A good day's work.....

Lovely needlecase from Cheryll in the post on Monday..... isn't she sweet? Such pretty embroidery. Thanks Chez.....xx

Fish update....

At my last post there were quite a few comments about my little baby fish.  Well it did survive okay.  We ended up having to empty the whole pond, repot plants, clean all the stones and bricks, get achy backs .... but the fish all survived okay.

It still looks a bit murky but we can see the fish - here you can see 12 ... different sizes and colours...

the teeniest baby stays separate most of the time.... I have labelled it in this picture (just above 'baby') as he/she is hard to spot but you can see the difference in size - I don't think it is 1" long.... 

Tuesdays I spend the 'ChooseDay' girls and is where my main machine sewing takes place for the week...

At the moment we are all working on our UFO's so doing different projects - of course we always have advice and opinions on each others work, lots of cups of tea and coffee and chat chat and a lot of sewing ...

I worked on making the last 4 rows of my Tags quilt and added them on...

So now it is a finished flimsy ..... it's very soft and pretty pretty

I had enough of one of the browns in the quilt to cut strips for the binding... I will need to buy some backing ...

Big thanks to the hosts of the No Fuss SAL (Tuesday girls) who got this going.... I love it

 Somehow I managed to cut quite a bit more than I needed.... these will be used - maybe even a little something on the backing....

Next up I put together a block for Gardeners Journal.  I have had the stitcheries done for a while.

Then I worked on the backing for my Shimacho quilt.  I have used up left over pieces of my Japanese fabrics for this ......  the outside is quite scrappy as you can see but not much will show - most of it is so my backing is big enough for pinning and gripping during quilting.

I had the blocks already made so it was just sashing and borders to add

I started working on the backing for another quilt... still a bit to do on that...

A good day's work....

Righto, Gotto Go... real work to do today......

My flock......

..... of geese....

Left over fabrics can go a long way ......  I used backing fabric for the backgrounds and cut up all my left overs from the Anthology quilt.  It's taken a few sessions with the 'ChooseDay' girls to sew all these up.....  

It is a bit monotonous so I was glad to have company.  

I cut smaller pieces into coins and I will join them up with strips in between and add them to the sides.  It will still need wide borders to be big enough to back the quilt....

I think I like a flock of geese .... 

I used a 'no waste' method for the geese, which was nice and easy and certainly quick and eliminated a lot of trimming for me.  There are heaps of tutorials and video's but this page HERE is one I found useful. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I also started on the backing for my Shimacho  quilt.  A much more simple way of using up left over fabrics - some of which I had quite large pieces.

I will join up these blocks with sashing next time we get together

Evening hand sewing has seen a few more circles come together..... 

These are all the ones I have done so far..... putting them together made me realise some of the 'charms' are not quite straight....

so they are all being trimmed down to 4 1/2" squares..... 

Something rather satisfying about a bunch of pretty trims....

Holly Cottage

I've been co-hosting a Stitch-a-long with Raewyn, and we have been sewing Michelle's pattern (from her book) of the Holly Cottage quilt....

March is the month for sewing the borders on ....

I love all the different aspects in this pattern, there is applique, embroidery and piecing.  Just my kind of project....

I had bought the borders and binding all together, using a fat 1/8 pack of Anni Downs fabrics for the basis.  So I also made my binding up and it is now folded together with the wadding and backing waiting to be quilted... 

The aim is to have it done by Christmas!!!!!

My left over fabrics from Anthology have made up 5 lovely long strips of geese....

There are also some other pieces I am joining up - just small rectangles - all the scraps are being used

I added the final thin borders to my Shimacho quilt top.  I had used left over Japanese themed fabrics (there is still more to make the backing!!!) and a soft grey plain fabric.

I love the stained glass look it gave out in the sunshine...  and I love this pattern so I can see me using it with other scraps too

While I was out taking pictures I snapped my pretty little crocuses... they loved the rain we had last week.... 

So that is another flimsy finished ..... it has it's binding but I'm making up the backing with more Japanese fabrics (I had a goodly stash of them)

Righto, Gotto Go.... I've got a bit of quilting to do....

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