The Treehouse

Merry Christmas

Poor neglected blog! Some serious family illness and Christmas preparations have meant that my blog and blog reading has taken a back seat lately. I have a couple of finishes to show off though so made the effort to take some pictures while it was light enough the other day. I was determined to have these two quilts hanging on the wall this year as I thoroughly enjoyed making both of them.

This first one is from a pattern by Jennifer Reynolds  and is called Christmas Story. I have shown the finished top before but now it's all quilted and bound and has been hanging up for the last week or so.

I love it and was rather pleased that I managed to use all stash fabric to make it!

The second quilt is Frosty Flakes, a design by Dawn Hays Dawn offered the blocks and finishing instructions for no cost - what a wonderful treat. It was a pleasure to make and I thoroughly enjoyed every single stitch. The snowflakes I made from my scrap basket, the red border fabric had been languishing in my stash for several years and the squares are from a Basic Grey Fruitcake charm pack that I bought recently.

I have almost finished making my Tail Feathers quilt - it's been a long time in the making but I am determined to finish it off very soon as I have a couple of Leanne Beasley's quilts that I would like to start making...I have the fabric to get going too so plenty of incentive for me to finish up the birdies!

Wishing everyone who stops by here a wonderful Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year. We're looking forward to our Christmas celebrations which will be a little quieter than usual but hopefully still enjoyable.

 

One Flower Wednesday Christmas Style

It's been a little while since I added to my garden and strictly speaking I'm not adding to it this week either! I finished off the snowflakes for Dawn's Frosty Flakes BOW and have just the embroidery left to do on them. I think I'll call this my winter garden :) I will have this finished before Christmas and hanging on the wall but I need to buy something for the sashing and borders when I'm next at Patchwork Chicks (that will be on my birthday later this month). 

I'm ironing this loveliness this morning - it's called Sew Chick and is destined to become Dresden Plates. I LOVE Dresden Plates as much as I love pinwheels! I'm awaiting the delivery of a lovely pattern that I stumbled across last week which is all made up of embroidered and pieced Dresden plates...that's for the future though.

 

I'm wishing the postman would hurry up actually - I'm still waiting for a delivery of Kaffe Fassett fabrics so that I can get started on my Kim McClean Hearts and Flowers quilt. I went to the copying shop and had it all enlarged as per the instructions in the book (Quilt Romance by Kaffe) and now I just need a delivery! This is my first venture into using Kaffe fabrics which are considerably out of my comfort zone both colour and pattern wise. I did have a small delivery from a UK shop and the colours of the fabrics are stunning. I'm looking forward to the challenge. I could get all my shapes traced while I'm waiting - I think I will so that I'm ready to go when the postman delivers. 

While I'm busy with the stitching the rest of the family are happily playing with kayaks...I have had a go and I enjoyed it however my back wasn't happy about it at all and made its feelings very plain! We have a new addition to the family - I'm fairly sure that it's not meant to be living in the house really but I'm told it needs to dry off after a good dunking on Monday night.

Look at it lounging there in the conservatory with all its associated 'stuff' :o John was very canny when he bought these new members of the family...one is green and the other is orange, two of my very favourite colours!

I see the postman coming down the path...

Frosty Flakes No. 4

I'm enjoying making these little snowflakes, they're so pretty and delicate.

 

I found the perfect purple fabric for the diamond path for my Flower Garden quilt yesterday - I've stitched 6 diamonds on this evening and 3 triangles so I'm 1/2 way round...it's quite a long way! I'm aiming to make a few more hexies this week to try and catch up a bit.

 

Snowflake No. 3

Actually, it was the second one, I got them mixed up - I think this is my favourite one so far though. These are so pretty that I could quite happily make an entire quilt of them.

 

 

I also prepared almost all of the hexagons for the Badger Cottage pencil case last night. I tried again with the glue and developed what I think is a better technique - I'll find out if that is the case when I come to remove the papers!

We're all four of us off to play in a bowling match today. It's a doubles match - one adult, one child so we've entered a girls and a boys team! Hopefully the rain will stay off - there's been a considerable downpour overnight.

Friday Night Sew In

I stitched quite a bit yesterday. We're still on our official holiday and the weather yesterday was just terrible - thunder, lightning and lots and lots of rain! We cancelled any outdoor plans and stayed indoors so I started stitching a bit earlier than I would otherwise have done. 

I was going to work on Badger Cottage from my couple of days with Lynette Anderson but these sweet snowflakes of Dawn's were calling to me instead. I managed to complete two of them - the third just needs stitching onto its background and then the stitchery completing. This is a free BOM called Frosty Flakes that Dawn is offering. It is one snowflake per week for 9 weeks and there are 3 already available to stitch.

 

 I finished off one of my blocks for the Christmas Story quilt as well - there wasn't a lot of stitching left to do on it...just the star, the cute sheep and most of the houses, so it didn't take very long at all. I've just the star left to stitch for this now, my plan was to have it all stitched by the end of the summer holidays so I'm on track there :)

 

I'll be finishing off that third hexagon snowflake this evening and maybe a little of Badger Cottage. Usually I stitch my hexagons together using the Inklingo method so there are no papers involved. For the snowflakes, as they were to be appliqued onto the background I printed off some 1/2" papers and did them that way. I was also given a tip to glue the fabric to the papers instead of basting. I wasn't sure about that really but thought I'd give it a go just to see how it works as I have 3/4" papers to make the Badger Cottage pencil case (I don't have the 3/4" Inklingo hexagons). I used the tiniest bit of glue - the Sewline glue, thinking that it would make it easier to get the papers out. It was rather tricky to remove the papers and I think it quite possible that any time saved by glueing was lost while trying to remove the papers and restore the hexagons to their proper shape. The glue was so determined to hang onto the fabric in a couple of instances that it ripped it. Maybe it's because they're such tiny hexagons? I don't know but I certainly wouldn't like to struggle as I did with a quilt's worth of papers to remove so I think the hexagons for the pencil case will get basted on as normal...I wish I had the 3/4" Inklingo !

We're off to shop for school shoes today so I'll need a good stitch later on to recover from that joy, lol!