Year of The Pies and Tarts!

I hereby name 2014 the Year of the Pies and Tarts!

I started this quilt way back in December 2010 when on a trip to Dublin for my brother in laws wedding. Over the past few years I have pottered away on them but I now have a bee in my bonnet about them and they have been hanging around for FAR TOO LONG!!

My goal for 2014 is to finish the top - I have 39 pies and tarts to go, out of 100 of each. Once the top is together I need to applique the tarts onto it. This is where I want it to be by year end. I just need to double my yearly average to get all the piecing done and then get the applique done, and I will meet my goal! With my track record, not sure if I like my chances but I am going to give it one helluva shot!

Then 2015 will be calling for it to be sandwiched, stitched in the ditch and then the hand quilting that I oh-so-love will begin...but I think I am getting a little bit ahead of myself there.

The funny thing about this quilt is that it really does not go with our house, so I have no idea where I will put it once it is done. One thing is for sure, I will be keeping it after all the blood, sweat and tears of putting it all together!

A Birthday Quilt for Master S

I have known Master S since he was 6 weeks old when his mum and I met at Mothers Group. He is the son of the friend I made the quilt for in my previous post. He claimed his mum's quilt for his own room a number of times before finally asking me if I would make him a quilt for his birthday. How could I say no? His birthday was yesterday, 29th December, so I had it finished in plenty of time for catching up with him for his 9th birthday in a couple of days.

You can read a bit about Emma quilting it here
Of course, his sister Miss Z couldn't be left out so the Butterfly Quilt is going to her in early February, I still need to bind that one!

Sasha's quilt...done!!

Rainbow Jane - Let The Journey Begin....

Stay tuned for progress....

Sasha's Quilt

This morning Zoe had her swimming lesson, then both the girls spent some time playing in the water....on the way back home I declared that the rest of the day would be an "At Home Day"...I really need to get Sasha's quilt finished!!!

So, all the inner square stitching is done and I have 6 more of the outer squares to do, that should get knocked over tonight...the ironing can wait! Seeing Sasha tomorrow afternoon but the girls have swimming again tomorrow morning so I just don't think I am going to get it finished in time for 4pm......will give it a whirl otherwise it is a great excuse to catch up with her lovely mummy for a coffee next week sometime!

Progress Report for this week...

One of my really good friends had a bubba girl last August, I promised a quilt...needless to say they are still waiting for it. I was determined to give it to her for her first birthday. The party is next weekend. Tonight I have finished the top. I love the darker colours with the crisp white and found my inspiration for it here. I saw this quilt and fell in love with it, saved it as a favourite determined to do something similar at some stage...so now I have. By next Saturday I need to sandwich and hand quilt it. I have bought chocolate and a strong pink perle for the quilting and I am really looking forward to the finished result!

With Dave away on a 2 week trip at the moment and lots of sickness in this house, time to quilt and be creative has been short. Tonight I feel like I have achieved something!



Ciára is mad about monsters at the moment, so here are my girls impersonating the monsters in a book borrowed from the library this morning.

Progress Report

Some time ago, Miss Zoe and I took a trip to Spotlight together. She spied this Dora panel and begged me to make a "snuggle quilt" for her. I tried to persuade her that we could make a different (and nicer!!) snuggle quilt for her, but she insisted. I sandwiched and did some stictch in the ditch quilting on it a while ago..and then got the guilts that I hadn't made it for her when it was a task that would take so little time! Over the past few nights I have done some hand quilting around it and last night I finished it! Ta da....awful huh!!

I also decided that as I am pretty close to completing this cross stitch that I just love that I may as well just get on with it and finish so it can be framed and hung on the wall...just three more words to go!

WIP's are go to be completed, I am sick if having them hanging around!

Crazy Love

Last night I completed my love knot quilt top, her name is "Crazy Love" - coz love can be like that sometimes.

Now I need to head to my LQS and pick up some backing fabric for it. I have quite a bit of the border fabric left over so might pick up a chocolate brown and use that with the yellow pattern.

I am not sure what will happen with this quilt and where she will end up, I really love it but I do have a wedding and engagement quilt to make as gifts so let's see how time goes for me!

Reunited with Love Nest

I have just returned from picking up Love Nest from the quilter and I love it!!

What do you think?




now to get on to binding it!

Wall Hanging Wonder

I have been involved in a swap with my quilting friends over at EB. Today was the big reveal. I was very lucky to receive this lovely little number from the lovely Dani. I love the colours, and the thread used for the quilting. It is a really pretty little quilt. Miss Zoe has claimed it as her own already! Thank you Dani, I love it x



I am hoping Car can email me some photos of the wallhanging I made, as I was a tad silly and forgot to take any photos of it!

Will be back later to post the links to all the participants blogs so you can check out how clever we EB Newbie Quilters are. But for now, it is off to the kitchen. Our little minx, Ciára, turns 2 on Monday so we are having a bash for her tomorrow and I have ALOT to do before I go to bed tongiht!

My Family, My Puppy Dog, Books and Quilty Goodness....

..these are a a few of my favourite things....

This is the most recent family photo that was taken a couple of weeks ago. We went to Kirribilli with fish n chips for Earth Hour, though this silly mummy got the hour wrong as I thought it started at 7.30pm but it was actually 8.30pm. The view was fabulous, the fish n chips were great, wonderful company with our dear friend Sally joining us... however the kids were feral by 7.45pm so we packed up and went home and had Earth Hour with a lovely bottle of red, candles and great conversation at home chilling out on the lounge!




Dave and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary through the week. Dave is the most wonderful husband and friend that a girl could wish for. He is so grounding and supportive, loving and giving. Not to mention that he is an amazing Daddy to our 2 princesses. I just love him to bits! He suprised me with a stunning amethyst ring and a night out to my favourite restaurant - Guillaume at Bennelong. It is the restaurant in the Opera House, and it is always a fabulous experience to dine there. Gues what I did, made him a quilt - the Love Nest!!! Unfortunately I had to give it to him half completed as I am having it professionally quilted and the quilter has gone away until after Easter. I was so disappointed but Dave was cool with it! Will blog that one when it is all done, I just love it, and thought it might be a little naff to give Dave as our anniversary gift but he seemed to really appreciate it. Here we are ready to head into town for our yummy degustation ...



Our boy Zeus, is off having some training at the moment, I am missing him like mad! He is home in 3 more sleeps. I took these photos a few days before he went on his little holiday. Such a handsome fellow.



This morning I finished reading book # 11 for the challenge. "The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb. It is a 700+ page book and I have not been able to put it down for the past week. A novel that captured me from the first word and well worth the read. Here is the book descprion from the Harper Collins website.
"Wally Lamb explores the consequences of war and violence on human lives blown irrevocably off course.

When 47−year−old teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife Maureen‚ a nurse‚ move to Littleton‚ Colorado‚ they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999‚ Maureen finds herself in the school library‚ cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed‚ as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated‚ murderous rampage. Miraculously‚ she survives‚ but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity‚ Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries‚ letters and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family′s house. The intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk ancestors‚ from the time of the Civil War to Caelum′s own troubled childhood. Piece by piece‚ Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long buried fear‚ anger‚ guilt and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past‚ he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy.

The Hour I First Believed is a profound and compelling work of fiction. And Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller‚ assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity."

I am decorating Ciára's room with the lovely Butterfly Fling fabric - this throw is as far as I have gotten with the decorating but my plans are good!!! At the moment we are using this throw as her cot quilt. (Sorry 'bout bad photo!)



Zoe's room is alot further along in the decorating department, though we have yet to put it all together for her. All I need to do now is get my act together and make the bunting for her window... Zoe's room is bright and colourful beacause of the lovely Moda Strawberry Lemonade fabric we decided on. This is the throw...



And drum roll please......

Ta da - Strawberry Lemonade is finally finished after 9 long months. The 40 appliqued circles is really what took me so long. I thought the hand quilting would be alot more time consuming than it was. This quilt is a double bed size and as my first larger quilt I am very happy with the result. I had trouble when I was hand quilting in keeping the stitch length consistent but it got better as I went along. More importantly Miss Zoe just loves it!

Last but not least, Dave is Irish and it seems to have become a bit of a tradition for us to hold the big do to celebrate St Patricks Day. This year there was about 40 of us - family, friends, and neighbours but we were really lucky that both of Dave's brothers were in Sydney. Here is that side of the family... including Zoe's best mate who may as well be a family member....

Perhaps 40 books in 2009???

So we are almost at the end of the first quarter of the year - can you believe it? At this rate I will only get 40 books read by the end of the year...Yesterday I finished my #10 book, "The Undomesticated Goddess" by Sophie Kinsella. Easy reading chick lit, most enjoyable. This morning I went back to "The Widow Clicquot" by Tilar J. Mazzeo. I am 1/4 or so way through it and needed a little break, therefore The Undoemsticated Goddess (finished in about 36 hours).

Also for those you who have been following my Strawberry Lemonade quilt progress, I only have one more circle to hand quilt and then she needs to be bound and she will be completd. I am looking forward to that!!!!

My 3 lovely Pay It Forward gals, please email me at kayscha@hotmail.com with your details so I can send you little parcels...some time this year!!

Lazy Day Sunday Turns into Quilting Mania!

After a really lovely night out with friends last night, I awoke with a dull thud in my head as well as feeling totally exhausted. I took myself off to Mass then for a much needed chai latte and came home feeling a little more awake and a little more normal than when I left! We lazed around and read the papers and then I had the urge...to sew, of course!! What a wonderful afternoon I have had! Dave took Zoe out to the park for a couple of hours whilst Ciára had her nap, then he did absolutely everything at home so I could become one with my fabrics and sewing machine!!! I thoroughly enjoyed it and really appreciated Dave's hard work to give me some time out! He cooked, tidied, amused the kids and had a ball...might have to talk him into this being a regular Sunday thing!

Here is my little list of how my afternoon was spent;

1. Love Nest - top completed. Just waiting for the quilter to come back from holidays so it can be custom quilted, then bound.

2. Fr Martin's Jelly Roll Thank You quilt - fabric selected, grouped together and cutting started

3. M'Lady's Passion BOM - most recent block put together. Needs to be handstitched (along with previous 4 blocks - eeks!)

4. Wallhanging Swap - top and back completed, needs to be quilted, sandwiched and bound

I am not even going to pack my machine up as Dave will be away for alot of this week, so that means lots of sewing time once the girls are in bed of a night. Lucky me!

We are having huge internet dramas at the moment, not impressed with AAPT at ALL!! I am on Dave's laptop with remote connection so no photos for now. I will be back on the weekend with a long list of recently completed projects as well as my current WIP's.

Oh, and just the other day I finished Book #9 - Parky; Michael Parkinson's Autobiography. I always love a good life story and this was no exception. I have always loved Parky's interviews and his book did not let me down!

Love Nest & Rocket Man

Here is my stash from Prints Charming ! The fabric for "Love Nest" which I just love!
This is the "Love Nest" pattern. Thinking I might make it for Dave for our 5th wedding anniversary which is coimng up next month.

One of my friends is having a baby boy in May so how could I resist this gorgeous fabric for him! I had to order some of the fabric so the navy FQ's and the rest of the orange and lime are on their way to me at the end of this week.

What a Busy Week It Has Been...

So with no computer to distract me and Dave in Singapore on business(therefore no husband to distract me), there has been lots of quilty goodness going on in this house! A fine start to the week when a visit to the post office produced a few parcels! Always fun! Firstly a lovely delivery from my favourite online book store

Then a bundle from another favourite shop... I love this range from Lakehouse. I have no idea what to do with it, but I also bought 2 yards of the butterflies and 2 yards of the spot.
This table runner kit is for the coffee table in the back room. It is the Zippity DooDah range from Moda, I also bought some yardage and charm sqares to make new cushions and throws for the lounges. It is gonna be a busy year of sewing.....
Next to arrive was a little envelope filled with a purchase from Ebay. I love this print and hope to make a bed throw with this as a centre panel...funnily enough something similiar is in this months Better Homes and Gardens magazine with exactly the same fabric.
In the evenings after the girls had gone to bed, out would come my little "Brother" and together we pieced this top for Ciára's cot. Thought I should get onto it given she is 20 months old and soon we will be thinking about putting her in a single bed! It is the Butterfly Fling fabric, which I adore. This is a kit I bought but changed it slightly. It is a good size and can be used as a throw when the cot is dismantled (oooh, my baby is growing too quickly, might have to start thinking about a 3rd one!!??) Anyway, as I love it so much and my expertise at actually quilting is non-existant except for in the ditch, I have decided to have this one professionally quilted! It was so relaxing to just sew sew sew, with music on and Zeus curled up at my feet.
All my quilting gear has been organised into storage boxes and moved up to the garage, as it was so extremely hot here in Sydney I could not bear to take myself up to the garage to go fossicking through to work out what my next project would be....and I was on a quilty roll so something needed to be done. I happened upon 2 jelly rolls in my study that had missed my organising so off I chopped and have started another large throw for our bed. All the blocks are pieced, I just have to put all the blocks together now. Another great range of fabric that I love, it is Friends and Flowers by Mary Engelbriet..nice and bright - just as I love fabric to mostly be! Staytuned for photos of the finished product!

Yesterday it was 38 degrees in Sydney, now I love hot weather and summer, but that was just ridiculous, it was like a sauna, even inside where it was supposed to be cool! Poor Zeus was, I am sure, melting so we filled up his bath and he just sat in it for hours! I love this photo of my handsome boy!

And this photo just has to be taken, it is our version of Where's Wally..."Where's Zoe???" There was alot of activity in her bedroom when she was supposed to be sleeping...however now it is clear that she was having a toy party on her bed and that it all got too much for her and she just crashed mid party!!!