Bag Making....

Queensland is finally moving over to eliminating single use plastic bags at the shops in a month or two....

A friend had a whole lot of mesh fabric (from a business closure) and so I had a bag sewing day at the house.... Four of us made bags and bags of bags.....

These ones are for putting the potatoes and onions, apples etc.  Easy peasy to sew and then cut so it looks like a vest - and the handles can be knotted to hold them in....

I am also doing some with cords - they will make good shoe bags..... or grocery bags, or washing bags ..... 

There was plenty of mesh so I am also doing some large ones, for laundry when travelling, and also to hold quilts in.

I had some thicker cotton in bright colours so on Tuesday with the Chooseday girls I made up some tote bags....

I now have 6 good size totes for other groceries......

I think I'm ready for the plastic ban now.....

I started sewing the sides to my animal pictures for my safari photograph quilt...

ran out of the background fabric so I need to dig into my scraps (it's quilt backing so I must have some bits I cut off the sides)

Hand work has seen another 4 blocks of Dutch Treat made..... I still have over 30 to do and I have to say these ones are dragging on a bit.....

It could be because I want to sew angels.... hmmmm

Righto, Gotto Go....  powercut today so it will be treadlepower on this project.....

It's too big for my design board... so the spare room is no longer spare for the duration.....  

- better go and make that coffee before the electricity is shut down...... 

Have a lovely day/weekend.......

Panyiri .....

Panyiri is a Greek Festival held in Brisbane and this year we met up with a couple of long time friends to go to it....

We spent a couple of hours in the morning and had an early picnic lunch at a park .... a lovely well designed garden in the middle of the high rise buildings....

This beauty was enjoying the gorgeous weather.....

This area used to be where they serviced rail carriages I believe....

By the time we moved on to Panyiri we were quite thirsty........ 

The Greek Orthodox Church was open for us to see - lovely paintings of the life of Christ all around

... and of course a lot of lovely Greek treats.... this home made Baklava went down a treat - so did the honey puffs....

Of course there was a Tavern....

.... and plenty of wonderful food .....

... Zorba dancing competitions..... 

.... Ouzo cocktails....

... Haloumi cheese.....

The following day was more gentle with a walk down South Bank, a visit to the markets and some lunch and boutique beers .....

I like having some hand work for the car trips so I knitted ... this wash cloth is coming together nicely .... actually on the way back I just slept so this is only one ways worth of work! 

Good fun, good friends, good food ..... 

Righto, Gotto Go - back to real life and some work to do.....

Been doing stuff......

I finally did the binding for this quilt .....

The top was given to me some time ago so I have no idea about the pattern, then I did all the quilting and binding - hard to see in this picture but swirls and feathers....

Good to have another quilt finish .....

Millicent the Magnificent Mum is my latest Angel Story block.....

and some more feathers were made at the ChooseDay girls sewing day....

I already had the pink ones done ..... they end up at about 18" x 9" so quite big really... 

... and I've done a dozen more of my circles.....  the blocks are only 4" finished so I will be going along with these for a while longer.....

Hubz and I spent the day out walking last weekend.  Cunninghams Gap is not too far from us and has some lovely hikes and forest areas

There are lovely big trees, I love how they have their own little gardens growing on them

... some quite thick forest to walk through

there had been some heavy winds the day before - the path was littered with leaves as a result...

part of our walk went through palm forest.... they are messy plants but so stately....

.. then moved over into bushland..... I just love the Australian tree grass....

It was a lovely sunny day - but not hot with it... just perfect for a walk

.. another tree growing its own garden....

lovely views in the gaps .....

great day out.... I enjoyed our burger and drink afterwards at a farm stay which runs a restaurant and cottages nearby 

We live in a lovely area which has places to visit which are easy day trips.... very lucky and this time of year the weather is just wonderful for it

Righto, Gotto Go.... work work time....

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