cruising time is here !

today's the day ... the countdown is over !

I've been on the sunshine coast with my mum and dad for the past few days and we meet with the rest of my family in a few hours to board the Pacific Dawn in Brisbane - out to sea for 12 days with stops including Fiji ... well that was the picture the other day - last night we heard that tropical cyclone evan is also on its way to Fiji so things might change - fingers crossed that it doesn't hit any of the islands !

It will be such fun to catch up with the family and sail the Pacific Ocean at the same time :)

just before I go I thought I'd show what I've been sewing this week - a couple of cushions for my sister-in-law

and a table runner for one of my nieces - nothing like last minute chrissy sewing !

Hope you all have a great holiday season and I'll be back just before the new year :)

a few finishes

I tidied up and got a few finishes done today so that I could start on sewing the down under doll quilt tomorrow - its been on the wall for at least a month so it will be good to get it finally sewn !!

I finished the two care at do.good stitches blocks - fabulous wonky churn dash blocks using fabric foundation.

 

I also sewed up the craftsy drunkard's path blocks - they're a bit uneven so I might have to look at them a bit closer when I put the quilt together but I'm pretty happy with the first time curves :)

 

and I finally sewed the binding on a little mini quilt that I made back in April for a blog hop - its the one that had the red dye issues so wasn't finished in time and I'm not sure why I've been so slow in getting it hand quilted and bound ! I hand quilted lines in the sashing with red variegated Perle 8.

I put little pocket hangers on this one which is a technique I saw on Amy's Stitchery Dickory Dock blog earlier this week so its already on the wall !

have a great weekend - we're lucky to have a long weekend this weekend and the weather is perfect for sewing - cold and raining !!

sunny spring

a big welcome to the first day of spring !

the daffodils are out - I've been watching these little bulbs in the park across from my house - its so nice to finally see their pretty little faces :)

but mother nature certainly let us know it was the last day of winter yesterday with a little bit of snow !

that settled for quite a while on the hills ...

but at least it was a nice sunny day today and I'm really hoping it will stay that way :)

a rainy weekend

means lots of sewing - I mean what else can you do when its raining so much there are flood alerts all around !

On Saturday, after spending quite a bit of time on the computer in front of the fire I thought I'd better get some sewing done and my sewing room was nice and warm so I did the February Blogger's BOM blocks.

on Sunday I started the Craftsy BOM blocks - I finally organised the fabrics I am going to use so was happy to get the January blocks done - I hadn't done an asterisk block before so watching Amy put it together on the video was really handy.

this is the second January block - wonky pound sign - very much like the connector blocks I did last week - love this block as well :)

and I finally got the Long Distance Quilting Bee February block done - Kathy had asked for bright colours with some black and white in a mexican theme - I must admit the mexican theme had me stumped for quite some time - I kept thinking maracas and sombreros which didn't help at all ! then last week I googled mexican quilting and found a mexican rose block which I thought would be good but then on Saturday discovered that Margaret from our group had already done one of those for Kathy!

So after I'd done the Craftsy blocks I thought maybe a mexican star - I had done a starflower block for the January care at do.good stitches group and thought that might just work !  so I made up the block using some bright colours with a black and white background.

after looking at it on the design wall I was thinking I should have cut out the half square triangles and matched them up into each petal first which I kept thinking about as I was sewing it up - I should have stopped !  so of course as soon as it was finished I promptly unpicked it all and re-sewed - matching up the petals - oh well, unpicking is such a soothing pastime !!

so this is now the finished block - I'm way happier with the matching petals (I think) !

I probably could have got a couple more Craftsy blocks done but after that unpicking though I should just pack up for the day :)

hope you stayed warm and dry this weekend and got some fabulous sewing in :)

omg - huge storms and hail stones

that's right - I said hail stones - a day before the first day of summer and last night we had huge storms with some of the biggest lightening strikes I've seen for a while and to finish we had a hail storm  - and of course I had to take these photos at 2.30 am :)

hail stones at the front door

hail on pippi's garden seat and see that other chair on an angle - its not supposed to be there !

and now pippi has a broken food bowl :(

its been raining all morning as well so looks like we're set for a wet start to summer.

before the storm last night I finished sewing all the strips together for the postage stamp quilt - and while I was pressing the final seam on each row I discovered a little boo boo ...

so a bit of quick unpicking, move a block to the end of the row and then a resew and you'd never know !

I figure with 1,800 2 inch square blocks that make up this quilt - something had to go wrong :)