A Wonderful Surprise

With everything being so busy here lately I really haven't had much time to myself and very little time for my crafts. This has been getting me a bit down recently and one day in particular last week I was feeling really sorry for myself. You can imagine then what a wonderful surprise it was to go to my mailbox and find a parcel sitting in there. I haven't ordered anything online for ages now so I had nothing to expect, but as I turned it over I saw Ruth's name down as the sender. I quickly dashed inside as I realised it must've been her Pay It Forward (PIF) gift to me! I had signed up for it last year and completely forgot about it.

As I got inside Cheriese was excitedly yelling "present, present" as she helped me to open it. Inside I found the most gorgeous table runner! Before I could even say anything Cheriese seemed to read my mind and started ooohing and ahhing and saying "look mummy, it's pretty".

The best thing is that it fits perfectly on the chest of drawers I have in my entrance hall. The plan is for all the day's bits and pieces to be placed carefully inside one of these drawers, but lately they have been just thrown on the top of it, burying my digital photo frame and generally giving visitors and eye sore as soon as they walk in.

Not anymore, now is looks just stunning



Ruth has some more details about the runner on her blog here too.

Thank you so much Ruth, you seem to have just known the perfect gift for me. I adore the colours and the design you chose and not only did it brighten up a bit of a dark day for me, but continues to brighten up my entire home.

Stay tuned as I will be putting up my own 'Pay It Forward' here in the next day or so.

Natalie
xx

Kellie's workshop at Hettie's Patch

Having been away for the weekend has made this week pretty hectic with lots of things to do around the house and other sewing that needed to be competed, but I've finally found some spare minutes to post about my wonderful weekend with Kellie. It was lovely to meet her and to see her gorgeous quilts and pillows in real life. I thought they were stunning from her photos, but to see all the details up close was a real treat. I don't know if I'll ever get close to the perfectly stitched appliques that Kellie has mastered or even get my free motion quilting to resemble anything spiral-like at all, but I'm happy with the progress I made and am eager to keep practicing at it. Unfortunately I ended up with a terrible migraine on the Saturday and had to leave early, but thankfully I was able to shift it and felt 100% the next day, so got right to work on my dummy quilt getting the feel of free motion stitching and then was even able to get to stitching down all the applique for the practice piece and even started quilting it. I didn't get much of a chance to have a good mingle around with everyone and barely said more than a few words to both Emma and Andrea that were there too, so I hope I didn't seem rude, I was just so disappointed that I didn't get as much done on the Saturday that I really needed too, which meant for head down over my sewing machine as much as I good on the Sunday. Silly me didn't even think to take my camera with me, so I only have the two photos I snapped of my progress so far - but if you head on over to Hettie's Patch and Kellie's blogs, you'll see lots of lovely photos!

My dummy quilt sandwich to practice on

My practice piece which Kellie has called "Wish you were here!"

We each had a lovely bag and embroidered name tag made for us!

I really had a great time and would love the chance to do something similar again. A huge thank you to all the staff at Hettie's Patch for making it so enjoyable - all the little touches were just lovely and thanks again to Kellie for being a fantastic teacher! Now to set aside some time to finish up my practice piece and get tracing, cutting, fusing and stitching on the main project, "Willow".....

Natalie
xx

EB DQS#2 sneak peak

I'm part of the second doll quilt swap with the EB quilters and it's almost time for them to be all revealed - national opening day is Friday 7th November!! I have my parcel already and have been very good in not opening it, my sender didn't put her name on it so blog surfing hasn't revealed any clues to me either - so it will be a much anticipated day on Friday!

Here's a sneak peak of the one I've sent:
Now the nerves start to set in too..... hoping that my quilt is 'good' enough, hoping that my quilting novice-ness isn't too obvious and hoping that the child it is for will love playing with it too!

Natalie

My Table Runner

Now that AJ has received the table runner I sent her I can show it all off in here!

The front:

The back:
Close up:
Label:
I was really happy with how this turned out - I'm only a novice quilter and was impressed that I didn't have to unpick as much as I thought I would lol! The pattern I used was the "Moda Marbles Star Tablerunner". I had a wonderful time working on this and want to start working on a quilt for each of my boys now.
Thank you AJ for organising this swap!

Natalie
xx

Table Runner Swap Time

I am part of a table runner swap with the EB Quilter's group and I received mine yesterday from the very talented Emma!


Close ups
I love the flower stitching!

Full view on my table

I absolutely love this runner, it is completely my style and the colours look fantastic against our deep chocolate table - I'm so lucky! Thank you so much Emma and also huge thank you to AJ for organising this swap.

Here's a sneaky peak of the one I made which is currently on it's way to it's recipient......
Natalie
xx

The Doll Quilt I Made!

Well seeing as my swap partner has received the EB Quilters doll quilt swap I made, I can now post full size photos of it here:

All wrapped up:

Front:

close up of some of the dresses:

back:

Label:

I had such fun making it! I know it's far from perfect, I couldn't for the lift of me get all my little cornerstones lined up, even after endless unpicking and re-sewing, so I had to settle for the best I could do at the time. My machine quilting is a little wonky in places, but if I ended up handquilting it like I originally planned than it might have not been ready to post until this time next year ;).

Overall I'm really happy with how it has turned out, my first "pieced" quilt! I have been collecting some gorgeous butterfly fabric in various bright colours to make one for my friend's daughter for christmas.

Thank you so much Helen for organising this swap - we've all had so much fun and I'm sure we've inspired lots of others to give one a go too
Natalie xx

Raggedy Edge Quilt - FINIHSED!

Here's the final photos of the quilt I made for the EB sew-a-long:

yay, a washing line shot!

Back

Closeup


Already in use

Natalie xx

Still More WIP Quilt

It's almost done! I'm just about to put it through the washer and drier to reveal it's soft and fluffy side. Thought I'd pop in the final WIP photos:

Thank you so much Helen and Andy for organising this sew-a-long! Can't wait for the next one ;)
Natalie
xx

More WIP quilt

Silly newbie me bought the wrong wadding for my quilt, so ran back to SL yesterday to take it back and bought some of the Warm and Natural brand. While there I found a shelf full of new quilting fabric - all of it only $4.99 per metre (why didn't they have those in when I bought the fabric the other day!). So I picked out a lovely pink paisley one that I will use as my backing fabric. Here's a photo of it all together.


So later this afternoon I hope to get all the wading and backing squares cut out ready to sew them up tomorrow afternoon!

Natalie
xx

WIP - EB Raggedy Edge Quilt Sew-A-Long

Some of the girls from the EB sewing group are doing a quilt sew-a-long, Helen and Andy have the details in their blogs. I am running a bit behind the others, having only just had time to get to Spotlight today to pick out my fabric. Jai was being an absolute angel, but I didn't want to push my luck so tried to pick out something in colours I liked that I thought went well together too. In the end I only found three, but figured that would be enough, bought 70cm of each and came home a spent the next hour cutting them all up (YAY finally got to use the rotary cutter and mat I bought with my birthday voucher!)

I don't think that I have enough different prints to come up with an interesting layout that will still be symmetrical (I like symmetry!) so I think I will end up doing a simple diagonal pattern like this:

Please excuse the photos, the colours have come out a bit strange, but you get the idea ;)

It has actually turned out a bit bigger than I thought it would, but I guess it will shrink a bit after being sewn together.

Tomorrow's task is checking my stash for suitable backing fabric and cutting that into 6.5" sqaures and then attacking the wadding - So hopefully I will be all caught up by the weekend :D

Natalie
xx