Sunday, January 26, 2025

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

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

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!

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