Friday Night and Weekend Sewing

By the time I got home after work and a big grocery shop on Friday it was nearly too late for any Friday Night with Friends sewing. I was determined, however, not to post until I'd sewn the binding on the Round Robin quilt I've been working on lately.

Finally this morning I got it finished and now, this afternoon, I've have a moment to sit down and write my post!

Yahoo, the quilt is nearly done..... just a bit of playing with the hanging tabs and writing a label and it will be done!
Thank you Cheryll for hosting Friday Night with Friends. I hope there was enough slice for all 30 of us who joined in...!

There's not been a lot happening in The (sewing) Palace this weekend; instead rather a lot happening in the kitchen.
We've had a fabulous feijoa crop this year; we pride ourselves on being good feijoa eaters but this year we're having trouble keeping up with them!

So yesterday I froze at least 6 kgs of pulp. This morning I cooked up some more into chutney...looking forward to trying this batch, it had dates and apricots in it too :-)

And YD did something with her chillies...they look good in the jar...

Last night I finished reading the second of two books I've really enjoyed lately; one, The Promise Girls by Marie Bostwick, and the other, My Secret Sister by Helen Edwards and Jenny Lee Smith. Co-incidently both about families and sisters in particular. (The one by Marie Bostwick is a stand alone novel not connected to her others and not about quiting).(But enjoyable all the same!).

It reminded me that I have had a book sitting here that I was going to Giveaway here on my blog. I acquired a second copy of 'From here to Texas' (also by Marie Bostwick) which is connected to her Cobbled Court series. I have a soft spot for Marie after meeting her years ago on one of her book tours. She was a delightful lady whom I really enjoyed meeting.

Let me know if you would like to win this book...!

So if you haven't yet read this book and would like your own copy, let me know in the comments below. If there is more than one person interested, I'll do a draw for it at the end of the week.

I am happy to post to anywhere and maybe, just maybe, I'll pop a few other goodies in with it :-)

[I've been the lucky recipient of blog giveaways in the past, as well as kindness from blog friends so am wanting to keep the blog love circulating].

Happy stitches ♥

The Love Continues...

Friday started off really well with the excitement of Christmas in July. And it continued its upbeat theme when the mailman arrived with two more parcels - wow!
I had won a giveaway on the Cottage Tails blog; Leanne is a fellow kiwi from further down the island.
This is what arrived in my parcel -

The beautiful wool is a lace weight; don't you think that is a most gorgeous colour? It came with a pattern for a lacy scarf - I am so looking forward to making it. {The pattern is written by Margaret Stove, the lady who made a shawl for Prince William when he was a babe and who also designed the shawl given to Prince George on their recent NZ visit.}{Little old me rubbing shoulders with royalty :-)}

As you can see Leanne popped in some other goodies, including a violet plant (after another little conversation we'd had) which got planted straight away as per instructions! Thank you so much Leanne!!

And I was also on the receiving end of a delightful 'smile' from Jacquie; a truly random act of kindness. Jacquie has been sending these cute pincushions out all around the world. What a lovely thing to do.

Thank you Jacquie, it does make me smile when I look at and use it!

Now to share what I made for Jan for our Christmas in July swap. I got the impression from Jan's blog that she disliked a lot of the commercialism in Christmas and also thought that the likes of Snowmen at Christmas were inappropriate for an Australian Christmas. So these impressions guided my gift choice.

To go with the pot trivet I shared with you a few posts ago, I made this
oven mitt and a decorated tea towel.

This was a fun little notebook. You can see I used one of
Michelle's (Rag Tag Stitchin) alphabet people to decorate the front.

This was a new type of notebook cover to me; it had a flap that
folded over from front to back. I also liked the pen holder in it.

This was a pattern I found on Kaaren's blog, The Painted Quilt.

I thought these sentiments were lovely and you can see I had
fun with the quilting! Blew a few cobwebs away :-)

It feels quite amazing with all these gifts too-ing and fro-ing all over the place! There's a lot of sewing I'm trying to do at the moment (more gifts and more projects!) but my days as a lady of leisure :-) are being curtailed by a few of these little critters -

Yes, calving has started so I'm a (nearly) fulltime farmer at the moment!

Spring is on its way!!

Thank you for visiting, have a happy day,
and happy creating,

Party Time!

A special thanks to Chooky for inviting us all over to her place this past weekend...a weekend of sewing sounded like a great way to celebrate the Chookshed's 2nd birthday. 

I started with some curtains for YD - winter hit New Zealand suddenly last week and her thin little curtains just weren't keeping her flat warm....I cheated and bought lengths that already had the tape sewn on. All I needed to do was the sides and the hems...

Woohoo using my quilting skills and a walking foot on the curtains!!

I spent a bit of time on a little design I was putting together for our 'Seasons' club at The Country Yard. It's a 12 inch mini... had lots of fun with this one and wow a finish for June already!

'It feels a bit like Winter'

It sure does feel a bit like winter. The fire is going well and we had several frosts last week that knocked the socks off us - Northland NZ is supposed to be the winterless north!! The photos below show that this isn't always true!

 Anyway back to my weekend of sewing to celebrate Chooky's Chookshed's 2nd birthday...
On Sunday I also stitched a little —

a Rag Tag freebie from Michelle Ridgeway designs

and crocheted a little —

This is growing nicely and ever so cosy. It went to America with me
and helped keep me occupied at airports and on planes!

— And all was well with the world!

I just want to finish off with sharing two lovelies that I have been lucky to win lately; the lovely Kris sent me this as a monthly OPAM winner - a very cute pattern of one of her Tag Along Teddies designs that I look forward to stitching up one day - thank you Kris!!! Opam is a great motivator and a good way to keep on track with my projects, it should be us sending gifts to two lovely hostesses, Kris and Peg, shouldn't it?

 And I was delighted to also win this English Paper Piecing kit through a sponsered giveaway on beaquilter's blog.

It will be a case of coming up with a clever plan with my fabrics to get an effective design. (Gulp did you notice the size of some of those pieces?!). Thank you Bea, and also to Hillbilly Quilt Shop.

Bea is a clever crafter who willingly shares her learnings with us. I originally came across her blog through her EQ7 tutorials, but she does all sorts of things.

And here it is only 20 minutes (or so) until midnight on Tuesday night - yes the weekend, and Chooky's birthday bash is well and truly over.
Time to stoke up the fire and pop off to bed,
Happy creating everyone!

Stitching away, buzzing away and a Giveaway

After my flurry of posts and sewing at the end of October, it seems to have all been quiet here in Raewynland. 

So time for a catch-up (and a giveaway, however you have to wait till the end of the post for that!).

I've been busy handstitching away, but all I can show you are some sneaky peeks....I am sure you will guess the theme of these couple of projects....

More stitching away - this time some more quilting. I realised the other day that I haven't really been sharing about a project I have been designing/sewing for my favourite quilt shop this year. It is a BOM which focusses on learning different fmq skills. I've been really enjoying doing it; here is this month's block. Lori, from the Inboxjaunt has inspired me a lot this year and I was tickled pink that she has given me permission to use some of her designs in this project.

This month's block with Lori's picket fence design.

We have two more months to run on this BOM - I haven't quite run out of ideas yet!!!

 The bees have been buzzing away - it's that time of year here in New Zealand,

They might only be scrubby Manuka bush trees but they are so pretty at the moment with their brilliant white flowers....

And they do make the wonderfully flavoured and healthy Manuka honey. We have several beekeepers vying for spots in the bush to put their hives. For us, the rent is a good supply of honey. 

 No stitching for me yesterday as I went down to Auckland to the end of year exhibition of YD's design course. (Year 2 of 4 for her). Great to see what she has achieved this year, particularly as she hasn't been so well. And very cool to see the works of the other students too.

Can you guess, Dr Suess inspired font!

 More stitching away, I finished the mini wholecloth I was sewing for the 'It's all about Borders'  2013 FMQ challenge run by SewCalGal. Yaay!!

So hard to get a decent photo of something like this, getting the light right
 was a challenge in itself.
Excuse the photo bombing by the dog and the fence that looks
like it needs a waterblast!!

I had several comments and emails about the feathers I did on this quilt. They were done without a sewn/drawn spine and were so much fun - and easy- to do. 

I had found this book, Dream Feathers, by Peggy Holt, and was totally inspired by it! So much so, that I decided a second copy would be a good idea so that I could have a GIVEAWAY!!

Peggy has really good instructions - for beginners through to more experienced quilters, and lots of different ways of using and shaping these feathers. They really are great fun to do and also quite liberating as well (if that makes sense!). She has some good thoughts on the shaping of our feather lobes too. I think it's a really useful book.
If you would like to win my spare copy, please say so in a comment below. My only requirement is that you are a follower of my blog so please say how you follow. I will draw this on my next blog post - in a few day's time. (If you don't want to go into the draw, you can still comment, just say you don't want it!).
Till then, happy stitching,

Some things Christmas

I think I've made the deadline for Narelle's 'One Christmas Item per Month' round up for March. Narelle has the lovely Pins and Whiskers blog and I appreciate the extra motivation to help me to finish some items.
This month's item is this cute wall hanging designed by Michelle at The Raspberry Rabbits.

A bit much glare this morning. It's making the colours a bit weird!

The felt shapes are fusible webbed and then hand stitched on.

I love how it's ok to merge very basic handsewing stitches with whizzy-around
free motion quilting.
Ooops. I've just realised too that I need to sew a star button/sequin on the star.

And talking of things Christmas, I was very fortunate recently to receive a gorgeous parcel from The Australian Homespun Magazine. In it were these gorgeous fabrics from Anni Down's Christmastime range.

Aren't they scrummy?!

Lucky me, I was Reader of the Month, with some photos from this project here. I've been a long time reader of this magazine so I am especially delighted.

Thank you very much Homespun Magazine - I am looking forward to using these!!

Thank you to Shirley for sending me this photo from her copy
of the magazine. She's received hers in the UK but us here in NZ are
still waiting for ours!!
Go figure!!

And it feels like all my Christmases have been coming at once, as last week I discovered I had won a $25 voucher from "I have a Notion". This was through a competition on SewCalGal's blogsite. Kelly at "I have a Notion' has been wonderful to deal with and it was fun shopping her site for goodies. I eventually decided on some Wonderfil threads to use for my invisible machine appliqué.... cant wait till those arrive too :-)
Whew two posts in two days, what is the world coming to?
Have fun everyone,

A small finish and a nice day

I'm not sure where this week has gone and when I thought back on it this afternoon I couldn't think what I had been up to (apart from farm and stock work that is!)... a peek on my camera put me right...

... I remember now, I finished this book cover for a friend.

I used some of those stars from this post....

And was really happy with how it turned out.

Love the fabrics!! Hope my friend does too!

I can now report that the book arrived safely at it's new home!

I also finished week 2's blocks for Joanne's Threadhead Quiltalong

Churn dash blocks to go with the Star blocks. I'm just doing 2 of each instead
of the 3 she is doing... and having a play with different colour placements
and effects.

On Friday I travelled down to my parent's place (approx 5 1/2 hours from home). I have left the trusty MOML to look after my calves....

Mum turned 75 today. Pretty flowers arrived by courier. Hard case seeing Sunflowers
in Spring! 

This morning I went with Mum to her Embroidery Guild's exhibition. It turned 30 and I have never seen so many ladies wearing pearls at once!!

Without proper  permission to take photos, I didn't. You'll have to believe
me when I say there was lots of beautiful work there!

Walking back to the car I was fascinated with this street art on a wall.

The outline of the design was marked and the general public
could come along and fill the areas with handprints. Then
the black edges of the pictures were done. Very clever.

 While Mum and her ladies in pearl necklaces had a special luncheon, Dad and I went for a walk around his orchard. I'm a bit late for the spectacular blossom show this year, but there are some trees that still look nice.

Nashi Pear under the shade cloth.

Crabapple bossom.

Dad, Crabapple blossom and the sheep.

Rounded off a nice day with a Roast Pork dinner and Lemon Birthday Cake.

Found the photogenic Nigel on my camera!

Tomorrow I head back home. Hope all of your weekends are going nicely too,

Happy creating,