Such a great week!

I had such a great week this past week, checking things of the list I made here and there. I've taken several new photos for Etsy listings, and using Canva to edit/make them interesting. 

I've still quite a few to do, and now that I've decided on how I'll present them I can do it at leisure. 

I also started to work in the pantry - this is a job that I always dread, and I pretty much find any excuse not to do it. My pantry is a floor to ceiling cupboard in the kitchen, and it's the same depth as all the other cupboards in there. IMHO it's too deep, and things get lost in the back. I'm forever watching organisational videos and instagram stories and just not coming up with good ideas that will work with what I have. I'll keep trying. 

I've now made up eight of the star decorations, I'll keep going on those too, but I'm going to make a Colly bird next for a little variety and to keep it interesting.

In stolen moments I've hand quilted a little too. On Insta I was asked to show a photo of my setup, and I was happy to oblige:

This is a cosy corner of my sewing room where I can just come and pop a few stitches in here and there when I feel like it.

What you can't see in this picture is that Rowley wanted to get in on the action:

He's such a sweet boy and always wants to be exactly right where we are.

Yesterday I started working on an Autumn/fall inspired Dresden Table Topper for one of my lovely friends birthdays. I've pinned it this afternoon and I'll start quilting it once I'm done here.

For this table topper, I'm actually using my Dresden Tree Skirt pattern, and instead of cutting away the centre opening I've appliqued a circle in place. I was thinking it looks a little bit drab, so tomorrow I'll get some pretty ric-rac to stitch over the seams and jazz it up.

I didn't get the pattern for the recent table runner written up just yet. I'll make another one or two up so I can take some in progress pictures for the pattern and I haven't decided which fabric I'd like to use. I'll get there!

So that has been my week, how has yours been going? xox

Inspiration sought ...

Well, maybe inspiration isn't quite the right word. Have you ever had a week where you just haven't felt like sewing very much? That's what this week has been like - but it's possibly because I've been staying up very late watching the finals at Wimbledon. 

I've been putting my viewing time to good use and doing some hand stitching, making up some more of the LodeStar ornaments:

These are such fun to make, and I love all the bling. Later on in the year I'll make some more up in different colourways. Fun!

I did also put a few hand quilting stitches in Lily Rosenberry, it's easy for time to disappear working by hand ...

And this next picture is a secret squirrell project I've worked on, some dear friends are anticipating a new grandbaby soon, and this is for them to gift to him:

This panel is Noah and Friends by Dear Stella - I did the piecing down the sides and appliqued the name. And I've quilted it using my somewhat new favourite wibbly lines. Gosh, I probably should have waited until after Tuesday (when it's being gifted) to share it, but I'm 98.7% sure they don't read here?!?

So I guess on balance I have got a bit of sewing done this week, it just doesn't seem like it though.

And the last picture of the day, when I took Rowley for a walk this afternoon, we saw a couple of kangaroos just down the hill a little. I took a picture from a distance as I wasn't sure if they'd bounce away as we got closer ... can you just see them there?

We're so lucky to have lovely walking trails just at the end of our street. Until we got a dog, I really never went there at all and didn't realise how nice they are.

Anyway, that's it for me this week - hopefully I'll have a bit more to share next week, and I'll have checked a few things off the list of projects to be done in the holidays. Chatter soon! xox

Mid year holidays ...

I have two weeks of holidays ahead of me, and I'm pretty excited about it. There are a bunch of things I'd like to accomplish, which seems to always be the case when I find myself on leave. I don't always get everything done, but it gives me something to strive for. These holidays I'd like to get some new photos taken for the painted bead heads in my Etsy store, make some more felt ornaments, write up the pattern for the table runner I've just made, and if I get really enthusiastic I'm going to try and organise my pantry. Seems like a lot, I'll try not to make myself nervous!

With kind social media help, I selected and applied the binding on the table runner I shared with you last week. The general consensus was to use the red plaid fabric for the binding, and it does look pretty:

The table runner is very pink overall, and looks so nice on the table. I have some different fabrics in mind to make some more soon, so I'll share those as I can. I do love the plaid fabric you see in the picture, I have it in a slightly darker red colourway, and a brown and blue also. I'm so nervous about running out of the red especially as I just love plaid bindings. I hope I'll be able to find a suitable replacement sometime soon. I keep looking!

Here's a close up of the quilting and the binding:

I took these photos yesterday, I was so enjoying the filtered sunlight coming in through the bay window - we've had plenty of grey days lately so it was a nice change.

And the last picture for today, walking the dog this afternoon, the trees in the park across the road looked so colourful, I just had to share:

That's all from me on a chilly Sunday evening, I hope you're all having a lovely weekend xox

June 30

When I wake up tomorrow morning we will officially be in the second half of the year, how crazy is that? Time has gone so quickly and it feels like next year will be here before we know it.

This week I don't seem to have gotten as much stitching done as I would have liked, but I haven't wasted my free time. I've gotten a few more Xmas ornaments made, and I've put together a new table runner that I was thinking about. It will be a companion piece for some of the placemats I've made a number of:

I hope to have the binding done within the next couple of days, but I'm having a hard time deciding which fabric to use. I popped a little video on Instagram, let me see if I can share it here:

The four options in the video are red plaid, green print, red stripe or spring green. The fifth option is that I could purchase some more of the light green spot fabric I've already used in the runner - but for the moment I don't have a scrap of that left. What do you all think? I'll love to hear your thoughts.

Chatter soon! xox

Another Sunday ...

I'm starting to wonder if I should change my posting schedule to Sunday? It seems to be more achievable for me lately. After a busy week I went to bed at 9.30 on Friday evening. Those of you that know me will understand that such an early night is almost unheard of for this night owl. And I slept for a full twelve hours!

Anyway, I did get a few things done this past week - first up, I'm entirely thrilled with this lodestar ornament - the pattern is another by mmmCrafts:

It's so pretty! The pattern is for a tree topper, but there are options to make smaller ornaments too - thought I'd mention that if you go looking for the pattern for yourself.

I also completed the binding on Camo's aviation themed quilt - so glad to be able to have it done in his birthday week:

Rowley wanted to be involved in taking a photo of the finished quilt, and how could I say no to that sweet face? My dear friend Lizzy did a lovely job of quilting with a cloud pattern, and even helped me track down some more of the green fabric so I could use it in the binding. I am so lucky to have such beautiful friends xox

And last of all for today, on Tuesday I had an urgent sounding call from my Mum alerting me to some Copeland Spode Byron pieces that were at the Op-shop. Of course I dashed over to pick them up and was so surprised to find this:

There were six place settings in total of all the things you see in the picture. The two handled soup bowls are just darling, and to have a coffee service with demi tasse cups was such a surprise. I don't know how I'll squeeze it all into the buffet cabinet, but I'm sure I'll manage it somehow. And when I tell you that this treasure was only $32 dollars, you'll understand when I say I feel like I won the lottery.

I'm not sure what I'll work on in the sewing room this afternoon, I have so many things I can choose from, but you can be sure I'll find something to do. Hope you're all having a lovely weekend, chatter soon! xox

Scratching my head thinking of a title ...

I didn't manage to get here on Friday - I had set myself a crazy deadline and was racing toward it. On Saturday I was meeting four of my lovely tennis friends for lunch, and at 2pm on Friday I thought it would be a great idea to make them two placemats each. What was I thinking? I got all eight placemats made and quilted, but I only got four bound by 1.30am Saturday morning. So my sweet friends each received one placemat, and the promise of another next time we meet.

The binding is made and ready to go, so I'll be able to bind the remaining four placemats at my leisure. That pretty seed packet fabric is almost gone now, I've been able to use it so many times for cute projects.

Earlier in the week I made a quilted cushion for our sweet dinosaur loving granddaughter Mary:

This was a super quick project, and I was glad to have a pillow form in my batting box to use for it.

Also on the list of finishes were a couple of the mmmCrafts ornaments I started a couple of weeks ago:

These were such fun to make - the turtle dove will be heading overseas, and the partridge and pear will be Hazel's first ornaments for the collection I'll build for her. I'll get busy on Mary's ornaments next, along with some others.

And last of all, I did something I've been avoiding for a couple of weeks now. I've been working on a garment - a first top for me. I purchased a pattern on Etsy and got busy with some linen fabric. While linen probably wasn't an ideal first fabric choice, it worked out just fine ... until I became completely intimidated by the buttons.

A sweet Insta/former blogging buddy encouraged me to just have a go - and also to investigate my machine's auto-buttonholer ... so I steeled myself and just did it ... and it was EASY!

I'm a bit disappointed with the pictures, the linen is almost a denim colour, so the blue thread makes so much more sense in real life. On the bolt in the store, the tan colour which I've used as the reverse of the fabric was on show, but I decided that I liked the reverse side better. Anyway, I know I need never be afraid of buttonholes again.

This morning I purchased some textured cotton, and I plan to try my hand at a dress pattern that I also purchased from an Etsy store. I downloaded the pattern to Officeworks to print on A0 sheets so I don't have to tape bunches of sheets together. Such a timesaver!

Once I'm finished on here, I'll put a few stitches of hand quilting in Lily Rosenberry, and then it's bed time for me. Chatter soon friends! xox

Simple Piecing

This week I had a few assignments due, and there is one more left for this semester. I found myself craving some simple piecing to give the cogs in my brain a little rest.

Early in the week I put together some placemats for a lovely friend. I do love this particular pattern, it looks so nice with so many different kinds of fabrics:

I love the diagonal check fabric, and have it in a number of different colourways. This is the lighter red version, and the darker red version is my favourite - I love to bind quilts with it, and I'm running low. I do hope I'll find some more again someday.

This week I also did a little tidying in the sewing room - it was getting untidy and made my mind feel cluttered. While doing so, I discovered my Moda Blockheads 4 blocks that I had worked on back in 2022. I don't know what was going on at that time that made me put them aside, but I only had 24 blocks made in total. So I thought it would be fun to make a little quilt top from them, and call that project finished.

They're such fun little blocks at 4.5in finished. I used a Civil War Dressing Gowns print for the sashing strips, and the border print came from my scrap drawer. I had to stitch many pieces together to get enough to frame the quilt. I pattern matched really carefully so the joins aren't too visible. Sadly I couldn't make up quite enough to mitre the border around the corners, so there are corner squares instead. It's quite fun to comprehensively use up a pretty piece of fabric. I wonder if I'll accidentally discover more of it in my containers later on?

I'd like to try and get this little quilt top quilted over the long weekend, but I have another I'd like to do first, so I'll see how I go. I also have a couple of weeks worth of tiny nine patches to catch up on, so I'll try and get that done too.

This next picture is something I could have shared with you last week, but in my haste to get a post together I forgot all about it. My Instagram friends will have already seen it:

Monday week ago, my Mum gifted me this pretty vase. It belonged to my Nanna, and is from Diana Pottery - the same brand as the cute fish bowls that I shared with you recently. I have a feeling that my Nanna had quite a few of their pieces. This new to me vase looks so pretty in the dining room, the colours are just perfect, so I'm going to make it a priority to find pretty flowers often so I can keep them and the vase on display.

It's quite cold here tonight, so I'm going to snuggle in under my Lily Rosenberry quilt and do some hand quilting for a while. Whenever I spend time in the sewing room, looking around me I know I will never ever run out of things to do! Chatter soon lovely friends xox

Almost June

Goodness this year is going fast, I can't believe it - it's almost Camo's birthday month, and then on to the actual middle of the year. Whew!

This week I've managed to get a little hand quilting done - I don't think this quilt is going to be done any time soon, so it's a good thing I'm just loving it!

I think I have three blocks left in the centre area to quilt, and then it's on to the borders. Happiness!

I've also been itching to do some simple piecing, and I was thinking about using some of my feedsack fabrics again. When I made a baby quilt for little Mary, the texture of the quilt after it was hand quilted was just divine, so I wanted to recreate that feeling ...

A double Irish chain is what I've settled on, and I'll use my pink and blue feedsacks with white Osnaburg. This is only my first block, but I've cut out several more. It won't take long to put together and I'll have itched the scratch for easy piecing.

Tonight I'm painting heads again, something I've also done a lot of this week. I am so surprised and thrilled with how many orders have been coming in. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - it thrills me that people are trusting me with their crafting needs.

At the moment I'm working on heads for the Ebenezer series, and on little elves heads in different colourways. I've also been stocking up as I go, as it's not even the busy time of the year for my Etsy store yet.

I shall sign off here so I can get some more work done before bed, and I'll check back in with you all really soon. *hugs*

May is almost over already!

Just a quickie post - having checked the photos in my phone, I only have one picture I can share with you tonight. It has been a busy week.

With homework, housework and painting bead heads there has been little shareworthy stuff going on. In fact, the only picture I had was of the orders I put in the mail today!

These all went in the mail today to sweet customers in the USA. I love that people are being so organised and getting ready for Christmas early!

I have put a few more stitches in the ornaments I started last week, or was it the week before? Oops, I'm not sure. And I did maybe 30mins of hand quilting in the whole week. But I do know that I don't have bunches to do this weekend, so maybe I'll have something to share with you after that. I promise to let you know! Chatter soon xox

Another Saturday post ...

I wanted to put a post up last night, and though my my mind was willing, my body wanted me to get some rest. So here we are. This has been the very best week - on Monday little Mushroom Chu-Chu arrived. Her name is Hazel Jane, and she is an adorable blonde bundle. Hazel was my Great Grandmother's name, which is such a lovely tribute, Amy has always been very family oriented, and Nanna was so pleased that her mother was honoured in this way. I won't share a picture just now, I want to run it past Amy first.

In other news, I finished the top of Cameron's aviation themed quilt, and it went together so easily. Once I got sewing I got it made in two days. Why did I linger so long over finishing it?

I do know that the blue fabric in the sashing was running low, and I have some recollection of being concerned about it. My original plan for the quilt is long gone from my mind, so I just built on what I'd assembled so far and put a border on it with the fabrics that I had on hand. And I think I have a 2in x 6in (approx) strip left over of the blue fabric, so it definitely was a close run thing. My darling friend Lizzy is going to quilt it for me, so I can check this project off my ever-long list. There are bits left overs from a couple of the fabrics, and they'll be great to use up later for donation quilts.

Later in the week I wanted to get busy on some mmmCrafts ornaments - I have a lot to make this year and don't want to leave it to the last minute:

These are the ones I've started off with - from the 12 days series. I'll be able to show them when they're finished too, but some of the ornaments I'll have to keep on the down low. They're lovely hand work, and somewhat portable too.

Last picture for the day - week 18 of the tiny nine patch blocks:

I'm so enjoying the little nine patches, and I think I've settled on how I'll set them together for the final quilt top. I'm not sure if I'll start working on that though, I should probably keep going on some of the other things I have on the go. It's not like me to have so many projects in various stages of construction, I'm flitting from one thing to another lately!

So that's going to be the extent of my post today, I have been busy painting bead heads for orders today (as well as visiting with my grandies) and I need to get back to painting. I'm always amazed by how many orders head out the door in a week, and very much appreciative too! Chatter soon friends xox

Back on schedule ... but with distractions ...

I'm back on schedule posting on Friday evening, but only just - it's almost midnight. It may click over to Saturday morning before I hit the publish button, let's see how I go!

This week has been a busy one, but also one with distractions. I stitched Week 17 of the tiny nine patches, and I'm super happy with them:

Some more genuinely old fabrics used again in those blocks, some icky shadows in that picture from taking photos late at night. A great photographer I am not, and more evidence of that to follow haha!

During the day on Monday I cut out a whole lot more one inch squares in readiness for the blocks above, and also for selecting in upcoming weeks. Little Mary was here for the day, and while I worked at the cutting table, she played with her Sylvanian Families that I have set up in the sewing room. 

Mary tells me she'd like to learn to sew some day, and it makes my heart sing. You can be sure I'll love helping her use the sewing machine when she's older.

I don't know if you remember, but during the Xmas holidays, one of the things I hoped to get back in progress was Camo's aviation themed quilt. I've been looking back thru the blog to see if I can figure out how long ago it was that I last worked on it, and I actually can't find any sign of it so far. So I'm going to say that it has probably been at least ten years. Perhaps more. But today I added two more rows, I'll add a further two rows and a border and hand it off to be quilted.

Even though he's an adult now, Camo tells me he'll still be thrilled to have it. Which gives me a tiny pang of guilt that I didn't make time to finish it much earlier. I think in the past I had some anxious thoughts that I didn't have enough of the fabric in the sashing strips. Because I don't remember what my original plan was, I'm going to make it work with what I have, and that will be just fine. It's fun doing some simple piecing, it has been a while!

And I promised last week that I'd share the pants that I made, this picture is not flattering for them, but here goes:

The pants on the far right were the first ones I made - I bought a cigarette pants pattern and wanted to use a less loved fabric to try it out. The fit was okay for the most part but I wanted the legs to be more fitted, so I took a half inch off each side of the legs before making the pants in the middle, and I'm very happy with them. And because I had enough of the houndstooth fabric left over I made the pencil skirt. These are made from stretch suiting, so I was able to use the coverstitch machine to do the hemming which I just love!

That's a warts and all picture, you can see I didn't match the stripes super well, but it's not really noticeable unless you're looking hard. And I did a little split in the bottom of the seam, I don't know what that is called (being a beginner garment sewer and all) but it just adds a little something to the look of the pants. I'm looking forward to being more brave and trying a few more things. Next on the list is a top, and I've bought some linen and prewashed it, so when I have a stretch of time that's what's coming up on the garment sewing agenda.

Well, that's all the action in the sewing room for this week, I don't know how much sewing time I'll have in the coming week, but I'm sure to keep you posted. Chatter soon!

Whoops!

On Friday I was such a busy bee, and I spent so much time at the sewing machine in the evening that I entirely forgot to put a blog post up! So here I go on a Sunday evening instead:

I finally caught up with the group working on the Tiny Nine Patch Challenge - it was such fun making my blocks:

All four weeks

Week 13

Week 14

Week 15

Week 16

I love them all and have such a great time finding vintage shards of fabric in my stash.

Prior to all the blocks, I completed the Dresden Table Topper I was making anew - in addition to refreshing my pattern, it's going to be a gift ... shhhh - as discussed!

I was actually surprised at how much I love the finished item, I think I'll make another for myself at some point - it'll be a challenge to find a bunch of red and cream strips and border stripe shards, but if I dig around hard enough I'm sure my stash will bear fruit.

During the day on Friday my Mum, Dad and I went on a little adventure. There's a story ... when I was growing up my Nanna had a set of what we called her fish bowls. They held so many memories for me of being around her big kitchen table at meal times, school holiday snacks etc. Nanna knew I loved them and promised I could have them some day. Anyway a long time later in the hustle and bustle of her downsizing and moving, the bowls disappeared. I decided that should I ever see any in the wild, I'd make them mine. And Friday was the day I was able to collect some:

Aren't they darling? I think they date from around the 50's by Diana Pottery - they're fish ramekins. My Mum tells me these are possibly in better shape than the ones Nanna had due to so much use, so I'm very glad to have them and every time I see them they'll make me smile.

Also during the past week, while I've been working I've been watching/listening to many episodes of the Great British Sewing Bee. Ohh my goodness, I just love it. And I was thrilled when one of the episodes had the contestants sewing on Featherweight machines!

How fun! Featherweights are always super fun to sew with. 

Watching all those GBSB episodes got me inspired to sew some garments again, and I sewed two pairs of cigarette pants. The first pair was with fabric less loved to test the fit, and the second pair from a darling black and white houndstooth to wear to a dinner party last night. I haven't taken pictures of them yet, but I absolutely promise I'll share them with you next week if you're interested.

So that has been my busy bee week - how has your week been? Chatter soon xox