A beautiful gift, new hobby and holiday project

I am so fortunate to have wonderful friends. I really treasure their friendships and know that many of them will last a lifetime.

One of those is a young lady I used to work with in the corporate world. We also have a love of stitching and sewing, and she is also my buddy at the Friends in Stitches get-together scheduled for 2013 and Urban Stitches from 2012. I admire this woman so much, she is literally a machine. With having an extremely stressful corporate job that takes her all over the world, managing a home and three children, making costumes and taking the children here and there for dancing comps, and making two dinners everynight cause she is vegetarian, I honestly can't comprehend how she does it all. And then she comes up with these amazing handmade gifts!

This is one of the gifts I received yesterday. The others are under the tree (strict instructions not to open the other gifts until Christmas day).

  

I just adore this wooden bunting and it will go perfectly in my sewing room on the wall. She knows me very well considering the colour choice.

 It was a little hard to photograph and apparently too hard to wrap! What a devine sewing machine.

 I am so grateful for my gift Sam - thank you. I just love it!

(I will show you what I made her in a later post as its currently still wrapped up under Sam's tree).

So I picked up a recent copy of 'The World of Cross Stitching' recently as I just adored this little kit that came with it. I'm making it for my daughter for Christmas. You just pop it in a little card.  

 I have now decided I really enjoy cross stitching. oh dear........

Its very relaxing although you don't get very far after an evening's work.

I also have my eye on this project next......

I am not sure I should be taking up another craft hobby - I have too many as it is. Am I the only one that does this?

Have a lovely weekend. We are having a dinner at our place tomorrow with my girlfriend from kindergarten. Now that is also a long friendship!

Happy Stitching

Susie

Steady progress as we go.......

Steady progress is being made on my SAL SKoW quilt

These little flowers were a bit fiddly. But I got there in the end.

And yes, as one of my very kind instagram followers pointed out - I do need to add an 's' in there!

A litte bit of cooking with Quinoa. I don't mind this and need to eat it regularly due to the health benefits of this grain for coeliac's.

It did taste rather oishii.......(delicious).

Susie xo

FlowerandLinen bathmat

Forgive me for the forthcoming picture overload and the lapse in blog posts. Well, in truth I discovered I had exceeded my web album limit for blogger and needed to resize most of my photos to within the free limit. I didn't really have a clue how to tackle it other than purchasing storage space, however, a long story shortened - sorted for the moment.

Anyway, I haven't been idle during this silly season. I've been rather busy. Here is the makings of a new bath mat. I will be selling these on my Etsy site shortly for AUD29.95 (plus p/h) but if you are interested in purchasing for a gift or for yourself, please message me and I can show you snippets of the alternative colourway I am working on.

This bathmat has been made in the gorgeous MoMo fabric 'oh deer' by Moda. Its so vibrant and really brings life to a dull bathroom (not to mention takes the attention away from those areas you would rather not look at!). I love the birds and deer scattered throughout.



I still have loads more to share with you but will upload the additional photos next time.

In the meantime, happy stitching everyone! (and enjoy the silly season!)

Susie

'now at your local supermarket'

Over the years I have heard loads of positive comments about how 'groovy' and 'hip' this magazine was. I have enough magazines lying around the home however today I found this at the local supermarket.

I generally find the supermarket only stocks your gossip mags, some nice house and garden mags but never this.

Is this the best cover ever! Gorgeous stitching!





What a fantastic phone cover this is...just adore it. Half square triangles! WHAT? (wonder how much this is for my chrissy pressie from hubby).

Anyway, looking forward to having a cuppa and sitting down to read this (sometime).

Happy Stitching, Susie

Row Number Two

So its taken me longer to download these photos than stitch the blocks! sort of.  My internet/computer connection is playing up and I never know if it will take 10 minutes or 10 years to log on. Anyway, progressing slowly but steadily on my blocks

in order that I may complete row two of my Some kind of wonderful quilt.

Its been wonderful watching the progress of every one's work, especially those who have finished quilts. They all look amazing.

I'll keep plugging on.......

Happy Stitching, Susie

These rows are really hard to photograph.

Lucky Me

Yesterday I went to my mail box and jammed into it was a parcel containing all these goodies. I was so fortunate to win Laura's 100th blog post giveaway. I truly couldn't believe my luck! I really enjoy reading her blog. She has some wonderful projects on the go. The funny thing is one of her daughter's has moved her from the UK and lives about 30minutes drive from me - small world.

Look how many parcels there are - and all wrapped up in my favourite colour!

With the help of my eldest daughter, we unwrapped the following:

I'm not sure where to start describing how much I love absolutely everything I received, nor how useful and beautiful it all is but I'll start here:

sorry about the photo clarity, I had one child screaming on the trampoline and the other trying to get and crying at the same time, so in my haste, I took these photos with my phone instead of the camera, they haven't turned out very well.

Check out this fabulous book..... I can't wait to start on these.....my daughter and I kept trying to pick out our favourites but loved all of them, so no favourite.....hehe.

How much do you want to get started on these.....

Look at the designs....so cute!

So many ideas!

Now, for the extremely practical items. I have always wanted to try a self erasing pen, just never got around to it, but here is one! Laura obviously knows somehow I do alot of unpicking of stitches too. And how about those scissors, I am forever losing my one and only pair of stitching scissors but now I can keep one in my sewing box and one with the project I am working on.



THE cutest velvet ric rac and snowflake ribbons - ideas, ideas. 

what a divine heart - my younger daughter asked to use it for her teddy pillow

And wow! Kate's Spain's "joy" fabric....it's beautiful. The only Christmas quilt I have ever made (finished) is with another of her fabric lines.

Something I don't have anything of is buttons! I just adore these.

I did take a photo of the buttons out of the bags but for some reason it would only download them upside down!!

Laura told me in her note that she makes this jewellery. Isn't it adorable? The beads used are Red Jasper and Howlite.

And FELT!! Yes, I've always wanted some of this but wasn't sure where to buy it from. It came with a Penny Rug pattern too!! Gorgeous colours!

A close up of some of the gorgeous buttons...

So today I still gaze at my goodies, not yet used any of them as I am just admiring my luck.

Happy Stitching,

Susie

Row One done!

I set myself a goal last week to complete the first row of my SKoW quilt. Despite my entire family including mother, father and brother whom we had spent the first part of the week with coming down with gastro - I finished it! (not sure how I was the only one to escape it......lucky me).

 I was quite hesitant to start this daisy block as I was a little concerned about the curves on the leaves but it was fine.

More curves in the ice cream........

So here is my first row.....gee, they really are hard to photograph aren't they?



And I was able to get this far along in the second row today!

I am really enjoying viewing all the finalised quilts. Such a wonderful journey for all involved.

Happy Stitching, 

Susie 

Curtains made by me

A couple of weeks ago I was in Spotlight and I saw this lined fabric and thought it might be nice for curtains for my son's room. A week or so later I was in there again and saw it was 30% off - so I bought it.

And then I made my first set of curtains. There were many imperfections but all in all I think they turned out OK.

Excuse the iphone photos - just quick and easy

As you can see we already have shutters but they are not good for the light when you have a child that rises as soon as the birds start chattering or if we are lucky, at first light instead of when the birds start in the dark!

He has the smallest bedroom and I wanted something to take him through till when he is older. We already had the rod there from some pre-made curtains my daughter had (previous occupant of that room) so I was fortunate I could use that.

Hope he likes them!

Susie

Stitch-a-long still going strong

Well I am way behind but am still chugging along. I gave up just the other day on hand piecing all the 1 1/2" squares. I hand pieced all of them into two but once I got to the four 1 1/2" blocks I gave up.

Then I made a huge mistake and machined ALL of the two patch units into blocks of four - then I read the instructions........Only 27 (?) were required. doh!

I really wanted to see some of these squares attached to a block as my goal by the end of next week is to have the first row completed.

I have yet to stitch my little 'string' for my tag.....

Finding these chocolate blocks terribly difficult as I think I have used some 'drill' cotton scraps and its quite thick.

I have another two blocks already cut out with applique ready to be sewn. 

So my motto is slowly but surely. 

Keep up the great work everyone.

Happy Stitching

Susie