OMG!!

Lots to report - One Monthly Goal! and Oh My Golly Gosh!

Lucky for me it's Leap Year as Leap Day today has given me the extra time I needed to meet my One Monthly Goal (OMG) for February.
I signed up with Heidi of Red Letter Quilts at the start of the month, pledging to finish this mini quilt this month. I was confident I had plenty of time to do the task but whew talk about squeeze it into the last few days!

This mini was a SAL called Market Day which Pam Buda of Heartspun Quilts ran in 2014. All I needed to do was quilt and bind it so I'm pleased it is finally done!
I quilted this by stitching in the ditch, and decided it needed very little else. I used one of my Bernina's decorative stitches in the border but it would have been totally fine without it.

The bobbin helps to give some perspective of size.
This mini is 16 ¾" square.

This was such a fun quilt to make, special thanks to Pam for this fun sewalong. (I have two more of these to complete....who knows, they might be turning up in a OMG post later this year!)
And thank you again to Heidi for hosting OMG; click *here* to go to her link up page, there have been a lot of finishes this month.
Oops, cant forget the Before and After photos —

Before

After.
The wee dog is happy with his new look chair :-)

And Oh My Golly Gosh, I have more finishes to report!!

Calendar Bears was in the pipeline for most of last year and here it is in its finished state - yaay!!
Thank you to Michelle Ridgeway of Rag-tag stitchin' for this lovely design, it was a joy to stitch.

I think this lady is my favourite block - what a great mixture, bears and quilts!
She's a little light, the background fabric is more beige than white.

Around this time every year, my local quilt shop, The Country Yard, has a special day to showcase its latest projects. As I work there, I've been busy helping to sew up samples for kits, classes and monthly programmes. It's a hectic time for all of us but also fun, getting to sew new designs, play with new fabric, and come up with ways to excite and motivate our customers. I designed this table runner for one of our classes. Apart from the binding there is no handstitching - the class is Invisible Machine Applique - should be fun!

While I love to do needleturn by hand, there just isn't enough time to do it all that way... I've been playing with this technique for a few years now and as new products come on the market, it just gets easier and easier!

I learnt something new today - well actually,  it was possibly just confirmation of what I already knew - sometimes it's just not worth doing house work ... a bit of a spring clean (well, early autumn clean) in the laundry resulted in water everywhere and a 90 minute round trip to town for a replacement part ... sigh ... I should have just ignored the housework and gone straight to my sewing!

Hope you have a creative week,

'till next time,

Stitching with friends (twice!)

Once again I am tied up with sneaky sewing at the moment so I'm just going to show this sneaky peek......

However I downed tools for Friday Night Sew In with others from around the globe, and tidied up a few of my leader-ender-scrap-busting-rainbow-scrap-challenge blocks.

February's colour for the so-scrappy challenge is brown (click *here* to get to the rainbow scrap challenge link up page), I have plenty of brown scraps so it didn't take me long to get these blocks prepped earlier in the month. I've decided to make 4 honeybucket stars of each colourway, join them like this.... and see what happens :-) 

So January's stars got the same treatment —

These blocks finish at 15" so I should get a decent sized quilt; perfect for some coziness :-)

I realised this week that this it the first virtual Friday night sewing I've been able to take part in - co-incidently, we've had family happenings every other FNSI and FNWF this year. Thank you Wendy for having us all along sewing with you.

I had another night sewing with friends earlier on this week..... got some 9-patches done... 

Busting more scraps

It was our Christmas get together for our local sewing group... yes, a little late but - you know how it is - December is always too busy, January is holiday time so February it was! 

We had a delicious shared meal (drool over roast chicken, salads, pav and fruit salad ♥) and exchanged our Christmas gifts, Secret Santa style.

I received this beautiful block holder from Leeanne—

It's a great size...maybe I should be starting another project to put it to good use!

More yumminess on the back. I thought the little angels were holding
needles and thread but then realised they are fishing for the stars :-)

And sewn inside on the first page.... lovely saying. Leeanne reminded me I
had given her a panel with these sayings on it a few years ago!

I made for Barb.... here is my offering —

If you click on the photo you should get a better look at the
stitchery. (I should have taken a better photo).

French General fabrics, I knew Barb likes these!

It was a fun night (thank you ladies)!
Today is going to be a quilting day for me, all going according to plan, I'll be immersed in feathers!

'till next time, 

happy stitching,

Little crafting...

...but lots of cuddles!!

(Warning: don't read any further if you don't want to see photos of babies).

My two daughters and I had a fabulous trip last weekend visiting 'our babies.'

The wee girls are over 6 months old now and at a beautiful age for lots of giggles, smiles and interactions.

Our two little chubs ♥

Saydee and Kaliah ♥

Lots of time for cuddles ♥

Doting Aunties ♥

Doting Ganma ♥

Quick family pic before we hit the train and the plane to go home ♥

While we were in Australia I was delighted to spend an afternoon with gorgeous bloggy friends Michelle and Fiona. 

One cup of coffee lasts a long time when you are busy chatting!

I also showed Michelle my Calendar Bears quilt - her design - which The Country Yard has been stitching this year - sadly I didn't quite get the quilting finished before I went over.

Since I've been home, time has flown and I haven't achieved a huge amount on the sewing front. I am working on this sneaky project, but at the moment this (below) is all I can share :-)

Hopefully I'll have some sewing to share in my next post!

Goals and Stars

My One Monthly Goal project for February will be to finish this sweet quilt... for the last few months it has hung over the back of the wee dog's chair in my Palace....

This little quilt was a sewalong by Pam Buda of Heartspun Quilts back in 2014... I loved the sewalong and actually sewed up three versions of the pattern..... here is a photo I took in September 2014 —

IT NEEDS FINISHING!!!!

There's quite a few people signed up to take part in OMG this month. Click *here* to get to the post on Heidi's Red Letter Quilts blog where everyone has linked their goals. I always enjoy looking through and seeing the huge variety of great projects.

I got quite a surprise this week to find that I had pieced all the stars for my Charming Stars quilt. The fabric, etc, has sat in a drawer beside my machine and has been an easy one to just pull out and piece when I've had a spare moment.... I won't get them joined for a while but couldn't resist laying them out on the floor this morning for a photo. It was hard to find the floor space to lie it out and then hard to take the photo - I couldn't get high enough off the ground to get it all in! (It's 5 rows of 6 stars, the blocks will finish at about 13 ½").

yummy yummy yummy
The fabrics are Ladies' Album by Barbara Brackman

I thought it looked pretty cool in the mirror though! —

I've done a little quilting on my Calendar Bears and am happy with how it's going - mostly; there's (just) a little unpicking to do as I've changed my mind about the quilting on the border :-(

There's great excitement in my world today as TOMORROW my girls and I are popping over to Australia to visit our babies for the weekend ... they are 6 months old now ... we cant wait ♥♥♥♥♥♥

I'm sure there will be a baby laden post next week!

Until then, 

happy days,