T.G.I.F.F. - Just In The Nick Of Time!

Ever since becoming a shift worker, almost 17 years ago, I have relied upon my trusty diary to tell me where I should be and what I should be doing.  It has also been a saving grace as our family expanded, again, and again, and again!  But as my dear iPhone and iMac entered my life, a new member of the family has been welcomed - iCal.  My poor paper diary is a little neglected these days, as I find myself tapping reminders, appointments and birthdays in to my trusty phone.  And setting the alarms so I never forget anything!  Why am I telling you this?  Well, because I have a few very special little people in my life, outside of my immediate family.  And a certain young lady is having a birthday next week, and thank the lord I put a reminder in my calendar to make her something this week!

You may remember me bitching and moaning, and literally melting my way through the last couple of weeks?  Thankfully some cooler weather has fallen on us, so I have been able to return to my little sweat shop to whip this little baby up!

I stood in front of the Flying Geese block for about an hour before deciding which direction to take.  It needed to be bigger in size, so I just added an inch of the purple/green Terrain print, then another two inches of black before getting to the quilting!

And then I ummmed and ahhhhed about how to quilt it?  And which colour thread to use?  I cracked open another spool of Aurifil, this time the colour is #2605 - a gorgeous silver/grey.  I am slowly but surely falling in love with these threads, as I had been assured I would!  I never understood how thread could be such a big deal, but it really is so shimmery and lovely - and my trusty Bernina REALLY likes it!

The receiver of this gift has a penchant for purple, but I didn't have long nor wide enough amounts of purple Terrain left, so I went with the orange.  Which actually works beautifully with the print I purchased for the backing.  I LOVE all the wonderful statements on this print, and think it is just perfect for a 15 year old girl.  I haven't had time to get the right size cushion insert, so stole this out of one sitting on my lounge!  Just a tad "fat".

And here it is empty.  Why can't fabric manufacturers print straight!?!?!?!

So that is basically all that I have managed to finish this week.  But I have BIG plans for this coming week!  Fingers crossed the weather plays along.

I'm linking up with T.G.I.F.F. over at
Dreaming In Patchwork!

Blog Hop Giveaway Winner!

 Good evening!  A very short and sweet post tonight.  Thank you to EVERYONE who hopped over and checked in here on my blog via the Quilter's Blog Hop Party!  But just like every party, it has to come to an end.  I will miss coming home to a full inbox of comments, but do hope to see more of you all in future.  I've seen lots of lovely new faces (ok, well I've read your lovely words) pop up in my comments since the Hop started, so I hope you will stick around and read my drivel on a regular basis!

Without any further ado........Drumroll Please..........

The winner of the fat quarter bundle is:

NUMER 61 - JoyceLM!

 Congratulations Joyce!  I will be emailing you shortly to organise getting your little package to you!

Thanks again everyone 

xxx

W.I.P. Wednesday #12.....All my Geese in a row

Hallelujah for the cool change!  Whilst Melbourne has sweltered under the longest string of days over 32 degrees celsius, there has not been much sewing happening!  Some of my Ms Midge dress orders have been on hold, for otherwise I may very well have withered away to nothing.  Instead, I spent some afternoons sitting here upstairs in the air-conditioning wasting spending my time very wisely, pawing over Pinterest and blogs!  Which is what leads me to the TWO W.I.P's I managed to get going - albeit very slowly!

I pulled out the gorgeous dresden I made a few weeks ago, and put that baby to work.  She is now sewn on to a big yummy square of vacant white space, and has her first border.  I'm trying to take some inspiration from all the Marcelle Medallions I'm seeing on Instagram.  In fact, I purchased the E-book version of the Liberty Love book, however, am having major issues being able to open it.  The online book store I purchased it from is trying to help me!

I digress.  Again.  As usual.

The following day I felt compelled to make another thing I'd seeing flying around the traps.  Geese.  Flying Geese.  I used THIS tutorial. I am continually petrified by all the fabulous designs and techniques I see in the quilting world, and am equally surprised when I manage to figure it out.  So yay for me!

A gaggle of geese.  I have plans for these birds......

Then yesterday, once home from work, I decided I needed to get started on a birthday gift for a very special girl.  It was 37 degrees outside, and "only" 29 in.  So I dug out this bag of "scraps" I had, and forgot there were actually a few very big pieces (read - half yards!??!) of Terrain!  Yeh for surprises!

And I then went back to the Craftsy BOM I joined for free, and took a deep breath before diving in to this baby!  More geese!  In fact, a circle of geese!  This is my second attempt at paper piecing, and I must say, it was certainly easier than I had anticipated.  I'd only ever seen this pattern using white background, but the receiver of this gift is not a white background kind of girl!  I love the effect.  It will end up a cushion.  I still have no idea how I'm going to finish it off, as it's too small at the moment!

So that's it my friends.  Another week, another TWO W.I.P's to add to the pile!

I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced!

Living with It.

Since Chloe started Kindergarten a few weeks ago, I have been blessed with a rather abundant amount of "me time".  Now I'm not telling you to make you jealous (although I would have been if I read that sentence a year ago!), nor any other reason.  I've embraced me time, and have avoided doing anything remotely close to housework as much as I can.  Except for laundry.  There's just no avoiding that.  Especially when there's six loads of it piled high in your living room......

I said to a friend last week "the silence is deafening".  Right now, all I can hear is the rumbling of our most attractive brown in-wall air conditioner.  That's it.  This morning, whilst wandering aimlessly around the grocery store, I started to think of all the things here at home that we are just "living with".  You know, things that you really should do something about, but you really just can't be arsed?  Yeh, them.  Here's just a few.....

Look familiar?  These are gorgeous ready made curtains from Spotlight.  But the stooooopid curtain rods have a join in them where you can extend them - and there lies the problem.  The curtain hooks get caught on the join, and they end up looking like this.  In three separate bedrooms......

When we were moving house, and renovating, we had many a discussion over where children would be sleeping and where I would be sewing.  I very gracefully begrudgingly gave up the 5th bedroom so the kids would all have their own rooms, which meant I have the shoebox (which is actually named storeroom on the plans).  I suggested at the time that I could use the upstairs living room, but Andrew said NO he would like my sewing room to be closed off when it needed to be.  Well........this is the entry to my sewing room.  It is one of the downstairs living rooms.  Fail.

When we built the new deck, we asked the builder for a quote on a gate so the dogs couldn't get up.  If my memory serves me correctly, his quote was over $1000.  For a gate.  So since June last year, we have tried a number of tactics to keep the dogs off.  This being the latest.  You may note the top left hand corner of the timber is broken?  Yeh - one of the dogs chews through it when there's a thunder storm.  Really need to get that gate built......really need not to be charged a fortune for it.

And the most hilarious thing we live with?  This.  The entire staircase was the colour of those stairs, and we decided we would paint them white and then carpet them.  Back in June, when the carpet was laid, the carpet layers made a mistake thinking we wanted it on the stairs, but after I explained that we needed to paint the staircase first, he told me he'd already put the spiky wooden strips down.  "Not a worry" I say.  "We'll paint it soon" I say.  June............March.  Eight months of avoiding spikes in your feet, warning small children, and hearing yelps from unwilling victims.

In our defence, we planned to get the painting done over the Christmas holidays.  But three people decided to get chicken pox, which meant my planned trip to the beach with them so Andrew could paint, got shelved.

Sooooooo, what are you living with that really does need to be done?

Sunday Stash #8 - Some Stuff I Forgot To Show You!

I can't believe I forgot to share these sweet fat quarters bundles with you when I bought them quite a few weeks ago!  They are from the "On The Pond" range by Sarah Fielke.  And the colours are amaze-balls!  Much better than this photo anyway!  I also bought the two little Fat Flats the same day - just because.

Sarah Fielke's On The Pond

Cute "Flat Fats" AKA Fat Quarters

Bargain!!  $2 fat quarters from my LQS.  Some of them are from the same Melly & Me range "Where The Wind Blows" that I bought a month or so ago, and the same range I'm giving away in the BLOG HOP!

Remember my first dresden from HERE?  It's made from that beautiful fat quarter pack of On The Pond.  I pulled it out yesterday and started making it in to a quilt.

And made my first ever "flying geese".  There's another 20 something geese where these came from!  But you will have to wait until Wednesday to see how far I've got with my "flying by the seat of my pants" effort!

I'm linking up with Sunday Stash!

Quilter's Blog Hop Party - And a Giveaway!

GIVE-AWAY NOW CLOSED!

A rather momentous occasion happened over on my Facebook page last week - I hit 2500 "likers"!  It was brought to my attention by my Tokyo BFF, and then time got away from me, and I also remembered that I didn't like mentioning when I reach a milestone on the page - because then the number suddenly disappears!!

So when Alyce over at Blossom Heart Quilts told me that the Quilting Gallery Blog Hop Giveaway was on, I thought it would be a good opportunity to thank everyone for sticking around with me,  and all the newbies for joining me.  And for reading the huge amount of blabbing that I have done on this blog over the past few years.  I know my blog has changed direction just a little bit of late, with less personal posts and more quilty/crafty posts, but I really love the fact that everyone still reads along and shares their thoughts with me via comments.

As my little thank you, I have a sweet little fat quarter pack of these prints from the "Where The Wind Blows" range by Melly and Me.  I bought them a month or so ago, when I realised that my local quilt store is actually affiliated with Rosalie Quinlan, who just happens to be Melly's sister.  And when I popped back in there this morning to grab something quickly, Melanie (Melly) was in there!  And through the six degrees of separation, I explained to her that I actually know her sister in law, who was my eldest daughter's prep teacher.  Small world.....

Anyway, I digress!  Look at these!

Aren't they purrrrrdy????

To enter, just leave me a comment telling me what you would use these fq's for!  And followers of my blog can also leave a second comment for an extra entry!

Please make sure you are not a "no-reply blogger" so I can actually contact you in the event that you are the winner!  The winner will be chosen via Random.org.  Competition closes midday March 14th EST (Australia).  International entries welcome!

****  Edited - You will find all participating blogs HERE.

T.G.I.F.F. #9 - I Forgot I finished something!

I was totally thinking that all I had achieved, quilting wise, this week were the two Riley Blake BOM's!  And then whilst going through my Flickr stream, I remembered I made a quilt!  Whoops!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Spotlight for white homespun, and stumbled across a bolt of Riley Blake's Peak Hour fabric.  For $12.99 - bargain.  So I got me a metre, and a metre or so of some co-ordinating prints, and came up with this....

A cot sized quilt for a friend who is expecting a baby boy very soon!

I love how the full sun has shot this orange fabric to pieces!  It's really not this bright IRL, however is a lovely burnt orange hue.  And see all those circles?  Painful - but I got through it!
** My daughter doesn't have three hands, her younger sister decided to play assistant!

Those little curvy quilting bits were not as easy as I had anticipated.

I LOVE the binding.  Love it.

All up, this quilt took me a day to make.  I actually came up with my own "pattern", basically by working out what size I wanted it to be and then working out the length of the fabrics by the WOF.  I know it's very simple, but I think it really packs a punch with personality, and I'm hoping the recipient loves it!


Next cab off the finished rank is January's Riley Blake BOM.  These chevrons were quite easy to put together, although some of the points don't line up perfectly, which is rather frustrating - but my own fault!

And February's Riley Blake BOM.  My paper pieced love heart came together beautifully, and I just chickened out and went with plain old appliqué stitch.  

I cracked open the Aurifil I bought last week and went with the golden shade #2000.  I think it looks divine!

Once all the blocks are finished, I think a quilt made from them will be just so damn pretty!

What have you finished this week?

I'm linking up with T.G.I.F.F. being hosted by Quilt Matters this week!