Taking it for a test drive

Yesterday I spent a quiet afternoon at home after getting some jobs done in the morning. DS1 was at home with a virus, so he was able to keep his brother occupied with LEGO battles and Ninjago drama.

I thought I'd better get my act together and start preparing my project for the
Practically Paper Piecing Blog Hop - I am hosting on Thursday 9th August.

So I made a little headway with that - see the sneaky peak below....

I was chatting along on FB with Kristy from Quiet Play about our afternoon sewing exploits and she had been busy designing some new paper piecing patterns. I eagerly put up my hand and offered to test drive the Diamond Star!

And here is the result! Purple Terrain love! And the design looks fabulous set on point. I am hoping that I will be able to use this pattern to make my next quilt - hopefully using greens (you can see the green additions to my stash tomorrow).

Here is Kristy's design for a quilt using this pattern -

Doesn't it look fabulous?! All that purple love!

Sunday Stash #2

I'm writing this post while my hubby is out on a morning cycle so he doesn't see my stash for this week!

First up is a group of vintage sheet charm squares that I pulled out of Sasha. These are actually the work of the lovely Lara from Luellabella. I have a few other vintage sheets in my stash and I'm looking forward to seeing how I can put them all together. My favourite fabric from this bunch is the green and teal on the top left.





Vintage sheet goodness

 

Do you know that you can get designer FQs at BigW?? Who would believe it? I certainly didn't until I found some myself!

Below is some Tufted Tweets by Laurie Wisbrun. I found the red at BigW (who would have thought it?!) and was lucky enough to pull the green colourway out of Sasha. This is such a sweet line - you can see more at Laurie Wisbrun



Tufted Tweets



This was also a score from Big W - it's Robert Kaufman "Retro Cafe". I think I will be putting this to good use as part of my post in the Practically Paper Piecing Blog hop!



Retro Cafe utensils.



 The BigW FQs are $4 each, so not particularly cheap, but they certainly break up the monotony of Spotlight!

The biggest addition to my stash this week comes in the form of a layer cake AND a charm pack of Half Moon Modern by Moda. Such lovely colourways here - red, yellow, orange,green, teal and grey. I am really looking forward to playing with this. Not sure what I will do with it yet, but am open to suggestions!!



Half Moon Modern fabric yumminess!


I'm linking up today with Finding Fifth's Sunday Stash!!



                                                                

The arrival of Sasha!

Today heralded the arrival of Sasha, the travelling stash, organised by Cass from Cass the Coolest.

Sasha made her way to me after her visit to Kristy at Quiet Play

Here's Sasha's contents spread across my dining table.

Lots of goodies in here - threads, patterns, fabrics, notions...hmmm what to choose, what to choose? It was a hard decision but I chose -

2 black and white stripey FQs

Green chair fabric (to match the one I got in red at Big W on Monday)

A pack of vintage sheet charm squares

A reel of ribbon

A card of inspiration.

My choice from Sasha.

In return, I needed to add some goodies to Sasha before sending her on her merry way!

From my stash I added -

A quilter's Fabricalculator

A pattern for a loop bag

A pack of novelty charm squares

4 FQs of fabric.

So I have packed Sasha back up neatly and she just sneaks in under the 3kg mark, weighing in at a healthy 2.92kg. She is ready to head off to her next destination!

Thanks to Cass for organising - it's been fun to be a part of :)

 

Sunday stash

These are the new additions to my stash for this week. Not that I really needed anything but my friend Jane asked me to go to Spotlight with her..and this is what came home with me!

These are from the DS range. I will be using these next month when I am part of Quiet Play's Practically Paper Piecing bloghop!

some red and green - $4/m

And I managed to find these gorgeous nursery rhyme fabrics in the quilting section. The range is called "Classic Nursery"

Humpty Dumpty

The 3 little pigs

Hey Diddle Diddle!

Not sure what I will use this fabric for, but it was so cute that I couldn't resist!

Linking up today with Fiona from Finding Fifth!

Little red apples

My lovely friend Fiona from Finding fifth brought me some little red apples when she visited last week - such red appley goodness!

One of my favourite things to do with apples is to stew them and make apple crumble. So that little bag of apples soon became -


Lovely apple slices sitting pretty in my retro orange Le Creuset saucepan - appropriate seeing it is Bastille Day!

So on the stove they went with a little water until soft. I then mixed in a good teaspoon of cinnamon (we like our spices) and popped them in a baking dish.

Everyone has their own way of making crumble. For me, crumble means rolled oats and the recipe I use is -

1 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup plain flour
25g butter

I mixed all the dry ingredients together then rubbed the butter thru the mix until it was like breadcrumbs. It then gets spread over the stewed apple. I used a double batch of the crumble mix to cover this dish.

It all went into a 180C oven for about 40 mins or so.

It is great served  warm with ice cream or custard.

Also quite fab cold in the morning with a big dollop of Greek yoghurt :)

Apricot Slice

Baked apricot goodness!

A Mug Rug Swap

Ok! I thought a mug rug swap would be a lovely idea.

Guidelines -

Finished mug rug should measure approx 10"x 7" - but don't stress if it is 9x6 or 10x6 or 9x7!
Mug rugs are to be made of 100% cotton, quilted and securely bound. There is no set design...make it as simple or as complicated as you like!

To take part please register as Attending on the Mug Rug swap Event - you need to register by 31st August.

To give us plenty of time and no pressure, the date for Mug Rug completion is 30th October. We will endeavour to send our rugs in the first week of November.

This will be a secret swap - you will know who you are making for, but not who is making for you. I will post a list of questions for everyone to answer so that we can give our swap partner a few clues re likes and dislikes.

There is a nice tut here on making a mug rug
http://www.ryanwalshquilts.com/2010/11/dresden-wedges-mug-rug-tutorial-bliss.html
and if you need inspiration -
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1533394@N22/

Most of all this is meant to be fun!

How does this sound?? Feel free to suggest any changes or add anything I have left out!!