A new month, a new goal, and more sewing

I had a nice little play in my sewing room aka The Palace over the weekend..... I decided to carry on with some red Scrappy Sprouts..... it's a new month so officially we're on to a new colour in the rainbow scrap challenge (run by Angela over at soscrappy) but I was a bit grumpy at myself for managing only 2 red blocks. Almost half of each block was donated by Sue over at Mother Patchwork so that meant I'd done even less sewing and used even less scrap fabric than it looked!

So I now have a total of six red sprout blocks and I'm happy with that...

I'm taking a bit of a risk joining them all up before deciding how I will lay them out but it suits me to do it this way.

Because they're sprout blocks I thought I should photograph them in the orchard (I move outside to photograph in the natural light when I can anyway) and I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when Paddington our lovely old ewe wandered over for a sniff and a lick! It's getting to be a habit around here, our pets photobombing my photos!

(My original post about these sprout is *here* if you want to find out more).

While sewing the sprouts I spent a bit of time thinking about my next One Monthly Goal...Patty D has opened up the linky for April's OMG. As I've said before I like to use the OMG as a chance to pull out a long forgotten project and get some work done on that.

Not really forgotten but long time unfinished is this quilt made for me by my friends one year when a group of us "Round Robined" We had a fun year,  each taking turns to work on each other's projects and I was totally in awe and in love with my quilt when it came home to me.
The blocks had been joined as it had been worked on and it looked awesome but I think I was a little overawed and put the quilting and finishing in the too-hard basket! Of course that's not true and to be honest it doesn't need a huge amount of quilting as it is so detailed.

Side tracking me from finishing things like this are fun little projects I start playing with. I've gone from 'just trying out' one Scrappy 9 Churn dash block to designing a quilt using them in my head.
So now I have four of these blocks. I love them :-)
New blocks Number One and Number Two. You can see I experimented with using some browns for the Churndash.... I had been stuck in pinky/red mode!

And here are all four together -

Cyclone Debby, who caused a lot of damage in parts of Australia last week, has arrived in New Zealand. Last night we got torrential rain but luckily no wind. We woke up to massive flooding on our 'bottom flats' - the surface water is receeding now but it's very soggy. We're wondering how much more rain is around. In the meantime, once animals are fed, it's great weather for sewing :-)
'till next time,

happy stitches,

Whew, done - just!

I'm happy this morning that there are different time zones around the world - it means that I have finished my One Monthly Goal in time to link up - even though it is the beginning of the month here in New Zealand, it's still the end of the month elsewhere!
My goal for February was to complete the Applecore runner I'd started a few years ago. It was all sewn together but I wasn't happy with one of the fabrics I'd used.

One Monthly Goal - to finish this!

When I wrote about how the fabric was troubling me, several kind people suggested I tea-dye or dye those cores with a paintbrush. What a great idea, I thought! However when then a fabric literally fell at my feet one day (great storage system huh?!), I decided I'd found the perfect substitute and I didn't needed to dye after all.
Out with the offending fabric -

- and in with the new :-)

Quilted and bound - and, at the last minute, February's goal ticked off the list!

Couldn't get a good apple tree photo but thought the pumpkin patch one was ok!
The colours have washed out a bit in the strong sunlight.

Thank you to Patty of elm street quilts for hosting OMG - it gave me the push I needed to get this long forgotten UFO finished. 

I'm also linking up to Joy's Finishing Stitches Challenge. This linky shows progress we're making on our UFOs...this is my third ufo finish for the year - a good start I reckon :-)

Maybe one of the reasons I was scrambling to get to the finish line was that I had a bit of a DREAMi moment over the weekend. Sandra (of Musings of a Menopausal Melon) is running a fun monthly linkup where we're allowed to admit to those things where we have DRop Everything And Make It moments! This is mine!
It started when I was doing a bit of sorting and tidying after fiishing my Farm Girl Vintage quilt. While putting my scraps away I came across this box of fabric...carefully sorted and safely stored......"oh dear, what was this for I wondered?"

 When I saw the label on the side I gave a little giggle - oh yes - I was going to make that last year - I'd planned to start it after my big holiday - well that never happened oh well.

 Next minute I was sewing away, all thoughts of tidying (and Applecores) forgotten - just to see how the fabrics played together.....
I had came across this block on Sarah's sewjoy blog recently. She has a great tutorial *here*.

I like it - the start of a new project perhaps... another DREAMi moment?

Going through my photos for this post, I've just come across some more. The trouble with doing a secret project is that sometimes you forget to write about it!
I made this Feathered Star cushion as a class sample at my favourite quilt shop.

It's oversized and I love it!!
Fiona of BubzRugz did a blogpost recently on her scrappy quilt backings - well this cushion back is head to toe in scraps as well - there're 7 fabrics pieced together for this (one is hidden under the flap).

Oh what fun!

A new month - and Autumn around the corner - wonder what will happen in The Palace now - I'm excited to see what I will pull out of a box next!

Thank you for reading along,

and happy stitches,