SSCS 2012 Received

These are the lovely items that Karol-Ann made for me for
Chookyblue's Secret Santa Christmas Swap (SSCS) 2012.

This bag is sturdy and roomy and has a magnetic snap closure.
 

 The needle case is charming with lots of felt pages.

And this great Christmas stocking - always good to tuck those little surprises in and not just at Christmas! At least that's what I'm hoping...
 

This is the delightful hand-made flower on the bag.
I thought it worthy of a close-up.

All the loot. Thanks so much Karol-Ann!


And a big thanks to Chookyblue for another great SSCS.

Yellow HST and Christmas Ornament

My groups' HST swap continues with the colour for January being yellow, which also encompasses shades of gold, brown and orange. I've pulled these fabrics from my stash. Not too sure about some of them, but I will cut my charms and proceed. I'm sure it will all work out. Gotta love scrap quilts!

This is the ornament I made for my SSCS lady, Michelle. She adores gingerbread men. 

If you visit her she is currently doing a tour of all her amazing Christmas decorations. 

Here the gingerbread man is modelling next to a broken iPad.
Mr Fixit is putting on a new glass screen for DD #1.

I've got a turkey to get in to the oven, I think. Gotta check if it's thawed.
My days have been pretty tightly scheduled to fit it* all in.
Still, all good here.

* The day job. The housework. The shopping. The wrapping. The laundry. More day job. More housework. More shopping. Bout of gastro. More day job. More wrapping. More shopping. More laundry. And so on and so forth. Still, gotta' love Christmas! - and catching up with all the rellies is definitely worth it!

Flower-filled meadows with dainty streams...

I have finished the little quilt I started at this retreat.
I won the fabrics in a give-away that I blogged about here.


It's nice to make something to keep.

To make the blocks I stacked the six pieces of fabric.
I then made five cuts through the layers at various slight angles.
This gave me six stacks of six fabrics.
I carefully shuffled the fabrics.
Stack one was left alone.
Stack two had the top piece moved to the bottom.
Stack three had the top two pieces moved to the bottom.
Stack four had the top three pieces moved to the bottom.
Stack five had the top four pieces moved to the bottom.
Stack six had the top five pieces moved to the bottom.
The blocks were then re-sewn and carefully pressed.
I took my stack of six new blocks and turned it 90 degrees.
I then re-did the steps above.
After they were sewn and carefully pressed,
the blocks were trimmed to the largest block possible.
I played with the layout until I was happy.
Added the white border and found the striped binding in my stash.
I used wavy quilting using my walking foot.

This quilt makes me think of soft green meadows full of flowers
with dainty streams flowing through.

It must be nearly Christmas because...

I have received my first Christmas present!! I joined Chookyblue's Secret Santa Christmas Swap (SSCS) and the lovely Karol-Ann from sewkalico has sent me these presents!!

 Look at these gorgeous hand-made birds - complete with their own keeping-safe pouch (wish I'd thought of that.)

Today is the day I put the tree up. 

Can you guess which ornaments will go on first?

Thank you Karol-Ann!!

Is it December already?

I know I've been pretty quiet on the old blog lately. Too much of saying yes to things. So other than over-committing my time and thus needing to be committed, life is pretty good. Although we did discover a leaking water pipe this afternoon. Fortunately it's on the water corp's side of the metre. But they will still dig a really big hole to fix it. I'm currently procrastinating paperwork duties, but I feel I do owe my lovely quilting friends a word or two.

In quilty news, I did finish my secret Christmas sewing and it is winging it's way across the sea (and I'm not divulging which one). My spell check doesn't like the word quilty - honestly - we all know it's a real word! Right click, add to dictionary - much better. So a rambling post needs a photo or two. Will have to browse my albums to see what's happening.

These are kangaroo paws on a lovely rooftop garden in the city of Perth.

 This is the new Perth Arena. It's a concert/sport venue - very cool inside too.

We had the opportunity to traipse (great Scrabble work BTW) through some old City buildings last month. This old tiled floor caught my eye. Don't know if it will be saved or not. Hopefully.

This cornice is amazing. It is in the process of being restored.

What can I say? It's an old stairwell. I loved it.

And of course we've had a bit of this lately. Wind and rain last week. Hot this week.

So I'm off to do something so I won't keep getting emails from my fellow guild volunteers wondering where my data is. They're all lovely and we all work hard - running a state guild is not easy. I can only hope the members appreciate that we are volunteers and fit these responsibilities in around the day job, the family and other commitments. And we do actually like to sew sometimes.

I'll just pop back to my photos and see if I can actually find one that's quilting related. Back in a tick...

Are you still here? Wow, I was totally lost in there. Anyway - not really quilty but very cool.

Buttons sewn on to a straw hat and worn by the cutest 7 year old young miss.

My next HST colour is yellow/gold/orange/brown. I'm off to shop my stash. Although there may have been a little retail therapy today when I had to go to this particular shop where I had to pick up something for Mr Fixit. It's my civic duty to support my LQS - right?

I know it's incredible, but I do not yet have my tree up. How can that be? And it's December and everything.  All is not right if the tree is not up. But it soon will be on the weekend.

Is that the time!!! Gotta Go! Take care until next time.