October Friday Night with Friends

For the first time in ages I was able to join in with Friday Night with Friends, hosted by the lovely but absent Cheryll.

I haven't been getting up to much with my evening stitching lately so am currently working on my Life Is Beautiful stitcheries (by HugsnKisses). These have been in the pipeline for a Very Long Time, and just get pulled out from time to time when I have nothing else planned.

Friday night saw the continuation of this block —

Recently I completed the applique for the next block —

Those hearts were really fiddly so I am pleased there were only four of them!

Saturday started off as a lovely day so I got a little bit of weeding done in the vege garden. Yes that is a very full wheelbarrow of weeds. Self seeded potatoes and comfrey already growing healthily. I'm going to transplant the smaller comfrey plants into another area...apparently the plant is really good for soil health and mining minerals so it can get to work elsewhere!

While I was gardening, I had my Christmas cake baking! 

"Wow" you must be saying - "imagine getting your cake made so early!!" The truth of the matter is that I have been meaning to make it since JULY when I found TWO nests of eggs between some bales of hay. 

Mum and I brainstormed ways to use so many eggs (they all passed the float test). Aside from everyday baking, we thought a good batch of Christmas cakes would also use a fair few.
The eggs have stored well in the fridge but I really do hope to make a couple more Christmas cakes to use the last of them. 

After lunch I pulled out my The Country Yard challenge quilt...I now have less than a week to get this finished so the pressure is on!!

I joined some batting pieces —

(I do like using this batting-joining tape!)

and got pinning —

I don't believe I have showed you this block yet. The challenge theme was "What's behind the shop door?" I finally decided on some fabric and a sleeping pussycat (stretching the truth a bit there!). A fun one to sew.

If you'd like to do a little bloghopping and see what other bloggers got up to on Friday night, visit Cheryll's blog *here*.

In the meantime, I have got a quilt to finish basting - and quilt!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Raewyn

September Ends

It's hard to believe another month has whizzed by so here is a quick attempt to get a post done by nightfall.

The big news is that I finished my Cross and Crown quilt!

The quilt was made from the Cocoa Pink range by Laundry Basket Quilts. It's a sample for The The Country Yard so I took a few photos before taking it into the shop to display.

I had no more dramas with stabbing myself (see *here*) while quilting. Vireya suggested putting the back-pin-cap of an enamel badge on the upright pin; a great idea, but none of my badges had one the right size - grrrr. However I managed to sort my hands out so the rest of the quilting went smoothly.

I ended up using the Westelee circle template for the whole quilt, doing semi-circles along the edges in the border. I am quite pleased with the effect.

One more scenic shot. Our son's sheep are grazing our orchard at the moment -

I don't think I have shared this block yet. It's another for The Country Yard 20 Year Challenge. The theme is 'Have a Cuppa' -

I've started joining my blocks for my challenge quilt. Here is the top row.  I've not used much of the challenge fabric so have decided to use it for cornerstones in the sashing.

It's been a whirlwind 24 hours on the grandparenting front; last night I babysat the three next door while their parents had a very rare dinner out.

Then this morning Odie and family came out - 

Then the rest of the day was spent with Lily and George while their parents were busy. Of course calf duties time arrived and they enjoyed helping for a while-

We set up a 'table' to draw at and they were busy wee bees alternating between calves and pencils. It was a wet and windy day so that limited play a bit. I'm pleased we came up with an alternative!

I'm looking forward to a quiet Sunday - hopefully I will get more of the challenge quilt done.

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Raewyn

Raindrops on Blossoms...

We had a beautiful hot and fine week last week - some family members even had their first summer swims in the river! 

However we had a wet weekend and this week it has cooled down a little (with more rain) so there's no more swimming at the moment. Thankfully, it hasn't fazed the Wisteria at all.

The Met Service actually put us under heavy rain watch so I spent some extra time bringing my calves back to this side of the river - if it flooded, I wouldn't be able to get over to feed them.

AND, once the chores are done, we all know that wet weather means inside days and inside days mean sewing days. 

I needed to catch up on my blocks for The Country Yard 20th Birthday Challenge. The celebration is next month; it's coming around very quickly!

One of the block themes is 'a favourite block'. I like the challenge of sewing a tiny block, and I also love nested blocks so started with this - 

Then this-

Resulting in this - 

All of my blocks are in the centre of a heart so here is the completed block- 

Another of the challenge block themes is 'Christmas'. It took me a while to decide what to make, but I finally decided on this foundation pieced tree - 

(The pattern I used is the Pine Tree FPP from CentreStreetQuilts.)

Completed block - 

I had a lot of trouble getting the photos of the finished blocks - the colours I was getting were orange and royal blue; these are the best I could do!

YD and I were busy chatting the other day and heard little noises coming from downstairs - I spied young Odie doing this -

Haha, he was 'sewing'! He'd removed the tiny quilt from a nearby quilt and put it under the presser foot of my old treadle machine! He really looked like he knew what he was doing! (I don't think he's seen me sewing but his mum does do a spot of mending on her machine from time to time,)

I wasn't going to do any more calf/farm spam, but as I mentioned bringing the calves back from over the river, I thought I should explain. Moving the youngstock is easy as they follow the feeder, hoping for their milk. Here they are coming over the bridge -  I always speed up so they don't bunch up and push each other off - I've not lost a calf off the bridge yet and hope never to! - 

Then, finally a feed - 

And happy and full - 

'til next time,

happy stitches,
Raewyn