Happy New Year

 This gorgeous quilt was made and sent to me by Cathy for our Friends in Stitching Secret Santa.  

There were little advent parcels too; TREAT was the mug with chocolates, NATIVITY was the nativity orny, ANGEL was the angel orny and ANTLERS was the cute reindeer orny.

SANTA is this lovely Lynette Anderson decoration.

This is our garden, complete with tomato house (fruit fly netting). It's so lovely to have fresh picked veges.

A quilt I was commissioned to make earlier in the year before it was quilted. I used four BLUEBERRY bali pops to make it and bound it in the brown backing fabric. Loved how the colours flowed; lol one of the kids said it made him think of water, beach sand, mud.....

Matilda's Medallion quilt by Chandler's Cottage. This is a special kit in autumn tonings for G and is simply gorgeous.

Such beautiful colours, the photo's do not do the quit justice.

I quilted butterfly's on it.

A quilt I put SWIRLING KOI on earlier in the year for A&TREASURE, another Chandlers Cottage design, Forbidden Palace. It was lovely seeing the array of asian fabrics in this quilt.

A fantastic table runner that I made in VINTAGE MODERN by Bonnie and Camille. It's on the table today and brightens up the room.

Donkey Kong, Lynda's Pretties and Kids Floor Quilts

 In the past eight weeks I have quilted a wide range of quilts on my not so new Gammill. The quilts have ranged from bassinet size to over 100" square; and there has been so much variety in them. Mr Busy and the children love to visit the quilting room to check out the quilts; and to give their opinions on quilting patterns. Miss Z in particular has asked me to quilt POLAR BEARS on at least a dozen quilts, and just because she saw that quilting pattern on the machine and liked it! 

This amazing quilt is Donkey Kong of course and was made for a 13 yr old. I quilted it with squares back to back which enhanced the pixel design of the quilt. Such a cool and unusual quilt. It's now trimmed back and bound in the red; and in use.

These two partical pictures were done for my friend Lynda from LyndainWonderland who posted them to me to quilt. They were just beautiful quilts, so so pretty. The one above was made from the scraps of the one below. LOL I have just noticed that the pic below was taken during quilting and only part of the cross hatching is done! Such beautiful applique.

These two panel quilts had plain borders added before quilting; such a quick and effective way to make lap/floor/small quilts for children. The rescue vehicle quilt was quilted with loops and stars. The girl panel was quilted with retro flowers. Since doing these, and seeing how much my children (both big and little) liked them I have done some more. Hello Kitty, Dr Seuss and Spot the Dog.

Sewing Kit

The Friends in Stitching online group have been making sewing kits to donate for victims of the Tassie fires. I finished mine tonight and will post it off tomorrow. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose everything like these people have. The past month has been pretty horrendous here in Australia; with fires in Tasmania, fires in and around the Warrambungles National Park NSW and the floods in Bundaberg QLD.

Now that I have the camera and computer co-operating together again I will have lots more photo's to show in the next few days.....including Christmas and what starting the long arm quilting venture.

Oh Sew Busy Quilting

We've had a huge addition to our household recently that I am loving.

Oh Sew Busy Quilting

Colours

This is our new stove, an Esse 990 slow combustion cooker with three ovens. It's been a while since it arrived but I've had troubles not only with blogger but with uploading photos from my camera to the computer. The stove is in place now, complete with a stainless steel splashback and the Esse exhaust. We bought our stove from Pivot Stove in Melbourne. The cypress floorboards are down in the kitchen and almost completely down in the dining/family area; soon to be sanded and sealed. 

We've done a lot of painting here recently, with more to come. The entrance, hallway and kitchen/dining/family area is the yellow you can see the photo (Primrose Path by Dulux), bedroom #6 is a bright primary red called Hot Lips and the pantry is off white. I have brought home paint the other day to re-paint what was going to be our bedroom, this is a delicate pale blue called Alley. 'Young Leaf' is the fantastic green to re-paint the boys room when big brother moves to the 'red room'; and I am looking foward to painting the lounge room a stunning colour but that is a while away yet because the walls need sanding and plastering yet.

My sewing machines came back about a month ago and they have been whirring along ever since! I have started and finished a QS Bargello quilt, a lap quilt that was cut out quite a few years ago; and I have finished off the secret santa present for Friends in Stitching. I will show you as soon as I get the technical problems sorted out; pretty sure that this means transferring everything over to the other computer....

Weeding has been keeping me busy lately as Mr Busy has put in a good size garden. It looks so lovely and the weeding is so much easier with the tools he brought back from the organic market gardening course he attended back in September at Allsun. I can't begin to count the number of bags of lettuce and silverbeet that we have picked and given away, lol let alone eaten!

I have booked in with Kerry and am going to Girls Day in the Country at Nundle next March. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone and meeting Sue Daley. The Small Things BOM I am doing through Sarah at Patchworks Plus has fallen behind since I got my sewing machine back. Out of three small paper piecing projects that I have received I have almost completed one (needs binding); am part way through the second one and haven't touched the third one. I should get close to catching up now that Mr Busy isn't away for work for a few weeks. In the last six weeks he has spent half that time out west, way out west, almost to the borders for SA and QLD. 

Stitching Without a Machine

With my sewing machines away being serviced and not wanting to stitch bindings down (another story for another day) I joined Sarah's Little Things Club. There are six paper pieced projects that finish at approx 12" x 14", and each project is a different English Paper Piecing shape. A great way to try out different shapes without taking on a large project or ending up with odd bits of paper piecing that don't make anything.

The first month was clamshells and Sarah has sent this in French General fabrics, oooh so nice! At first I didn't like doing these but after a few rows I got the hand of it and flew along. Mr Busy saw it one night and when I told him about the others he suggested that I join them all up for a larger quilt. I thought it was a great idea but with each mini quilt being not identical in size it wouldn't work; also these are coming in different fabrics so my choice is to keep them as individual projects.

Back in March the girls all went to Girls Day Out in the Country at Nundle. I stayed home because I was due to have a baby shortly and wasn't up to a big day out. The guest tutor was Sue Daley and I wanted to join in so I started on this paper pieced pincushion for an October birthday present.

I think I got about half of the pincushion completed then it sat aside until October, of course! I finished it a week before the birthday (lucky this was later than I thought the birthday was!) so it arrived in plenty of time.

I intended to fill the pincushion with some silica sand or crushed walnut shells but having no machine meant I was unable to sew up an inside lining to keep the insides in, so I filled the pincushion with toy fill. Kylie loved her pincushion, and making it in some of her favourite fabrics was an easy choice. The hard part was choosing buttons!

While my sewing machines were away (about three months gone in total) I bought another one. A beautiful early 1900s Singer treadle machine. I have wanted one of these for a few years now but Mr Busy was dead against it before, and for some reason he agreed to me purchasing the 'dust collector' as he calls them.

It needs a bobbin and a stitching plate but I am sure I will come across these somewhere. The kids are fascinated with it,can't wait to try it out. The day this came home my seven year old son sat at it and sewed up his teddy bear by hand - very inspiring!

Bec xxx

Tea Towel Bag Trade

 Recently the online Friends in Stitching group had a tea towel bag swap, you just had to make a bag using a tea towel, easy. I hadn't done any sewing for ages with the baby and thought this was in my capabilities at the time. I was so excited to do something else for ten minutes a day, LOL and it was ten minutes a day, if that! One day I cut up the tea towel, the next day I cut some of the lining (I didn't have to line it but did as this allowed me to put a pocket in the bag and gave me fabric for handles), another day I stitched the sides of the bag up etc etc. Even with only snippets of time you can make great achievements.

I purchased a Red Tractor Designs tea towel with yummy cakes on it from our local newsagent. Red Tractor have lots of gorgeous tea towels out that it is hard to choose one! They are made from linen. Due to these being long tea towels I was able to use the bottom with the design name for the bottom of the bag.

I bought a pretty stripey tea towel from a local gift wares shop to wrap it in for De.

 Sarah made mine, and it is gorgeous! Love the red and aqua colours together!

 Thanks so much Sarah!