I'm not a big fan of green...

...so imagine my joy (not!) when both Luke's teacher and Kira's daycarer nominated green as their favourite colour. Earlier in the year I made a green disappearing nine patch for Luke's teacher when she got married and blogged it here. I was going to do a green log cabin for Kira's carer (who has also cared for Luke) but with time running short I decided on a raggedy edge instead.
Now let me explain about this woman. She is wonderful. Leaving my children in her care is the closest I could come to leaving them with family. I was very lucky in that she started in the preschool room just as Luke was going in there and moved to the babies room just as Luke finished daycare and Kira started. With our move to another state at the end of the year, I will miss her dreadfully.
So with great pleasure I present "Carer Extrodinaire"

I also used this stuff called EQ Printable Fabric for the first time to make a label. I'm so impressed with it! My blanket stitching (and my spelling if you look closely enough!) leaves a lot to be desired, but it was my first attempt and I would like to thank Janet McCaffrey of Primrose Design for the wonderful instructions that were so easy to follow. I apologise for the big green blobs in the photo, but I wanted to remove anything that identified the receiver or the centre they work at.I just know that come tomorrow I will be a blubbering mess as I give this to her!

I'm a bad blogger!

How embarrassing, I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted. In my defense, I am trying to sell a house, buy a house and move interstate! Yesterday was the first time in ages I have done anything so I thought I would share.
I picked up mums grandchildren sampler from the framers and I must say I am most happy with how it turned out. She is away until Tuesday so I will have to wait to give it to her. Anyway, here's a piccie.
I've decided to make a raggedy edge quilt for Kira's daycarer. She is a very special woman who looked after Luke before he went to school and I absolutely adore her. So yesterday, using a couple of charm packs and a few other bits and pieces, I got it all ready for sewing. The picture below is of all the blocks ready to be pinned and sewed. Hopefully there will be some time this weekend.

Practise, practise, practise.

This is what I now need to do after doing a machine quilting course on the weekend! I did the course at Addicted to Fabric with the fabulous Beth Reid. As you can see from the pictures below, I need lots of practise to perfect my technique, but at least I now have an idea of what I am doing!

OK, so this is the sampler I did. Hmmmmmmm, what did I say about practise. :blush:







Close up of the leaves and gumnuts. Most probably my best work and the one I really enjoyed doing. I can see me doing lots of these!





This is my stippling. Obviously a lot of work needed here too. I can see how this would be used a lot. Quick and effective once I master it!









Beth Reid uses these two techniques alot with her landscape quilting. I love it, but my circles need a lot of work. I've discovered they work better if you are going fast, but if you go too fast it makes it worse! Finding that fine line is my challenge!







This is the bit I did last, so was getting tired and therefore very lazy! The flowers are suppose to have four leaves, but I often only manage to fit three! The other two patterns rely on you being able to replicate what you have done once several times. Did I mention I need to practise?







Finally there is a picture of my new toy - a quilting table for my machine. Very extravagant but oh so nice!

Finished! - Grandchildren Sampler!

I said I would finish it tonight!! Finished about 20 minutes ago. Here is the sampler I've done for my mother.



For someone who doesn't enjoy backstitching, there was a lot on this! I backstitched as I went, I think I would have gone mad if I had left it until the end.

I also took a pic of the backing fabric I got from EQuilter. In the words of a friend of mine - Lush! So the big question now, is what cross stitch do I start next?

I'm still here...really!!

Life has been hectic, hence the lack of blogging. We are trying to get our house ready to go on the market, trying to organise a trip north so we can look for a house to buy up there, trying to maintain a semblance of sanity in a house we only seem to be fleetingly these days as we trip from one thing to another!! While there has been no quilting recently, hopefully tomorrow night will see the completion of my mother's Grandchildren sampler. Stay tuned, I've only got to add the names and it will be complete! I received the backing for my disappearing nine patch, the top of which looks like this:
I have also been doing some sewing of my frogs, but that was at least 10 days ago! Hopefully things will settle soon and more sewing will get done. I live in hope!

What's in a Name? I've been Tagged!!

Helen has tagged me. I've never been tagged before, so lets see how we go!

Here’s how it works:1. Players must list one fact, word, or tidbit that is somehow relevant to their life for each letter of their first or middle name.2. When you are tagged you need to write your own post containing your first or middle name game facts, word, or tidbit.3. At the end of your post choose one person for each letter of your name to tag.4. Don’t forget to leave a comment telling them that they have been tagged, and to read your blog.5. If I’ve tagged YOU (see below), please join in on the fun!

K - Kira is the name of my daughter, so we both have the starting initial of K. It took me a long time to agree to this , even though I love the name because both my husband and son start with L. A little too cheesy for me, but we couldn't agree on another name. Either way, I love it!

Y - Youngest. I'm the youngest of three girls. My poor dad was in a house full of women!

L - Llywellyn is what I wanted to call our son. It had to be an L for family reasons and I love this Welsh name. Leigh (Husband) wouldn't agree. In hindsight he was most probably right!

I - Introverted - something I am not! I'm the person who will spot you standing alone at a gathering and come and talk to you. I'm also the person who will talk to you while in the queue at the supermarket, movies, anywhere! Feel free to tell me to bugger off, I don't offend easily!

E - Easy going. Whatever happens, happens and I'll deal with it one way or another! Stressing doesn't help, go I don't do it!

OK, so now I'm suppose to send this to 5 other bloggers I know. Hmmm, need time to think if I know 5 other bloggers who haven't been tagged!! Be back later to finish!

When is a sewing day not a sewing day?

When you spend the whole day cutting out instead! I'm making a quilt for my son using frog fabrics as the feature. On Saturday and Sunday I fussy cut 30 frogs. I hate fussy cutting!! The results were well worth it though.



Today I spent the day cutting the rest of the fabric. For the record, I cut 162 2 inch squares, 120 2x5.5 inch strips and 71 2x8.5 inch strips. Now all I have to do is sew it together...

More Cross Stitch

Thought I would just add a few more cross stitch pictures. The first two now hang in my bathroom where my two year old exclaims "Turtle!" everytime she gets out of the bath, like it's the first time she's seen it. So cute


This one is called "The Kiss." I actually logged the hours it took me to do this and it added up to over 300. Would you believe I gave it to my sister?


By the way, I've been tagged by a blogging friend! Just a quick note to let her know that I will get around to it, I promise, although I don't know it I know 7 people who blog to pass it onto!

Once upon a time...

Many, many years ago, (3 or 4!) a friend and I did a course on hand piecing. We both wanted to learn to quilt, and our local fabric shop was doing this course. For 6 weeks we would go along and they would teach us a new block and then , at the end of the 6 weeks we had another 6 weeks to finish off our blocks or do extra if we wish. The plan was to then return for what was called a finishing class - a class that would show us how to put it all together into a completed project. About 4 weeks into the course, I had made about 4 or 5 blocks which were in a box of all my quilting stuff. This box was in the boot of my car. In order to get my pram into the boot, I had to take the box out. Doing this one day at the local shopping centre, I forgot to put it back in. The box and all the stuff (blocks, fabric, scissors, rotary cutter etc!) was gone never to be found again. Not to be deterred, I started again, redid the blocks and continued with the new ones. (Remember this was all hand pieced, not machined) Anyway, get to the end of the 6 weeks and we have 6 weeks to continue making as many blocks as we want before our finishing class. I decided on 12. 2 weeks before our finishing class, the shop burnt down. It never reopened. So, for years I have had these completed blocks and no idea how to put them together.
Fast forward to this year and having received only one mothers day present in the last 5 years, I took matters into my own hands and booked myself in for another quilting course. This time it was machine piecing and the shop didn't burn down! So now I knew how to finish my other quilt.
A group of online quilting friends from a website called Essential Baby, decided to set ourselves a challenge of finishing a project we had been working on for awhile by the end of the year. I nominated my hand pieced blocks. So, today I spent the working on it and this is the result!



Two of the blocks in this quilt are a the Grandmother's Garden which I quite enjoyed doing,

and a log cabin, which I am telling you is a bitch to do by hand!



So given the history of this quilt, I was trying to think of a name for it and can't come up with anything catchy. Any suggestions?

Under the Pandanus

As mentioned in the last post, my son's teacher is getting married these holidays and I decided to make her a quilt. Well, it was finished and delivered this morning! She loved it. They are getting married under a Pandanus tree, thus the quilt name, Under the Pandanus.


Her favourite colour is green. It was made using two charm packs from Rosemont plus a few other bits and pieces I had. I was really quite impressed how it turned out given that I am not a big fan of green. Not sure what to go onto now. Should most probably finish the other disappearing nine patch!

Something old and something new!

Couldn't decide what to show you today so I thought I go with some older things and some newer things.

The old first! I have two kids. A 5 year old boy and a little girl who is almost 2. (*sob* they grow up soooooo fast!) Anyway, before I was even pregnant with Luke, I bought an Afghan rug to cross stitch. I finished it when I was about 7 months pregnant with him. This is Luke's rug.



So, it seemed only fair that when Kira came along she should get one too. It took me until she was 2 months old to even find one for her I liked! I think she was about 8 months old when I finished it. This is hers.



My new is from my new passion of quilting. Luke's teacher is getting married during the holidays and I have been making a Disappearing Nine Patch for her in green. This is a piccie of all the 9 patches before cutting them up! This needs to be finished by this Friday! So, I'm off to sew!

Some more early work.

Thought I would add a couple of other cross stitches I've done. I love Fiona Jude's work and have done the Galahs for my mother in law and the budgies for myself. A close friend did the pelicans for me. I have the wildflowers, frogs and kookaburra to do at some stage. One of the things I like most about Fiona Jude is the lack of backstitching!! Gotta love that!

Hmm, where to begin?

I'm not really sure where to begin with all this! I suppose cross stitch is what I was into first. Unfortunately I don't have photos of everything I have done, but in recent years I have started to keep track. So here is some of my earlier stuff!

This is the first piece I did for myself. It's stitched on black aida and every single stitch has blending filament - very painful. Please excuse my reflection in the photo!

The Beatrix Potter alphabet I did for one of my sister's kids. This took me a couple of years while I was studying. It was the second alphabet I did. The first was an Australiana alphabet for my other sister's kids. One day I will do an alphabet for my own children!


So that's the start of my blog!