Stuff (as opposed to stuffed)

Apologies to Suz and Alex for the title.

Suz's mug rug is one of the finalists in the Mug Rug section of the Modern Mini Challenge being run by the lovely Jennifer over at Ellison Lane Quilts. I loved Suz's mug rug when she made it and have it bookmarked to use as the design for a Christmas table runner. I'm sure Suz would be over the moon if you popped on over to Jennifer's blog and voted for it.

This is a teeny tiny photo of it, as the only way I could borrow the pic was to use the thumbnail in flickr!

Alex of Teaginny Designs is another blogger whose work I love who also made it into the finals along with other awesome mini quilts. If you haven't already had a look, head over and vote for your favourites. I think you know who I'll be voting for!

We had more bad weather on Monday, after years of very little rain and abnormally dry seasons we are now back to good old fashioned Queensland weather. Lots of rain, cloudy crappy weather, but at least it's still warm.
On Monday we had very strong wind gusts and lots and lots and lots of rain, yes more rain. The weather bureau was saying if the weather depression went out to sea, it could form a cyclone, although it wasn't very likely. If you had taken a look at the radar images you would swear it was already a small cyclone.
One of the casualties of the strong wind gusts and another 8 inches of rain in one day was this tree. Around the corner from my house.

Fortunately it fell over and only crushed the fence, if it had fallen the other way it would have completely blocked the road and possibly crushed a passing car. That's a very big tree.
We are not the only ones suffering from excessive rain. In NSW and Victoria they are experiencing terrible flooding as the excess rain that fell a week ago is now waking it's way down through the river systems.


On a brighter note, to prove my babies are still alive, some photos of my feline fur babies, I haven't posted pics of them for ages.

Off cuts from squaring up after quilting are great to lie on!

That looks so uncomfortable

I haven't dated the photos, so I could have killed them off and just be showing you old photos! I know Shay will be wanting proof that they really are still alive. A detective would note that Bailey is lying on the bits from the baby quilt I made.  I suppose I could have stuffed him and artfully posed him lying there!

Although it would be hard to do this to his paws if he was stuffed. Look at those claws, he is one big boy!

I still need to take a photo of the other boy, Karma!

Simon's Cat in 'The Box'

Reminds me of a cat I know................... my special boy, Bailey.

A bit quiet

Karma, check out that tongue!

It's been a little quiet on the blogging front at Chez Sunshine. Life has a way of taking over sometimes.  I've been trying to read as many blogs as possible but unfortunately have not had the time to comment.  I don't think I'm the only one in this predicament either, what's with this time of the year being so busy?  I'm crossing my fingers that over the weekend I'll have some time to get back to normal.

Friday Night Sew In

Last night  as usual I had grand plans to get lots and lots done. I don't know why I keep on thinking that is going to happen, it never does. Maybe one day I'll surprise myself with lots of progress instead of being surprised that I don't achieve much.

I started early, in hindsight that was good, otherwise I would have absolutely nothing to show. At all.

I started sewing the extra blocks for French Roses as I could see the finish line for this project, admittedly on the horizon, a long long way away but it was looking feasible for a finish this week. Until I realised I had cut 10 blocks  1/2 inch too small. That's 10 blocks - background, backing and batting.  Really great when I don't have enough fabric to cut another 10, I don't even think I have enough to cut another 4. Anyway, as it's a quilt as you go, and was originally using a 1/2 inch seam, I'm going to fudge it and use a 1/4 inch seam and cross fingers toes and eyes and hope it works.

After doing one of those blocks I decided it was too depressing to continue so I changed projects and worked on the Flurry Quilt.

By this time I was starting to fade. I was a little very tired after  being woken up at 3.45am by a wet nose in my face,  not the best way to start the day.

Owner of the wet nose.

I sewed the sashing between the blocks and one row of sashing below the first row of boxes.

All laid out on my "design bed" as my temporary design wall fell down a week or two ago and I haven't put it back up again.

I'm enjoying making this one so will hopefully get much more done over the rest of the weekend.

This is where I finished on Friday night.

I really do hope everyone else was far more productive than I was.

Take a look over  here and see where people actually were productive last night.

Pyjama Party Sunday

Last night I was all cosy in my pyjamas ready to finish sewing in the ends on the Spice boxes quilt. I had a nice quiet evening planned after being so social the last few. I sat down in my nice comfy chair to watch TV and finish the last few blocks. I was sitting there quietly concentrating on threading the needle, minding my own business, when all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye, I saw something hurtling toward me.  Next thing I know, I have a cat attached to my head. It gave me such a fright. I looked like Donald Trump having a really bad hair day.  How would you like a cat clinging to the side of your head? All I can say, I'm very lucky it was 2 kilo Lulu and not 7kg Bailey.  I'm not sure who was more shocked Lulu or me, Lulu is still alive although I think she might be deaf from the amount of screaming and cursing I hurled at her as I chased her around the house. Hopefully that will make her decide that it was not such a good idea to do that. 

The culprit

She has never ever done anything like that before,  I'm hoping she was playing with Bailey and misjudged her death defying leap from the other side of the room, and unfortunately my head was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well I hope that's right, otherwise I'm not going to be able to sleep for the next few weeks wondering what other plans she has in store for me.  

This morning in my pyjamas, I left Spice boxes alone and worked on finishing the last of the Floral Bouquet blocks.

39 blocks all done!!!!!

Some of the Spice Boxes blocks. I used bamboo batting and it has left a LOT of fluff, which you can see on the darker fabrics. I've already brushed the fluff off a few times, once it's bound and quilted it doesn't shed.

I sewed these blocks yesterday morning, again in my pj's, before I had to go out. Sorry no photos yet. I still have to cut the background fabric.
This afternoon I set up a High Tea out on the verandah. I was not in my pyjamas for that, I do have some standards. You can read about and see pics in my last post.
A very much more productive weekend. I hope everyone had/is having a great Sunday. Please join in below, grab the linky button, you can find it on my side bar, and share in the joy of Pyjama Party Sunday.

Remember PJ's are optional!

Favourite Things Friday

This week Emma asked if I could do her favourite thing for FTF.
I said sure, can you please pick out the photos that you want me to use.......................I'm still waiting!

So here is a very late FTF post of Emma's favourite thing this week.

That's right it's Bailey, but judging by the look on his face, Emma wasn't his favourite thing at the time.

Pop on over to see Shay at Quilting In My Pyjamas to see what other favourites are posted this week.

Favourite Things Friday

It's Friday and that means it's time to link up to Mrs P at Quilting In My Pyjamas.

This week my favourite thing is my computer in the kitchen.

When I renovated a couple of years ago, I swapped the living room with the kitchen. Most people thought I was stark raving bonkers, but I had a plan, and that plan was brilliant, even if I do say so myself.  It flows much better, it is in a much better part of the house, and opens up directly to the verandah. It also has a special place for my computer.

That's the late afternoon sunlight through the blinds, I love the shadows it creates.

There's Arnold who lives way up there above the computer, it's the only place in the house where he is not likely to be eaten.

I love having my computer in the kitchen. It's central, I can use it for recipes and have them up on the screen while I'm cooking. I can check emails and blogs while I'm cooking supposed to be cooking and I am close to all the action. I can Skype with friends and still work in the kitchen too.


The only downside

There is a nice little space to the side and behind just perfect for

my problem child to sit

and play, yes he is upside down

and plan attacks on his sister

and annoy the hell out of me, messing up my nice pile of crap that is sitting behind the computer

but he is so cute, hmm, maybe not so much..........what's next......................

Tuesday Tidbits (and tails)

Look what I received in the mail today. A beautiful crochet pin cushion from the lovely and very kind Rachael at Clever Cheshire Cats, isn't it gorgeous, I absolutely adore the colours, it's so pretty.

Rachael popped these in the parcel too, how did she know I love chocolate. A girl can never have too much chocolate.

Thank you very much Rachael.

After my stuff up with sewing on the weekend, I lost my mojo, again!  I just couldn't motivate myself to do anything, it didn't help that my dining table looked like this. Actually it was worse than this, I'd already started cleaning it up when I remembered to take a photo of the evidence.

After what seemed like hours, in fact it was hours, it took me ages to rearrange things and find homes for everything, my dining table looked like this, and it still does this evening. I'll be interested to see how long it takes me to pile crap all over it again. The rest of the afternoon I worked on the French Roses quilt until Fanny decided to start sewing teeny tiny stitches again, grrrr. I've turned her off and I'm hoping when I return to sewing, everything will be fine. Fingers crossed. No photos of the French Roses today, I don't want to bore you with the very slow progress.

This is one of the pears decorating the table. I need a table runner, but I don't feel like making one. I thought I had one that would work with the chairs and the pears, but no such luck.

I had to tidy up the desk in the study/spare room too, so that I could put my cutting mat here instead of leaving it on the dining table.

You can just see some fabric in a mess under the desk, my tidying didn't get that far.

A brilliant idea,  I found a metal letter holder in the cupboard, to hold my rulers.

I don't want to move Miss Fanny Pfaff into the study, because this is the view I have whenever I look up.  That's a rain gauge on the right of the railing. How good is that view, and look at that lovely blue sky today. We have had a couple of absolutely beautiful days, the weather is finally improving following the hideous weather we had through summer.



Feline fur babies photos.

Bailey has taken to licking his back leg constantly, and now has a bald patch. It gets better and then he starts again. We've tried a few different things to stop him, but it's turned into a habit, hopefully he will grow out of it eventually.

 He usually sleeps with his paw over his face, and he curls up his toes, too cute.

This was Bailey this morning, through the kitchen window, about to eat my lemongrass.

Lulu sunbathing in Karma's bed. Poor Karma, nothing is sacred.

Not Not Karma's quilt

Another finish for April.

The idea started when I saw the Max and Whiskers pre-cuts I thought it would be great to make them into a really cute dog bed for Karma.  I combined them with some co ordinating prints from my local quilt shop, the sashing is It's a Hoot from Momo.  Initially I called it Karma's quilt, really original name I know!!!   I thought long and hard to come up with that name.
As the quilt progressed though I thought it was way too nice and I had spent too much time on it to be just a dog quilt. So I was going to make it bigger and use it myself.  It became Not Karma's quilt. More hours of thinking to come up with that one!
After getting this far with it, I came to the conclusion, that the fabric was cute but I didn't want a quilt in it.  All my friends who saw it said I should give it to Karma and I was mean if I didn't, so now it's not Not Karma's quilt, dumb I know, but it's more interesting than just plain old Karma's quilt!


There are some really cute prints in this range, some of which I fussy cut.  I echo quilted it around the log cabin strips in a kind of squared off zig zag.

The back is chenille which was surprisingly easy to work with.




I pieced the binding using more of the jelly roll.



It's the first time I've pieced a quilt on point, and I had a little bit of trouble working out the setting triangles as I wasn't following a pattern.

I'm really pleased with this one and Karma seems to be pretty pleased with it too!

 I don't think he's too impressed with Lulu trying it out!