On the eve of Christmas Eve

It's getting late here - the night before Christmas Eve - I'm quite worn out as it's been such a busy day. Pretty much all the days in the lead up to the 25th are hectic and there are few minutes spare. I decided I really must grab the laptop and do a little writing or it'll be another week before I think of it again.

I'll try and go in order of things that are in my phone ... first up, now that they've been gifted, I can share some of the things I made for the gift bags for my lovely quilting friends:

Keyrings made from one of the mmmCrafts 12 days ornaments patterns. I embroidered both sides of these hearts, and they could still be used as ornaments really.

And some bag straps, or phone wrist straps. These were a really fun make. I don't have one left for myself, but I'll fix that in the holidays!

For my birthday my sweet girl Amy found another piece of Masons Vista for my collection. She always knows the very best things to get for me. This ginger jar is just perfect, I love it!

These are this years 12 Days ornaments for the girls and for some friends that live in the USA. In photo order, 3 - French Hen (for our friends), 5 - Gold Ring (for Mary), 2 - Turtle Dove (for Hazel). I love working on these ornaments and simply cannot wait until I get to work on some of the people!

I was thrilled to reach my goal of 300 days of hand quilting during the year. I crossed that line last week, and I don't think I've sat at the hoop since. I'll rectify that after Christmas day.

Because I'm on holidays now, I fired up my sourdough starter again. When I put it on hiatus some time back, I dried and froze some of the starter so it would be easy to get going should I want to. It was ready to bake with again quite quickly, and I made some dinner rolls.

If I make these again I'll try and do better with the shaping, but I'm learning all the time. I didn't have much bread flour which is why I tried these rolls first, and when I got more bread flour I made sourdough and baked it in a loaf tin. No picture I'm afraid, it was eaten so fast. Next time fingers crossed I'll get a picture.

And last of all for today, this afternoon I finished this year's gingerbread house. I'm pretty happy with it!

I used a pattern from Ellen Designs. Her templates are wonderful, and her gingerbread creations are just spectacular. I hope I'll be able to create at her level some day!

So I can hit the send button while it's still Wednesday evening, I'm going to finish up this post ... but first, please allow me to wish you Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays. I hope you have a wonderful festive season, and here's to wonderful things in this coming year! xox

May 14th

I'm just so entirely thrilled, on Wednesday last week I put the final stitches in my Lily Rosenberry quilt. It was such a relief to have it finished finally - I wasn't sure I'd be able to get it done to the deadline I set for myself at the end of last year. The first pic is while it was laid out drying in the lounge room:

It's on a hanging rail now so I can see if it hangs nice and flat, and so far so good. When I started quilting the top I didn't really have any plans for the quilt and so I quilted at leisure, and in the end it took about three years. But I'd say that more than half of the quilting was done in the final year, there were stretches of time prior to that where I didn't work on it at all and was distracted by other things.

I love the texture of the crosshatching, when the light is just right it really shows well. I did plan to do more interesting quilting with feathers and such in the border, but the background fabric with text that I chose is quite busy and the quilting texture just didn't show up well at all.

This finish makes me so happy, and I'm extra happy to be able to pick up other projects in the sewing room and also do some tidying in there with a clear mind.

So I've picked up a couple of Morrell quilt blocks, and finished this one which I put aside last year. I originally had some hexagons to accessorise this block but they just didn't seem to work, so I've done some broderie perse and I'm much happier. This block is now complete, and I also finished another block yesterday which I've yet to photograph. 

I also picked up some of the tiny nine patches and sewed them together. Though they're tiny, the pinning and stitching takes just as long as larger blocks, so I'll keep plugging away at those.

Last of all today, I wanted to share the lovely treat Amy found for me for Mother's Day. She knows my love of dishes and china, and tracked this lovely Masons Vista treat:

It's a darling ginger jar. Amy must search for ages leading up to special occasions as it's rare to see Masons Vista pieces in the wild lately. I'm so thankful to have such a thoughtful and caring daughter. 

So that's all I have to share today. Now that I have my all consuming project out of the way, hopefully I'll be able to blog more frequently and potentially participate in some of the zoom quilt happenings at times. Chatter soon lovely friends - thank you for sticking with me!

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!

Almost, almost ... getting reaaaalllly close ...

I really wanted to have my quilt top finished by this evening, and I'm so very close, honestly I am ... There is just one side of the star border, and then the little spacer to go ...

I just dumped the quilt on the floor in the sewing room and haven't straightened it up properly so it looks a little jiggly wobbly, but you can see it's coming along. I think I will do a little unpicking though - the top of the star block in the very corner doesn't meet with its neighbour nicely enough for my liking so I'll sort that out tonight.

As soon as the top is done I can hand it on to my lovely long arming friend Lizzy to baste for me, and hand quilting can begin in earnest.

In other news - yesterday while out shopping with Amy, we wandered into an antique store and I found a lovely piece to add to my Masons Vista collection:

Isn't it pretty? I've never seen a '3 section relish dish' in the wild before so I had to bring it home with me. They did also have a dinner plate, but I left that behind because at $55.00 the price was too steep - and lets be honest, the 20 plates I already have are plenty!

Well, that's it from me, hopefully the next time I check in with you all I should have this top completely finished - fingers crossed!

A happy win, and the lead up to Christmas ...

Not so long ago my lovely friend Vicki sent me an urgent message - she asked me if I'd checked out the upcoming Small and Whitfield auction. There was a Masons Vista dinner set coming up and because she was going to the auction wanted to know if I'd like to bid?

Of course I would!!

This is the picture from the listing. Though I don't really need dinner plates, you can never have too many. But the serving dishes and salad/bread plates are what I was excited about.

Sweet Vicki managed to win the auction, and for the bargain price of $300.00. Doesn't sound like a bargain, but if you check out how much serving pieces and plates go for, you'll know why I was thrilled :-) Here is the state of my little cabinet in the dining room now:

I think I'm good for quite a while. The only thing I'd really run for is a lovely soup tureen, and maybe some coffee mugs. The mugs are hard to find!

For those of you that are my buddies on Facebook will have already seen all about this next thing, but I thought I'd share my baking in the lead up to Christmas. You all know I love my gingerbread ... and so do my family - but for different reasons. I tried a new and much more elaborate gingerbread house this year, and I'm thrilled with the results.

The house design has been around for a while and I'd seen a few on Pinterest, the templates can be found here. I also found a recipe for 'no spread' gingerbread on Pinterest, and let me tell you, it's my new favourite thing. Trimming gingerbread house pieces after baking is a bit of a pain, and with this recipe, I didn't have to do it at all!

Here are the pieces after baking:

It was like a delicious jigsaw puzzle.

Here is an in progress shot, I was super worried about the roof fitting.

The blobby bits on the back wall of the house are the supports I used to hold the string of battery operated LED lights in place. Once the icing was dry, I looped the lights over the supports and used more icing to anchor them. You can see the mansard roof in the background. I had to wait until it was super dry before I could attach the tower, and then carefully lift it in place.

And here is the finished article. I'm so pleased with how it looks. The trees in the foreground are icecream cones iced to look like fir trees. I can't even imagine what I'll work on next year - perhaps this one again with refinements ... who knows!

Camo loves to work alongside me with his own creation, and here he is:

The Ikea gingerbread houses are so much fun for little people to work on, and he has fun creating with the icing and sweets.

Last of all for today, I thought I'd share a couple of the mats I've made up during the last week or so:

I always have fun making them, the quilting is my favourite bit. I genuinely think I've made more than 100 of these over many years, and it always makes me laugh that I only have one of my own. I think I might have one left over this year, so if that's true, my personal collection of spiderweb mats will be two! Don't forget if you'd like to make one of these, there is a free tutorial at my website - feel free to download it.

Well, that's it for today, if I don't have an opportunity to get back before our big day, Merry Christmas from my family to yours! xox

Refreshed Shoo Fly Table Runner

The sewing machine needle has been flying here lately - I have been a busy girl. It has been on my mind to refresh some of my older patterns, and since I'm just loving my French General scraps right now, I put them to work. You saw the Shoo Fly blocks recently, and now I can share with you some of the recent work in progress:

After I got the top together, I had a bit of a hard time choosing a backing fabric. Hunting thru the stash found the leftovers of the spotty backing from my Turning Four-T quilt. I had to make the back up from three pieces, but doesn't it match the front well?

This picture was to serve two purposes - firstly to show you a little of how I'm quilting the blocks, and secondly to share that I had scorched that cream coloured square a little while I was pressing. Oops! You can't actually see the mark as the bright lights under the machine have washed the colour out - but if I'm really honest, it's not too bad anyway.

And a little in progress shot while I was quilting on the hexagons. I'm super happy with how they looked in the end.

And here's the finished article. It looks so much nicer now than the old original Thimbleberries one that I made almost 9 years ago. I've re-written the pattern for my Etsy store, and if I can bear to part with it, this runner is destined to be a gift.

Last picture of the runner for the day - Gratuitous pattern shot :-)

Also, I wanted to share a couple of gifts I recently received - I truly have the most wonderful friends on earth:

My lovely friend Wendy from quilt group found this side plate for me while we were all on our holiday break. She was in a second hand store and stumbled across it for the bargain price of $4.00 and thought to grab it for me. I have plenty of the dinner plates, and it's the side plates and salad plates that I'm looking for, so this was a 'meant to be' find. Thank you Wendy!!

And my sweet friend Bridget from class gave me the most darling gift on our first week back after holidays:

Bridget knows my love of Masons Vista dinnerware, and also my love of Nutcrackers. While browsing Etsy, she found me these miniature plates! Do you see the size of them there? Ohhhh my goodness!!

I'm not sure if Bridget knew that one of these days I'd love to have a Victorian doll-house - but it is actually on my bucket list, I've even been pinning a few lately on Pinterest. I'm just gob-smacked by the detail of these darling tiny things, and also by Bridget's wonderful generosity and thoughtfulness. Thank you so much!!

Well, that's it for today, I ended up writing a bigger post than I intended, so thank you for sticking with it. If you have an inkling that you'd like to make a shoo-fly runner - head on over to my Etsy store. You may well be inching me along to my Victorian doll-house dream! :-)