Country at Heart

The time since my last blogpost has passed by in a bit of a blur. I did take down most of the blocks from my design wall...tidied them into their boxes. I'll allow them to settle, marinate, rest for a while before they see light again. Some will need longer than others :-)

Because of upcoming events I decided not to start another Foxley Village block. Instead I pulled out my Country At Heart (alphabet) stitcheries (Designed by Michelle Ridgeway of Rag Tag Stitchin'.) I started these a few years ago and have stitched A-Z. There are a few extra stitcheries needed to make an even grid for a quilt and those are what I am doing now.

I have traced the last three stitcheries so I will work on those next.

A 'what is this' photo......(read on)

It seems appropriate in a 'country at heart' post that I show a photo of my latest chicken feed bag. I found a small (10kg) bag in a bucket, left over from when I was raising my youngest chickens. It looked like it would make a handy sized bag so here it is —

And next to one of the earlier bags —

The tutorial I used for these is by Carole on the
From my Carolina Home blog.

A few posts ago I'd started a cute wee beanie. I've finished it!

Although it's the smallest (and baby) size, Lily thought she'd try it on. It's quite a nice style, it will be quite cosy and fits nicely so I think I'll make a few more like this.

Minutes after this photo was taken her and George discovered the balls of
wool - great fun! Sigh!

The cute little tassel on top took about 5 seconds to make and so worth it!

I had a bit of a rotten week last week, crook with a tummy bug, but before I got sick we spent a morning out in the sunshine doing some stock work. Since it was a beautiful day I had my camera with me and took these photos —

Firstly I needed to walk these girls to their paddock.
The calves were very interested.

The cows needed to join these herdmates in one of the back hill paddocks.

Nosey Parker

I passed by the horses on the way back to the shed.

This was the last milk feed for these calves. We get them to follow the feeder
a certain distance out the back (different direction as to where the cows were).

And then follow them out to their new paddock. (3kms total.)

These animals were also out the back and came over for a chat - last year's
calves - amazing how much they've grown in just 12 months!

I've spent the last few days tidying and sorting - I'm getting ready for a wee adventure which will be great fun and I'll tell you all about when I can. It does involve a plane (or two), a wedding, and some quilts, so I'm looking forward to it :-)

[Although the amount of extra organising and stock work that's needed doing as it's 'this' time of the year makes me wonder my sanity sometimes! Once I hop on that plane I know all those things will be forgotten!]

'til next time,

happy stitches,

What's on my design wall?

I glanced up at my design wall this morning and realised it was full of things I haven't blogged about yet. There's a post, I thought!

You may remember I was working on this block from Foxley Village. The handwork is complete. Yaay. There are pieced blocks to do but I'm waiting till the end to do those —

And the Ohio star blocks I was making in my last post got finished and joined to form a row for my row-by-row adventure —

And here are three of the rows together —

Ha! I see I miscalculated the width of my star row. Unpicking will happen at
some stage!

Next up, there are a few more leader-ender churndash blocks made for my Omigosh quilt —

Something else I haven't even talked about is this project. Years ago (2011!!!!) I started doing the My Town BOM from the Homespun magazine. I made a couple of blocks and then decided I didn't really care for it so much. There were different contributors to the quilt and they didn't all seem to work so well together (imho). So I stopped. A few years later a wee group of us local friends decided to do a simple round-robin. Starting with a centre block, narrow borders, and ending up with a cushion sized piece or small wall hanging. I decided to use one of the blocks I'd done from My Town. Things happens, people got sick, and the whole swapping thing really slowed down and seemed to disintegrate. I was particularly slow completing a block I was working on, and refused to collect my finished bag until I'd done it...which really wasn't until earlier this year.
Anyway here is what I started with - the Quilt Shop block —

Two others worked on it and here it is now. I think it is pretty much perfect as it is and aim to just quilt it and put it on a wall in The Palace. (Thank you to the ladies who worked on this for me, I adore it!)

The photo's not the best sorry. Believe me, it looks great.

Next on the design wall are a couple of blocks from the grunge club we've been running at work. I'm going to sidetrack and make more of the Broken Wheel block as I've decided I love that one the most and think it will make an effective quilt.

The Owls were a bit of a play before I got sidetracked (in a major way) with my International Sisters blocks. We'd been using the Sew Kind Of Wonderful QCR rulers at work for a class and some samples. I had one (unopened!) at home so wanted to experiment. I'll get back to these One Day!  

(These rulers make curves so easy and fun!)

And last but not least. The Penguin blocks. I love to pattern test for Juliet of Tartankiwi. The Little Blue Penguin I've shared before, but not the Baby Chick. I squeezed him in between feeding calves a month or more ago and had forgotten to share his photo. Another cute pattern!

And speaking of calves (subtle segue?!) here's a pic I took this afternoon. I moved a mob of calves into the paddock next to the house so it's easy to sneak up on them with a zoom lens!

Whew, what a busy design wall full of plenty of things to keep me busy for months! Now that I have photographed and blogged about them I can put them away in their special places :-)

'til next time,

happy stitches, 

Friday Night sewing

Friday night was a chance to sit and stitch with others for Friday Night with Friends. Thank you so much to Cheryll for hosting us all :-)
I worked on my current block of Foxley Village (block five). After making some wee flower dots —

I started appliqueing them to the gaps in the row of flowers —

Just the three to do tonight and then this part of the block will be finished - yaay!
I didn't get much done for FNwF as bed was calling - we'd had a very early start to the day when a possum decided to pay us a visit. We woke at about 3.45am to a very excited little dog making a fuss. Expecting him to be playing with a mouse the cats had brought in, we got quite a fright to see a possum scurrying around the house trying to find a way out! After the complete tour, the MOML managed to shut him in a room with the sliding doors wide open - whew. By the time the wee dog had got over the excitement it was cow time and no point trying to get any more sleep!
Pop on over to Cheryll's blog to see what everyone got up to.

Last week I finished sewing my International Sisters blocks. 50 altogether. I'm now gathering fabric for the sashing and borders so have put it to one side for now. I became quite obsessed with these blocks so it was probably a good thing that I've had to pause....they were taking over my life and nothing else was getting done hehe!

It was so much fun hunting out all the fabrics!

While I'm waiting to get back to my Sisters quilt, I've pulled out my Row by Row quilt. We were doing this as a sewalong through the shop and I've got a little behind.
The next row is Ohio Star blocks, and the challenge fabric is the black script in the block below —

I've made these two and decided on the fabrics for the next ones. They'll be my leader-ender project for the next week. It'll be good to advance this project :-)

I think I have a home week this week so I see some more sewing in my future!

'til next time, 

happy stitching,

A bit of this, a bit of that

When I threaded my needle for some more stitchery the other night, I lamented (to myself) that I don't seem to be making much progress on my current block of Foxley Village. In my last post I was doing the stitchery under the main applique, and guess what, a good 10 days later, I'm still working on the same patch of stitchery! (Although I have changed thread colour!)

I generally reserve my evenings in front of the telly for any handwork that needs doing, and here's a touch of what has snarled me up.
My handwork in the evenings lately has consisted of —

Unpicking some quilting. I made this quilt top some time ago and I decided it really is time to finish it. After all the ditch stitching, I amazed myself by quilting the first block sideways!

Mending slippers. George thought it was great fun to have his toe come through and spent quite a bit of time wriggling it and watching it. These slippers have been well worn all winter; I'm hoping the babies will get just a little more wear out of them before summer comes!

Sewing the finishing touches on two pouches.

Haha, you can't see much but I sewed strips down to cover the raw edges inside these two pouches.

I got my old sewing machine serviced the other day so that YD can use it. I thought, while sorting out some bits for her, that a couple of wee pouches would be handy. I made myself some a few years ago and they are still in use.

One big, one small.

I spent an evening knitting up a swatch. Although I've put my knitting away for now, I found myself wanting some to do while I babysit sleeping children (and recharging my batteries for when they wake!!). This is some homespun which was spun for me years ago. I had a whole lot of 'fleece' from our pet goat which a lady mixed with some sheepswool and spun. I had started a jersey out of it (years ago) but have unpicked it. It was a cabled, loosefitting jersey and I could see I wasn't going to have enough. I have found a fresh pattern I want to use

The swatch was far too big for the pattern so I've put it away for now, and will decide how best to tackle it in the future.

So I spent another evening getting started on another knitting project for those babysitting sleeps. I've had this beanie pattern for a while and have always wanted to try it out.

 

So I guess slow progress doesn't mean no progress :-)
I am hoping to finish that stitchery soon though!
'til next time,
Happy stitches,