Scrubstitching Show and Tell

We've had a busy old time since I got back home from retreat, but I did have the chance the other day to pull out the projects I worked on while over there.
I was really lucky that Sue lent me her machine - I thought she was bringing a second machine but no, she'd decided to mostly hand sew.
She put her time to great use and here is one of the Old Time Kaleidoscope blocks she completed.

I hadn't planned my retreat sewing very well and only had time to throw a few close-to-hand project boxes in my case before leaving home.

I spent the first half of retreat working on my Whimsical Woodland mystery quilt from last year. All the stitcheries were done but little else. Lots of cutting, piecing and more cutting yielded a pile of the filler blocks.

I got to the stage where I needed to lay it all out to work out my colours - I didn't have enough room, so packed it up. So glad of the progress made though.

On Saturday I worked on some hearts for the Christchurch healing hearts quilt drive. I'll share those in another post.

Sunday was a half day and I pulled out another box. I needed to make some small friendship stars for the current mystery stitchery I'm doing. As you can see, I got a whole heap of half square triangles done. I think I got busy chatting on the way to the iron and didn't get them pressed.

But I did try for the scenic shot though - not very successful due to only the wrong side of the fabrics being visible!

At the start of the weekend we each received a gift bag of lovely goodies. One of the gifts was this gorgeous embroidery design by Sonia, of forever always online.
Sabrina, who hasn't really stitched before, achieved this!

I'm looking forward to stitching mine when I get to it; it will be a great memento of the weekend.

On Saturday afternoon we had show-and-tell. It was great; a huge variety of finishes over the year. Some of my photos had heads, etc, in them so there's just a sprinkling here to share.

Sue, with her Doing the Rounds quilt

Deb, a French General Sarah Fielke BOM

Janice, with a quilt made for her Mum

Kylie with a scrappy Round the World

Lea showing us her applique quilt

Sonia's Tessalating Diamonds (?)

Janice had her Splendid Sampler on the wall

Trish's Interlocking squares; she finished the piecing at retreat.

All very inspiring - what will I take for next year's Show and Tell, I wonder!!

I could sort photos for days.
However I'm leaving it here, as time is creepng on and I must get ready for work today :-)

'til next time,

Happy Stitches,

A Grand Adventure

A Grand Adventure Posted: 18 Apr 2019 09:45 PM PDT It's all over!! Retreat has been and gone, and oh we had a great time! Kiwikid Sue picked me up from the Airport and we set about getting up to retreat at Baradine in New South Wales. It was a good old road trip. We did a bit of exploring — Sue Geocaching

saw some interesting sights —

Grass Trees

And did some sightseeing —

We may have even sung a bit :-)

Mrs google maps lady sent us off on a very scenic route for the last leg of the journey

The sign didn't say "Beware this is the dirt road route!!"

But it was a lovely drive - very interesting for this farming girl!

So disheartening to see acres and acres of drought

There were abouit 35 of us gathered for retreat - friends who had mostly met by way of blogland. It was organised by Chooky and Sonia, who both did a great job of making sure all our needs were thought of and taken care of.
We sewed —

We laughed

Photo of our first 'fivesies' borrowed from Chooky's blog

We celebrated —

Bling night

Sue and a sunset

I saw a Galah —

— or three

Retreat was fabulous. (More about what I sewed in my next blogpost).
After it, and on the way back to Melbourne, Sue and I spent a night at Chooky's.

We three by the Chookshed

An oasis in the middle of the drought

Feeeding time on the farm

More driving and a goodbye at the airport —

Flying off 'into' the sunset

After a little more driving 'before I knew it' I was home again and the adventure was over.
Happy to be home, happy to have done it - and itching to go back next year!!

'til next time,

Happy stitches

Slow Stitching!

I feel like I've been working on this block for ages!

It's my third applique block from the Foxley Village BOM I'm doing. The needleturn was pretty straightforward with long straight edges and not too much in the way of fiddliness.

But I'm finding it slow going with the satin stitched leaves, and there's another tree on the other side of the house!

There may bave been a few distractions —

Hehe I bet you didn't expect a photo of my latest chickens!

But maybe you were expecting one of these?

This is going to be my quickest post ever written - and probably the shortest too, and with the least amount of photos....It's very much a quick pop in and say hello post as first thing tomorrow morning I'm heading off to catch a plane to go to Retreat!! So exciting :-)

Yaay - I think I've just got my toothbrush to pack and instructions to write for the MOML on how to look after the baby chickens.
I was going to be so organised and have projects cut all ready to sew but today I've just thrown random stuff in my bag so it will be a real surprise what I end up doing!

So Hello - Goodbye,

'til next time,

happy stitches,