starter course for that. It was a great evening with lovely people. And then we went out for dinner on New Years Eve, followed by drinks at our place and then wandering to a local viewpoint to watch the fireworks. This has been a lovely festive season, and now we can rest a little and take it easy on our holiday break.

One of my favourite Christmas gifts was from Amy. She found a toothpick holder which belongs to my Masons Vista china collection. I had no idea such a piece existed, what a wonderful find!

In the Betwixtmas, Amy and I put a puzzle together. It was a lovely gift from my dear friend Lyn who I used to work with:

Isn't it a fun puzzle? It was gifted 12 years ago, and I can't believe that we've only just made the time to put it together. Thank you so much Lyn - Amy and I (mostly Amy) had so much fun completing it.

Last of all, a little quilty content. In a few stolen moments I put some of my Tiny Nine Patch Challenge blocks together - I used a different setting than most people on Insta used. I didn't get far before being called to other things, but I can do some more with these in coming days. 

I had a delivery of a few fabrics suitable for broderie perse - I'm still very anxious about the Morrell quilt broderie perse blocks. I just need to put my nerves aside and just make something. I'll do a lot of learning as I go hopefully.

Last of all for this long post ... are you still with me? ... here is a little hand quilting I've been working on today. I hope I can get Lily Rosenberry finished this year. I'd love to say 'fingers crossed' but that will make it super hard to quilt! :-)

Well, that's it from me for tonight. Thank you for reading this far if you've managed it. This year I hope I can do better with my posting schedule, and also do better responding to messages. Apologies if you've messaged me over the last month or so and I haven't gotten back to you.

Happy New Year lovely friends, and chatter soon!

Quickie post ...

Note: I started writing this post last night (Sunday evening) but time got away from me and I saved to pick it up again later. Here I am Monday morning with little more to share, but I do have time on my hands ...

Just a quickie post so I don't let another two weeks go by without writing to you all here. By the end of this coming week I'll be able to share the secret squirrell projects I've been working on with you. They've taken time, and I can't wait to pass them on to their new owners.

During the week I've been hand quilting, babysitting, working in the sewing room and handing in assignments. I have only one more assignment to finish and I'll be done for the year. Such a relief!

I know you've seen this quilt a bunch before, but here's a little Lily Rosenberry eye candy:

Apologies for the blurry areas in the photos. Either I need to clean the lens of my phone-camera or I've got it on some fancy setting that I don't know how to manage :-/

I have two and a half blocks left to hand quilt, and then the border, fingers crossed that quilting the border is much speedier than the blocks which have so much stopping and starting around all the shapes.

Because I managed to finish all the 'must do' projects I've been working on, I picked up my Morrell quilt blocks and started to work on another. I'm really a bit lost with the broderie perse blocks in this quilt, and don't have lots of fabric that I feel is worthy of this technique. Anyway, this block is made easier with the cute fabric:

I'm going to make hexie flowers for the corner of the block, add some leaves, and maybe other flowers too. Who knows how it will work out, hopefully for the best. Perhaps my Morrell quilt will have less broderie perse and more regular applique which I love and am not so nervous about. Who knows.

And because I decided that I don't have much fabric with large floral motifs - I may or may not have ordered some more which is winging its way to me right now. I despair over how much fabric I have in my sewing room already, but it doesn't seem to stop me from buying more. Why is it that we never have the very piece we need in the moment that we need it?

In other news, you may know that I had my birthday recently, and I was very much spoiled. My sweet quilting friends know my love of nutcrackers and presented me with the most darling nutcracker themed gifts:

And in the photo above a sweet plaid cake plate from Amy, I just love it, and it will be perfect at Christmas time.

The final photo for the day is a view of the dining room - I cannot wait for Christmas Day, and we're all ready for it:

Amy and the girls are due here any moment, so I'll leave off here - and I'll respond to my emails later on today. I hope you had a lovely weekend, and I'll chatter soon! xox