A quilting surprise

First of all you know its Christmas approaching around here when i start to produce Christmas quilting and crafting materials. With that in mind i could not get my mind away from the fact that I wanted a Christmas runner in bright materials and that I should use a fairly straightforward pattern I had using four traditional blocks. I spent ages in Spotlight tossing up between a stack of blue Christmas colourway fat quarters and a stack of green. These stacks are new to Spotlight and really nice. I picked the green on the recommendation of my children and the fact that it is my favourite colour and that it has gingerread men on it. But now im thinking (constantly) that i should have ought the blue. As I was meant to have spent nothing and these cost 25.00 Im not going to turn around and yu the blue AS WELL! Im not keen on the two blocks i completed while watching a thriller on tv last night, but am keen to do the rest to see how they go.

Then there was this little Christmas surprise. I CANNOT elieve how well this little table covering came up once binded in plaid and stipple quilted. I love it so much that ive put it up now. This was such an insipid and boring piece that i held no hope for it at all. Just shows how wrong you can be!

After two days of the girls swimming in the pool, today it is cold and wet and rainy, grey and bleak. Its a strange october!!

Happy Christmas crafting!

Love Cherry

Swimming

CHRISTMAS!!

Christmas is coming. Two projects thats I am working on is this (very cheap on sale) panel from Spotlight. It will be once i have stippled it a small table covering for my coffee table upstairs. Today I am boiling my first (Hopefully there will be more) Christmas pudding. I cant leave the house til 4.30!!! Its sucking up a lot of water.

The strawberries are popping up little white flowers that will become fruit. These and my peas I have popping up everywhere. What ideally I want is to have enough of both for Christmas..well the peas certainly but Ive never had the timing right for strawberries yet. I was telling Mum the mad dash around the strawberry farms on Christmas eve has become a tradition ever since my Uncle finished his strawberry farm four years back!

SWIMMING:

And so this labour weekend (Thursday to Monday off!!) and hubby has the pool cleaned and ready to go. Its still freezing..does that deter the kids? No!

Halloween:

This is my primitive cat I made a while back who is currently sharing its second Halloween with us. It will go on the door soon except that I am still taking all the old paint off the door. Actually as half finished and rough as it is it will look the part for Halloween.

Im off to finish the table cloth. I have a million "wants" in my head right now to do. A Christmas tale runner and a unseasonal but "Must do it" urge to sew a russian Babusca doll. My fingers are a mess and its quite painful to sew. really must learn how to quilt with a thimble but I feel so uncomfortable.

happy Quilting

Love Crafty Cherry

happy house haunting

Much to the excitement of the girls I have begun to decorate the house (or the parts of it that will be used) for our annual (bi-annual?!) halloween

party. As we are fast approaching summer here the party will be mostly outside so I will decorate that closer to the time. Ive had fun prowling over martha Stewarts web page. She has daily Halloween advice and a squillion ideas over at her Halloween central site!! Unfortunately being on dial up means we are so ssslllooowwwww and things take forever to come up in order to print off so I will only be skimming the service there. As we are having our Halloween party the weekend after halloween in order to enjoy a double celeration (celebration? Is this the right word for Guy Fawkes ???!) that means that I can go into Spotlight and buy lots of on sale merchandise (if theres much left!) I have many ideas and inspiration up my sleeve ut it means Ill be busy in the two days running up to it. I hope I can pull it all off!

On the crafty front I have quilted and put binding on my Civil War quilt. Ill post a pic next time. ONE DOWN...three to go..Im working on quilting a small table covering. Its a "cheat" quilt, one that I bought on sale and that was small enough to use my walking foot on some of. I need to move forward on this one with Christmas fast approaching. I also have begun work on my sheep wall hanging. Just doing some applique at the minute. I want real type country fabrics from a real quilt shop so wont be able to buy cheap from SPotlight on this occassion. hence I am buying bits and peices over a period of time. Saying that I did actually manage to buy two country fabrics from Spotlight. But they were almost at a normal quilt shop price and it IS rare to find such fabric at Spotlight.

We are on a long weekend this week. Friday is Hawkes Bay Anniversary Monday is Laour day. I thought GREAT! Then rethought that when I remembered I dont get paid!!!

GHIU is cleaning out the pool as we speak. It will be too cold for a few weeks yet (The water, not the temperature) but it has to be done for Halloween (of course..just incase any one feels up to some swimming).

Ill sign off for now.

Happy Halloween in progress to you all especiall in Amercia where I bet you are having the king of preparations that I so love!

Yours in stitches

Cherry

my unfortunate blogging holiday...

Well i didnt mean to take a break But first the internet refused to go for a week then we took a up one day and back the next trip to Taupo for a birthday...and got snowed in for three days!!!! In spring!! It was a freak snowstorm and the worst in 25 years!! Fortunately we left a bit late otherwise we would have been trapped on the road with 100 other people in need of rescuing!!
And do you know there I was safely and warmly ensconced in a bach with my family andnot a thing to quilt in sight!! Oh THAT was painful!!
Before I left I finally finished my Christmas Mystery quilt. And with that finihsed I joined a quilting group who meet in a hundred something most gorgeous cottage to quilt and talk. I hurridly basted and samwhiched up my Civil War quilt and so that is my project of current.

A close up...can you see the stippling. What a pain I find the edges of the quilt to do!!














And its beginning to feel a bit CHristmas with this the traditional christmas cake baked and beautifully moist. This is my Granmothers recipe faithfully reproduced by all her offspring. Now i dont like Fruit cake but its one of those traditions that I couldnt do without, and I can be proud of this one...it may be the best one yet. I have it wrapped up to age before the ig day but I am unsure of the icing technique just yet.
Im looking forward to reading all the blogs after my enforced intenet break. And I have 180 e mail to trawl through.....
Love and happy stitching
Cherry