What a chaotic week!

If you had asked me at the beginning of the week how my week was looking, I would have told you it was going to be a relatively quiet one, with a couple of outings and some lovely stretches of time in the sewing room. That's not really how things went ...

On Monday evening Marty came to me and said 'I think we've got a big problem', and to cut a very long story short, the main water line into our house had ruptured (fortunately outside) and we were dumping water into the front yard underground somewhere, and very little water was getting to the house. Not ideal. I won't bore you with all the details, but all kinds of digging, investigating and repairing followed over the next couple of days. And while the water was turned off, we lived like pioneers with containers of water. 

Rowley was super helpful while we were working in the yard - relocating things we were using:

It was actually pretty funny, we should probably have named him Bandit!

Some of my friends and I had planned a trip to a quilt store on Wednesday which is about an hour drive away, with a side trip to pick up a dinner set I had seen on Marketplace. Because of the plumbing drama, I wasn't able to go, which was super disappointing, but my lovely friends offered to pick up the dinner set for me anyway, which was so kind. I had been watching it for a while, and thought I had missed my chance to get it.

It's Copeland Spode Byron, and I just love it. It really suits the decor in my front room, and I can't wait to use it at our next dinner gathering. As all my friends know, I have an addiction to vintage china that can't be tamed, but I am going to have to temper my collecting now as I'm running out of places to put these lovely pieces!

From a quilting perspective, I've made a couple more blocks, and cut one out of a lovely toile I purchased - I'm really loving working on these Morrell quilt blocks:

This is block 57, I love how it came together - the fabrics are really crisp and fresh looking.

This is block 53 - it's much murkier looking with that mustard coloured print in there, but I love it too. It gave me flashbacks to working on the Nearly Insane quilt with all those pieces, but definitely not so tiny. 

And this is the toile block I cut out - it's from one of Karen Styles of Somerset Patchwork's collections. I was so happy to find it. I've ordered some other fabrics that should look lovely in this quilt where the toile fabrics are placed, so I'll share them with you when I get them.

Before all the plumbing chaos I also quilted and bound a small top I'd made earlier in the year, but I forgot to take a picture, so if I remember, I'll share that with you next week. I hope to also get some more time in the sewing room over the weekend, so hopefully I have some interesting things to share with you next time I check in. Chatter soon lovely friends! xox

I did it!

Oh my goodness! After having so studiously avoided finishing the centre block last week, on Saturday I bit the bullet and made myself finish the broderie perse. And you know what? It wasn't as fiddly as I'd worked myself up to believe. And I'm very proud of it!

I realise that Di's pattern has appliqued petal shapes in the corner, but I wanted to try something different, and I'm sure you've come to realise that I do like to break rules - in my own 'don't colour too far outside the lines' kind of way! 

Not sure yet how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to ensure that the little rose print will appear in several other places in the quilt. Carefully, because I don't have a lot of that particular fabric.

And because I was on a high finishing up the centre block, I put together a couple more. One using a cheater fabric:

I'm calling this one Block 13, but there are a few blocks almost exactly the same, so it could be used in their place. For this quilt I'm not going to assemble as I go, I would like the freedom to mix the blocks around if necessary.

And on a roll, this block came next. Block 59 - so much fun to make - I foundation pieced the triangle strips and the large rectangles I fussy cut the stripes as straight as I possibly could. Nothing bothers me more than stripes that run in all wonky directions. The outer border had me stymied for a while. I was really hunting through my stash for a cute (but narrow) border stripe. This one was cut at 1.25" wide, so will finish at 3/4". I didn't find what I thought I was looking for, but decided this green from a scrap bag from Karen Styles might work. I probably should have put the green in the middle rectangles, and the stripe in the border, but this is what I've ended up with. And tiny mitred corners too, yay!

There has also been a little hand quilting during late nights watching Wimbledon, but on a wild hair Wednesday evening, I decided I'd like to put together Mrs Claus from the mmmCrafts Twas the Night Ornament series. I finished her this afternoon:

I'm so thrilled with how her red hair turned out on the painted bead head, so I've added red as a colour option for Mrs Claus when people are shopping for painted beads in my Etsy store. I've only made three of the ornaments from this series, but I've painted hundreds and hundreds of heads. I love that people trust me to help them with their crafty pursuits.

So, the first of the Wimbledon mens semi finals has started, so I am going to settle in front of the TV with some stitching and allow myself to be engrossed. I hope you've all had a great week, and we'll chatter soon! xox

Avoidance at its finest ...

Last week I shared with you that I was feeling super happy to have completed a broderie perse corner on the centre block of my Morrell quilt - and that it was challenging because of the fabric's propensity to fray ... so this week I have been studiously avoiding that particular block ...

And instead today completed this block - it's # 36

I really love it, and I so enjoyed making it. It's all I can do not to make a few more that are very similar. But I really should finish the centre block - it's so close!

Earlier in the week I made an alternate colourway of one of my recent tree skirts. Also avoidance I suspect - but I told myself it's Christmas in July.

Also super happy with how this project worked out. The pattern is available in my Etsy store if you're interested, it's the easiest tree skirt I've ever made - you can stitch it together almost in a heartbeat!

So they've been my quilt related accomplishments this week - I'm super pleased that 'life with puppy' is getting easier and stitching time is easier to find. It's also mid year school holidays for the next two weeks, so I'll have an extra couple of hours to myself each week which I'll dedicate to all things crafty. 

And just a fun little aside - I was watching a movie while working on some hand sewing during the week (it was the tennis movie Battle of the Sexes) and at one point they were sewing tennis outfits for the ladies - and I was so thrilled to see that they were using this machine:

A darling white Featherweight! How fun is that? I have one of these sweet babies of my own, but I don't use it very often. I purchased mine while I was in the USA some years ago, and it's a 120v machine, and we're 240v here. I do have a transformer for it, but if I need to use a Featherweight I tend to use my black one as it's much less messing around. Maybe I should put the white one on display somehow, as it's such a sweet little thing.

So that's my stitching week up to now - I plan to get a little hand quilting done tonight while I watch some of the tennis at Wimbledon. And then tomorrow I will make some kind of bargain with myself so I finally set to and finish that darned broderie perse. Seriously!

Chatter soon - and hugs!

Broderie Perse

This week I am feeling so proud of my accomplishments! I finished all the piecing on the centre square of the Morrell Quilt. And rather than work on the applique in the corner of the block from the pattern, I thought I'd give some broderie perse a try:

I'm super happy with how it looks, though it wasn't without tribulations. The fabric is not tightly woven, so it frayed easily as I was appliqueing it down - kind of nail biting actually. So I'll have to psych myself up to get the other three motifs put in place. I've started working on an updated tree skirt this week, and I just know that my brain made me work on that as a bit of an applique avoidance tactic. My justification is that it's July tomorrow, and I should have something ready for Christmas in July. Haha!

In other news, today Amy and I dashed to a local charity store - they were having a sale, and I spied something on the shelf in one of their Facebook photos, I needed to make sure I got them!

These milk glass dishes are very much prized among quilters - they're great for storing tools in the dish part, and for hanging scissors and other whatnots in the holes around the edge. So I bought all they had. Please don't think I'm being greedy, I definitely have a plan for them - one which I won't be able to reveal for a while now. But please trust me on that. If any of my local friends have some they don't need, or know where there are some for sale, please let me know, as I could use a few more!

And last of all for today - this is something I cannot believe, but our Camo turned 21 last week! Long time readers will remember him being quite small, and now he is so very big! Friday evening last week we had a party for him, and it was such a nice time. We don't seem to get as socially busy as we did before Covid, so it was so nice to be out and about with lovely family and friends.

We're so proud of Camo, he is doing so very well at work and following his dreams. I couldn't be happier for him!

That has been my week up to now - I'll chatter with you next week - the second half of this year. Hope you all have a lovely weekend xox

Almost there!

I've almost finished the centre square for the Morrell quilt. I just need to make up the pieced corner sections, and then I can decide what applique I'd like in the corners of the background fabric. I'm thinking a little broderie perse could look nice. Let's see how brave I feel when I get there. I still find broderie perse a little intimidating if I'm honest!

It's so nice to spend time working on the sewing machine, I've done so little of it in a while, and I hope to get more piecing finished this weekend. 

One of the lovely things keeping me from spending time in the sewing room is our Rowley pup, he's a delightful distraction. He's doubled in size now since we got him. He was 6kg when we first got him, and when we weighed in at the vet last weekend he was just short of 12kg (26lbs) He's going to be a big boy I think, as he's only four months old.

He has such a sweet personality, but still tends to be a bit timid and doesn't love to go on walks. Hopefully that will improve when we leave this puppy stage behind.

I don't have a lot to share tonight, but I do want to send an apology out into the world. During the week I remembered to have a look and see if there were any comments that were waiting on moderation. I dug a little deeper than normal and found that I had A LOT of them, and some were at least ten years old. There were many comments from long time readers and friends, and I hadn't seen them. At some stage I elected to moderate comments that were made more than two weeks after the original post had gone up, as most of the odd spammy comments seem to be on older posts. But sometimes people do comment on older posts, and they are all the ones I've missed. So, if you've commented and I haven't gotten back to you, that is most likely why. I'm so sorry if I didn't see your message.

And this is a recent one on an old post:

I don't have any way of responding personally, as I didn't get an email address or a name, but I appreciate the visit and I'm happy to answer questions. The questions relate to this post:

I made the quilt quite a long time ago, so I don't really remember how I constructed the border, but I imagine I probably did make up a bunch of four patches and sewed them all together to form the border. I most likely had leftovers from when I made the blocks in the main body of the quilt and then made extras.

And the little inner border would have also been 2" cut (1.5" finished) that way all the maths works out for adding the 1.5" squares for the blue and white part of the border.

I hope the original commenter will see this info, and I hope it helps.

That's it from me for now, it's getting late here, and I'm super tired as we've come home from being out to dinner. It was a big fun night out, and I'll share about it next week. Chatter soon friends! xox

Almost finished with the centre block

I  have one image only for you this week. I've been fiddling away with the centre block of the Morrell quilt, and I'm pretty happy with how it's coming along.

I've fussed a lot over details that won't matter to anyone else. The gold paisley print in the outside ring of the block was in my scrap drawer, and I had just enough to eke out the pieces I needed. It's a little bit directional, and I was hoping to have the paisley print always facing in the same direction, but I didn't have quite enough fabric, and had to alternate them. Will anyone but me notice? Probably not. And I realised that the background fabric is directional too, so the bottom of the block is on the left of the photo. Which made me want to take the little flower in the centre off and rotate it slightly, I know it's OCD, but I don't want to have to regret later on that I didn't do it. 

So now you know how OCD I can sometimes be, but not always - thank goodness. It can be paralysing!

I'm in two minds about what I'd like to work on tonight after I shut off the laptop. I'm really keen to foundation piece the triangle outside border of this block, and make some decisions about the applique for the corners. Or I might like to print out some Solvy sheets and work on some mmmCrafts projects to get a head start for the end of the year. I suspect that the foundation piecing will win out, I've hardly used my sewing machine since we've been back from our holiday, and I really miss using it.

In other Morrell quilt news, I'm probably going to upset some of the purists that have worked on this project. I'm fairly certain I will change the layout of the quilt, and maybe make up a couple of the blocks differently. From a layout perspective, I want to give my quilt a little more symmetry, and the blocks I make differently will depend on how that all comes together. I've made no big decisions, and I promise to keep you posted as I go. I hope you've all had a great week, this week has flashed by here, I can't believe we're almost done with Friday already! Chatter soon lovelies!

Ohhh, and quick edit - I've had a hard time commenting on some blogs lately, I haven't paid good attention, but have some changes to blog settings been made recently?

It's getting easier!

I can finally say we're starting to get used to our new puppy family member. Or maybe he's getting used to us? But anyway, we're working our way into a routine, he's starting to become calmer - and happy days, I'm finding a little more time to spend on crafty pursuits.

I'm so grateful that lovely people have been purchasing more of my painted bead heads for mmmCrafts projects from my Etsy store. This week past they've gone to destinations in the USA and Australia, and for the first time to New Zealand. It makes me to happy to help people out with their own craft projects, thank you all!

And I've had some more time to stitch a couple of my own things. A few hand quilting stitches in Lily Rosenberry, and I've begun to tackle the centre block for the Morrell quilt. It's just a start so far, and as is my whim, I've changed it a little:

Next I need to select some fabrics for the triangles that surrond this centre circle, and also settle on which background fabric this will sit on. Decisions decisions!

I also located and finished the other applique block I had worked on somewhat while we were away. It's a combination of applique and reverse applique, so I included a picture of the back for you too.

It's always fun when I'm working on scrappy projects to remember where I've used the fabrics before. The fabric in the block above was one of the major border fabrics in my Phebe quilt. I don't remember buying such a huge amount of it, but I have a lot left still!

The Morrell quilt has so many blocks that feature lovely Broderie Perse, and pretty toiles, so I've been collecting fabric that suit that purpose for a little while with varying degrees of success. This one I found at L'ucello and it arrived this week:

Isn't it darling? I'll look forward to finding the perfect block to use it in (and maybe others too!) That's all I've had time for this week. I'm hoping to have the centre block finished to share with you all next week, and it's my plan to catch up with some blog reading over the weekend, I've been a diabolical slacker! Chatter soon lovely friends xox

Edited to add: A big thank you to Elsie Montgomery for your message regarding last week's post, your email address didn't come to me, so I wasn't able to message you personally, but I wanted to send you my thanks for stopping by! xox

One Block!

I don't have much to share with you this evening, there hasn't been much time for stitching - and at the moment I'm painting bead heads for my sweet customers working on mmmCrafts projects. It's such a fun thing to do, and I love to see the finished ornaments people create.

But back to stitching - I've only made one block this week. I cut it out before we left for travel stitching, but never got to it. On Sunday afternoon Amy babysat the puppy so I could have some time to myself, and I was able to spend some precious time at the sewing machine. This is the result:

I love this block so much! It would be a really fun block for a whole quilt, using different corner fabrics and border strips would make such fun secondary patterns.

I'm not sure what my count for Sarah Morrell quilt blocks is now, but surely I'm in double digits?

Another fun (and slightly stressful) thing I did this past week was to decorate a cake for a friend who was celebrating a school milestone with a bunch of friends.

Norma baked the cakes and distracted the doggo while I did my thing with icing. I'm so glad she was happy with the cake, I feel like I could have done so much better - every cake is a learning experience.

I'm super hopeful that this coming week will be less hectic - I'm still adjusting to life being a puppy Mum. This week has included a trip to the emergency vet, which not only isn't great for the stress levels, but the bank balance too. My tactic now is to simply relax into the fact that it's going to be messy for a bit here, and this little (well, not so little each day) fluffball is going to take up a lot of my time for a while.

I'll be trying to get back to your messages when you leave them as soon as I can, please don't give up on me. Your notes mean so much, so I'll chatter soon! xox