A Last Minute Gift

My improvised design wall is the venetian blind with clips!

My closest friend on the Plateau comes from north east China. Her parents have been out here for the past eleven months on a tourist visa. I have a good ear and memory for most languages but when it comes to Asian/tonal languages I have a learning block. After all this time I can still only greet them, say thank you, goodbye, Happy New Year and "My Mandarin is not very good!" Oh yeah and "sit down" (left over from 3 years sitting in on my Year 5 classes learning Mandarin).

Winter Lights Festival in Harbin, China 

Anyway Lao Lao (grandmother) is a lovely lady and I want her to remember her time in Australia with fondness. So I decided this week to make her a lap quilt to take home. I know it will not be warm enough for -40 degree nights in Harbin during the Winter Lights festival but she can throw it over her woollen blanket.

I am using a charm pack that I collected from a Travelling Stash last year. It is called Victoria by Nikki Russell and is a Benartex Sampler of 56 charm squares. I had to supplement the prints with some florals and pastel solids from my stash.

This Week's  Sewing  Stats

Completed projects  -  0

Currently in progress -  Tall Boy Runner (top complete)
                                            Dresser Runner (back)

                                            Victoria lap quilt gift

                                               

Yet to start  - "You Little Ripper!" paper pieced block for Feb

                           

On Hold projects   - Sherbert Dreams Quilt

                                     - 4 Liberty Pillowcases 

                                     - Victorian Garden Quilt - to baste

       

I am belatedly linking up with WiP Wednesday. It is my 44th birthday today and one of my lovely friends made me a chocolate pavlova and brought it over. As well as some of her handmade mango chutney. I felt very special indeed.

Sunday Stash #50

Good morning and sorry for the delay to Sunday Stash this morning but our family celebrated Chinese New Year last night with some good friends. Wonderful dishes. And I ate duck for the first time (just a small snippet). I did NOT make it to midnight but my five year old stayed for a sleepover for the first time too.

Back in December I won two vouchers from online Etsy Stores. One of my orders came in last week and one this week. I have to admit that the vouchers were just a jumping off point for me. I ordered a LOT more to take advantage of the US International postage costs before they hiked up to $24.

Lizzy House - Constellations

Part of my order from Stash Modern Fabrics was some new-to-me Lizzy House. I think that this will compliment the Castle Peeps and 1001 Peeps quite nicely. 

Asterisk in Black

Star Charts in Black

Constellations in Teal

Twinkle Twinkle in Teal

Moon Phases in blue

Twinkle Twinkle in Natural

I am so pleased with the service and help I received from Beth at Stash Modern Fabrics. It was lovely of her to sponsor a voucher for a prize.

NEXT WEEK remember that Sunday Stash is @ Molli Sparkles 

What about you? Got any stash additions that you want to share? Linky is below.

'Sew Retro' Crockery

This month Chief Wombat is Marieka of Bespoke Bites. Being an amazing farmhouse cook, she has requested retro kitchen as her paper pieced theme. Kristy of Quiet Play whipped up about 6 different patterns over one day. So I chose to make the groovy crockery stack. You can purchase her patterns individually or as a Retro bundle (only $15 for 7 patterns) over at her Craftsy store.

As always Kristy's pattern came together quite easily. I wanted to use my retro 'Dream On' wallpaper fabric that Lara sent me but I did not even bother to line in up. It turned out quite well though. 

I had to include mustard and teal as pot colours - I mean how retro can you get? My favourite two pieces of tupperware are mustard (small scoop) and khakhi (measuring cups). And that red and white enamelware design keeps cropping up in a few Wombat blocks - see Lara's and Kristy's. And you can never have enough orange in a retro kitchen!

So this block is heading Marieka's way with a snippet of Amy Butler for a RASK.

I am in love with that clock!
I am linking up with TGIFF which is growing a healthier following every week.

China on Display

Two weeks ago, after visiting Rainbow Patchwork in South Lismore, I stumbled upon a second hand furniture store called JJs Junk Shop. Don't let the title fool you. Inside I found plenty of lovely pieces that I could have made fit into my new home.

But I was a good girl. I took photos of a few pieces and later showed them to my husband to see if he agreed on buying them. Last Saturday he picked up a few pieces in his trailer. One of the prized pieces was a glass cabinet. Perfect for my collection of china tea sets to sit in. It even matches my sideboard!

It has been a while since I last purchased some tea sets for my collection.  But I spied some gorgeous Colclough china tea sets, sugar bowl and creamer on my favourite Etsy Store Nancy's Tea Shop. These pieces are going to fit right in with the pieces I already have.

And then there were these... Yes those are orange saucers!!!

I had packed away all of my sets when we moved and this week I was finally able to unpack them. Don't they look lovely in my new old cabinet?

Can you see? There are two half shelves for future additions. I may have found something else to order from my favourite English tea shop.

Retro Fitting a Runner

I made this dresser runner last year but just backed it with French General textured solid. Now I wish that I had made it double sided. I do love the triangular quilting from the front showing through.

I went off to my first Sunday Sew In at Rainbow Patchwork and discovered that I had 3 nine patch blocks of Astor Manor already sewn together. 

So my question is...Can I retro-fit the back of this runner with these 9 Patch squares and what technique should I use? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

This Week's  Sewing  Stats

Completed projects  -  'Sew Retro - crockery" block for Wombat Stew

Currently in progress -  Tall Boy Runner (top complete)
                                            Dresser Runner (back)

                                               

Yet to start  - Sherbert Dreams Quilt

                           

On Hold projects   - Sherbert Dreams Quilt

                                     - 4 Liberty Pillowcases 

                                     - Victorian Garden Quilt - to baste

       

Linking up with WiP Wednesday.

Sunday Stash #49

This week's Sunday Stash comes courtesy of the Australian Sew You're Destashing Facebook page. Lara from Luellabella was clearing out a few irresistables that I snapped up

1001 Peeps by Lizzy House in the tan colourway.

Kona Solid - 'Mocha' - over a yard

Retro Floral - I adore this piece and might use it with the Retro Kitchen paper pieced block I need to make for Marieka this month. Doesn't it look like 70s wallpaper?

RASK - Lara slipped in some scrap love. She always does. The sweety.

So how is your Stash this week? Feel free to link up below.

Faith is the Substance

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

That has got to be my favourite verse in the Bible. I have faith in people and a lot of faith in God. So when Kristy was looking for volunteers to try out inspirational words with her new 'Just my Type' paper pieced patterns - I snapped up 'Faith' in the lower case letters.

I think I must be getting better at paper piecing because there was definitely LESS unpicking this time. And even though some of the pieces are teeny tiny I still managed to do them right. I did have momentary panic when it looked like I had sewn my 'f' back-to-front. However it turned out that I was sewing a 't' by mistake and had it up-side-down. Hehehe.

With the green fabric I used a few leftover 2-3" strips leftover from the back of Fussy Fairytales. The 'white' was just homespun from Spotlight as per requested.  Kristy is gathering all of the words to assemble into a donation quilt for the recent bushfires. But now that Queensland and NSW have added massive floods to the January disaster list I think we will be making donation quilts for a while in 2013.

And Sew On

Now the February block should be out soon (poor Kristy is having a phone and internet crisis with her new rental) at Quiet Play. So just keep checking. I was so pleased to see over 40 blocks made it to the January Link Up (if you sneak over to her Craftsy store the Jan block is still FREE for the moment). I am ready to post out my bag of fairy goodies to a happy entrant.

Update: The details for the 'You Little Ripper' February ASO block are now up and posted at Quiet Play. Remember that the pattern is only FREE for this month (only 28 days) and that the link up will be open only slightly longer to allow for the time differences. Great prizes on off for this month too.

Linking up to....TGIFF over at Quokka Quilts today.