Santa 2010.

There is no Santa Photo Booth at the shops here in down town Kununurra. Hard to believe but true! There was a small ad in the local paper the other week saying sorry no Santa photos this year due to an impending birth. So what is a Mum to do? I have to have my Santa photo, have had one every year since 2004. During my recent whirl wind trip to Darwin while wandering around Kmart, I found a Santa Suit for $7! $7???!!!! So I brought it just for this photo shot. The girls weren't fooled at all about it being their Dad. "When is the real Santa coming Mummy?" Milly asked, soon sweetheart soon.

We will be going here on boxing day for 2 weeks so I'll be taking a blogging break while we are away. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, looking forward to sharing 2011 with you all.

Honeysuckle.

We have had a lazy start to the week, sleep in's, not getting changed out of our PJ's till lunch time, dancing with friends on the Wii, drinking champagne with my dinner. But amongst all that I have been designing and cutting out a new project that I want to take away with me to hand stitch on our holidays. Inspired by the ones I have sewn in the past. Just a sneak peak as I am hoping it will be published next year..... We shall see. Pantone has declared the colour of the 2011 to be Honeysuckle! Which is fitting as there is a bit of pink here!

Tablerunner Finished!

Thanks for the welcome back girls. Nice to know I was a little bit missed. I finished something last night, gee it has been awhile since I wrote that! This runner that had accuracy issues last seen here, all I had to do was join up the binding and sew it down which was completed last night while watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

This runner is a gift, all I have to do now is sew the label on but I couldn't resist putting it on the table with our gingerbread house.

I have never made a gingerbread house before and will confess I didn't actually make the house, just assembled it and decorated it. Looks almost too good to eat!

With Grace's help. The spearmint leaves on top where her idea!

Kate C's Blocks.

Hi my name is Helen and I used to blog and quilt. I feel I have fallen off the wagon. This month has just been crazy. It just seems like yesterday that Daz graduated and we arrived here. And now the school year is over, we all survived! The last few weeks have been full of graduations, celebrations and goodbyes of new friends made. Plus a quick trip up to Darwin solo for me for some medical stuff. School finished yesterday to a sigh of relief. We have 6 weeks stretched in front of us all! 6 glorious weeks. So seeing as though I haven't sewn anything for awhile, thought I'd throw myself back into it today and did these two blocks for Kate for Around the Block 2.

I followed this tutorial here. Hope you like them Kate, they were great to sew. Nice to warm up to after being away for what seems like awhile. I can turn my attention to a few projects that have been stewing in the back of my mind. Let the quilting begin!

Pink Squares Finished.

Well not 100% finished, the top is finished at least. I have some Amy Butler Midwest Modern in the floral pink and white left over for the backing. Now to find time in the week to sandwich it.....

Grace's Art Exhibition.

We went to the school's art exhibition last night. Grace had a few pieces on display. Despite being less than impressed on the first day here, I am proud of how well she has settled in. She does enjoy her art classes!

Fishing at Digger's Rest.

Sunday sewing last weekend was interrupted by a 12 hour fishing adventure. Yes, 12 hours.... We went with friends to a place called Digger's Rest. Travel 90kms towards Wyndham, then do a left and travel for an hour or so and your there! We stopped on the way at the old Boab Prison tree. The tree has a circumference of 14.7 metres and is estimated to be between 2000 and 4000 years old. As the name indicates it used to serve as an overnight lock up for patrols taking prisoners to Wyndham.

You can climb in it. Bats live in it now, it was smelly, Milly is holding her nose saying "ewwwww, it stinks!" in the first photo.

The ranges in the distance were amazing, Australia was shot around here for a few weeks. Apparantly the plains were so bare in places due to wild goats eating and trampling everything in sight. Now it is cattle just staring at us, wondering what we are doing.

We were after the elusive barramundi. But all we scored were the ugly cat fish! Grace caught one on her line but she couldn't bring herself to touch it! Mr H. helped!

On the banks of the King River. Waiting, and waiting....

The two tired and dirty fishermen.

Due to the crocodiles, swimming is a definite no go, so I let the girls play in the mud which they enjoyed. Thank goodness for napisan! Although I will admit I just threw their socks in the bin, didn't even attempt to wash those.

Dinner was a chicken roll and an apple under the sunset. We didn't catch any Barra, but we had a great day! Thankful for lovely friends that can take us to such amazing places.

Quilt from Krista!

A few months ago, the amazingly talented Krista and I decided to do a little private swap. I have been reading her blog for a while, she lives in a fairy tale land of snow at the moment which is a world away from the red dirt and heat outside my back door. My quilt to her arrived last week and this beauty from Krista arrived this week! I was eyeing off this one she had made that was similar, but this one I received I love more!!

Look at her stitching! I think I can do an okay button whole stitch but I am in awe of those who can do straight stitches and flowers! I love how the colors graduate down, very pretty!

Her stitches are perfect! Just perfect.

And look at the label! She made me laugh out aloud with her reference to snow forts. In a recent meme I admitted I didn't want to build a snow fort and she got stuck into me in that blog comment!

And she spoilt me with some Christmas fabric. And there were some alphabet wrist bands for the girls but they have vanished with delight into their bedrooms before I could snap them!

Thank you so much Krista, your a great blogging buddy, it was a great swap. :)

Grace's Merit Certificate.

Grace got a merit certificate on Friday at the school assembly. She was a bit surprised and said to me that afternoon, "I thought you were only supposed to get one a year Mum?" So did I Gracie, but I guess her teacher thought "pushing herself to produce neat and well presented work which is a pleasure to mark" deserves another one. Well done Gracie!

Rachel's Butterlies.

I have been a busy bee this morning and sewn three butterfly blocks for Rachel's round of Around the Block 2. She wrote a fantastic tutorial here how to sew them. I still have the antenna to hand sew on these.

I didn't have enough white for the sashing for this one so am hoping Rachel can just pop it on when she gets it back. These were fun to sew Rachel, hope you like them!

Next Year's Diary.

I received a parcel from Homespun in the mail this week which puzzled me. I squeezed the package thinking maybe this is a Christmas thank you for when I designed Bye Bye Birdie for them? The squeeze revealed it was hard, a book. A few extra magazines? Not big enough a parcel for that. So I stopped pondering and just opened it to find a complimentary copy of their 2011 diary. That's nice I thought and started flicking through looking at the quilts, one quilt for each week.

Then the penny dropped when I turned to April. Ohhhhh, there is my quilt! Perfectly matched to the same week of Grace's birthday. Funny how things all fall in place as the day before it arrived I was actually speaking to the editor about designing something else for them. Maybe that will be in the 2012 diary? We'll see. :)

Pink Squares.

I had my monthly Bitch and Stitch Quilting group on Saturday, 5 hours of uninterrupted sewing thank you very much. Well uninterrupted except for the husband ringing to ask if lamb roast was okay for tea? Yes dear, that would be lovely, now I am hanging up because I have sewing to do!

I was a bit unsure of what to sew the night before when I was packing up all my stuff. So I pulled out these pink fabrics and thought I would just make up some square in square blocks like this quilt. I hadn't cut into my Denyse Schmidt since it arrived back in April. It was time, I was ready.

So Saturday I finished all these blocks. I had a rough idea of doing 4 rows of three blocks and making each block 11 inches. These aren't trimmed down yet, I still have one more square to add to that one in the bottom right, slightly too small. Then sash it with white and wolah, cot sized baby quilt in pinks complete.

Wonky House for Carissa.

Car has received the quilt I made for her in the EB DQS #4 so I can blog it. Close up of the quilting was back on this post here. This one was all free pieced and hindsight is wonderful..... If I was sewing it again I'd have more sky on the left and angle the flying geese tree in towards the house more. But I am being super picky and Car is happy so all is good. :)

EB Dolls Quilt from Emma.

My quilt for the EB Quilters DQ Swap #4 arrived earlier this week from the amazingly talented Emma. The quilt is the actual quilting, clever!

Her detail is just incredible, my photos don't do this quilt justice. Check out her blog post here. Thanks Emma!

Thanks for all the comments about my accuracy dramas. Glad to hear I am not sailing this boat alone!

Accuracy.....

I should learn, I don't know why I do it to myself, but accuracy and I don't mix when it comes to half square triangles. I thought I would start a simple weekend project yesterday. Note the word simple. A pack of charm squares purchased ages ago but I still love. I cut 52 squares from some Eggshell Kona Solid Cotton, did the diagonal line and sewing on both sides trick. So far so good, even used the starch ironing them out after trimming!

Then I started sewing them together. Randomly. Just thinking oh that one looks nice next to that one, la la la la. 5 squares to a row. If my life was a movie (ha!) this would be where the sinister music would be playing and the audience would be watching the heroine do something crucially wrong but unwittingly realize it! But no, the heroine is sewing her rows in la la land. All done and back to the ironing board to iron them and start pinning them together. To then realize that none of them match up, they are all over the place and that I should have trimmed them down after I ironed them flat, before I sewed them flat...... ohhhhhh! I will admit I did think about it but then decided not too as I was too impatient to sew them together and didn't want to waste my time by trimming them and thought I could just wing it. Yes, good one Helen!

So I then had no choice but to trim them all down to 4 inch squares! That was a fun way to waste a few hours!

And even then you would think I'd have sharp matching points, but no, some are still out. Look at that purple one, fourth row from the bottom, second on the left. So what have I learnt this weekend? Sew like this Helen, it's less stress, less trimming, less accuracy and more you!

Around the Block 2 Update.

I recently received this amazing block from Amy for the Around the Block 2 swap. Love, love, love it Amy! Perfect! Thank you!!

It inspired me to get out the scraps from AJ's blocks and the scraps I had from making up the bundles to sew this one.

And all put together so far it looks like this! These were just plonked on the floor randomly, looking at the photo now the middle row of all big squares disturbs me, but other than that, looking good!

Today is a big day in this house. Today is my last Friday in a very long time that will be mine. In the past I have always had Friday off, even when they went to family day care, the girls went on a Friday, it was my day. The job I have fallen into up here at the school luckily continued that tradition and it was Monday to Thursday. But things are changing. On Monday I start full time employment. No more Fridays for sewing or sitting on the computer or watching Glee eating musk sticks. On the plus side I suppose its only till the end of the school year.........

Happy 6th Birthday Milly Moo!

Miss Milly Moo turned 6 today. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth hey? When I mentioned to Daz only 10 years till her Sweet Sixteenth he nearly choked on his coffee poor man. I have just spent the last ten minutes reminiscing about her second, third, fourth and fifth birthday's.

We held a party for her yesterday and she had 10 of her friends over dressed in their fairy bestest to have jelly cups, cup cakes and play musical chairs. She had a great time. I vowed afterwards the only party we are having next year is mine! It's going to be the big Four OH!

Blogtoberfest Day 31 - Bloggers Quilt Festival.

It's that time of the year again, Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival! The quilt I am submitting is on the other side of the world now. This is my favorite close up of it.

Those of you that read my blog already know I have been a swap mama for a few rounds of the flickr Doll Quilt Swap. It's always a fantastic swap. There is a lot of chat behind the scenes amongst the mama's. One fellow mama is an amazing lady called Lynne. We got to emailing each other chatting back and forth and agreed to have a little private quilt swap of our own.

We gave each other an open brief as we both thought each others work was fantastic. I knew I wanted to do some wonky houses for her. And then I added a tree.

Looked good but still needed another house. Getting there....

Enter the rocket house!

Okay, the top is now finished! Let the quilting begin!

I pebble quilted the sky in a variegated blue cotton.

Echo stitched around the windows and if you look very closely pebble quilted the house in white as well.

And framed it in some Kaffe. Lynne loved it. You can see in this blog post of her's where she hung it. And I in return received this quilt from her.

Check out everyone's quilts here in the festival! Great work as always Amy.