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

Keeping my head above water ...

November and December are always the busiest months of the year for me, and this year is proving to be no exception. I've been working hard on getting Christmas gifts ready, and I'm almost done with all that - this is a busy social time of the year, and of course we have all the normal things going on.

Looking thru my phone, I've taken some photos that I can share with you, but as is my habit I don't seem to have everything:

This past weekend we had a dinner party with lovely friends - I made a new table runner for my big table and decorated for the event.

I love how this runner turned out, I used the Tim Holtz Christmas fabric that I absolutely fell in love with. This is basically the same as the Halloween Table Runner pattern I put in my Etsy store but I stretched it to almost 100 inches in length. As you can see, I'm still mad for ric-rac and have been using it on almost every project lately.

Once the table runner was done, I set the table on Friday:

We had a great time, and I did share a picture of the aftermath on Instagram stories - I can share that next time if you like :-)

Our sweet friends gifted me with some flowers and a potted plant which was so kind:

I've been walking the dog every day, and we've been finding new paths to explore. When Rowley was younger he was very anxious about going too far from home, but he's getting better every day. On a recent outing I was taken with these pretty trees close to home:

Last of all for today, I just wanted to share the latest set of mmmCrafts heads I've been working on. Larissa added the 'Hung by the Chimney' ornament to her Twas the Night Before series, and it is so adorable! After it was released, I added the doll heads to my own Etsy store and they've been so successful.

There seems like to much more that I have to share, but I've reached the end of the photos I've managed to take since last time I checked in with you all. I have my sweet daughter here and my grandbabies too, so I'll leave off here and check in with you again soon. Big hugs!  xox

Hello November!

My goodness, how can it be November already? It seems like the year has only just begun. The month has been busy for me already, so let me share a few of the goings on here so far:

On the day of the Adelaide Christmas Pageant I put up our Christmas tree. It's tradition for lots of families in Adelaide to mark the day in this way - for whatever reason the pageant is a couple of weeks early this year, but that just means we all get to enjoy our festive decorations for a bit longer. I'm sure I've told you all before, it's an all day job for me, and one I look forward to. It's much less fun when it's time to take it down.

And putting away the Halloween display in the hallway meant I was able to put out something else:

I've been hand quilting and working on some secret squirrell business too. And I promise to share photos of those things when they're gifted. But I can share pictures of the table topper I made for my friend for her birthday:

I'm so sorry about the quality of the photos - I clearly took them (especially the last one) in a rush. For this table topper I used my Dresden Christmas Tree Skirt pattern, and instead of cutting away the center circle and opening for the tree, I appliqued a circle of Dutch Chintz fabric in the centre. I do really love that green floral, it's so pretty.

Another recent adventure was meeting Nagee Maehashi from Recipe Tin Eats:

My lovely friend Sonja and I decided on a whim to head to Tea Tree Plaza to meet her at her book signing. We joined the queue just oven an hour before it all began and were so thrilled to meet her and have Nagee sign our books. Her recipes are wonderful, and Nagee is a delightful person. Amy and I are going to make one of her recipes tomorrow after Amy has a sewing session here.

Dog walking has continued. We decided to give the Wynn Vale dam a go once more - we tried it a while ago while Rowley was still very much in his puppy stage, and it was a big overwhelming for him. It's a much busier place with lots of smells and other people and animals to meet. Just a couple of pictures of the dam:

We are so lucky to live in such a nice place with plenty of space to wander.

And the last picture of the day - some cute pompom like flowers that I bought at the grocery store. I wasn't sure what they were, but my dear Instagram buddies tell me they're crysanthemums:

These would be so lovely to grow in the garden, I'm definitely going to look into it.

I have so much work I'd like to get done tonight before I head to bed, so I'm going to sign off here with a promise to catch up on comments tomorrow. Thank you for stopping by, I always appreciate it xox

Hand quilting obsessed!

I've been really inspired to get as much hand quilting done as I can lately, and even though I've got a lot of work to get through in other areas, I've been making time each day put a few stitches in.

There are a few other pictures I managed to snap ... I set up a little corner by the front door for Halloween, and if we have any trick-or-treaters we'll be ready. 

We don't often have little people stop by, Halloween doesn't seem to have really taken off in our neighbourhood. But there was one time that I wasn't prepared and had to give some little darlings chip packets from the pantry - and since that day I've been ready. Just in case.

Something I needed to make this week was a little mat for my bedside table. It won't really be seen, but I grabbed a sweet little border print from my scrap stash and put this together:

The mat is pieced and quilted, and I've stitched the binding on the front. All that remains is to hand stitch the binding on the reverse side and I can put this little mat in use.

Walking the dog is still happening each day, and I try and take pics of our surroundings when I can. We live in a lovely neighbourhood with fabulous walking trails.

I wish I could take pictures that looked as good as my eyes can see. Does that make sense? Anyway I could learn a lot about photography.

Last of all for today, one of my sweet quilting friends had a significant birthday this week, and lovely Norma made this gorgeous fruit flan, isn't it so pretty?

It tasted as good as it looks. I have such talented and lovely friends.

That's it from me for today, my days continue to be super busy, but I hope to check back in with you in a week rather than the two weeks I've been stretching out to lately. Chatter soon friends! xox