Friday night fun

I joined with lots of others  on Friday night for Friday Night Sew In, which is being temporarily hosted by Wendy at Sugarlane Quilts.  Thanks for hosting us Wendy!

Some of my sewing was of the secret variety, but I did start to join my 1 inch hexagons together for the front of a bag, which will be my SAL project for July. I love these Double Chocolat fabrics designed by 3 Sisters, I got a charm pack and some yardage from The Art of Craft in Gore.

And for the cross-stitchers among you who thought I had crossed over to the dark side quilting side, some stitches were even added to my Christmas Garden piece.  I've been working on this a little lately, the bottom pic is where it was at way back in December.

It's a stunning winter's day here in the Deep South, a day to throw all the windows and doors open and enjoy some beautiful sunshine....prune some more roses, and maybe get some time in the sewing room later too. Thanks for stopping by today....... Nicky x

Some stitching progress

I thought it might be time for an update on some ongoing projects......

• This is where I'm up to with Christmas Garden, by Blackbird Designs, the second pic is where I was at back in May(didn't think it had been that long....lol)  The top pic is a better representation of the fabric colour.

• Next is Block 5 of the Fat Quarter Shop Designer Mystery BOM.  This block is designed by the Blackbird Designs girls Barb and Alma...... still loving these fabrics.  Block 6 is ready to sew and Block 7 should be in the mailbox any day.

• I had my first attempt at prairie points on the first of two Pinwheel baby quilts, this is the completed top in Ruby fabrics, and I now need to add the prairie points to the one I have done in Bliss fabric.  The little twin girls these are for recently turned 1, so I need to make this a priority!!  Not sure how I will quilt these yet.......... 

I have heard from my lovely SSCS partner Cheryl in California that her parcel has arrived.  I can't find the photos I took of it, but when I do I will share the ornament I sent here.

We finished weaning our lambs this week, this was about 2000 ewes heading for the back of the farm yesterday .........

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Our girls are finished school for the year, they have both had a great year at school, our Miss 12 was awarded with the General Excellence prize for her class.  She was first in English, Mathematics, Science, Phys Ed and Visual Art, and also received a prize for Citizenship.  Our Miss 10 performed beautifully in her kapa haka group at their breakup, and has received a school report for the year that we are so proud of.  Apologies for the skiting, but there are two very proud parents here........  :o)

I hope your Christmas plans are going as they should, I'm off to town today to make sure that we will be ready too.

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

FNSI - The Friday afternoon version

As I hoped, I did get a few stitches in on Friday afternoon for Friday Night Sew In...... on my Christmas Garden project.  I haven't worked on this in several months, so there isn't much change to see, but surely a few stitches is better than none!

If you joined in FNSI, I hope you had a lovely evening stitching too.................

Till next time ...........Nicky

One of these is not like the other .......

.......... can you work it out?  You can't?  Well the difference is that one of them is mine and the other one might be coming your way soon!  When I began to make the first one back at the start of January, all the measurements were for half width strips, and as I was working with full width cuts of fabric it was just as easy to cut enough for two. This is also where I confess that I was too lazy to hand quilt the strips in the second one and machined them instead  So if you've commented on my blog this year already, each comment will  be one chance in the draw.  If you don't usually comment, feel free to go for it, leave a comment on this post to throw your name in the hat, I'm happy to post anywhere(if you don't want to be entered from any previous comments I guess you should say so here on this post too!!)  I'd appreciate if you didn't advertise this too far and wide, I'd love it to go to someone who visited 'just because' not someone who came only because they heard there was a giveaway.  I'll draw a winner this Sunday night the 26th NZ time.

I also have a couple of parcels of IOU stitching from last year ready to send off to their patient recipients, and it feels so good to have that done.  I am a hopeless slacker with the attention span of a gnat, and I must apologise to those people who have been waiting a very long time for me to get my act together.  You know who you are - and I will share some pics here when the parcels are received!

I did sign up for Friday Night Sew In last week and managed to get a little done on Christmas Garden, as well as the final stitches in one of the above-mentioned IOU projects.  I just didn't get back here on Saturday to share as I was supposed to.....   :-(

Well I hope your week is off to a great start....... till next time........Nicky

Stitching update

Hello again, it's been nearly two weeks(again) between posts but rest assured I haven't been sitting idle all that time..... here is some stitching I've been working on at nights while watching cricket and tennis, loving the Aussie Open, some great games and very entertaining.  I just wish we weren't 2 hours ahead of Melbourne as it was after 3am when I dragged myself off to bed last night!  (I have to confess there may have been some dozing in the chair at times though.)


But anyway, back to that stitching, this chart and fabric are a late Christmas gift to myself ........ I've made a small start, because of course starting is what I do best........lol.  This is Christmas Garden by Blackbird Designs, I think I am going to omit the wording at the bottom, and make it more of a family sampler than an exclusively Christmas piece.

Below is Secret Egg Hunt by The Trilogy, not much to go on this little one, just waiting on a couple of thread colours to arrive in the mail and I'll be done!

I have also started stitching those hexie flowers down on Janis' Stitching Round the Block, not as difficult as I imagined, the seam allowances stayed nicely creased under and I just used some tiny drops of Roxanne's glue to hold them in place while I stitched............ 4 done, 4 to go!

I think I mentioned a couple posts back that I had done a little Butterfly Garden stitching at Christmas time and here are 5 more little miniblocks done. .................... check out Fiona and her Butterfly Garden stitching, she is on fire, so is Josie, she is now working on her final block.   Oops I've just remembered I still need to get pics of my Gardener's Journal top now that the borders are on - next time!

Tonight I'm going to stitch while watching some more tennis ............. hope you're getting some stitching time today too............. till next time ..................... Nicky