Another Surprise!

Receiving this parcel made me laugh out loud......

Marina spoilt me .....

These are little suffy puffs - some of them fabrics I have just used in my sampler quilt....  I have a little hanger and am going to put it on there to display on my wall....

... and a beautifully sewn needlecase.  I do love a little needlecase to go in project bags (which you may have guessed I have a few!)

The "Make a Wish" hanger is already up in a little corner ....

Thank you Marina, you spoilt me .....

This is what I sewed up over the weekend.  All the blocks needed edging first and that took a long time and was really quite boring so I'm glad I had it where there was company....

There will be 9 blocks all the same and then just placed in different directions....

I used up quite a lot of Japanese inspired scraps for this quilt - so I'm happy with that....

Righto, Gotto Go... Tuesday means sewing day with the girls!

Surprise .....

Shez sent me a lovely gift.....

How beautiful is this wool candle mat with so much detail.....   it came with a lovely candle holder and candle too.....

My heart melted at the apple and pear.... they are just stunning.....

... and have found a special place on my shelf with other specials....

Thank you so much Shez... just beautiful ....

I spent the days of my weekend here with this view..... 

.. and did a bit of this.....

Widget found himself in the paper ....

Yep... he got to see more than he expected .....

"hilarious - saw his bum, his ding dong and then he faceplanted the concrete"

It amazes me that some men still want to do this.... 

Righto, Gotto Go.... it's Monday and I have work to do.....

... a new Flimsy....

Monday night I spread my blocks over the design wall ......

Tuesday morning ready for sewing with the girls trusty little Elna came out....

.... the initials of my four children in this block....

... representation of grand daughters...

 .... and grandsons.....

... and Africa (though I don't think this is an African elephant)

I didn't realise until I had sewn them together but the D and F (Hubz and I) are sewn together..... Aaaaaaawwww - it must be a sign!

... the intial of my maiden name....

... and the initial of my maternal grandparents (who I loved so much)...

.... and of course a little dog.... as long as I remember we have had dogs in our home...

... and there we have it.

I think I'm not adding borders - I'll just bind in that sashing colour.

Widget was having a day off school so he was trying to help me get an outside picture....

... but it was too windy!!!

I had this to say on my Facebook.... but I'm interested in your comments .....

"Two friends and I have been getting together regularly for a few years. Since August last year we have been working on this quilt in our own choices of colours.

I get comments about my ‘hobby’ being expensive so I have done some sums. I’m estimating the cost of the fabric as $200 for the top of the quilt. We have spent around 160 hours working on our blocks - so that’s $1.25/hour entertainment costs. (A movie of 1 1/2 hrs is $16 I think). That’s not counting the priceless time with friends, sharing problems, laughing, crying and sometimes just comfortable silence. So it’s cheap entertainment and you end up with a quilt and some special memories! Now there is still more fabric to get and wadding to buy and quilting and binding to be done (estimate another $200 for materials). My ‘work’ is the quilting and for this size I would charge $180. So direct costs for a quilt like this is about $580 and that’s not costing out 200 hours of work. You can work that one out at what you think time is valued at.

Although it might be cheap entertainment it is an object of value - it’s not a cheap handmade gift ...... just saying ..... and no I am not able to do your mending or sew your curtains because you don’t have time ... my job is quilting and my time is valuable too."

I don't often publicly rant, but this time I did! 

These blocks were all made from The 4" x 5" Quilt-Block Anthology by Carol Hopkins.  182 blocks.

Righto, Gotto Go..... a flimsy to fold ..... and a backing to make?????

A visit, some handstitching, prep work and a flashback.....

A couple of weeks ago Janice visited Toowoomba..... we have been bloggy friends for a long time but never met.  It was lovely to go out for a meal with them and Kris, our other halves and also Chookyblue's Fairy girl ....

I got this snap of the 3 of us bloggers...

It was a lovely evening with wonderful food (thank you so much Janice .... and Mick)  Janice and Mick do lots of interesting trips... I love reading what they get up to....

(This is old news but somehow my photo got tangled up in the recesses of technology and I had to hunt for it!!!)

My weekend started with Friday night stitchers  where I continued with my Flowerville stitching .... I'm not so neat at my chain stitching but I expect it will improve as there is quite a bit in it...

As I have finished all the blocks for my 4" x 5" Anthology quilt on Saturday I chopped up the left over fabrics and some backing.... I will do a bit of pieced rows for the back... as always there was more than expected left over.  All ready now for the next Tuesday sewing day.....

This next weekend is a Friday Night stitchers retreat weekend..... again I have lots of Japanese fabrics left over from when I was doing Japanese themed blocks 

This is the top I made (still not quilted!!)

Anyway I found some lovely soft grey and I chopped up lots of the scraps up and got all the pieces ready to sew..... Shimacho Quilt coming up!

Handsewing in the evenings was some more circles..... I am gathering these around cardboard then a quick starch and press and this makes it so easy to needleturn down (I guess that it's not strictly needleturn if it's already turned?????)

My special treadle machine project had drawn to a halt since I needed to do a whole lot of cutting of diamonds... so on Sunday I did that .....

I am going to need to spread it all out to get colours right.... so one day I will take over the design boards for that....

The little tags are another lovely gentle hand stitching project.... these two got finished since we still had hot weather and it was nice to sit quietly in the afternoon with the TV on....

So I am progressing on a number of projects .... these little 6" canvasses were done some years ago.... I was learning applique and quilting at the time and had been over to walk in some of the lovely forests in NZ (almost 10 years ago)

They were fun to do and one day I want to do more similar work ....  I do need to learn to attach them to the canvases a bit better... these are very lumpy!

Righto, Gotto Go... Monday is here and there is work to do.....

I do hope you have lovely weeks

Keeping up with the blocks......

This month for Holly Cottage (Michelle Ridgway design)  stitch-a-long is the cottage block....

there is quite a bit more work in this one than the others but I do love doing this kind of detail and mix of applique and embroidery....

This is the last of the blocks and I have joined up the row....

Next all the rows go together and borders to add.....

At shows I try and avoid demonstrators showing the latest gadgets and things..... in my time I have bought some junk, and things I didn't find useful at all..... but I got sucked in again!!!

This time it is a little plate that helps clean silver and jewellery...... 

This is my very favourite little piece of silver I inherited.... I use it all the time as my sugar bowl...

I put it upside down as you can see the pretty work easier....

There it is with the plate...only after a short time the difference can be seen...

the plate causes hydrogen bubbles apparently and these knock the dirt... can you see how grubby the water has gone...

... after only a few minutes and no rubbing or scrubbing...  just a rinse and a wipe...

... my beautiful bowl is back in action....

Anybody used these?   Please warn me if there are problems....

The demonstrator cleaned quite a few of us onlookers jewellery - I have a silver chain which is lovely and clean now, including others had diamonds and gold which came up beautifully too ....

I'm impressed...... now I have a drawer of random silver cutlery to clean.... this makes it fun!!! haha

This week the last of the Anthology blocks were sewn!!!!!  We did 11 (but I added another which we had done last week to make a tidy picture!)

Very exciting ..... now I need to clear some time and my design wall to place them all out and start joining.....

This week's Dutch Treat block is a cottage .....

The little windows are supposed to be all individual little appliqued squares but I couldn't cope with that so I did a larger square with a line of back stitch.... (I'm not totally insane yet)

Righto, Gotta Go, that random cutlery is calling me!!!