Another catch-up

I've gotten behind again so sit tight for lots of photos!
One day when the 5 year-old twins came to visit, they insisted they needed to make some shorts for their Barbie and Ken.

Out came the pattern and out came some fabric. George was the most keen to sew - 

After they had gone, I finished up the fiddly bits for them-

And we had two happy children!

Another time they visited, they wanted to go adventuring down at the stream-

Amazing how quickly these two are growing up!

Sewing wise I haven't been up to much lately, with other commitments taking my time. However I have made another small quilt for our series of them at the shop. A single block quilt this time-

Simple walking foot quilting- 

I really do like this 'block' so made another one using some leftover bits and pieces- 

There may be more of these in my future!!

Back in February, the MOML and I had a weekend away, travelling down to the Bay of Plenty to celebrate the 80th birthday of one of my uncles.

We stayed at the Karangahake Gorge on the way down. A beautiful area with a rich gold-mining history. We did one of the walks there, it went over some swing bridges, along the river and through an old railway tunnel. Very cool.

We then carried on to Papamoa, where Mum lives. 

The next morning, we climbed Mount Maunganui with my sister and her husband. A great workout! And great views...

After a quick dip in the sea, we spruced ourselves up for my uncle's birthday lunch-

Mum, my sister, and I - 

The next day we travelled home, having had a brilliant few days away.

I'm about to start another adventure-------more on that next time!!!!

See you then,
Raewyn

February and now March ---

I'm not sure where the months are going and I can't believe that I've gone nearly six weeks without blogging here...

February was a busy month and there was also a bit of family stuff going on which threw me a bit.
[However, I have been keeping up with my one-photo-a-day challenge over *here* so I was pleased about that.]

At the beginning of March, The Country Yard had its annual launch of new projects and BOMs, etc. So most of my sewing in February focussed on that.

I didn't contribute as much as I would have liked, however these were my main projects —

First up was our Starry Delight Mini quilt for our Mini Quilt Club —

🠉Oops slight error in my chain piecing!🠉

My finished mini (20" square) —

I folded a square into a triangle to form hanging corners —

I've also been making some spool blocks for a SAL at the quilt shop. I chose to make mine from Tilda fabrics. I used a bundle which contained various ranges - I was a bit concerned initially about how they all sat with each other but in the end I was really pleased with how they turned out —

I made use of some cute wooden pegs I found in a $2 shop - they have numbers on them which were handy when I was keeping track of the rows I was joining. (Usually I use scraps of paper plus pins to number my rows.)

Tammy helped. Of course —

I forgot to take a photo of the finished top (only, so far) before I took it into the shop so you have to put up with this inadequate one!

I chose to make just 2 of each block, and bordered it with strips of leftover fabrics.

The launch at the shop went well. We spent the day before sprucing the shop up, hanging new quilts, moving others, moving fabrics, and displays and so on. I took a couple of photos just as we opened on Saturday morning. As you can see the place was looking nice and fresh.

We had a birthday in early February with youngest grandie Odie turning four. He had a low pressure birthday party with a couple of friends and his cousins to play with.

Odie and Lily relished getting totally soaked!

YD made the cake - covering all of his requests nicely. He asked for dinosaurs, lollipops, trains and a volcano! —

An interactive cake!

Ok so that's probably enough for now.......

Apologies to those I haven't visited and replied to in recent times. I think I'm back on track now 😊

'til next time, 

happy stitches,

Raewyn

A Mini Swap and a Show and Tell

I was thrilled earlier this year when Janet of rogue quilter invited me to swap with her...I've admired her work and her blog for some time and we both have a love of teeny tiny projects.
How exciting it was when the BIG day arrived - we'd each received our parcels - and we could open them!
The rules of the swap were simple - the quilt had to be under 18" square - beyond that it was creative license to do what we liked and create something we hoped the other person would enjoy.
What a thrill it was to open Janet's package - it truely was a heartsinging moment - wow!!

Don't forget this is a mini - it's actually only 12" square!

Look at those tiny pieced pin wheels!
Janet's workmanship is exquisite! Love love love :-)

Just to show you the scale of things!!!

But wait, there's more - also in the package was this gorgeous pin cushion!!

Plus some mini-charms and a tumbler template, wee pin cushion kit, and a delicious cake-in-a-cup mix!

Janet also popped in some green scraps after I mentioned once that I didnt
have much variety in my greens!

Thank you so much Janet, this was a fabulous swap. I so enjoyed it, it was fun making for you and an honour to have your goodies in my home ♥

In my rush to post my package (yes I was running late!!!) I nearly forgot to get out my camera but I did remember at the last minute!

In exchange I made Janet this Granny Squares mini. I had picked up that this was one design she wanted to make but hadn't yet - 

This one finishes at 18" square.

I felt it really needed sashing -  joining the blocks would have been very
messy  - but to keep it under 18 " meant it had to be extra narrow!!

Last year Janet very kindly sent me a copy of a mini quilts magazine which I hadn't been able to get hold of, so I decided she needed a little something extra. I put together this notebook for her.

And I couldn't post something from New Zealand without a kiwiana
decorated handtowel.

Janet has written about our swap adventures *here*. If you don't know her blog, do visit..it is always an enjoyable and inspiring read.

There was more excitement this week when we had our show and tell at The Country Yard for our Friday's Village QAL. This was Moda's Be My Neighbour which we adapted to include wee pieces of challenge fabrics that needed to be included in each block.
I apologise for the poor photographs. We have too many workbenches and pieces of furniture - so it's difficult to see the whole quilts.
Three of the quilts have been quilted; the rest were tops. (And a couple of people haven't go their's completed yet).

Five of them...

...another two ( the one on the right is also in the top photo)

And one on another wall.

It was amazing to see how different they all looked, and how the challenge fabrics worked with different combinations of colours, etc.

I took a few quick closeups to show the different border treatments.

Kerryn on the left and Nancy on the right.
Kerryn's birds flew off her quilt and ended up on Nancy's :-)

Ngaire on the left and Bernice on the right.
Ngaire added lots of extra applique - flowers and cats. Her's was quilted,
look how she cut the corners off!

Noeline enhanced hers with some stitchery.
And came up with a different border treatment.

Liz did some fun fussy cutting for her windows.

Inthia's was given a cheery finish with the wee squares in her border and a
totally scrappy binding.

I previously talked about mine *here*. The quilting isn't finished yet but I've
made a great start!

So this week has had some good highlights!!
And a roast and the rugby (yaay go the All Blacks, whew!) at our daughter's last night was a great way to round off Saturday.
I've finished my outside jobs for this morning already and the weather's looking a bit grim....might be time to get some sewing out, I think!

Happy stitches,

 

OMG!!

Lots to report - One Monthly Goal! and Oh My Golly Gosh!

Lucky for me it's Leap Year as Leap Day today has given me the extra time I needed to meet my One Monthly Goal (OMG) for February.
I signed up with Heidi of Red Letter Quilts at the start of the month, pledging to finish this mini quilt this month. I was confident I had plenty of time to do the task but whew talk about squeeze it into the last few days!

This mini was a SAL called Market Day which Pam Buda of Heartspun Quilts ran in 2014. All I needed to do was quilt and bind it so I'm pleased it is finally done!
I quilted this by stitching in the ditch, and decided it needed very little else. I used one of my Bernina's decorative stitches in the border but it would have been totally fine without it.

The bobbin helps to give some perspective of size.
This mini is 16 ¾" square.

This was such a fun quilt to make, special thanks to Pam for this fun sewalong. (I have two more of these to complete....who knows, they might be turning up in a OMG post later this year!)
And thank you again to Heidi for hosting OMG; click *here* to go to her link up page, there have been a lot of finishes this month.
Oops, cant forget the Before and After photos —

Before

After.
The wee dog is happy with his new look chair :-)

And Oh My Golly Gosh, I have more finishes to report!!

Calendar Bears was in the pipeline for most of last year and here it is in its finished state - yaay!!
Thank you to Michelle Ridgeway of Rag-tag stitchin' for this lovely design, it was a joy to stitch.

I think this lady is my favourite block - what a great mixture, bears and quilts!
She's a little light, the background fabric is more beige than white.

Around this time every year, my local quilt shop, The Country Yard, has a special day to showcase its latest projects. As I work there, I've been busy helping to sew up samples for kits, classes and monthly programmes. It's a hectic time for all of us but also fun, getting to sew new designs, play with new fabric, and come up with ways to excite and motivate our customers. I designed this table runner for one of our classes. Apart from the binding there is no handstitching - the class is Invisible Machine Applique - should be fun!

While I love to do needleturn by hand, there just isn't enough time to do it all that way... I've been playing with this technique for a few years now and as new products come on the market, it just gets easier and easier!

I learnt something new today - well actually,  it was possibly just confirmation of what I already knew - sometimes it's just not worth doing house work ... a bit of a spring clean (well, early autumn clean) in the laundry resulted in water everywhere and a 90 minute round trip to town for a replacement part ... sigh ... I should have just ignored the housework and gone straight to my sewing!

Hope you have a creative week,

'till next time,