While I was happily quilting the above quilt, Bernie, my beautiful Bernie, started to make squeaking noises. I have no photos of Bernie. (Note to self: Must take a photo of Bernie.) She is my wonderful sewing machine... a Bernina Virtuosa QE 153. I've had her for three years now, and she hasn't been serviced once.. except for me oiling her regularly and cleaning out her fluff. So, it seems like she is telling me she needs a little more attention. Which is a problem since the closest Bernina dealer is a two or three hour drive from here. Sigh.... I will have to call and make an appointment.

In the meantime, I will have to use Ellie Elna, which I gave to Elizabeth. I tried to find a quarter inch foot for her today, but no luck. I tried a Brother one, but that didn't work. I will have to keep hunting.

Now, the quilt above, is our Jubail Friendship Quilt...... yes, dear friends, we made it over two years ago..... and I am now finally quilting it! I won't get it done for March, but hopefully it will be an April finished project. Then I need to keep working on the Riyadh one. (The J one was smaller, so I am finishing that first!!)

Four more sleeps till Alice comes!!!!!!!!!

to the farm. I took the kids to see their grandparents. It is a three hour drive towards the South Australian border. We took off on Monday afternoon and got there in time for dinner, and then came home on Friday.

While we were there, I worked hard on my crocheting and stitcheries :) In other words, I had a lovely holiday from cooking and cleaning and I just got to relax and stitch!!

I finished the little crocheted blanket:



I used four balls of yarn. Of course I could have gone on and made it bigger, but I didn't want to go and buy more balls. This is a nice little size to go over my knees as we approach winter.

I caught up with all the Veranda Views! Yay! I really love this project. I have to say that I enlarged the pattern... I was just not coping with the tiny size. I haven't taken any photos yet. I need to iron them and then I will take some tomorrow.

Now that I am back, I can keep going with quilting all the stuff I pinned last week :) And only 7 more sleeps until Alice comes to play.... woooohoooo! Can't wait!!!

Sorry, I am new to blogger and didn't realize there were comments to moderate :) I will get there....!!! All moderated now! Oh dear...!!!

Tracy, thanks for all the positive comments and suggestions for the quilts :) Now that they are pinned, I am mulling over all the options. As for your knitting, really, you are just too disciplined.... start crocheting already!!! Mind you, you are a very good influence on me.... must not start something new, must not start something new.... And we'd love to have you guys visit one day :)

Alice, as requested, here are photos of cats and quilts. Socks is initiating Garion's quilt :) Don't blame me for the black cat hair when you get it. It was your idea :)


Ok, comments are responded to and now I must get back to sewing :) Now that I think I know what to do with comments here, I shall answer them in the comment section next time..... I will get there,.. I will get there....! (i hope)

It takes up my whole kitchen. It is enough to make me even more worried about how I am going to quilt it. And then to top it all off, I think I would have done better to only have the one border, and have it blue. Sigh... I guess you live and learn.

It matches my kitchen cupboards though :)

I finished the aparments for Come Over to My House just in time for the new block to be posted. I did this last month too. I must try to finish the next house in the next week or so, rather than waiting till the last minute.

I've also been sneaking in some crocheting and today I started my third ball of yarn. It's fun to see it growing bigger.

And... And.....!!!! I finally put the borders on the Mystery Quilt!!!!! Yay! I had a bit of fabric shortage and didn't do it exactly as I was supposed to. Oh, and... I also put borders on two snowball quilts, which means I now have four quilts to pin.. ARGH! What fun! Whose bright idea was it to learn to Quilt??? NORA! I need you!!!

Alice and I took a little bit of time this afternoon on messenger drooling over Gammills. Sigh...

Enough yakking and dreaming, here are the photos of the quilts:

The Great Summer Mystery Quilt (ignore the Kangaroo's cap):


The snowball quilt for Daniel's best friend:

And Daniel's quilt, the same as above, but BIGGER.... how I will pin and quilt this one is a real worry:

See how nicely it matches his cap? Go the Roos!!! (Aussie football team)

By the way, you can't tell that I like blue... can you?!

Enough for today. I need to go and get dinner ready, and then decide where I am moving the kitchen table so that I can pin :)

Yes, it is a big tree... a very big tree....(block 3 from Harmony Quilts) and I am very happy with how it turned out. I have been lacking motivation today and finally forced myself to choose the fabrics for the tree and also for the apartments for Come over to My House. I will work on that later. I just wanted to get these photos up to motivate myself....

So, here is the tree:


And here is approx where it belongs in relation to the other blocks I've done so far:

I really need a floor with one color background... oh well. Getting there, getting there. Back to the cutting board now to make apartments.

We had a lovely weekend away :) We got to catch up with some very good friends and us ladies got a lot of crafting in (and that of course is the best thing about going camping!). We also went on Saturday morning to a couple of quilt shops. My dear friend Tracy so kindly offered to drive us ladies, and we left the kids with the men while we went off galavanting!


On the way home on Tuesday, I encouraged Cameron to take us home via the quilt shop :) There were some things I wanted to show Elizabeth, and Cameron loves to drive through different places. We stopped there and had lunch at a bakery, and then had a quick look at the quilt shop again. Elizabeth was so pleased - she had been looking for some horse fabric to make a quilt for her friend's birthday, and there she found a horse panel that was perfect! I also got a bit of background fabric, and some offcuts. I think I controlled myself quite well :)



I worked on some more of the Quilter's Blessings stitcheries:



and I made a start on this one:

Sorry the photos are not so good. It was dusk.. but I wanted to get a post up! Once I start putting sashing on I will take some better ones I hope.

Another dear friend (I am blessed with so many of them!!) was crocheting a granny square blanket. I had done one when I was a teenager, but had long since forgotten what to do! So while we were getting some groceries, I bought a crochet hook and some wool and asked her to teach me. Once I got started, it was very addictive! So, sadly, I have started another project...!!

This is how far I got:

Can you tell that the outside yarn is different than the inside?! I think the dark wool was in the wrong section, and I grabbed two balls in a hurry that were similar, but not the same. I did go back and get some more, and although it probably would look fine as is, I think I will pull the second ball of yarn out and use the original color... does that make any sense at all?! ~sigh~

And now I need to get off the computer and keep unpacking.... that is the part that is no fun :( Lots of washing and lots of sand! Ah, the joys of camping by the beach! But we did have a lovely, lovely time.

I got Dad to take a photo of Mum's apron. Now my sidebar is also nicely updated :)


And here are some of the stitcheries I have been doing over the past few weeks:

Veranda Views:

Noah's Ark:


Gail Pan's Christmas Wish:


I finally started the Quilters's Blessings:


Most of the above stitcheries I did when we were camping a few weeks ago. Daniel is now big enough to take over my role of helping put up the camper trailer :) Which means I can sit and stitch :) Yes, I have discovered that camping is a wonderful time to catch up on stitchery boms!

We are going camping again this weekend, so I need to go and trace, trace, trace! I'd better go get busy!

At the beginning of the year, I joined a few challenges. I really wanted to sew more this year and finish many of the UFO's lying around my sewing room... :) One of the challenges I joined is the one hosted by May Britt and Kris - One Project a Month Challenge. I have it in my sidebar (the main reason I started this blog because I couldn't seem to get it into my sidebar on my old one!!), so you can see at a glance what I have done each month.

In January I finished a project that was supposed to be finished last August. My friend had buttons from her Nanna, and wanted a way to display them. So I designed this simple pattern and made her a wallhanging.


For February I finally finally finished my sister's 30th birthday quilt (her b'day was back in August too...) and also made a cushion to match.

I was pretty pleased to have two projects done for the short month of Feb, and then managed to squeeze in an apron for my mother (which was supposed to be firstly for her b'day in Nov, then for Christmas... hmmm... there is a theme going here....!). I will get a photo of the apron up sometime during the week. I forgot to take it before I gave it to her!

So, now I need to think about what I am going to try to finish for this month. Of course in between finishing things I also have some BOM's that I have joined... but more on that in another post :)

Ok, in an attempt to stay organized and keep track of all the projects I have decided to do this year, I have started this blog just for my quilting.... I've had another one, but it didn't do what I wanted it to. Blogger seems to be quite easy to use, although I am still learning.

You can see in the sidebar some of the things I've committed to this year. There are more bom's, which I will put a link to sometime. This is a start at least :)