A quilt finish.....

A couple of evenings sewing the binding and hanging sleeve down and my Holly Cottage quilt is finished.....

 The pattern is Holly Cottage from Michelle Ridgway's book ....

Raewyn and I hosted a Stitch-a-long and if you like you can see some different versions HERE .  

 Righto, Gotto Go... just a little more stroking (I love the feel of a quilted quilt) before it gets packed away till Christmas

Have a lovely weekend... the cool has come - we are ready

As usual.....

... there is lots of different things going on here....

My first block for Flowerville is completed .....

very sweet in the Tilda fabrics

Flowerville is designed by Rosalie Dekker and I bought a kit from The Quilters Angel - preprinted linen and lovely Tilda fabrics

Monday was a holiday and so I spent it doing some of my own quilting....

I pin quite heavily ..... listening to a book and keeping an eye on the birds outside and it's not an unpleasant task....

A lot of outlining to start with..... 

I like to use monofilament thread for this part then I can move from cream, to blue, to red to brown and the thread doesn't show.....

I changed colours for the different borders .....sometimes is means that the 'quilting' doesn't show much but thats the look I wanted... the quilt is busy enough with the applique and fabrics....

However, I did a loopy ribbon in the thin red borders, some big ribbon in the green and holly in the wider red ....

Some lovely stars and stripes for the binding.... a couple of evenings in front of the TV now... the evenings are cooler so perfect timing..... 

This quilt is Holly Cottage designed by Michelle Ridgway

I visited a friend recently and was saying how I learnt to sew on a little Singer handcrank and it is one thing I was sorry I never kept when we immigrated....

She gave me this sweet girl - who needs cleaning and derusting etc - a project for Hubz (with my supervision of course).  She was made in 1920 so the goal is that she can celebrate her 100th working!

You may yet see my handcranking a quilt!!!  No accesories etc, but I am delighted non-the-less

Another little block done for Angel Story

The whole of ChooseDay sewing was working on these little blighters.... 

the Blocks finish at 3" square ..... foundation paper piecing and I tried so hard to be accurate but you can see points don't meet....  very frustrating.....

I have been growing a Native Finger Lime and this week we got a little finger lime off it....

The lime itself is smaller than my little finger and so those are tiny little caviar balls packed with flavour when popped

Prickly little bush but there are about 10 more little one's growing

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

Have a lovely rest of the week.....xx

Japanese Gardens....

Our local city Toowoomba (we live about 20km out) has a lovely Japanese Garden and we enjoy a walk around in the different seasons..... a couple of weeks ago we wanted to see some of the Autumn colours....

I always love the stone patterns and shaped bushes....

The little lake always has lots of ducks and geese... the drake here thought the pretty girl was fair game but she wasn't having any of it!!!  

The bamboo area is always lovely.... 

... interesting bark on one of the paperbark trees.....

... fun to look up too sometimes.....

Our Autumn has been silly, we got cool then hot then cool and wet then very hot again.... so the poor plants haven't known what they should be doing....

The little stream they have in the gardens is bone dry..... a bit sad.....

... spotted some pomegranates..... not ready for eating  unfortunately...

as we stood on a bridge the turtle came to ask for bread.....

... a little bit of colour with Camelia's....

I love how the trees are shaped ....

very pretty water area....

... not much Autumny colours at all!

... but some trees were trying!

It's not a huge garden and a very gentle walk around.... nice to see some of the uni students (it is right next to the University) sitting there and enjoying the day....

Righto, just a little bit of our local area..... 

Chooseday.....

My ChooseDay girl friends are back in town.....  so we are back to our weekly sewing sessions..... yay

First up yesterday I worked on making my Dresden ring in pretty Tilda fabrics.... this will have the Flowerville circle - shown in this post -  in the middle that I finished embroidering last month.

The quilt has 9 blocks, all different houses.

I then started these fiddly diddly little foundation pieced blocks..... I had forgotten how long it takes me to do foundation piecing but I have made a good start on this scrappy style piece.

Over the weekend I prepared some more Angel Story blocks.  I find this part takes me ages.  I will need another weekend to do the rest....

We had a lovely little visitor over the weekend... a little echidna was spending the day hiding as he passed through.  I hope he found his way across the road and into the bush that night.

A fascinating little creature and quite my favourite Australian animal ....

Young Widget came to stay, and he loved the echidna too.  He will turn 10 later this month and stated that he loved the quilts I made him but he was getting a bit grown up now, could he look for another.  We went through some of my quilts and straight away he said this was his favourite....

So now it's gone to a new home.  I made this quilt from leftovers from a bigger quilt and used it to right a tutorial for quilt as you go years back....

It will be a great one for wrapping up in front of the TV this winter

I did sew three more rows of my diamonds quilt on my treadle machine....  I have not joined them to the bigger piece yet....  It's almost time to start squaring out to do the other side (which is the bottom in the picture)

A couple of evenings TV viewing saw another bunch of circles made.....  I have a nice little collection now but still want to do quite a lot more.... the blocks are 4 1/2" so I will need a few....

This young chap is tall and energetic ..... but he still gets tired and needs a lie down!

Righto, I want to prep up the circle and background fabric to applique my Flowerville block tonight....

Have a lovely rest of the week.....

Month end......

Again a busy month..... but I still cannot manage a day without some sort of sewing.... it is my therapy.....

For OPAM (hosted by Peg and Kris - thank you very much) I finished a number of projects ...

This needlecase is a UFO which I had sitting around for a few years... I had done the stitchery and got no further....

Inside is a little bag, pockets and a mini heart pincushion.....

This is a design by Bronwyn Hayes and was done for a Stitchers Dream Day Out at The Quilters Angel originally....

I made up this bag with a couple of friends one day this month.  The bird fabric was given to me by Michelle and I do love this saddle bag pattern ....

Another of my UFO's was a bunch of birds and hearts - they are double sided and from a panel of pictures.  I sewed around them and filled them with lavender to hang in wardrobes and some to sit in drawers.....

Finishing Stitches (hosted by Joy - thank you very much) encourages finishing UFO's - so the needlecase and lavender bags are in that group..... but also working on blocks in order to finish projects....

I worked on these blocks for Gardeners Journal this month.  Michelle and I both decided to work on this quilt this year.....  The stitcheries had been done and the fabrics all cut so it was placement and piecing time....

Weeding the garden and the vegetable patch....

 \... the orchard....

tea time, the bird feeder and a pretty bed of flowers....

... as a result the top has been made......  It is still a UFO but a good deal further along than I was at the beginning of the year....  This is a pattern by Annie Downs....

Another long term project is my Dutch Treat quilt....... and happily I got 11 blocks done this month...

I do find I am well motivated by keeping lists and then working from them... so thank you Kris, Peg and Joy for hosting these fun activities that help keep me motivated....

Righto, Gotto Go... I need to look at what else is on the 'To Do' list ...... 

I hope you have an excellent week.