Just a glimpse

Just a quick glimpse today of today's efforts.  I spent ages working on the Christmas quilt but I am not quite ready to show you yet - hopefully tomorrow night.  I am very pleased with it though!

Tonight I have been cutting out bags - my favourite little Japanese lunch bags - to send to Japan!  Seems rather appropriate don't you think?  I managed to cut out seven and tomorrow I am hoping to get some lining fabric to go with them. 

Hopefully we are having a sewing bee on Wednesday to make the bags up - yet to find out how many ladies are free to come .  We have been doing fortnightly sewing bees on top of our fortnightly regular meetings.  Some people are finding they have a few family things to do so we may have a break this week.  

Till next time......happy stitching.

Stand clear please.....

That's right!  After being sick for the last couple of weeks you now need to stand clear as I am catching up again!

Had a very productive day today - did lots of around the house jobs and also managed to sew all the four patch blocks for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt.  No idea what comes next - a few thoughts but I will sleep on it over the next week!
Here they are on my design wall.

I am loving all the bright colours with the white.  Not sure where this quilt will end up  - guess some of that decision depends on where I go with it next......stay tuned!

Also, finally, managed to sew all the 5 inch star blocks for my Retreat Christmas Wall Hanging. 

Here they are when they had their turn on the design wall.

Tomorrow I hope to get them sewn to the rest of the quilt -  remember these are the border!

I can't wait to get to it!

Hope you have all had a great sewing weekend!

Till next time........happy stitching!

Bye Bye Brooke :-(

Tonight was Brooke's going away party.  She is our lovely young lady who is going to Texas on exchange for five months!  Isn't she going to have a fabulous time.  And she is such a gorgeous young lady, inside and out, I just know they are going to love her!

We always decorate for whenever we are getting together for a special occasion so tonight was a no-brainer!

I was even able to find tiny sugar lollies in the shape of red, white and blue stars!  We can't put much on the table because it will soon be groaning with food anyway!

I was so pleased to be able to give Brooke her quilt.  She loved all the comments and I reckon she will know them all off by heart by the time she comes home again!

As usual at our sisterhood gatherings we had loads of yummy food - sorry, too busy eating to take photos but I did remember to take a pic of her special pavlova - I had seen this done as a cake before and though it would translate well into a pavlova!

Bye Bye Brookie - we will miss you but we will all be here waiting for you and we will look after Mum for you!

Till next time.........happy stitching!

Friday Fiddling....

First up a couple of people wanted me to share my recipe for the yummy little muffins so here it is - all freshly typed up for you!  Enjoy!

BASIC CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS

2 ¼ cups SR flour

½ cocoa powder sifted

1 cup caster sugar

¾ cup dark chocolate chips

½ cup vegetable oil

2/3 cup milk

1 teasp vanilla

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 180C/160C fan forced. Line a 12 hole , 1/3 cup capacity muffin pan with paper cases.

Combine flour, cocoa, sugar and chocolate chips in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre. In a large jug whisk together vegetable oil, milk, vanilla and eggs. Pour into well in dry ingredients and using a wooden spoon stir until just combined. Don’t over mix. Spoon mixture into paper cases. Bake for 25 minutes or until firm to touch.

I didn't get much done today.  Brooke's going away party is here tomorrow night so I needed to make her pavlova.  Luckily the only other thing I have to provide is the marinated chicken thighs to barbecue.  Everyone else brings the rest of the food and we all provide drinks.  This is like having family over so there is no need to make the house spotless  - just generally respectable will do!

I did manage to sew my informal swap block for Celia.  Only a sneak peak til Celia has received them! 

There is an extra one in there for me too. 

Here are a few more five inch (when trimmed) stars that I did on the quilt retreat which I don't think I have shown you yet. 

I love making these - a great way to use up scraps of favourite pieces of material.

Finally tonight I managed to finish off another four of my Christmas stars for my wall hanging.

 I just love the fabrics in this one - I will always enjoy seeing it in my quilt.

I also made this red one to add to my slowly growing pile of scrap five inch stars - note all of these ones still need to be trimmed to size! The centre piece in this one was a tad too small but I loved the pic so just added a green strip - meant to add a bit of green to each side but didn't realise that I hadn't till it was all together - duh! Not unpicking it though. This can be my Amish mistake!

 That is it for me - probably no sewing tomorrow as I will take my time tidying up for the party and getting ready.  The antibiotics have done the trick and i am feeling fine - I want to stay that way so easy does it.  I don't have all that much to do anyway.  I have Stars and Stripes paper plates to set the table - red plastic table cloths and so on - photos to follow after the party.

Till next time............happy stitching! 

A sneak peak or two!!!

A bit frustrated tonight as my cursor is not showing upin blogger so it is a bit hard to go back and make changes to the text so bear with me if there are mistakes.

I took myself off to the doctor again this morning and surprise surprise, another set of antibiotics.  here is hoping these do the trick quickly!  I am getting bored with being sick!   I needed a new take along project as I have almost finished my poncho for my little niece - just have to sew in the threads and finish the fringe.  I decided to grab this ball of Can Can Yarn and start it off.  Not too bad - easy to do and quick to knit.  Not sure I will do another but I need a "take along" so I am happy to knit up one ball! 

After a couple of essential errands it was home and back to bed  - aahhh bliss, for a couple of minutes til some inconsiderate person started up a power saw and started hammering, that started the dogs barking and then I was being buzzed by a blow fly!!!!  Not happy!  So, I sprayed a canful of spray on the blowfly, called the dogs insdie and the three of us shut ourselves in my sewing room and slept on the daybed - back to bliss........ahhhh.

Once I woke up I amused myself cutting out four mini star blocks to send to my informal swap partner Celia -

The colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month is white!!!!  Other than that....NO HINTS!  Sorry Celia.

Next job was some more cutting out - my local Quilt Store, Country Pickin's at the Corner, has a free BOM (that is Block of the Month for my non-quilt mad friends) .  I finally decided to cut my first block out.  I have no problems choosing fabrics for safe choices but I want to go out of my comfort zone - with Kaffe Fassett. 
I have given myself two options - I am not sure of either of them but if I don't try I wont learn anything will I?

All opinions welcome even if you say yuck!  Kaffe is not easy for me to work with in kaffe styl if you know what I mean but I am determined to have fun trying and learning. 

If I get some sewing done tonight I will do a second post tonight but I have to get this one out as someone is ready to read it.

Till next time......................happy stitching!

It all started with chocolate chip muffins!

At least my day did today.  Last night at the Parent Teacher night I found out there was a morning tea for the Year 10 parents today - it had slipped past me - but I wanted to go so I rearranged a few things and that meant getting straight into my day by slamming out chocolate mini muffins by 720am this morning.  Don't be shocked as I am up and hanging around between 540am and 720 anyway, just trying to get the boys out the door without doing everything for them!  I usually have time to make something quick.  This is a new recipe so I haven't typed it up yet but yell out if you want the recipe. 

They went down pretty well with the boys and two of their class mates so I guess the recipe is ok. 

Just had time to do a few chores then off for morning tea with the other mums - chat about school stuff and Senior School Subject selection and so on.  next on to quilt group.  There was lots of ooh-ing and aahh-ing over the current progress of the round robin quilts  - but again I can't show you photos!  Time to come back home and arrange food for kids then rushing off to pick up Fly Boy and class mates and do my normal Wednesday prolonged taxi service. 

Finally back home around 630 and quickly throw together dinner for Guitar hero and I.  No actual sewing tonight but I did manage to organise and cut my fabric for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for the month.  This month the colour is white and I have dragged out lots of scrap squares of other colours to go with it.  I am going to sew about 70 odd four patches and then I will go from there.  Still undecided if I will add more white or more colour or just a border.  I will wait till I get to the design wall stage. 

Not very exciting at this stage!

Tomorrow I am hoping to sew but after two consecutive doses of antibiotics which finished yesterday I thought I was on the mend.  Sadly I have had a couple of disturbed nights and now I am getting a sore throat again.  I always seem to get a sore throat if I miss out on too much sleep so I am going to try and rest a bit tomorrow as well.  I have to be well for the weekend as we have Brooke's going away party on Saturday night.

Hopefully tomorrow will see some more Christmas stars but if you don't hear from me for a couple of days you will know I am resting and party prepping (not that there is much of the latter to do as it is really like a family get together and everyone shares the load)

Till Next time........happy stitching!

Bits and pieces

I had one of THOSE nights last night when you wake up and don't feel at all rested.  Yuck!  So, I didn't really feel up to much so what did I do?  I tidied my fabric stash - well half of it!  This is the after shot - I forgot to take a before shot. These shelves mostly store my novelty fabrics and my bigger pieces for backings.  I have separated things into piles labelled DOGS/CATS,  NAUTICAL, BRIGHTS (my biggest category), HALLOWEEN, MUSIC etc.  The top two shelves are out of bounds to others as I often let my quilt group raid the stash and this way I don't have to worry about them grabbing favourites.  It looks so nice and neat now and will make it so much easier for me to delve into it!

 This IS the before picture.  This is where I keep (top shelf down) my 1930's, Mary Engelbriet and Pink and Orange collection.  The next shelf is my whites, yellows, neutrals and browns.  then on to the purples and blues and next the red and greens and then the pinks and black/white collection!

Finally the bottom shelf contains tins of labels, safety pins, kids tin lunchboxes with bits and pieces in them and notebooks and computer discs.  Hmmmm, this really needs a clean out but sadly probably another week!

No sewing today but i did manage to prepare this sweatshirt for my niece using some of the fleece leftover from the fleecy top.  The hardest part was ironing the cut out on to the  sweatshirt as you can't touch the iron to the fleece.  I managed to get it to stick in enough places by putting a layer of cotton fabric over the top of it and then I turned the top inside out and ironed it on thoroughly from the back.

I have stitched it down with a very fine zigzag in colour matched threads.  Not the most up market project I have ever completed but hey, it is for a 4year old and all she will notice is the princess.  it seems a waste to throw out the extra pics.  Not sure what I will do with the rest - have to think on that a while.

No other sewing today - just some good old line drawing for the little triangles that go on my scrappy stars.

Till next time..................Happy stitching!