End of Month Goal review

Its 4 days to go till the end of the month and I am delighted to be able to report that I have completed or made substantial progress on ALL my goals. Way to go me!

• work on baby quilt for Megan DONE. Its been dropped off to the grandma who is going to Mackay to visit the new baby this week.
  
• Do 15 minutes quilt related work each day DONE I managed this every day so far.
• Complete Dash the Cat DONE Got it quilted bound and even labelled.
  

• Work on Diamond Dash Quilt 2 - DONE - I completed the back as well. Hope to get it basted this week at Patchwork.
• work on hexie quilt -Top DONE. I've worked out a design to use up the left over into the backing. 

• Pin and quilt hashtag quilt- PINNED. I might get a chance to quilt it this week. Hope so.
• empty scrap basket - DONE. I did this Sunday afternoon. I wanted it done before I started another project. I have a cute one planned, not too complex that I want to knock out this week. We'll see how that goes. Meanwhile Eevee made sure the basket didn't stay empty for long

• make 2 Gruffalo capes for Kylie DONE. Kylie sent me a cut picture of her daughter A wearing the cloak I made.
•  

WIP Wednesday

I'm feeling really really frustrated. Last night... very late I wrote my WIP Wednesday on my iPhone as I lay in bed. I should have been trying to go to sleep but no... I wrote the post and something went wrong as I posted it and I lost the lot. Needless to say at 11.15 pm I didn't try again!

It was a really good post. It was witty and succinct and sob this is going to just be a poor imitation of what might have been (Hope you can hear the violins)

My hand pieced hexie quilt has absorbed most of my sewing time this week. I did work on the backing for the first of my Diamond Dash quilts... now called Dash That Cat ( I was going with Dash the Cat but think this sounds better). I got it done. Now have to get it pinned and quilted. I had planned to pin yesterday at Patchwork Group but I didn't go as I was asked to babysit a gorgeous 2 year old and figured I was better off staying at her place than trying to take her out.


I also tried to start work on a baby quilt. I got as far as getting the fabric out and cutting up some of the panels. I left the work space temporarily to check the words of the story (Its The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and some intervention arrived

and so I left it and spent the rest of the evening hand piecing on the Hexie quilt.


I have made good progress on the hexie quilt. The centre piece is finished. Its about half the length of the quilt and the full width.

Now I am working on the bottom quarter. I am working it as one strip. I got the line of pieces to match the centre piece completed but didn't attach it Instead I have it pinned to the top of my design wall and am working on that. I chunk a few bits together and then stitch those bigger chunks together and will eventually attach them to the strip that will go on the centre chunk.

My take along project at the moment are hexies that will go at the top of the quilt - the clouds and sky. They are not flower shaped! I am piecing white and cream pieces together for the clouds at the moment. I took photos of my paper plan and am working off that whilst I am away from the house...

like today when I once again will be babysitting the gorgeous Teesh. Unlike my daughters cats she is not the slightest bit interested in my hand sewing and happily colours in, plays in her sandpit or models my hat whilst I stitch away.

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Fitness Friday - back on the horse..well the trail anyway

Very pleased to announce that this week has been a much better week. I have been eating a little better - not scoffing copious amounts of chocolate anyway or drinking plenty of wine so not as many conspicuous calories going in anyway. 

This week though I have worked hard at getting my steps up and managed to make it to 10 000 steps most days.

Friday:               13 159
Saturday:           12 325
Sunday:               6 874 (only one walk being Sunday :) )
Monday:            13 276
Tuesday:            13 146
Wednesday:       10 127 (you can get the idea of how busy I was on 
Thursday:          10 222  these 2 days when I say I only got one                                                walk in and still made my 10 000 steps)

Last week I set myself the goal of being back in the top 10 of my friends and I made it! It was Saturday or Sunday that I got back in there and have been up as high as 4th amongst my friends.

We've had some beautiful bright blue skies. It would be even better if they were cloud filled rainy ones but they make for lovely pictures, especially with it green around here at the moment. Some gum trees from our walks

The cockies (Sulphur Crested Cockatoos) are out in force at the moment. There are flocks of them about the place and a few times we have had them outside our home

We decided that since they are here long term Fangirl's cats were going to become inside outside cats. Where she lived they had to be indoor only because of the busy road she was on but we are on a quiet cul de sac. I know that the wildlife suffers when cats are allowed outside but we only let them out during the day and so far they aren't much good as hunters. Long may it last. They have enjoyed the experience and go out as soon as they can. Fangirl has moved to Brisbane and as yet doesn't have her own place but is staying with her brothers (Kombi Boy and Boyo) in our town house there or with a friend. (She doesn't want to wear out her welcome with her friend but she needs a bolt hole for when her baby brothers drive her nuts). If she can get a place on her own that she can have the cats at she will take them down with her... and they will become indoor only cats again. 

      

Our big boy cat Pippin was unimpressed when the interlopers invaded his outdoor space as well. Can't you tell?

Wip Wednesday

I finally got myself motivated to get moving on the POD quilt. I've only had one block to do - the last block and one block to redo... block 10. I'd messed up the labels on the books so decided to remake. A fellow PODer, Cassandra, from the facebook  group "Project of Doom"  kindly offered to send me some fabrics that she had used in the block. Block 10 is the one with the Standard Book of Spells, volume 1-7 (or 1-6 if you preferred cause Harry didn't do his last year) and she had 7 coordinating fabrics that looked great as the book spines. I got both the box for the jelly beans (Block 30) and the Spell Books (block 10) done Sunday.

I thought I hadn't printed them out yet and the printer wouldn't talk to my pc despite lots of stuffing about so I put the files I wanted for the blocks onto a memory stick and Fixit Guy used his pc to print them off for me. Then when I went to the box with my fabrics and completed blocks in it ... yeah you guessed it I found that I had already printed most of them off already. As well as Block 30 and block 10 I want to do some special blocks to go on and beside the book shelf. I want to do the broom stick, the sword, Dobby, flying keys and perhaps a cornish pixie or 2. I had trouble finding the Dobby pattern I wanted ... printed the wrong one twice but have found it now. I'll have to get it printed out.

In the meantime I have sewn all the book blocks together into rows and have started removing the paper from them. What a painful task that is. They look good on my design board

On Tuesday at Handmade Love I made some baby bibs. I had found the pattern on April Rosenthal's website here

They are really simple. We didn't use a charm pack but took 2.5" from the fabric we have been donated... there is heaps of it. (our co-ordinator said we are going to have to sew till we die to use it all up. Lol) I was going to cut some units but found some already cut. I got 2 made and working on a 3rd with the help of one of the other women who comes. The bias I used was pretty narrow but it was the best I had... no photos sorry. Forgot to take any. We will make some of our own bias at some point... but didn't worry about it today. I did end up cutting some more 2.5" squares from the scrap stash to use in future bibs. Have one young mum in our group and she loved choosing funky colour combinations so we'll make sure we do some of those too as well as some more traditional colour combos that the grandmas seem to prefer.

I have made good progress with some hexies.... have basted just about all the ones that I had pinned (think there are 3 left) so have to get some more prepped and ready to go. My aim was to make 100 this month and I've made in excess of 160 so pleased with that. Still a long way to go. 

Last year I made a panel of the 23rd Psalm into a wall hanging for the worship area of the aged care facility that Fixit Guy and I help out with on a weekly basis. The residents loved it. Recently I was able to purchase another religiously themed panel featuring a Lion and Lamb. I decided to make it into a wall hanging for there as well. I would like to have it finished to take up tomorrow but I had some assistants today whilst I was working on it. Haven't got as far as I would have liked!

The reason I have had these two helpers this week is that our daughter, Fangirl has been in Brisbane for the Comic Convention there. She had a stall there selling her cross stitch patterns, some kits and some made up items. She dressed up in her Hogwarts cloak for the occasion and Boyo, our youngest who was her assistant was also decked out as a Hogwarts school boy. If you want to see her patterns visit her Etsy shop... she's into all things geeky

 

Thursday Thoughts on Friday - sewing with Cats

We have one cat - Pippin. He's a fairly laid back cat, so much so that we can have other cats come and live with us and whilst he isn't enamoured with them, he tolerates them. He's an indoor outdoor cat so when it all gets too much for him inside he can go outside and get some relief. He's needed it this last week



About 4 weeks ago my friend Maree went overseas and her cat Mr Tibbs came to stay with us. He could have stayed at his house, which is only about 10 houses away from us, and we could have gone over and fed him there but by coming here he got some company and I didn't have to go visit him twice a day. Mr Tibbs is an indoor only cat

Then last week our daughter, Fangirl went away for work for 4 days and she dropped her 2 cats over here as well... so we had 4 of them here Tuesday till Friday night. Eevee and Skimbles are both indoor only cats too.

So..there were cats everywhere. The funny thing was that whilst Pippin tolerated this invasion of his territory it was Mr Tibbs who was put out by the young 'uns coming in
.

Pippin is used to me sewing and doesn't seem to be all that interested in it anymore. He tends to leave me alone whilst I sew. The other cats though were far more fascinated by the whole process..