Anni's New Book

This arrived in the mail today, I was on a pre-order list at the shop. It is just divine, lots of lovely quick and easy projects; all related to bags. A fantastic book for gift ideas! Thanks so much Anni for all your creative ideas!

This is a treadle clock that Aunty sent me a few weeks back. She is collecting miniture sewing machines and Treasure (her boyfriend) suggested sending one to me. What a lovely surprise it was! I have photographed the clock where it sits, on the shelf near some FQs. So lovely to look at.... Thanks Aunty!
Aunty is making McKenna Ryans 'Back to the Farm' quilt in classes, have a look at her posts about it so far.

Also in the mail today was Down Under Quilts magazine; and while flicking through got a big surprise! There on the page with random photos from the Royal Easter Sydney Show was my mother-in-law watching a beading demonstration!

This week I have been machine appliquing Little Macca's Farm. It seems I put together the main centre block but did little stitching on it, so I have a bit of work ahead to get this one done as it is a large block. I have also done some machine stitching on a not quite finished block for my Harvest Home Sampler quilt; and have finally picked up the needle again to work Gardeners Journal stitcheries. There does not seem to be enough hours in the day!

Little Macca's Farm progress

Another two blocks together and appliqued for Little Macca's Farm.

They still need their 'sounds' stitching in, BLEAT for the goat and MOO for the cow. There are two blocks and the border to get together before assembling the whole quilt.

The eyes are buttons which go on after quilting.

It's a fun quilt to make, large blocks so fantastic to start off with machine applique.

Anyone know what this is????

LOL

That's right, it's a piece of weaveline that I didn't pay attention to the other day when pressing it onto a stitchery. Lucky I haven't put together my new ironing board cover yet!

We've hit some cold weather here today and a great place to be is in the kitchen with the slow combustion stove, the children and a board game. We have just finished playing Monopoly Junior - me being weary of Squatter, it has had quite a work out the past ten days or so!

This afternoon I have been working on machine applique projects. I should have some more Harvest Sampler blocks to show you soon. There are five completed and I have a number of other blocks for the quilt on my desk waiting to be started/finished.

Knitting Takes Off

A knitter I am not. It is an aspirtion though, same with croquet. I start, doing maybe a row or two and that is it. Until this last week. I am SO excited! A week ago last Saturday I picked up the needles to knit a scarf for my friends birthday; and kept at it, and at it until it was finished! I REALLY enjoyed knitting it! My technique does need some tweaking, but it certainly got easier as I went. Looking foward to some more knitting soon!

We have just had a long weekend here in Australia. Tonto came to visit and she was very pleased with her scarf. So glad she loved it. Tonto visits regularly and we enjoy her visits. This time she joined in with an archery shoot out and was introduced to a new board game, Squatter.

In case you are wondering Squatter has been around since the 1960s and is kinda like Monopoly but is about sheep stations, buying and selling sheep.

Late one afternoon Tonto made 'Happy Hour' so good that we skipped dinner (she does a FANTASTIC happy hour spread), and kept drinking and nibbling.... well the kids didn't drink but they were full up on creamy cheese bacon bread dip. mmmm. Next time I will get a photo of it and post it with the recipe.

The night after I finished the scarf, our midget doorway dissapeared, permanantly!

MrBusy got busy and pulled it down. He has now 'adjusted' it and it is back up as a bedroom wall. The bedroom is to the right and has the ladder in it. Looking straight ahead you can see the family/dining and kitchen, through to the laundry (outside door is covered with Rhino wrap until we go buy one).

This afternoon I have mucked about with freemotion quilting, to do the applique work on the geese block for Storybook Farm that I put together the other week. Not ready to start on the real thing yet, worried about mucking it up!

Gardeners Journal

This is block G from Anni Downs A Gardener's Journal quilt that I am doing with the Stitch-A-Long group. This block was meant to be finished back in April....and I was meant to have block A finished in May....

I am very pleased now that my fabrics are cut and bagged up in their blocks, so I am hoping to progress more quickly now.

You have to have a look at the Stitch-A-Long blog, the quilts are coming along beautifully and they all look fantastic in all the different colours and fabrics!

(and it's not too late to join in)

I recently renewed my subscription to Australian Quilters Companion and they sent me this little bundle of FQs for free. They are just gorgeous and I can see bits of them being used in lots of projects. Last year I bit the bullet and subscribed to three magazines; something I had never done before, mostly due to the initial cost. However it has paid off. My magazines come to me in the mail so I no longer have wasted trips to the newsagent to check if the next one is out. It also saves me money because I am not going into the newsagent and coming out with unplanned purchases! Last of all, the free gifts are fantastic. When I subscribed to Australian Homespun last year I recieved a pair of the Scissoroo scissors which are worth a bit of money, I love them! Not all magazines offer free gifts for subscribing, but having my magazines delivered to my mailbox (I can't say door because the mail box is quite a drive from the house) with no extra mailing costs is great! Do you subscribe to any crafting magazines???

We've had a lot of icy cold weather here lately, how are things your way???

24inch Baby Quilt

I finished this quilt yesterday for a competition that was advertised in Down Under Quilts magazine. The quilts from the competition will be distributed throughout Australia for Neonatal Intensive Care Units to offer small quilts to families whose babies dies before or at birth.

I was sent the FQ of Nicey Jane fabric to use to make the 24 inch quilt, and I put white with it because I wanted something simple but effective.

Now here is an interesting read!

The Duggar family has 18 children, one daughter-in-law and one grand-daughter. I stumbled across this book one day at Amazon. It is a fascinating read on how they family manages everything; from day to day life (including homeschoooling) to overnight trips together. They don't have live in maids and they live in a HUGE house that is just gorgeous; AND they are debt free, not rich but comfortable.

They certainly make my five children sound like a small number!

Duggar Family

Exciting Works

Above is some DollyDresses yardage that arrived today from the US; I have been using my stash of this range to make a BOM quilt with the online Friends in Stitching group. Each month one of us posts a link to instructions to make a pieced 12 inch block; we will end up with 12 blocks over 12 months. Until very recently I was a bit niggled as I didn't know how I wanted to 'set' my blocks. However when that pretty floral piece of Dolly Dresses 3 came the other week I knew Ihad to have some more of it! So I have 5 yards of it to do the main border and the backing. The periwinkle spot is for the inner border and binding; and the white spot is the sashing between the blocks. I ordered a yard each of the spot fabrics, but am wondering now if there will be enough for the sashing???? I hope so.

Also in the mail today came Deb Louie's quilting stencils!
The most recent Australia Quilters Companion magazine came with a free dvd 'Introduction to Free Motion Quilting with Deborah Louie'; and in the magazine was an offer to purchse the quilting stencils direct from Deb. These quilting stencils are used with a quilting pounce and chalk - which will arrive here soon. Deb's dvd has re-inspired me to make a move on my quilting. I seem to be able to pile up quilt tops easy enough but am rather slow when it comes to quilting them. I am hoping that the quilting procrastination will ease up as we gain some more living space here - things have been rather cramped here for a number of years.

A recent project is McKenna Ryan's 'Storybook Farm' quilt.

These are art quilts, and something new to me. The majority of the quilt is freemotion raw edge applique. I thought I picked the easiest block to start with for this quilt; however soon realised that even the simple blocks have many many pieces!

Here you can see that I am using an applique mat - a fantastic creation.

Here is the Geese block ready to be spray basted to the backing for me to freemotion the raw edges and quilt. As you can tell by my boot the blocks aren't tiny!

This quilt has been around for sometime now, and I NEVER thought I would be able to make something like this (LOL still might not be able to!). I bought this from Annie's Cottage Crafts in TAS as a BOM - she still has a few left but once they are sold won't be making up anymore BOMs/kits as alot of the fabrics are out of print.

Aunty started an in-class BOM for McKenna's 'Back on the Farm' quilt. (Lucky her, she gets tutoring!) So far they have cut and appliqued their fabrics and are almost ready to start stitching. Aunty tells me they won't be doing the stitching as freemotion rawedge so I am anxiously waiting to hear how they do it and how it goes. We both agree that the purchase of a Clover Mini Iron would be a fabulous help to press all the tiny pieces in these quilts.

I am so excited to be doing this quilt, and to be able to confer with Aunty as she attends her classes making her similar quilt.

Another recently started project is a Moda quilt using the Verna fabrics by Kate Spain.

Gorgeous range... I bought this as a kit a while back from Natalia at Piece'n'Quilt in the US.

I have been working on more applique projects but will share these in the next few days, will also show you why I haven't blogged since last week - it will freeze your toes off!

Kerry made for me in FiS Bag Swap

Kerry made my bag in the Friends in Stitching bag swap, she used a pattern from a book by French General AND even used french fabrics!

The bag has a square shaped base and folds up very nicely; so it will be great to keep in a town bag, to give me extra shopping bags.

The stitchery is one of Rosalie Quinlans from the quit pattern Little Patchwork Village, very cute stitcheries and I LOVE all red stitcheries.... and red bags.... funny that Kerry made me a red bag and I made Jan a red bag for the swap!

Had to show you the inside of the bag; just gorgeous fabric.

Thanks so much Kerry! I love it!

oh, and because I put MissBusy's clothes in for the first pic; she thought the bag was for her! Wasn't happy when I said she couldn't keep it.

LOL