I met some goals!

I have two great things to report today.
This month I joined in with Patty of Elm St Quilts and committed to a One Monthly Goal of completing the last of the stitcheries needed for my Country at Heart quilt. It had been sitting waiting for attention for a very long time. In November I stitched the 4th to last —

And for my OMG I had these 3 traced and ready to stitch —

Here they are —

Ahem, the last one, above, shows how long I've actually been working on these!

I had a bit of a dilemma with the last one as I'd mistakenly marked the dots left to indicate where our own script could go. After a bit of thinking and planning I managed to cover the dots with strategically placed lettering and the simple vine at the bottom!

These designs are by Michelle Ridgeway of Rag Tag Stitchin'. Here are the rest of them, a gorgeous alphabet —

Thank you Patty for the motivation!

EDIT- I've come back to this post to link it up the following Tiny Tree to Sandra's DrEAMi party. It really was a project I had no time to make, was completely unplanned and I pushed myself to get it completed.

So pleased I did though!

The second exciting thing that happened today was that I got the Tiny Tree quilt finished!!
Thank you for those who guided me on my corner choice - the wee squares were a resounding winner!
Under the watchful eyes of Miss Piggy and Mr Quail, I took it outside for a photo shoot —

I decided it just needed very simple quilting so I stitched in the ditch of most of the seamlines. I used a clear invisible thread in the top and a very fine thread in the bobbin.

The sunny shots show what I did. All with the walking foot.

I'm so pleased to have it finished - in time for Christmas next year (!) Many thanks to the Temecula Quilt Company for this free sewalong.

( Day 29 of my 31 day blog writing challenge complete!)

'til next time,

happy stitches,

A wee bit of sewing

Although we had another nice (quiet) day with family and food,  I had high hopes of finishing my Tiny Tree today.
(This was the mini quiltalong run by the Temecula Quilt Co earlier this month.)
I really don't want to start the new year with this as a UFO - there are enough of those around here already- so I decided that today was the day to get it all done!
Ha!
My original plan was to just quilt it simply without any extra sewing and playing around. No fuss. Finish it.
But then I remembered that Joanne threadhead had made hers into a cushion and I wondered if I should do something different with mine.
In the end I decided to compromise with some extra borders but not too much extra fussing.
Of course that really was extra fussing as I couldn't decide on what borders. Scrappy greens perhaps - nope, no good. Light greens and dark greens, nope, yuck. One inch perhaps, nope, too wide..and so on and so forth.

This is where I'm at so far —

The green border finishes at half an inch and I think the size
 suits the tiny tree's dimensions.

Quite liking the fine, fuss free border...but then I got thinking again —

Maybe a half inch square in the corners would look kinda cool? Initially I didn't really think so, but it's grown on me. The photo just shows a cut square plonked in position. I'd have to piece them of course.
So you see why I didn't get this to the quilted stage this afternoon! Too much thinking (and overthinking) going on. It's another day tomorrow.

I've been pretty slack with my photo taking this Christmas and don't have many photos to show. Today was definitely a quieter day and there were a couple.

Two girls blowing bubbles with their Mum and Great Nana
(DIL and MIL)

Xavier and Ganma

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Baking and Trees

Today was my day dedicated to Christmas baking...I wasn't sure I'd get it done if I put it off any longer! 

Part way through the day my kitchen looked a bit like this-

Stuff everywhere!

But I got my Christmas cake made (late I know, my forebears would have had it made several months ago!), some gingerbread, fudge  etc etc. By the end of it all I was ready to get to my machine and work on my Temecula Tiny Tree project.

This quiltalong came to an end a few days ago and I still had a couple of the blocks to make before I could start assembling it.

Block Nine - Yule Log

Block ten - the Hourglass

Block eleven - 9-patch

Putting it together below. I decided to use a Christmassy fabric for the background and a constant fabric for my wee setting triangles (the outer branches of the tree). Although I love the scrappy look, I thought it would set all the blocks off nicely if I did that.

The green setting triangles are trimmed next, coming out 1/4" from
the edge of the blocks.

My Tiny Tree

The blocks all work together surprisingly well.

A Sampler Tiny Tree!

Thank you to the team at the Temecula Quilt Company. It was a fun little quiltalong. I'm not sure it will be quilted by this Christmas...but wouldn't that be a nice thought?!

Now, if you promise not to laugh too loudly, I'll pop in a photo of my Gingerbread men. I used the small cutter so they're only about three inches high. I had trouble finding tiny things for eyes (no pre-planning going on around here!) so sultanas cut into quarters were my very fiddly solution. 

At least they're edible!

So while you're rolling around the floor in laughter, I'll leave it there for tonight. 

(My eighteenth day of my 31 days of blogging challenge!)

'til next time,

Happy stitches

Tiny Tree catch up

I had a quick wee sew this morning and caught up on the latest small blocks for the Temecula Quilt Company
One small block a day —

Day Four - four-patch

I got so excited by it all, I went overboard and ended up making two of the Day Four blocks!!

These blocks all finish at 2 ¼" (ie are currently 2¾") and a lot of people shy away from blocks this size.
However there are a few tricks we can play to make sewing them up a little easier and more straight forward.
Most of us are familiar with making half square triangles a little bigger than necessary and trimming them down to size —

I often do this with other blocks as well. In the below photo, two x 1¼" squares called to be cut and sewn together. I sewed two slightly larger pieces together (these scraps were this size; I don't usually cut them at this stage) —

And then cut them to size —

The resulting Day five block - Log cabin.

I've been using this technique for a lot of my small Omigosh blocks too.

I've started making my pinwheels slightly differently too. I used to make the four HSTs needed, trim them to size and then sew them together.

Now I don't trim until the end —

(One HST was already trimmed for the third photo above!)

Trim

Day Six - Pinwheel block

Day Seven - Bowtie block
No shortcuts for this block!

Day Eight -  Lincoln Log

So I'm caught up and keeping up with these!

'til next time,

happy stitches, 

Friday Night with Friends and Family

I spent my Friday evening babysitting two wee toddlers. Once the house was quiet, I settled down to carry on with the afghan I've been working on lately. Although I thought I'd leave it for a while because of the summer heat, it's easy to pull out and put away when there are interruptions. 

Steve helped

And then he helped a little more

And even offered to help lay it out to check my progress.

I'm definitely getting somewhere with it!

I had one little squawk at about 9.30pm. Apart from that it was very peaceful. Thank you Cheryll for inviting us along to share in with Friday Night with Friends.

This morning there were more Ganma duties and I had a last minute birthday cake to make. No time for fussing with decorating. It was still a little warm when I spread the ganache but still looked quite edible!

While it was cooking and cooling I made the next two Temecula Quilt Company blocks for their Tiny Tree Sew Along. 

The first one was Broken Dishes

They had made the next one, called Homeward Bound, in brown so looked to be part of the trunk. While hunting out some brown scraps I came across a partial orphan block. 

I sometimes get laughed at for my extreme scrap collecting , but I was pleased with what I did with these bits.
We needed to make half square triangles and I realised I could cut some ready made ones.

A bit less sewing to do.

And a completed block —

The edges of these HSTs were bias because of the way I'd cut them so I'll need to be careful handling this in the future.
Momentarily I am up to date with this project and looking forward to seeing what tomorrow's block will be.
This afternoon I delivered the cake. The party (a 13th) was in full swing when I left and apparently the cake went down well :-)

'til next time,

happy stitches,