Happy 2023

I hope that everyone's 2023 has got off to a great start. While I have started mine with no major goals or lists of ufos to work through, I do have hopes of being more organised and productive in my quilting life, to connect more with my online friends and community (I've been a bit slack the past year and have missed it terribly!). I'm not citing any figures but have the idea that I would like to end the year with a few less UFOs and a few less scraps - no promises though as my sewing time can be quite unpredictable due to the ebb and flow of family and farm life.

We don't tend to see the New Year in - it's not a custom we've nurtured as there have always been cows to milk the next morning - however it does seem to becoming a bit of a custom for us to babysit so various other family members can celebrate!

This year we also had YD and half her family camping on the farm so Mum, the babysitting grandies and I joined them in the early evening to toast marshmallows over their campfire.

The kids thought it was great but keeping them safe from the fire was a bit of a challenge!

I had a wee flurry of sewing on the last few days of 2022 to get my block count up a bit. The hourglass blocks for my Smidgeon quilt were closest to hand and quickest to sew. 

I also joined some more together—

And then I couldn't help myself and sewed some of my hourglass blocks to the 36-patches. Looking at the design, I can get away with this even if I haven't chosen my layout yet. It's always nice to have a little play—

And a bit more of a play; it's going to come together nicely—

I've stitched four Christmas stitcheries over the last month or so; these were a bit of an impulse buy but I couldn't resist as they represent a Kiwi Christmas in summer. ..... so many of the Christmas symbols I grew up with are from the Northern hemisphere - snow, sleigh and snowmen, lights, Red Robins, mistletoe, scarves, mittens and jerseys and so on - that it is nice to find something that better represents our kiwi lifestyle at Christmastime.

Pohutakawa under the sun —

Haha who can resist a nod to our reputation as having one of the highest sheep to human ratios! (Sadly that is declining but this is not a political blog so I will say no more!!!) — 

Christmas/summer BBQs —

And of course camping. How Santa finds all those campsites I don't know, but he manages it! —

Hehe our wingless bird has sprouted wings. Too cute —

I have no idea what I will do with these blocks but I am sure I will find inspiration.
This effort brought my December blockmaking tally to 25...and the year's block tally to 373! I was happy to report that to Prairie Moon's 350 blocks project but will be aiming for more this year :-)

Those of us who could, got together at ED's for a pizza meal the evening before Mum went home. It was a fun little gathering and the kids had a really good play while the adults had a good chat.

Mum was here for just over 2½ weeks and she got to see plenty of the family in that time. I am sure she is enjoying a bit of peace and quiet now!

Family were out visiting on Sunday, I thought this was a cute photo —

My 'baby' chickens are getting to the gawky teenage stage; they're nearly 8 weeks old now —

I'm about ready to give up on Bloglovin' as my main reader to keep track of my blog reading...I've been very patient with it but I haven't been able to access it for quite a few weeks now. I've signed up with Feedly.....my problem being of course that I have to start my list of blogs I follow all over again...I will raid my sidebar for some of them but it is a little frustrating to have to start from scratch again!

'til next time,

Happy stitches,

More February Sewing

As we're now well and truly into March and I'm just posting the last of my February sewing now, I'm going to keep this post short and sweet - hopefully no lengthy explanations and wordiness, she says optimistically!

I did a little secret sewing during February —

Yes, looks intriguing doesn't it?! It's a class sample bag for work...sadly I didn't get mine done in time for the launch of all our new projects last weekend, but I'm on the home run and it shouldn't take me too long to complete. 

Don't you just love that fabric - do you think perhaps that this might be a travel bag for grandies to bring to ganma's and gandad's for a sleepover.....!

The rest of the sewing to report is blocks.

I made four more blocks for my Omigosh! quilt —

Three more Scrappy Christmas ornament blocks —

I received two surprise parcels in the mail, from the very thoughtful Fiona and Sue.In the packages were an assortment of Christmas scraps - perfect for more of my ornament blocks! (I've used one above in the white/colourful block). I'm looking forward to using these as I was getting a little tired of my own Christmas scraps!

This star block is for a sewalong we are doing at work —

Here is a block I took home over the Christmas holidays to work on. It's from the Redwork Garden BOM we are running at work. It did take me a while to get around to stitching it, but it's now done and back where it should be!

All in all I only added 12 new blocks to this year's tally for Prairie Moon's 350 block challenge. Hopefully March will be a different story!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Block count and a goal

This month I am joining Patty of Elm Street Quilts and her One Monthly Goal link up.

I made very comprehensive lists last year and because I didn't make much headway on them, I'm working off the same lists for this year's projects.
Foxley Village was something I did pretty well with last year. I completed all the applique blocks. And I even made some of the pieced blocks.
There are four columns. Here's the first two completed columns —

And here's part of column four —

This month I aim to get column four completed!!!

Please visit Patty *here* to either sign up yourself or to have a good little look at other bloggers' goals.

I completed Block Three of The Santa, The Tree, The Turkey and Me (by Anni Downs) recently —

And have made three more Omigosh! blocks —

And another two Scrappy Christmas blocks —

Although I was focused on getting The Lorax quilt finished in January, I squeezed in a little block sewing time!

With the temperature quilt blocks and other bits and pieces, these latest ones took my block tally for January to 24. I've signed up with Shelly of Prairie Moon Quilts to do the 350 block challenge - January's goal was 31 so I'm a bit short but oh well.

I thought I'd finish with sharing a photo of Lily wearing the hat I made her, shown in my last post.

It's passed the test - she loves it!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

April tally-up —

Mixed results from my month of sewing...even with the lock down I didn't get as much done as I thought I would - always plenty of distractions down on the farm (etc!). I did set myself plenty of goals though and on the whole kept reasonably focused. I fought the urge to start new large projects but did get sidetracked occasionally with smaller ones :-)
My PHD goal, hosted by Quilting Gail, was to finish my Hannah and Harrington quilt. It was all basted, ready to go.... I stitched in the ditch of the big blocks, and also quilted in the small squares.
Rather than cross hatching, I did a simple vine design across the diagonal of each square —

A lot easier to see on the back —

So at this stage it looks like this —

It has a lot less pins in it!

Some may remember me saying I have a Glide foot to attach to my machine to quilt around the felt appliques (preventing any snagging). Attaching that involves doing a foot conversion first - the warning on the pack says to take care, incorrect installation may 'cause damage to your machine'. I gulped a bit at that and decided to wait till after lock down to do that IN CASE things do go haywire. I wouldn't like to not be able to get it looked at by my machine person for weeks.....

So because of me chickening out, the work on this goal sort of stalled a bit.

My One Monthly Goal, signed up for over at Elm Street Quilts was to get my Truck and Tractor quilt finished...hmmmm....I got the top finished - yaay - but didn't get it quilted. I had a rummage around and didn't have enough of anything to use for a backing so that was another wait because of lock down job. However, I was happy enough with where I got to as there was still a lot of work to be done on it at the start of the month.
I've just linked up for the end of the month report - click *here* to see how everyone else got on.

My WOOFA goal was to get some more work done on Foxley Village. In particular, some pieced blocks to go with the appliqued ones I've already done.

I wrote about this the other day. Pleased with the progress here.

My 350 blocks project is another one I'm tallying up tonight. Shelly over at Prairie Moon Quilts has challenged us to make 30 this month. 

Including the 15 for the Tractor/Truck quilt, some for Foxley Village, 10 for my postcard quilt, and a few extra randoms, my tally came to 34. Not bad, I feel!!

I haven't quite updated my OPAM page yet but I think I have 11 for the month! I'm so glad I've blogged about them all as I'd forgotten about the bunnies —

the bunny bags —

there was also the Scrub Stitching pouch —

and a Tilda pincushion —

I counted overlocking four nighties as two finishes and there was a cot sheet, plus my postcard quilt. Whew, plenty keeping me out of mischief, and it doesn't make my underachieving of my goals look quite so bad. The goals help me to keep focused on the bigger picture but I do like to potter and play with other little things as well!

'til next time,

happy and healthy stitches,

 

The end of the month already!

I can't believe it's the end of the month today. With the lock down, one day is so much like another at the moment!

Firstly, I need to show you the wee stitchery I started quite some time ago. I think I finished stitching in January, got the hoop on it in February and finally photographed it in March - and it will have to count as a March finish too.

The pattern is Purrrfect by Cinderberry Design (Natalie Lymer) - I made it as a shop sample for The Country Yard.

I've been a bit slack with any progress on my long (and newly) forgotten projects on my PHD and Woofa list.
Omigosh is on my Woofa list and I have managed 5 more blocks for that this month.
You can see in the photo below my meagre attempt at using 'teal' for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for the month. It's a colour I found hard to classify so my 'teal' is very broad!

The Flashcat medallion quilt is on my Woofa list too and I've completed two more blocks there as well. Even though I'm pattern testing for this quilt, and therefore will be 'forced' to sew blocks for it as Juliet requests, I put it on my list so that I would sew the additional blocks needed to complete the quilt. For example I was asked to test One Left Facing Mouse...the quilt needs four of those particular blocks.
I think I may get into a bit of a bother with the background fabric.... I'm not sure if it's still available so will have to get my thinking cap on if it isn't.

Thank you to Cheryll for hosting the WooFa challenge. Every little stitch is one stitch closer to completion.

Today I sewed up 3 more (Buggy Barn) truck blocks for Xavier's quilt and two more need just their last seams sewn. I thought I'd be able to include them in my monthly block count but of course all these blocks still need tyres/wheels added so are a wee way off finishing!

EDIT - I did a tally up for my 350-blocks project. I made 16 complete blocks this month, counting my fish sample, temperature blocks and those mentioned above. There are a few more I won't add in as I haven't talked about yet - my secret stitching project.....

This morning's walk was a short one and I was tempted to flag it after a good three hours in the cowshed this morning for our final milking of the season - two months earlier than usual because of the drought :-(

This was the most scenic photo of the walk.

Later in the day we had family waving at us from the back hill I was up the other day when I was waving to them. They took the easy way up - using the buggy!

'til next time,

Keep safe, stay home and stay well,

and happy stitches,