Pyjama Party Sunday

I hope everyone has had/is having a great weekend. Of course mine has been pretty fabulous as my birthday celebrations continued.  I was given THE most beautiful necklace by girlfriends yesterday.

I didn't have much of a chance to stay in pyjamas this weekend. Yesterday I had to go to the supermarket in the morning, and today we were up nice and early to go to the local farmers markets to pick up some supplies. Of course I couldn't go in my pyjamas, hmmm, I suppose I could have but I'm not much of a rebel.

A little bit of sewing has been happening at Chez Sunshine, working on the Flurry quilt yesterday and today.

I've changed the corner blocks, as this quilt design is for use with the Kate Spain fabric Flurry, which has a panel as part of it's line. The panel is supposed to be fussy cut for the corner blocks and some of the cornerstones in the main part of the quilt.  

I used my very limited mathematical skills to work out that I could make a 4 patch block in place of the corner block, and guess what

it worked.

I still need to add the sashing strips to either side of the pieced side borders and then add the outer borders, but it's almost finished.  I had to  cut ✂ 23589875944759284297455  2 1/2 inch squares for the borders. An easier way would be to cut 2 1/2 inch wide strips WOF, sew them together then cross cut them, BUT I always do things the difficult way and as I am using a layer cake and have used part of most of the layers already I had to cut very short lengths 2 1/2 inches wide and then sub cut them, so basically cut all those squares and then chain pieced them together again. That was fun................☹

French Roses

I think the 1/4 inch seam will work.

As it's quilt as you go, and you sew the blocks together so that the seam is at the front.

1/4 inch seam

Pressed to the front

Then add bias binding

Bias binding added to cover the seam

Voila, it should be ok.............

I think

The bias binding pic is from when I made the first few blocks, I haven't go that far with these yet.

My birthday present - front

Back

This is the absolutely beautiful necklace my girlfriends gave me. I just love it. I'm so lucky. 

We had a great evening, laughed - a lot. So much so that I think we may have scared off some of the other patrons, lol. 

The waiters were..............young, 

too young, but cute!


PJ PS will be taking a break next week as I'm visiting Melbourne (again) and will be going to the Craft and Quilt Fair while I'm there. (I'll be the one limping/hobbling around  like the hunchback of Notre Dame). I really hope my knee has improved a lot by then or I might need one of those motorised scooters, lol, I'll be able to run everyone over push everyone out of the way to get to the good stuff first, lol.

If you want to join in on Pyjama Party Sunday please link your post below with the Mr Linky widget. Thank you to everyone who linked last week.

Grab the code for this button from the side bar on the right.




Remember pyjamas are optional!

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.

Favourite Things Friday

This week my favourite thing absolutely has to be birthdays.

I wonder why?

Let's see.

Presents

A shower cap, love the fabric

Balloons

Yesterday.

A beautiful day in the middle of winter

Lovely views with a celebratory coffee glass of champagne, and sunlight sparkling on the water

Dinner with family, oops no pics.

(If you are ever in Noosa the food here is superb.)

Well wishes from lots of friends.

Mucking around with BP taking photos with photo booth on the computer, and thinking, gee, I don't look too bad.

Two are not necessarily better than one.

More celebrations with friends to look forward to this weekend.

More balloons

Oh crappity crap, it's back to front, lol.

 Life's good.

Pop on over to Shay at Quilting In My Pyjamas to see more favourites.

And Now For Something Completely Different

WIP WEDNESDAY lots of different projects this week

Warning: many photos.

Despite my dodgy knee which had me in bed or lying on the couch most of the weekend, I seem to have achieved quite a lot this week.  Still no finishes but I've worked on a variety of things. I'm so glad I had some English paper piecing to work on, and the Amitie Circle Game BOM couldn't have arrived at a better time. It meant I could keep myself occupied even though I couldn't stand and rotary cut fabric or sit at the sewing machine for more than a few minutes.
This week was a bit of a change of scenery for me with my sewing projects.

I finished another PP flower and started playing with joining diamonds.

I practiced the Circle Game block using Kaffe, wow it's vibrant. You might need your sunglasses for this one.

Starting on the "real" one now, all pinned and ready to sew.

I worked on the Flurry quilt, and finished all 16 of the box blocks.

Here's some of the blocks ready for sashing. I still need to cut out 289459843  2 1/2inch strips for sashing. I've been putting that off for as long as possible. It's not my idea of fun.

A sneak peek at this month's Monochromatic block. For once I haven't waited until the last minute. I still have to embroider the centre but at least the block is sewn.

Another Mystery Quilt star block finished. It's not as odd shaped as it looks. I still haven't started Week 5, but it involved much more rotary cutting so I made this one instead.

Finally I was supposed to put borders on the French Roses quilt, but as I was making it as a quilt as you go quilt, the broders needed to be quilt as you go too. I wasn't feeling the love for that so I've been putting it off. Every now and then looking at it and then deciding it was too hard.

The colour in this photo is a bit off and drab, the photos below are more accurate.

Yesterday I finally came to the conclusion that it was never going to be finished if I had to put borders on it so instead I opted to make some more blocks to make it bigger and do away with the borders.

It didn't take me long to cut up the background fabric, the batting, the backing and all the pieces for the flowers. All that's left to do is quilt the blocks and sew them together.  Now it's going to be 7 blocks by 5 instead of 5 by 5 with borders added.  Hopefully it will be finished very soon and that will be one less WIP, yay!!!!

Worked On This Week
Circle Game BOM - Trial block and the "real" Block 1
Flurry Quilt - finished piecing blocks.
English Paper Piecing - completed another flower , and played with joining diamonds.
Monochromatic block for July - pieced
Mystery Quilt - finished Block 6
Floral Bouquet quilt top- cut out setting triangles
French Roses - extra blocks

Sitting on the Sidelines
Spice Boxes - waiting for binding fabric

Waiting Patiently For Me To Show Some Interest 
Tiggly Winks - applique
Plume quilt top - backing
Jacobean Flower - mini quilt
Don't Look Now - cushion/mini quilt (still)


Weeks Statistics
New Projects - 0
Completed - 0
Worked On - 7 - I think this might be a new record for me.
Ignoring - 5

Is it just me or do the numbers keep on increasing, even though I haven't started any new projects?

Click on the WIP button to go to Lee at Freshly Pieced to see other WIP's for this week.

Knee's up and whoops a daisy!

Stop Press for a medical update.

I've been to the physio and it looks like, unlike the song, my tibia didn't want to be connected to my femur. Or something like that.  Fortunately it wasn't the medial collateral? ligament, which is stressed and sore but not torn.

My knee doesn't look as sexy as this one.

After a lot of banging, twisting, manipulating, massaging, ultra sound treatment and taping I can now walk a whole lot better. I have to go back Wednesday for further treatment, and she is hoping that that will be enough.

So sorry I won't have to have my leg amputated and provide everyone with hours of interesting  gruesome details.

It's put paid to Rachael's idea of a Hop Along Quilt Along. This could have been one with a difference, lol.

Pyjama Party Sunday

I'm feeling a little sorry for myself this weekend. I spent all day Saturday in my pj's which would normally be a sign of very crafty things happening here. However I had a crappity crap moment on Friday night, I twisted my knee. (It wasn't because I was up all night partying and dancing on tables, if I had done it doing that I would be impressed, not feeling sorry for myself!!!!) I think I've torn a ligament, I have to go see a physio tomorrow to determine exactly what is wrong with it. It's possibly from an old basketball injury when I tore a ligament in that knee (which kept me on crutches), that happened umm, hmm, let's say it was a long time ago.  See exercise is bad for you. If I hadn't been fit and played basketball back then I wouldn't be like this now, lol!

My sports related injury bwah ha ha,  has meant I spent all day in bed trying to rest it and keep the swelling to a minimum. I couldn't have picked a better day to stay in bed as the weather was horrible - wet, grey and cold.
Fortunately for me I had a bit of hand sewing I could do to keep me occupied, and also Gone With The Wind was on satellite TV which kept me amused, boy that is a looooong movie.
I had cut out the pieces for a trial Amitie Circle Game block so I spent most of the afternoon doing that. I'm really really pleased I did a trial block, as I had hardly done any hand piecing before and never curved piecing nor a circular block.  Although about half way through I was thinking, yuck, I have to do this all again.  I think I've worked out how to do it better next time, hopefully I'll start working on the proper block this week.

This morning I was feeling a little better,  I worked at the sewing machine for 3/4 hour and sewed the bows to the boxes on the Flurry Quilt. Sorry no current photos.

I also finished another EPP star/flower and tried out some pieces to connect the flowers.

I had a big weekend planned, working on some of my projects but the universe had other plans.  It feels good to have been able to work on the hand sewing, so even though I didn't finish the quantity of work I had planned, I'm really pleased with what I did accomplish.
I'm now hobbling around, and as long as I don't straighten my leg or go down stairs it's not too bad.  I'll be back to training for triathlons walking normally soon.





If you'd like to show what you've been doing this weekend, please link up with Mr Linky below, and grab the code for the button up on the top of my sidebar.
Remember pyjamas are optional. 

Favourite Things Friday

It's Friday again, and this week my favourite thing is the self cleaning oven in my kitchen. Not a very exciting favourite, but when I think of how much time, elbow grease and chemicals (because bi carb and vinegar never work as well as chemicals) I save,  it's a really huge deal.

I've been really slack and haven't cleaned it in f.o.r.e.v.e.r. In fact it was so long I had to get out the instruction manual. That's when I had an oops moment, as it said to clean every 2-3 months.

In my defence it wasn't really really grotty.  I wish I had thought to take a before shot.

It's been such a long time because all summer it was so hot and humid. The oven pushes a lot of heat out into the kitchen when it's cleaning as it heat up to 500C. Now it's winter and relatively cold it was perfect timing, nice and toasty in the kitchen for a few hours.

All nice and clean again, not a mark in sight on the oven walls or glass door, yippee. 

Linking to Mrs P at Quilting In My Pyjamas who always has an interesting favourite.

Interesting stuff from blogger that might help you in the future

I have been subscribing to Blogger Buzz for a few months now. It's been really helpful to find out what is happening with Blogger.

I think this post:
Update on Browser Support would be of interest to anyone who has had problems in the last few months with Blogger.  Go over and read it and make sure you have a current (up to date) browser as you will find you will start to have real problems with Blogger in the future if you don't.
I highly recommend subscribing to Buzz Blogger, it's not all interesting, but occasionally you will get at tip like this that will save you lots of frustration.


Happy blogging.

Bastille Day - France

Today, the 14th July is Bastille Day in France.
In honour of the day I've searched through my photos from a couple of years ago taken on travels to France. Some are from a trip in January and others were taken in late September.

This is my absolute favourite photo from Paris, Bitchypoo skipping down the street in the rain.

Nice
Don't you just love those blue and white umbrellas, oh to be sitting there right now.

I love the quirky old paths in the small towns, so many things to see just around the corner out of sight.

Paris, the view from the top.

Notre Dame

On Saturday the 16th July the Brisbane French Festival will be held in Brisbane at Southbank Parklands in honour of Bastille Day.  I went last year, the inaugural year, and it was buzzing. So many people and so many interesting things to see. It was apparently the biggest French festival in Australia.