Sunday Stash - Prize Winnings

I just realised that I haven't blogged about the fabrics I won as part of the Something New Sampler quilt along which saw me put this little baby together earlier this year:

You can see more photos here if you are interested.  Anyway, in the voting my quilt top 'Pole Dancing' came in third and I won a fabric bundle from Sew Me a Song.

Now I'll be the first to admit these fabrics are outside my usual style. I LOVE bright colours in my fabrics and these are very muted for my liking.

Some have a bit of a vintage sewing theme:

The others are more sort of more depression era style which I have to say is not one of my favourites. 

Not sure what I'm going to do with these so into the stash they will go for a bit of a think until their turn comes up! 

Anyone have any suggestions for them?

Linking up with Sunday Stash at Finding Fifth!

Pressing Board and QBSA Block for May

A little job I have been wanting to sort out for a good while is to make a pressing board to have near my sewing machine.  Up until now I've been using a folded up towel and while it works, it slides off and moves around and is generally a bit blah.

I finally remembered to ask my lovely other half to cut me a square of wood from supplies he had stored up in the rafters in the shed (hence why I needed him to do it - I wasn't grovelling around in the dust and cobwebs up there for anything!).  I measured up the spot I wanted it for and left him with it.

Later he brought in a (thankfully) dust and cobweb free piece of board, nicely sanded all around which fit perfectly.  I promptly wrapped my old towel around it and gave it a test drive and even in that state I loved it!

No time to sort it out that day but today I made an envelope using the old towel and then covered the lot with some fabric I had and here it is:

Yes, I know, its not very exciting to look at but I love it because it fits perfectly!  When the sewing cabinet is fully open it looks like this:

I use the bit on the right for my small cutting board and to layout the pieces before I join them and now I can't wait to get started on a project to test it all out!

Before I go, my partner in Quilting Block Swap Australia for May is Kelly from Queensland and here is the block I am sending her:

Kelly was after an Ohio Star block in pinks and as she is collecting blocks to make a quilt for her grand-daughter's 'big girl bed', I thought the little sleeping animals would be just right.  I hope she likes it!

Star Seams Pillow

The other day I shared photos of a paper pieced star I made using the Star Seams tutorial at Six White Horses (see this post for links):

and I figured that I would one day make a pillow.  Well 'one day' arrived a lot sooner than I thought!

On the weekend I had a bit of time and decided to play around with some fabric and this is what I came up with:

This is the first time I've made a pillow and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out!  I just realised I forgot to take a photo of the back but its just plain in the aqua fabric with an overlapped opening, so you're not missing anything exciting there!  I quilted around all the narrow dark blue lines and I was tempted to quilt the white area but I really love the crispness of the plain white so I decided to leave it be.

I think I'll be making some more pillows soon, its such nice quick project to do.

Thanks for stopping by,

Star Seams from Six White Horses

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a post by Anna on her Six White Horses blog for a tutorial for a paper pieced star block called Star Seams which really caught my eye and I just knew I needed to give it a try one day.  Well last weekend I had finished all my April tasks and had a bit of sewing time so I thought ' Now's the time!'.

I had a fossick around in my stash and decided to make the block using some of my favourites at the moment.  I'm thinking I might make it into a pillow for our bed.

Anyway, here's how it turned out:

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, although do I wish I had changed back to darker thread when I was joining all the segments together.  The stitching shows up a little in the middle (as you can see below) but on the whole I think it looks good.  Hopefully by the end of the month I can quilt it and make that cushion cover!

I really love the effect of this star but I'm not sure whether I'll make another one!  There was a bit of fiddling around and I had to get a little creative when joining my halves together.  No-one was more surprised than me when it lined up as well as it does (luckily you can't see the back!)  Still, never say never - I may just feel the need again one day.

I have to say I probably saved my sanity in places by sewing the wedges together with a long basting stitch on my machine and checking they lined up before stitching them together with a short stitch.  Much easier to unpick that way when you don't get it quite right!

Thanks Anna for sharing your lovely design!

And Sew On - May Block

I love it when the first of the month falls on a Wednesday as its my allocated sewing day.  It lets me get stuck into that month's projects straight off the bat!

The block for May for the And Sew On BOM was Keep Calm and Press On.  Funny how I'm happy to fire up the iron for pressing anything quilting related but drag it out for actually ironing clothes? No way, too much trouble!  Anyone else have that problem?!

Anyway, after considerable muckups, unpicking and starting over in the case of one piece of the pattern, along with some sessions of, lets say, language which was not child friendly (luckily I was home on my own!) I finally managed to finish this block yesterday. I can't believe it took me most of the day!  I should point out that the problems I had were all of my own making, not related to the pattern itself, which was perfectly fine!

Pretty happy with it, although I would have liked the patchwork on the ironing board to stand out more.  That was my fault because I changed my fabric choice for the ironing board at the last minute and didn't think about how it contrasted with the patchwork bit.  Never mind, its okay!  It should fit in nicely with my others:

Just noticed how washed out that photo looks.  The yellow fabric on the cotton reel block is the same fabric I used on this month's block!  Not very yellow in this photo.  Oh well, I'll take a better photo down the track!

Cheers,
Thanks for dropping by,

April Projects Finished

I can't believe its the end of April already so after polishing off my April UFO project I snapped some photos to share!

My project this month was to make some cardholders for Christmas presents.  I wanted to make some to match the bags I made a couple of months back and then made some extras for other people!

Here they are all together:

and this is what they look like inside (in the same order):

I used a pattern from Nancy's Couture blog here.  I just need to add the closures and they're done!

While I was away my block from my April swap partner Robyn arrived. Its lovely!  Only one more to go before I can pop them all together.

Robyn asked for a block with teacups/teapots/coffee mugs in any colours.  I had some teacup fabric so I appliqued a teapot onto the fabric and fussy cut some cups and appliqued them too. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo in my rush to get it in the mail before the end of the month! Rats!

Anyway, that's pretty much it for this month.  Really pleased that I've managed to complete my April UFO project as well as my No. 13 project (read about it here). Bring on May I say!

Thanks for reading my blog today!

April Getaway Wrap Up!

April seems to have flown by but probably more so as I was on annual leave for two weeks and we spent a week at Pine Point on Yorke Peninsula in South Australia.  Nothing fancy, we hired a shack right opposite the beach and just chilled out.  My hubby loved that he could just walk across the road and around 10 metres to the beach and fish at high tide and at low tide he could go crabbing.  Only down side was that the tides were only really good for 3 or 4 days as they were leading into a dodge tide later in the week but he enjoyed it while he could!

 I loved being able to just wander over the road and see what was happening on the beach. The weather was great, low 20's almost every day and although sometimes it was cloudy, most of the time it was sunny and so nice to be able to enjoy the sun without frying in the heat as we have for the last few months here in South Australia!

I love the way the clouds look in this photo. Not sure if you'll be able to see it but there are two specks on the horizon on the right hand side and that is my hubby and son out crabbing!

 The beach looks totally different with the tide in as you can see in the next shot. Its taken from up on a cliff behind where we were staying and our shack was to the right of the second power pole in the photo. Not far to walk to the beach!

 We spent a day down the bottom of Yorke Peninsula at Innes National Park.  It turned out to be the most amazing, sunny day so made for glorious photos of the sea and I could bore you with many but I'll control myself!

First stop was Stenhouse Bay, which had been a gypsum mine for a long time. The colour of the water was just gorgeous!

After a walk around a trail off to the right with beautiful views in all directions we headed off to find somewhere for lunch.  This was the view from our picnic table while we were having lunch - hard to take don't you think?

 Not far away was this amazing beach, the size of which is hard to convey in the photograph, it was enormous and not a footprint to be seen! Way at the back on the horizon, behind the smaller island, is Kangaroo Island.

There was actually a family fishing on the beach, tucked away on the far right end of the beach and they looked tiny they were so far away!  Can you see them in this shot?

Further along we stopped for a rest break at a campsite and happened along on some of the locals:

I'm sure this one had a joey in the pouch, although I think it was at a very young stage as she was doing a lot of pouch maintenance while we were there.  There were quite a few others around us among the bushes.  My husband is mad keen on birdlife so we spent a lot of time peering at the treetops but unfortunately no photos to share!

We stopped on our way home to have a coffee at Marion Bay, a nearby town and my hubby spotted a little runaround boat he thought would be handy if only we had a towbar on the car!

Think we might need a bigger car for that one!  We also called in at Minlaton to say hi to these emus (there were also kangaroos and wallabies) on the way back to the shack.

The rest of the holiday was spent in chill out mode and on the night before we were due to come home I said it could rain now that I'd had my holiday. Sure enough I woke up during the night to hear steady rain falling - the first we've had here in Adelaide for sooooooo long. It rained all night and all the next day as well - steady, soaking rain and we were so overdue for it, the soil just drank it all up. Here's hoping for a bit more to top it up!

So that's where I've been lately. An update on my April projects coming soon!