Yippeeeeeee

I had a lovely surprise when I went to the post office today. A parcel addressed to me, all the way from the Czech Republic. I don't see that everyday, I was even excited looking at the stamps.

Inside was my win from the giveaway that Dianne at Quiltova hosted a few weeks ago. Lucky lucky me. Look at that cute card and the pretty blue tape.

How cool is this, Dianne even sent me some chocolate named after me...... almost, ha ha.


Some lovely scraps too.


The best thing of all............



a fabulous pot holder, it's far too nice to use, but it goes beautifully with the decor in my kitchen, so will be on permanent display.




Dianne's quilting is awesome too.

Thank you so much Dianne for a lovely gift/prize.

WIP Wednesday

A little bit quiet on the sewing front this week. I flew to Melbourne for a couple of days break and took some hand sewing with me. The plane trip is just over 2 hours so I packed some starflowers to sew, along with my trusty needle threader and a thread cutter.  I was going great guns until my needle threader died.  It started shredding the thread. I tried threading the needle by hand but the thread cutter wasn't cutting the thread very cleanly, which made it impossible to thread the teeny tiny needles. I gave up after about 15 mins.
This is all I managed to do. Attach the three diamonds.



I've joined in Foundation Paper Piecing for the Terrified which is being run by the lovely Katy at The Littlest Thistle. I've paper pieced before but found it too daunting and a pain in the backside as I quite often cut the fabric the wrong size and shape.  Katy's instructions are clear and concise and I made the first block last night. I used some left over Martinique jelly roll strips from my scrap bin.


With only one little problem.

I forgot to trim the seam before folding the fabric into position after sewing, and when I remembered later I didn't fold it back far enough and sliced the fabric right through the middle when I trimmed the seam!  I won't make that mistake again.




I've also started the binding for the Lily Quilt. I should have it finished in the next couple of days.

Worked On This Week
Starflowers
Paper Piecing for the Terrified
Lily Quilt

Sitting On The Sidelines
McFlurry
Material Obsession BOM
Amitie Circle Game BOM - I even went to Amitie while I was in Melbourne to get some tips on working on the blocks.
Mystery Quilt - oops I forgot about this one

Ignoring 
Whoa - nothing, I'll have to rectify that, lol

Statistics
Finished - 0
Worked On - 3
Waiting Patiently For Me - 4
New - 1

Hmm I'm thinking I could start something new. I hardly have any WIP's that I'm counting.

Linking with Lee at Freshly Pieced, pop on over to check out other WIP's this week.

Absent with a note!

I'm sorry I have been very quiet. I took off!

I've been here.

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I had to be a secret squirrel, as no one was left looking after the home front, and you know what they say about putting info out onto the internet!  I didn't want to come home to either nothing left at my place, or a family of 10 who had moved in and made themselves comfortable!

We raced around catching up with long lost friends and going to an engagement party. I took the baby quilt I made last week to give to the parents-to-be and they loved it. I think I may have gained a few orders too.

I was hoping for lovely cooler dry weather in Melbourne after spending most of summer dripping in the heat and humidity. Unfortunately this weekend was stinking hot, in the high 30's (almost 100F) but at least it was dry. I'm back to heat and humidity at home now. I can't wait for autumn.

Back to normal programming tomorrow.

WIP Wednesday

I think I've missed at least two if not three WIP Wednesdays. The last couple of weeks at Chez Sunshine, I've been concentrating on the two swaps I'm in.

I've been working away at the Mouthy Stitches zippered pouch. I love English paper piecing, it's relaxing but it's slow. You can see some more close ups of it here.


The back

It's finished and today it has been sent off to it's new home with fabric scraps tucked neatly inside.

I finished the Name Game Swap mini quilt, sorry, the big smudge in the middle is where I've blurred the name, I can't reveal that part yet as I still haven't sent it to my partner.

I made the label yesterday and was in the process of sewing it on when we had a massive thunderstorm and the power was out for almost 6 hours.  I'm hoping to finish it this afternoon, that's if we don't have another storm.



I've also been hand quilting Tiggly Winks. It has been a real struggle to try and summon up the enthusiasm to work on it. It's about 3/4 finished and I've made the decision I just don't like it. Life is short and I'd rather spend my valuable time working on something else.
It is now officially being put in a bag and stuffed in the back of the cupboard.  Maybe one day I'll bring it out again and maybe I might like it enough to finish it. Then again........I doubt it!

Over the weekend I had a very strong urge to make something new, that would be quick to finish and not make me think too much.  I had to think way too much making that pouch!

I whipped up a baby quilt, you can read more about it here.

Worked On This Week The Last Three Weeks
Mouthy Stitches Swap
Name Game Swap
Baby Quilt
Tiggly Winks

Sitting On The Sidelines (I'm not ignoring them, I want to work on these but I needed to get these swaps finished, arghhhh)
Lily Quilt
McFlurry
Material Obsession BOM
Starflowers

I Really Am Ignoring
Amitie BOM

Given Up
Tiggly Winks


Statistics
Finished - 2
Worked On - 4
Sitting On The Sidelines - 5
New - 1


Linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced, so pop on over and look at all the lovelies worked on this week.

After the storm

Yesterday afternoon I was supposed to go to Pilates in Cooroy, but something made me decide not to go. I'm glad I didn't because if I had........

this is where I normally park my car.


I took this photo this morning.  Apparently that's after a lot of the branches were removed. It was a lot worse yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon we had a massive tropical storm.  Thousands of lightning strikes, the power was out for almost 6 hours. The town 5 minutes from where I live was quite badly hit and suffered quite a bit of damage.  The tree above was one of many that were blown over or split and lost branches.

The photos below were taken in Cooroy yesterday after the storm.

One of the larger buildings in the centre of town lost it's roof.

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The main street of town.

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It was one of the worst storms I've been in and the house didn't have any damage at all, other than loss of power. A few of the trees lost smaller branches, but nothing too serious. Talking to people in Cooroy this morning, who were in town when the storm hit, they all said they were very very frightened and it was the scariest storm they have endured.  It must have been bad as we get a lot of storms here throughout the summer.

Pink, orange and elephants

My oldest friend, as in I've known her the longest, not she's really really old, is going to become a grandmother, snigger. I love when my friends become grandmothers. It makes me laugh because I still imagine them as being 20 something, hardly old enough to be a mother let alone a grandmother.


Her youngest son is about to become a father, so it was a good excuse to make a baby quilt.

I was thinking about doing some fancy piecing, but couldn't find a pattern that I wanted to make that wouldn't be too time comsuming.  Bitchypoo suggested simple squares, so I went with that.  I found the oh sooo cute elephant flannel for the backing on a recent trip to Brisbane.  Searched through my stash for some lovely pink and orange co-ordinating girly fabrics and voila, a girly baby quilt using 3 inch finished squares, measuring 36" x 36".

Nice and quick, started Friday afternoon, finished this morning.

Not without it's dramas. I had to unpick the first 4 quilting lines. I spray basted and used a few pins, but the spray basting didn't hold this time. I had lots of puckering. So lots of pins and a walking foot later, success.



I was in two minds whether to use the white, not a very baby friendly colour, but I love the crisp look it gives to the quilt.

That's out of my system now, back to my WIP's and BOM blocks.

Keeping it simple

I've been slaving over WIP's on and off for weeks.  Working hard on two swaps, which I've finished, yay, and I just needed to make something that wouldn't take too long and didn't need much brain power. A change of pace to quick and easy.

Sorry, bad lighting, it's much brighter in real life.

The change of pace involves 1 metre (just over a yard) of this seriously cute flannel by Valori Wells for Free Spirit, some luscious baby pink Heath binding and a search through my stash.

Stay tuned.