I have been bitten by the bug.....

Well it was inevitable I suppose that this was going to happen. I have been bitten by the "hexie" bug. For sometime now on the Craft Forum the ladies have been doing a framed hexie swap and a flower hexie swap and I have been drooling over these gorgeous creations for weeks. I was awake in the early hours of the morning...which I believe is the time when we are at our weakest point... and it hit me hard. When I woke the next morning it was still with me and I knew that I could not ignore this and had to act straight away.

I had signs all around me pointing me in this direction. Yesterday Google featured a picture of the buckyball - hexagon shapes - and one of the patchwork books given to me as a birthday present had hexies on the front.

Off I went to my sewing room knowing that I had to follow a few rules (my rules)

1. I was going only to use what I have in my stash
2. All the centres are to be white
3. Only using small/medium floral prints
4. Backgrounds with not too much white as I wanted the centres to stand out and be a contrast.
5. Equal number of light, medium and dark hexies flowers

Bearing all of the above in mind after couple of hours I had cut out quite a few flowers and centres and sorted out the dark prints which need to be washed before cutting here is my progress to date.




At this point I have to give an honourable mention to my dear hubby - a very patient man - who I have seconded into cutting up hexie shapes for me. As you can see he has made a good start with only a few thousand left - but I won't tell him that at this point! I will just keep adding a couple of sheets to his pile each day. I don't think he will notice - do you?

Thunder and lightning and

What started out as a lovely sunny morning with a line full of washing swinging around in the wind suddenly changed to banks of large black clouds chasing the sun away, a mad dash to grab the washing off the line and a sudden clap of thunder followed by hail lots of hail



I am glad I closed the glass door on my sewing room as I dashed between the raindrops to grab the camera. Could have been a very wet mess to return to.

This picture was taken from our bedroom window looking out to the road



Not sure who owns the car out the front..I am only glad it was not ours..as there could be quite a bit of hail damage. Mother Nature doing her work again.

Quilting retreat

Last weekend I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the annual quilting retreat of the Eastwood Patchwork Quilters which was held at "The Hermitage" Mittagong. Setting off on Friday morning after breakfast we headed south across the Harbour Bridge which as you can see is hidden in all the fog which shrouded Sydney until mid morning.



After arriving in the Southern Highlands and fortifying ourselves with some lunch and of course some retail therapy in all those lovely patchwork shops we arrived at the Hermitage mid afternoon.



After setting myself up - or should I say spreading myself out - as you can see I have claimed a couple of chairs I made a start on my weekend project which involves using up my ever increasing scraps.



I cut up 6 and 3/4" squares of flannel (80 of them) on which to stitch and flip 1 and half inch strips. Each block has a medium blue in the middle and it goes out dark to black on one side and light to white on the other.



And looks something like this when pressed, squared and cut in 6 and 12" squares



I surprised myself just how quickly these sewed up and I managed to get just on 30 all sewn up and cut into neat squares.

After a day of sitting, sewing, eating and talking I took myself off for a walk just on dawn to have a look at the surrounding countryside and catch up with a few of the locals.






I know that I had a great weekend away and I am sure that all the other ladies that attended do so as well. I was even lucky enough to get some expert advice and tips on free motion quilting which I will have to put into practice sometime this weekend.

Thanks for stopping by and happy sewing to you all

Lucky me

My next door neighbour was doing the mail collection duty while I was away for the weekend and has just handed me a parcel. On opening it this is what I found





All these lovely goodies were sent to me by Barb of http://barbscreations.blogspot.com/ when I left a comment on her lovely blog. I will have to get my thinking cap on and come up with a project to do justice to all these gorgeous goodies. I am sure I will find something to fit the bill inside that delightful book.

Thank you once again Barb I feel very spoilt indeed.

Time flys

I have just noticed that is is over 2 months since I have posted on my blog. That begs the question what have I been doing in that time. Not much when I look back. The office where I work has moved location same suburb but different direction from my house. A piccie of my work station and view that I have from my window is below





One of the townhouses that I can see has two lovely big cats that love to sun themselves all day in the window. Lucky cats I say...I wish I could join them sometimes.

Onto the business of sewing...lots of ideas and I did finish off a dresden plate cushion cover. Looking back on it now I should have bought the next size up cushion in order for the plate to sit better however I was pleased with how the method turned out.



Believe it or not there is a plan in that mess on my work table. I have been invited to attend a quilting weekend away at the end of the month held at Mittagong and I thought it was about time that I started using up my ever increasing pile of scraps. A scrappy quilt I thought was the way to go however my personality does not allow me to do "scrappy scrappy" so I got out the coloured pencils, workbook and ruler last weekend and designed a scrappy quilt. Hence the pile is being sorted into lights, medium lights, medium, medium dark and dark.



The last photo shows a quilt that I am working on using batik fabrics using the square in the square method. I love the colours and designs in the batik fabrics. There is still a long way to go on this quilt but I have put it on hold so I can prepare my scrappy for my weekend away.



I hope that I am able to get back here before another 2 months goes by with piccies of my scrappy and batik quilt progress.

Autumn Days

Today was one of those lovely autumn days that Sydney is known for - cold nights, crisp mornings and clear blue skies - just the day to go for a drive to the Blue Mountains. Off we set and along the way I found some of Percy and Petunia's relatives on the side of the Great Western highway. As you can see in the first photo a couple of uncles are busy supervising the roadworks taking place whilst in the second photo an aunt and two cousins are eagerly watching with interest.






After taking some photos of Percy's "family" we set off to Katoomba and you can see why they are called the Blue Mountains from the following photo.



I would call this "survival of the fitest". While walking one of the tracks along to the Threee Sisters I spotted this tree growing out of the sandstone rock face and I wonder what lives in this "house". I was not going to put my hand in to find out!!!





And of course the highlight of going to the mountains in autumn has to be seeing the beautiful range of colour in the trees.

Starry Starry Night

I seem to have been working on this quilt for quite sometime and I was hoping to have it finished for Mothers Day as a gift for mum which I achieved as I did the last of the "tidying up" at 9.30 last night and I must say that I am pleased with the way it has turned out. I was having doubts about it along the way as I was working on it from a picture I saw and only knew that it was made using 5" squares.

I like the way the stars seem to "pop out". The quilt appears to have a three dimensional effect.



And for those who are interested here is a piccie of the flipside



I have taken the last week off work and whilst out and about I took the opportunity to do a bit more stash building as can be seen below.



I am toying up with doing another quilt the same as the one above only this time using batik fabrics. I will have to do more thinking and magazine research on this before making my final decision. Then again I really enjoyed doing the "tube" method. Decisions, decisions.