Bloggy Visit

This past weekend,

I had the joy of a bloggy friend to visit!

Such fun!

Kate and her son came to stay

and we had a great time.

The first day I subjected her to a Christmas market I was doing,

but she certainly made the day fly by!

It was the first time I've ever done a market

and had a decent coffee!!! - Thanks Kate.

 

The second day we managed a bit of sewing!

We decided we wanted to make a block

which could be made into a small Christmas wallhanging

and would remind us of the visit.

(The block pattern is Bonnie's Happy Scrappy Houses.)

 As Kate said...

Can you guess who's is who's? :)

If you know me,

you'll know it's the top one...

although we should probably have swapped

and made a block for each other. Next time!

 

Of course mine is not quilted (yet)

and shan't be for a while.

Scary Scrappy Houses

I have completed a UFO!!!

Toni sent me these cool Happy Scrappy House blocks. I doctored some of the windows and doors to make them more scary for DS1 and have machine quilted it in metallic varigated thread that I won some years back in a raffle at Birgit's Quiltfest. (Time to win another raffle as I'm out of this thread now LOL - or perhaps I just over-quilted with it??)



Here's a close-up of the quilting. I tried some words. I have never done words or much machine quilting, but I am really enjoying it.



I definitely need more practice and I also just need the hanging sleeve or something like that and it's done, done.


I've been having a little play with the leftovers of some charm packs. I robbed the charm packs of roses and then thought that some of the rest of the fabrics would make a few small Autumn wallhangings...



It's still in the 'play' stages... I cut the pumpkins out free hand then I tried a bit of hand stitching and machine stitching of the felt pumpkins and just played around... These were fun. One will be a very mini gift for the hostess of the annual Halloween party.

We just did not 'do' Halloween in South Africa when I was growing up so I've got some catching up to do :-)

And for those who wonder how I sew at all in this house, here are the gruesome details:

We have lost our 'dining room',


(here you can see my friend Vicky and I sitting at the upstairs kitchen table perusing patchwork magazines on the last day the table lived upstairs.)

but gained some stud walls and a skeleton of a bathroom.


Oh well, at least my scrappy houses are finished! :-)

Happy Scrappy African Houses & a 'cool' BQL May bag

I have been trying Bonnie's Happy Scrappy Houses in African fabrics.



I adjusted the size as I wanted to use 2.5" strips that I already had...


I probably need to work on the frames next time so that there is more seam allowance, but this is a fun pattern and I shall be making more!


I finally finished my BQL Bag Challenge for May which has 3-D Bowties.

I lined it with brown Da Gama fabric and used a beaded pull that my mother made. When I was in South Africa my mother and I made loads of these zip pulls as well as beaded handles.

The bag has 'insul-bright' wadding so that it can be used for chilled shopping or as a bag to keep your picnic cool. The plain fabrics were kindly given to me by my very DB (Darling Brother!!). I think the plain colours are very 'cool' tonally so I'm sure to remember what this bag is for :-)

Now to see if I can do some BOM's before the month is out. Time just flies when you're trying to get some sewing done!!!

Something scary

Something scary was in my postbox yesterday.... oooohhh....


I know they're frogs, but I think they're quite spooky!
Andrea sent me these fabrics.

DS1 loves them. Thanks Andrea.
I had to use them straight away!!


The Happy Scrappy House blocks are from Toni. Hope you don't mind Toni, but I just had to use those googly eyes in one of the windows and one of the doors so I adapted your original blocks a bit. The borders for the houses are the sum total of Halloween-type fabrics that I have. As it's not a 'celebration' that I am familiar with, I don't have a stash of Halloween fabrics (and you guessed it, I'm not buying any! LOL)

Friday I went to the Lunesdale Quiltshow with a friend. It was held at Jean's house. When we arrived it looked so nice from the outside so I whipped my camera out to take a picture only to discover that I'd left the battery on to charge!! So no pictures except this one of some of my raffle winnings and a few small oddments of fabric that I bought (there must be less than a yard there so I've forgiven myself).

I also bought some batting/wadding offcuts for a future BQL Bag as I need batting. I'd love to buy a whole roll of the batting Birgit stocks, but where would I hide it? :-)

I met a fellow BQL-er at the show called Linda, she is a hoot and I hope our paths cross again sometime!