Finally...

Hand sewing binding is working it's way up the list of my least favourite things, along with basting and quilting. Maybe I need to change crafts.

Do you remember this? I started this quilt back in early August.

It took me most of last week to finish it.  I wanted to finish the binding in the evenings, the idea was to watch tv while hand sewing to keep my mind occupied and make it feel like it wasn't taking for.ever.

The first night I was attacked by these.

Even though I had all the screens shut, these flying ants swarmed inside, straight for the light that was over my head. There were lots more I just don't want to gross you out with pics. Please excuse the cat fur, who buys a white sofa when they have a black fur baby!!!! 

Despite this set back, hand sewing the binding continued, and went on and on and on, until, finally.....

it's finished!

The binding is in Kona charcoal and I added a strip of  Kona Artichoke and a strip of Hope Valley for a bit of interest. I pieced the back which included one more owl block.

Oh and look it matches my cushion on the outdoor sofa, a very happy coincidence.

Favourite Things Friday

Warning: lots of photos




This week my absolutely favourite thing is my verandah, I can show you some lots of photos.

Before:

The side used as a dumping ground.

The nicer side, but still messy, not staged for the photo, note the bucket under the table!

The water tank at the end of the verandah, that has been moved as it was handy but an eyesore.

Notice the boards in one photo are running parallel with the house, in the other photo they are at right angles. This is because the joists that the boards sit on all run the same way and the verandah wraps around two sides of the house.  Cleared of most of the furniture and junk, ready to be pulled up, it doesn't look so bad from this angle, but take a look below! I was so scared that someone would fall 6 metre (20 feet) through the boards.

Boards almost finished, Bailey and Karma checking it out. Bailey is more likely checking out some birds in the tree and working out how he can get to them.

Oiled and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for it to dry.

Unfortunately we had very very wet warm and humid weather and it's taken a week for the oil to dry.  It's dry enough to walk on and I've put the seating out there, it doesn't move around and shouldn't scratch, but I want to wait another few days before I put the table and chairs back, as I don't want them scratching the surface.

Still some plumbing bits and pieces in the background, the guttering and plumbing to the rain water tanks isn't finished (next week, fingers crossed.  

The decorating isn't finished yet, I still have more to do and fine tune where everything is placed, but I wanted to show you for FTF this week.

My hammock, and  below, the view from my hammock, heaven!!!!! This is why I had to show you my verandah for FTF, I finally have space again for it on the verandah and it's  ready for the lazy days of summer.

To see more of this weeks favourite things,  you can visit Shay at Quilting In My Pyjamas.

Tuesday tidbits (and tails)

Fabric stash, I just don't have enough fabric, cough cough,  I always decide I am not going to buy any more until I make inroads into what I already have, then something lovely catches my eye which I just have to have.

This week these beautiful fabrics arrived.

Parisville - Mist

Parisville - Pomegranate

These were both from the Fat Quarter Shop. I ordered them ages ago, and for some reason it took nearly 3 weeks to arrive, that's very unusual for it to take so long from there, but they were worth the wait.

This is a fabric bundle from Fabricworm. I love the way they put together co-ordinating prints, it makes it so easy when purchasing online, as you know you are getting fabrics that will work together.  A huge bonus for me when trying to pull fabrics for projects. 

There are lots of lovely bright colours, it must be that it's summer and the weather is very tropical here right now that is influencing me.

Speaking of tropical weather, today was the first day it hasn't been raining cats and dogs. We even saw lots of blue sky during the day.  We had a couple of very light showers, but it was so good to see that there is still blue sky there behind all those clouds. The only down side now that the sun is out..... the humidity. It was only about 26 deg today but felt more like 30+ because of the humidity, yuck. 

I spoke too soon, it's just started raining again.

Only one photo of a fur baby this week, nothing exciting happening in fur baby land. My helper, hanging out next to the computer.  I don't think she wanted her photo taken, she looks less than impressed.

Productive

It has been wet here, for days now. We haven't seen outrageous rainfall, unlike other parts of Australia, and no flooding here. Two reasons it doesn't flood where I live. Firstly I live on the side of a hill, so if it floods here, we are in very very big trouble, and secondly this area has always had very heavy rainfall it's not uncommon to have 4 inches of rain in a single thunderstorm in less than an hour, the landscape is able to cope very well with heavy rain.

Enough of the geography lesson, lots of rain meant I made the most of the cool weather and tried to make a tiny inroad into my ever growing pile of WIP's which are slowly turning into UFO's.

I finished piecing this quilt top, it has a name too, Spice Boxes. Excuse the very ordinary photo of it, it's just too wet and grey to take photos of it outside and this is the best of a bad bunch. The pattern is a  Kate Conklin design that was in a Down Under Quilts magazine earlier this year.  I just love the colours in this, I started off using the warm palette from Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush line and added some Kona solids to break it up as they are beautiful fabrics but very busy. I also wanted to use a few more fabrics from my stash to make it a bit more individual so I added some Castle Peeps, Hope Valley, Deer Valley, and Meadowsweet.  I'm really happy with how it's come together, after a lot of time spent trying to make it look random, I just can't do random random, I have to have controlled random. Now I'm just stressing about how I'm going to quilt it.

After finishing the Spice Boxes top, I tackled the Wonky Owls quilt in an effort to reduce my pile of unfinished 2010 quilts.  After a lot of brow furrowing, swearing and an almost "art installation" moment, where it was quite possibly going to be burnt, stabbed or run over, or all three, I finished the quilting. No photo yet, but in the meantime, a photo of the binding all ready to go.

We also put  up the Christmas tree on the weekend, unlike Mrs P's at QIMP whose tree looks fabulous and very finely dressed, mine looks almost naked. Bitchypoo wanted to go with a blue/silver theme, unfortunately I don't have that many decorations in those colours, and I don't want to buy anymore so it's going to have to stay naked.

 Sorry I had to crop the photo so you couldn't see the disaster zone* in the background. The tree is tall and slim as the layout of the living area means a lovely big fat tree would take up half the floor space.

I bought a couple of decorations in a sale about two weeks ago, they were so cute I couldn't resist.

I'm having second thoughts so I think I'll buy some silver tinsel to make it look a little less forlorn, I can't have a naked Christmas tree.

* The reason the disaster zone in the background - due to the very wet weather, the verandah decking oil still hasn't dried so I can't put any of the furniture back on to it, a lot of it is still taking up space inside. I'm hoping I'll be able to show the big reveal later in the week, that's if it stops raining for a day.

ETA: I didn't buy any tinsel, when I had a look at what was on offer I decided against it.    I am very glad I didn't buy any and thank you all so much for your wonderful and supportive advice. M

An alternative Christmas Carol

You won't have heard this one 20 times already.

Straight No Chaser - The Christmas Can-Can

(It takes a while to buffer so it might be easier to watch on You Tube)

Favourite Things Friday

Yay it's Friday again, this week has taken forever, thanks to on going verandah renovations.  It's now December and the only decorations I have on display are my Christmas crochet stars I made last week ? or the week before, (I don't remember), and my Advent Calendar.  I normally put up my tree in the last week of November so that we can enjoy it for as long as possible, however the Christmas tree and boxes of decorations are stored up in the studio, and the most direct route to the studio uses the verandah, (the one that has been out of action for the last three weeks forever.) I am crossing my fingers that I will be able to bring them down to the house on Sunday.
So this week my favourite thing is my very own cross stitch Advent Calendar. It is stored in the house, not in the studio, so I unwrapped it earlier this week and now it's sitting in pride of place.

I made this when bitchypoo was very young. I just love the detail and it's such a cute picture, although maybe not quite politically correct as Santa is smoking a pipe!

The charms are cross stitch on plastic mesh. 

Take a look over at Mrs P's  to see all the other lovely favourites this week.

Assiduous

This is becoming difficult, it took me a little longer to find an interesting and appropriate adjective today.  The dictionary is my friend!

We have had very humid weather here, approx 90% humidity, temp. approx.  26 C (78F)  and I've been working slaving away on the wonky owl quilt, quilting in the ditch. About half way through I decided it would have been better to be a bit more daring. Rather than unpick it all, I finished quilting in the ditch on every block and I'm now trying to decide how I should be more daring.  

All the blocks are finished, and I spent the last two days arranging and re-arranging the 30 blocks.

The HST quilt is now quilted, bound, washed and dried. I am going to try very hard from now on to not make any more quilts using only the one line. I much prefer to use a whole range of fabrics, it feels much more exciting.

Lamb and Greek salad with marinated lamb, marinated feta, cucumber, capsicum, tomato, Cos lettuce,  (no olives as I didn't have any, much to my surprise), and tzatziki,  and yes that does look like the world's largest dollop of Tzatziki. It's an optical illusion, trust me!

I was hoping to go for a walk and take some photos to show you the views around here, but it has been so wet it will have to wait until the weather improves and the cloud lifts.