maiden voyage

Well I took the beast for her maiden journey.

I went to the gym and did a step combo class then did an RPM class (stationery bike) and then when I got home I discovered that my appointment with the osteopath wasn't until 4.30pm so I quickly got changed and jumped on the bike.

WOWZER!!! awesome ride and I only went whizzing around the back blocks... I did wheelies around the roundabout several times and if the neighbours were watching they would have been wondering what the hell I was doing.



When I got home I took the opportunity to take the photo of the beast resting... this brings a quilting theme to my post

quilting retreat

the froglet went her her first 18Th birthday recently and made the birthday boy a special card... I found out he likes sparrows that's why it she chose this bird... my goodness she is talented (she gets that from her mother lol) I will post the picture she did for my birthday... is a butterfly, the noisy one said she is going to have it as her first tattoo (oh my)


One of my favourite times of year!! quilting retreat.

I'm off tomorrow with my quilty friends to spend most of the weekend indulging in things that I love to do.

Sadly I have to leave on Sunday morning as the froglet has her biggest dance competition of the year that day and I cant miss this.

For the first time in 4 years of going to winter inter club at MSAC I will miss this Friday night, but I felt this compromise was acceptable this year.

I have several things packed to go so that I can decide on what I feel like doing the most.

1. Double wedding ring (hand piecing) as pictured in the last post.
2. Leannes house, quilters journey, last block with a tiny bit of embroidery to finish and then sew the final blocks together.
3. Fix the work quilt that I made... it was defaced by some plebs who obviously have the intelligence of a rock.
4. Table mats that I bought as a kit, finish these off.. some quilting.
5. country sampler... hand pieced quilt that I am hand quilting (on and off.. more off than on lol).

I think that is all I am taking and I'm confident that I will complete numbers 2 and 3... specially 3 as my boss will kill me if I don't do this quickly!!

bike riding

The weather has turned back to summer!! Today I went for a bike ride with the froglet, who took me up the hill just near our house. I have admired this hill for years and finally went up it today. OH MY GOODNESS! Last year I did a boot camp and they were going to make us run up and down this hill, gosh am I glad they didn't!

The view of the Northern suburbs though was worth the sweat. Sorry to say I didn't bring my camera, but next time I will (yes there will be a next time). My odometer on my bike wasn't working but I would hazard a guess that we rode about 18kms

School is back (yahhhh) and we are all getting back into routine. Guild meeting was yesterday and I took my much loved bread knife to be sharpened as we had the man in to sharpen our blades of choice. Also had a lady in to sell fair trade stuff. She spoke to us about the fair trade and explained who and how it helped, its good to know that instead of a large company gaining from my purchase that a family might be buying a cow for milk.

I just sat down and finished the binding on my nieces quilt, instead of turning on the laptop and being lured by my blogs I love to read and the dreaded face book that wastes hours of I should be sewing time!! But now its done and so is this post so now I can go and play farmville, or treasure Island or what ever it is I have been suckered into!! The hedgehog?? I just liked him!!

road trip 2!

Today the girls and I embarked on another road trip... such fun!

today we decided to invade the other side of town and went down to Mentone. Our first stop of the day was primative patches

You enter a small slice of patchwork heaven and dive in at the deep end!

I really dont know how long we were there but we managed to do a bit of damage to the bank accounts heheheheh. I kept on finding fabrics that I knew Jennifer would love but she was strong (most of the time) and deflected my attempts to empty her purse.

The next stop was to Carmels warehouse.... Anita said it was just like project runway! I agreed with her and thought we should have run in there screaming make it work!! That show is the bomb!
We also managed to go into Carmels actual shop in Mentone.


This was I think my find of the day. the froglets best friend is goth (babybat for those in the know) I saw this epic spider fabric and knew I had to buy it for her. I also bought some black satin backed crepe... both these were in the remenants bin so a total bargin!
I bought it home and showed the froglet who was delighted, but when I told her that her friend could sew up a skirt, she told me she is "crap at sewing mum" Looks like I might have to have a sewing day with the girls. Sewing clothes is my least favourite sewing thing but if push comes to shove... I will have to wait until Friday morning to present my finds to the babybat, I can hardly wait!!

funky owls for the froglet... yes yes I know its not frogs but she likes owls too and we have a cunning plan for a bag.... stay tuned for that saga!


The noisy one likes cats and the froglet made herself a frog quilt some time ago and now the noisy one wants the same quilt but with cats. Im slowly collecting cat fabrics for the hexagons and some century we will make it together.

Of course I bought a few other bits and pieces and then we had a very nice lunch at truely scrumptious Anita had a yummy looking (and tasting) vegetarian foccacia melt, Madeline and I had the B.E.L.T. bacon, egg, lettuce and tomato on a very light roll and Jennifer had the breakfast in a roll... All looked and tasted very good. The coffee was pretty good too (better than the crap I had last week!).

Tonight I did a danzika class with the girls as I missed my gym session this morning to partake in the road trip.

Bullion roses

I finished quilting my nieces birthday quilt that I made for her 16Th birthday which was March 2009 opps. Better late than never! Just need to do the binding.

Here is the cherry quilt that I have made for my cousins new baby girl. Its all done apart from the label, I need the date of birth then I'm done!


Another friend had a baby girl recently also, so I have bought some bibs and singlets and then I sewed on some girly patches on some and did some bullion stitching on the little bibs.


I did a course in bullion knots many years ago and enjoy whipping up little bullion rose here and there.



I had an urge to do some cooking so I made a lemon meringue pie. I then cooked a lovely roast lamb dinner in the BBQ... so less mess!! The gas bottle didn't fail to run out on me like it does every time but this time I was prepared!!

Hope you had a lovely weekend and if you celebrate Valentines day that you had a nice day with your loved one. The fisherman is as romantic as a rock so you can guess we don't 'do' gifts, however I did buy him a large toblerone as I always buy him some chocolate.

my daughters quilt

I have been working the last couple of days but last night I managed to baste a quilt for my niece, thanks Maddie for the help. I will post a photo of this quilt when I have quilted it.

In the meantime I thought I would share some photos with you of an epic quilt I made for the noisy one. The centre fabric was a special gift from a special friend who taught me a lot about quilting, most of it via the Internet. I love pretty fabrics, especially the Robyn Pandolph ranges and similar ranges and have amassed a decent amount of fat quarters.

I finally found the pattern I wanted to use, its a Jane Austin style pattern, but instead of using diamonds, you use squares. The pattern is from an Australian patchwork and quilting mag, but I must confess I don't know which one.











The quilt ended up being enormous so I decided to have the quilt professionally quilted. Anita Ellis of Hillside quilting in Warrandyte did a fantastic job and custom quilted it perfectly! I asked for feathers and basically left the rest of it up to her!

Hope you all have a quilty weekend, or whatever floats your boat! :)

Dinner with friends

Last night my friends from noty and I finally had our christmas dinner and kris kringle swap. I received a lovely gift from Jenni (thanks!) A cute little tin and an awesome bundle of civil wars, perfect for my dear jane quilt that i am plodding with.



We had a lovely dinner of thai food.



Once again I was so hungry I forgot to take a photo of the food before we devoured it, we had just finished and the power went out! We missed out on our dessert *sob*



Today though, I had coffee and a gluten free banana muffin at my favourite place with a good friend. This evening I spent several hours browsing through my favourite blogs and watching a movie with my family so my weekend has been okay.

I am however struggling with a quilt pattern and tommorrow I am going to make a tester block using 2 different methods that have been suggested to me by friends to see which is the most accurate. Hopefully one will work and I will post a happy message with some photos.