Exploring the Garden....

It's been fun exploring the garden and finding pretty things.... a keen gardener set up the garden and did some lovely landscaping originally and although some plants have died there is the bones of a very pretty garden.

I really really love these soft fluffy flowers on this tree....  If you know what this is called please let me know...

It's a pretty shaped tree too though there is a bad ant infestation that is eating at it which we will have to try and deal with... you can see those dark marks at the base of the trunk.. thats ants nests and where they have destroyed the bark.

I think these are an ornamental pomegranate and there are quite a few of them... just bursts of lovely bright colour...

..and our white jacaranda is looking exquisite at the moment....

... so is our ghost tree!!!  I want to get a solar spot light for under this!

I am slowly going through and making up Christmas ornaments... for a little thing they seem to take me an awful long time but I do love sending these off...

there is a few square ones....

... some round ones fussy cut with a happy snowman....

and some with lovely buttons....

I have done quite a bit of other sewing.  Some are secret stuff so no peaking at all!! 

Some are jobs which is wonderful and I do share sneaky peaks and some pics on my work Facebook page HERE if you are interested - the blog will be mainly kept for my own private stuff....

This week I got a handmade ornie in the post... how fun.... clever little idea

Righto, Gotto Go... Tuesday is sewing blocks day with the girls.... I'm looking forward to it ... but I think I will start with a coffee!

Blocks 'n Things .....

This week we got 3 more blocks made for our Sylvia's Bridal Sampler quilt ......

54-40 or Fight (32 pieces)

Aunt Sukey's Choice (45 pieces)

Bachelor's Puzzle (17 pieces)

We took a picture of all of our last few weeks blocks together.... this shows just how different they look in our colourways... there will be 3 lovely quilts .... 

So far we have done 67 of the 140 blocks... so not quite half way there and I put mine up on my design wall .... I'm just loving the look so far and quite like the light background though I would go for an off white/beige colour I think..... Hubz says he fancies a green... what would you choose????

There are 1484 pieces of fabric making those up...

At retreat I made some of these cute little purses.. they don't take too long to make up but I didn't have poppers with me so this week I just hammered in some .... 6 little purses for the gift box and I think I will be making more....

I have joined in with another postcard swap for Christmas.... this is my little one I will be sending off to California....

One thing I just love about this time of year is the stone fruits coming in season... Hubz was away for work but came back through cherry territory.... he doesn't eat them but I just looooooooove them so was delighted with the pressie he brought back for me...

Righto, Gotto Go.. cherries to eat!  Have a wonderful weekend....x

Retreat.....

Friday to Sunday was retreat time for me with the Friday Night Sewing Girls....  I come home at night (the venue is only 10 minutes away for me) but the days just go by so fast with a lot of sewing done, a huge amount of chatting and an enormous amount of laughing... 

I am not a good photographer at these and there are always a lot of 'TaDa' moments which I forget to capture.... but I did my own!!!  Sewing down the binding was all that was needed on this quilt.

Ta Da......

I got this kit quite a long time ago as a bargain unwanted kit from someone.... 

I love the twisted middle to the star

I used a sparkley thread for the quilting .... 

close up it shows on the light fabric but not much from a distance....

we have a lovely venue with these charming cottages so I couldn't resist a bit of a play with pictures....

... and a lovely tree... a storm hit not much after the pictures....

I did do some other sewing but those are still works in progress!

.. there was a birthday at the retreat.. one of the girls there has a daughter that does icing and put together this very pretty... and very tasty cake...

I am a bit naughty sometimes (I know - very hard to imagine) but I recently found this picture and sent it to Hubz.....

I am a bit silly too (I know - hard to imagine) and thought he might find a similar one with a shed so I googled 'Pleasure Room'..... noooooooo... I may be on the police radar now checking to see how we are going to set up the shed!!!

Righto, I do hope you have an amazing week... mine is going to be busy ...

Shirt Challenge

Last year Tracee shared with us a challenge her quilting group was having .... The Gisborne Quilters Great Shirt Challenge.....The group was sharing their shirts but we could join in cyberly and do our own thing...

Susan has helped me to keep my motivation going and last week she and friends had a wonderful reveal... Please go HERE and  look at the amazing creative quilts made from shirts

These are the shirts I started with... I bought the greens (I later changed that middle one to a plaid with red in it after the picture was taken) for $2 each at the op shop and the blues were old work shirts of my hubz (they had shrunk ... a bit like my jeans did!)

this picture shows the plaid I used and the enormous piles of blocks I got just from shirts....

I have been sewing secretly but now we can show off what we made....

Ta-da.... a picnic quilt ......

we could use one extra fabric so I had some large gingham in my secret hoarding place so I made the bunting (and binding) with that....

I had a few spare blocks so pieced a strip for the backing.....

it's not a good length for this table but it does look nice there.....

I did an all over swirl ... except the bunting was just outlined.... the backing was a piece from the op shop too for $4...

the wadding was the most expensive part!!!

I'm happy with our new picnic blanket...

Thanks girls and such lovely work from everyone

Righto, Gotto Go.... blogs to read, tea to make, procrastinating to do .....

Pumpkin Time....

This months FMQ challenge hosted by Darlene at QuiltShopGal with guest tutor Lori Kennedy from The Inbox Jaunt  features Pumpkins...

I have followed Lori for some time and had great tips and ideas from her so this was fun for me to do...

My printer (supposedly wireless) has decided to resign duties so I drew out the provided pumpkin pattern freehand (luckily it is fairly easy shapes!)

... firstly I went over my pumpkin with a darker thread just to highlight it....

... then with a lighter thread I simply had fun using a number of Lori's filler ideas....

Even though I am scared of spiders I added one - he looks a friendly spider!!! the spider is another of Lori's quilting ideas...

I also sandwiched the pieces for the back of the cushion....

here it is finished and bound....

.. with the back done in my favourite envelope style (not too straight lines!!)

QuiltShopGal hosts heaps of things you can join in and Lori has heaps of free tutorials on her blog ... worth popping around to both of them ....

They really are worth doing... I am learning heaps each month and trying out things I would probably never do...

This week the Sampler girls and I finished a few more blocks....  fiddly blocks...

Night and Moon (29 pieces)

Road to Oklahoma (20 pieces)

we also caught up with this foundation pieced block

Crown of Thorns (41 pieces)

for homework we had to finish another which was a combination of foundation piecing and lots of Y seams.... not easy to do those on tiny pieces....

.. these corner tulip blocks are 2 1/2".....

.. there are a few wobbly bits a but it is such a sweet block - but I will only be doing one of them!!

Here is a picture of all of our blocks together this week

such different colours and the blocks end up looking quite different... and yet they go together rather prettily - we are having such fun

.. this is a new bird visitor ... a pair have started coming regularly for breakfast..... 

'Little Corella' ... they are quite shy so a bit of a blurry shot....

I also had a lovely surprise dropped off by the postie this week

Dear Cheryll from Gone Stichin' had a birthday and gives out a gift!! and I won!!

Look at all this loveliness... buttons, fabric, pins, thread, notebook, purse and pin helper (just perfect for me as I pin my quilts for quilting)

This week Cheryll has not Gone Stitchin' but Gone Cruising! happy holiday my friend and thank you so much for a lovely present

Righto, Gotto Go... new toys to play with ......