April scraps and almost a fail —

As seems typical with me, I breeze in at the first of the month (here in NZ) with a last minute post about my monthly goals for the previous month!
I sort of failed with the One Monthly Goal I had for April; to finish a Round-Robin quilt from Years Ago...... but I'm happy that I am a few steps closer to finishing it as the bulk of the work on it is now done.
I did get the quilt top quilted, here it is trimmed in the photo below —

— but I didn't get it bound...hence the sort of fail but not quite! Quilting this brought back all sorts of good memories for me, thinking about the friends who contributed each row, and also the scenes depicted. Here's a couple of sneak peeks but I'll show more when it's properly finished.

This was Mr Piggy, who we no longer have, but we do have a Miss Piggy!
I did a very small amount of ruler work but it was mostly random fmq-ing.

Hehe - different pig - same pose!

I'm linking up to Patty of Elm Street Quilts - thank you Patty for hosting us - click *here* to see how other bloggers went with finishing their goals.

I'm also linking up to Joy of Days Filled with Joy, for her monthly Finishing Stitches Challenge. Thank you Joy for encouraging and hosting us. 

Since I had only a partial success I hope I qualify for joining these link ups!

In April I also sewed up two blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. The month's colour was Multi; rather than make a multi-coloured sprout block (My RSC block for this year) I added two new blocks to the Great Granny squares I started a few years ago.

Obviously it was a bright glarey day when I took these pictures so I apologise you cant really see the colours very well.
I now have 9 of these blocks - I had wondered if it might be a good place to stop but now that I see them together I think I will carry on - maybe a 4 x 4 setting will be nice... if I plan a bit better with my scrap colours for the rest of the blocks I may even end up with a cohesive looking quilt!

I'm linking up to Angela of soscrappy - thank you Angela for motivating us to rummage in our scraps and use a few up!

[EDIT; And I've just linked up to Freemotion by the River, for Linky Tuesday. Thank you Connie.]

The school holidays have ended and the girls have gone home. We had two busy fun weeks with them here. We are gradually turning them into farm kids and I love this photo I took one day while we were out the back doing some stockwork.

See them leaning? They were singing their hearts out!

Ok, gotta go - I have a quilt to finish!

Happy Stitches,

Sew Stitch Snap and Share

Linda and Julie have started up Sew, Stitch, Snap, SHARE; a new regular linky party for us to share our WiPS and finishes.... and a way to help us keep on track with our projects.

All we do is do a bit of sewing and stitching each week, take some photos and share them on their link-up post. Easy! 

(Click on either of their names above to go to the link-up page if you want to join in, or simply just want to visit some new blogs and be inspired by others' work!)

I haven't done a huge amount of actual sewing this week but I still managed to snap a few photos of things to share.

This was some sewing —

The Flying Geese for my Evandale quilt.

And then I spent an afternoon prepping. When I'm in an organising mood, I like to do this; sorting and cutting several blocks so when I get a chance to turn the machine on I can just plough ahead and sew.

Three blocks prepped, and layered on scrap batting.

You may be able to tell that two of those blocks are some more sheep for the quilts I started in my last post...a re-make of some of the Farm Girl Vintage blocks.

Last weekend's completed block above, one partially sewn and a prepped one
waiting....

I find that if I lay them out on the batting, the piecing process is so much easier
and logical.

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour this month is multi-colour...anything goes... I'm not sure I want those colourways in my scrappy sprouts but remembered the great granny blocks I was making a year or so back as part of the RSC. I found them difficult to do in the rainbow theme but thought it would be perfect for this month.

That's the other prepped block you can see a few photos above. Below are the great granny blocks I've already made.

So this will give me eight - one more will be nine - I've been wondering whether to call it a day there or carry on.....? I'm thinking that perhaps adding more blocks will make the mis-matching ones gel together a little better? Or maybe after this latest block is sewn they all might get put back in their box for a while....... :-)

For the last few evenings I've pulled out a bit of stitching - something I haven't done for quite a while. This is my Country at Heart Alphabet (by Michelle Ridgeway). Can you believe I just had one letter of the alphabet left to do! 

Now I've been busy planning layouts for putting these together so that's fun!

As Easter and winter approaches, it's Happy Pants season. (PJ pants). Today in town I stocked up on brushed cotton/winceyette for our resident family.

[Just as a little aside... including this post, in the last three posts I have mentioned/worked on EIGHT different projects!!!] [Gulp].

The talk of New Zealand at the moment is Cyclone Cook which has been hurtling towards the country, and had threatened to be one of the largest storms we've had in 49 years. And destined to hit areas that are still sodden and damaged from last week's (ex) Cyclone Debby. 

While we've had plenty of rain, it seems like it's mostly missing Northland where we live. Naturally we're very relieved but we're now anxiously waiting to see what happens with the rest of the country.

I went for a walk down the farm this afternoon, the MOML had warned me that the river was swollen but I don't think it had come up any higher than he described. He had to kayak across this morning to move the water pump to higher ground. (Apparently it was quite a challenge, the water was moving very quickly!)

Our swollen river; nowhere near a flood here. Under the water is our bridge.
There's a large tree banging against the bridge rails
 so we are hoping it doesn't wipe those out.

Hoping all my fellow New Zealanders stay safe and dry this weekend.

♥ And to you all, Happy Easter ♥