Roses

We have some really beautiful roses in our garden this year, and I thought I'd share a couple of pics:

These are just so lovely that I couldn't bear to cut them from the bush. Such gorgeous old fashioned roses - they were all planted before we purchased our house, so we don't know the names of any of them.

And these are lovely too, but a little past their prime. I snipped just a few so we could enjoy their last days inside.

Bears Anyone?

I was cleaning up in my sewing room today (because I have the time now!), and came across this little bag of goodies:

They're bear parts that I bought a good long time ago. Now I know that I'm never ever going to make a bear, and even if I did, I don't think I'd know what to do with them. Would anyone like them? I'm happy to send them anywhere. Just drop me a message and let me know. If there's a few of you, I'll draw a number.

Thank you for helping me de-clutter! xox

My NI is completely finished!

My NI quilt (Not Quite Insane) is completely and utterly finished, and I'm just thrilled! I took this quick pic of it hanging in my dining room.

This quilt has been the best fun to make (machine pieced and hand quilted) - a very long process - and I've very much enjoyed the ride. I'm so ready to work on something new!!

Fabric Shopping for the Dazed and Confused ...

Finally I opened up the baggies in the box of fabric that was delivered just over two weeks ago. And I have to confess something ... when the box arrived - I was stupefied by the size of it!

And here's the story ...

Most often when I shop online, I head on over to Hancocks of Paducah and click away. On their site, they sell things by the half yard ... (and the astute among you will have figured out where I went wrong already ...) But this time I was shopping at the Fat Quarter Shop ... and they're NOT half yard kinda folk :-)

They're more like 'We sell by the yard' - and hey presto, I have eight yards of the lovely red reproduction there ... and four yards of the background fabric ... Duh!

At some point I must have had a moment of clarity, because I have much more reasonable amounts of these fabrics ... one, one and two yards. Yay!

And these fabrics (Hooty Hoot and the Kangaroo) I seem to have a lot of also ... but I'm sure I can use it. Camo fell in love with it, and how can a Mum say no? Well, this fabric addicted Mum anyway?

So, the moral of my story is this: Do look over your purchases carefully when you're at checkout, because when fabrics are on sale it's REALLY easy to get waaaay too much of them!

And in completely unrelated news:

A couple of girlfriends and I recently went to see the movie Horrible Bosses (which was really quite funny). BUT - before the movie, the preview to What's Your Number was played ... and I happened to spy that the girl in the movie had a white Singer Featherweight in a sewing nook by the window! How's that for spotting? I think I'll have to go see it just for that :-)

Updated: And a big thank you to Amy - my tech savvy girl - she helped me with the whole 'print screen - where did the picture go' thing, so I could share it with you:

Chatter soon friends :-)

Bound, but not gagged :-)

I am really on a roll right now - I can see the finish line, and I'm sprinting toward it!

The binding is completely stitched down, and I've attached the label - only one more thing to check off the list and I'm entirely done!

I'm so pleased I used the green for the binding - the pink and green fabrics, and the purple from the cornerstones were all contenders - but the green was my final choice. I'm really happy with it, and that's what counts :-)

Thank you everyone for your lovely comments on my last post - I will respond to them all over the next couple of days (except for the couple of anonymous ones - still just lovely, but I won't have email addresses for them). Better run, it's getting late - chatter soon!

Yes!!

It has been a really long time coming, but I'm just so thrilled to share that ... I'm finally finished hand quilting my NI quilt!!

All that remains is to apply the binding, sleeve and label, and my life can once again become my own :-)

Don't get me wrong, I have loved, loved, loved working on this quilt, but there have been times when I've longed to work on something else, and just haven't been able to. As soon as dinner is out of the way tonight, I'm going to get the binding ready and maybe get it stitched in place. I'm thinking of the green fabric which is in the zig-zag border, yes?

And you know just how preoccupied I've been with the quilting when you know that this box of fabric was delivered the week before last, and I haven't even opened the packages to check them out! That can be some excitement for later this week :-)

How fun it will be to get back to regularly scheduled blogging ... I've missed you all! xox

Yum!

How naughty of me to take a whole week to reveal that ... we were in Singapore!

We stopped into Raffles Hotel more than once for the obligatory Singapore Sling, it would have been irresponsible not to! They're the 'thing to do' and mighty delicious as well :-)

We had a great time with our friends, and we've declared that we'll be back. The girls and I shopped pretty hard, this time we didn't even nudge our baggage allowance - but of course I managed to find 7 pairs of shoes to come home with me.

In quilty news, I've finished quilting one whole border of the NI quilt, so I'm definitely on the home stretch. I'm really looking forward to finishing now ... chatter soon friends :-)

Where in the world??

I know many of you already know this answer to this one ... but play along anyways ...

Where in the world were we??