Since

Returning home life has been busy, appointments for hubby and myself,  grass to cut, gardens to weed, house to clean, all that stuff, plus tone to be spent with this young man 

Who has discovered what you can do with his Grandmothers phone!! 

I have finished one of the Christmas quilts to go to the special care nursery at SJOG 

I have sewn together one of the charm packs I found at the Albury (I think) quilt shop Raewyn will correct me if I have the wrong place 😉 plus some batik fabric

It looked a bit bland so I added a purple border and then used up the rest of the batiks

One patchy quilt top done.  Happy the top is sewn together and the fabric hasn't taken up residence on the fabric shelves! 

We have had some lovely days this last week

We had some visitors to the front deck one day recently 

This one let me hand feed it for a little while , it enjoyed the seed cereal topper.

I am off to Gisborne next week  for a retreat  8 of us to sew up a storm!! 

Happy stitching

Progress

 I have been doing a lot of ironing, cutting and preparing this week, getting ready for Scrub Stitching

Fabric cut for one quilt

two quilts

#3 quilt, more fabric is coming in the mail, I hope it gets here before the weekend. I am doing fat quarter blocks for these quilts so they should come together quite quickly . (She says hopefully!!)

When I was in the kitchen this morning  I could hear and see a galah outside, I thought it might nave been interested in the vege garden below but it's mate was in the tree just a bit further along feasting on these red berries, it was not at all bothered that I went out to say hello and take some pictures.

I spent quite a bit of time on the kitchen this morning preparing the figs for some more jam, there are so many figs on the tree, the birds are having a feast, I watched a silver eye demolish a fig about the same size as its body when I went out this morning.  I have made 10 jars this season so far. 

The Churn Dash quilt is finished - Ready for show and tell at Scrub Stitching

This scrappy quilt is finished, thanks to Joan for the quilting. Joan did a spider web design and it looks amazing.

and the Foundation Paper Pieced hearts are finished.

Two more blocks have been done for Anthology, sorry blogger decided they had to be turned around!

I was given these blocks, they are the last of Kates things, Judy, one local quilter has, 

I am going to add them to the sides of this quilt top started ages ago and never finished, it is long enough but not wide enough, this may just solve the problem.

I had better be off and sort the mess in the sewing room.

Happy stitching.

Woops

Today was the day to make a block to take to Guild...I have the pattern and the fabric, just not the ability to get it together correctly!! The block is going into a Quilt that will be raffled at the Geelong Agricultural Show in October.

I was too busy watching a movie and not concentrating! Just created a new block!

The one on the left is how is was supposed to be done.

I have been slowly doing some quilting on the Christmas quilt.

This morning when I rode down to St Leonards these guys were doing their morning ablutions and keeping a close eye on the returning fishermen.

Yesterday I came out of the shopping centre in Geelong to see this rainbow, sadly the colours are not as bright in the photo as they appeared to the eye.

Happy stitching.

Monday madness (photo heavy)

Well I have decided today is mad day as so many people have told me I am mad....must be very silly all kinds of things as I am working on tiny hexies

here is the first one finished, this is to be added to Doing the Rounds

to give you and idea of the real size, they are quarter inch hexies

the next lot getting ready, I can see I am going to have trouble getting the fussy cut hexies in the right place on the fabric!

There was some beautiful show and tell today, I only got a few

a string quilt

Lynda has made this for her grandson Paddy to celebrate his love of dirt bike riding

another string quilt in different colours.

I took a couple of photos on my way to sewing this morning

this  lady and dog were enjoying a walk along the beach, every now and then the dog would run into the water and bark and bark!

Shane, #2 son is staying a couple of nights so we went out this afternoon to have a play with our cameras

something of interest ahead!

It has been a windy stormy kind of day

lots of white caps

and photos being taken

and interesting angles being chosen!

loads of barnacles on the boat launching ramp.

the Christmas blocks quilt is together 

the backing chosen...now to make a sandwich!

Happy stitching.

Life

is slowly getting back to normal, we came home to a beautifully clean home (many thanks Robyn and Dennis) and a very happy chowdy dog

as you can see the Supervisor is relaxing after his morning walk!!

Yesterday I did a little more  on the Christmas quilt, I hope to get back to that today

this is my progress with Doing the Rounds, all sewn down, the poor hexies looked a bit worse for wear after I had wrestled them off their card!! But they have ironed up and sewed down ok. Now to start fussy cutting the next lot of hexies.

I had a brain buster this morning and decided I needed somewhere to keep the little hexie bits once I had them cut, so I combined bits of idea I had seen around

two quilted and lined pieces of fabric that I had been going to make into a zipper pouch were zig zagged together and left over binding reironed and folded to cover the join.

zip lock bags placed along the centre, stick down with double sided tape...they are slippery little customers!!

another repurposed binding bit sewn down on the inside centre to hold everything in place

and binding sewn on..all ready to hand sew later.  it is a bit floppy but will do the job I need it to do so I am pretty happy with it.

While in NZ we met Mum while she was on an outing with some of the residents from the home, a cruise ship was in over at the Mount wharf, the idea was to have a fish and chips dinner and watch the ship leave at 6pm

serious business this fish and chips!!

Not the most flattering shot of Mum...the wind got up and the oldies got cold so they went back home, we found out later the ship didn't leave until 6.45, a bit late for everyone! One of the ladies, Willa, got into trouble for feeding the seagulls, she thought it was a great thing to do, but one of the carers discouraged her (many times) saying last time she did that several oldies went home with sea gull poop in their hair!!

Mount Maunganui from a different vantage point, there is a big cruise ship at the wharf but it is a bit hard to see.

I had a good find at the local supermarket

bags to put your fruit and veg in. Itried them out this week and apart from having to have them open so the check out person can see what is in them, they work really well and no plastic bags needed! 

I am off to do some more sewing and cutting.

Happy day.

PS. Just laid out and counted circles finished, total = 169!!

Pretty happy with that!!