Angus our Jack Russell Terrier is not the flavour of the month today. I had thought I would finish my Wendy Williams project but discovered this….. Say no more, I went to pony club to watch my granddaughter instead of sewing today…

Who me? would I do that?

I bought the pattern for these bags Sew Together Bags  by ‘Sew Demented’ several months and it is only recently that I started making them. I completed the second one yesterday and I am fairly pleased with the result.

There are several little pockets on the inside for keeping sewing knick-knacks. This will be a very useful bag and make a lovely gift.

I had hoped to do some quilting last weekend but managed to bend my sewing machine needle. This knocked the machine out of alignment resulting in skipped stitches as well as the needle threader not working. A service and repairs is going to be $115. As you can see I did a good job of the needle which is titanium!

I had wanted to play with the fancy stitches on the sewing machine as they have a lot of potential for quilting and could be useful for quilters who are not confident with free motion quilting. I recently used some of these stitches on journal covers I have been making and was really pleased with the results.

Instead I have had to content myself with drooling over the 820 stitch manual which I made last year (Can you believe I stitched all the stitches out). Nevertheless this did give me time to me select a few stitches that would be suitable for use instead of using a straight stitching or cross hatching when quilting.

It is quite some time since I last updated my blog and my a lot has happened in that time. Towards the end of July my DH was critically ill and needed emergency surgery. He is now home from hospital and making a slow and steady recovery. As you can imagine I’ve not had much time for sewing during this time. It is only during the last week or so that I been able to pick up my needle and thread.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a retreat a couple of weeks ago while my daughters looked after DH. While at the retreat I picked up some gorgeous fabrics as you can see below from the shop in attendance.

I love both packs but the red is my favourite. I’m not sure what I will do with yet, I don’t want to open as I just enjoy drooling over them!

I have been able to start work on the QuiltWest Raffle Quilt, here is the top border, I am now working on the side border. The design is by Robyn Falloon of BonBon Designs

With DH being  sick I have to reschedule all my workshops. I will give you updates on the workshops page about my new workshops in the near future. In the meantime I can tell you that I will be doing a one day workshop at Ocean Keys Sewing Centre  on October 11th that will cover using the wedge ruler and free motion quilting. Please contact Faye Peskett for more details.

Finally I have been able to put the blocks together for the Jelly Roll quilt I started last week. Babysitting during the school holiday has kept me busier than I thought it would and I only managed to get around stitching the blocks together on Wednesday.  When finished this quilt will be donated as a community quilt. This was a really quick quilt to make.

I still have 4 more Jelly Rolls left, my next project will be to use these pink and aqua rolls. The Jelly Rolls are very pink dominant so I will see if I have any aqua in my stash to tone the pink down a bit!

On Saturday I went to Parkerville Friendship day. I had a really enjoyable day and it was topped off by winning a $30 voucher to spend at Bali Girl. I wasted no time selecting fabrics which I am really looking forward to using!

I couldn’t resist sharing an image of Abby, I’m a keen photographer and have just upgraded my camera so the little dog has been used as a model.

During the last week I have been busy doing housework…..and also tidying out a few cupboards where I found several Jellyrolls I’ve been squirreling away. Infact I had forgotten I had them. Two of them were bought at the AQC 4years ago so I felt it was time to put them to good use. I opened them up and spread them out over the table which would you believe had been tidied!

I decided that I did not want to purchase any more fabrics when using the Jellyrolls and had to use only the Jellyrolls I had with any fabrics I had in my stash. I thought that firstly I would try and use only the 2½” strips in the Jellyrolls. I drew a simple block in EQ7 which would suit my needs. How simple is this. I joined 3, 6½” x 2½” strips together as shown below. There are 2 sets of strips as I  made 2 blocks.

I then stitched a 6½” x 2½” to the top and bottom of the strips I had just sewn together so that the 2 blocks I made now look like the photo below. Each block now measures 6½”w x 10½” high.

I then stitched a 10½” x 2½” strip to each side of the blocks to give me 2 blocks that each measured 10½” x 10 ½” as shown below.

I finally stitched a 10½” x 2½” strip to the top and bottom of each block to give me the finished blocks as shown below with a size of 10½w” x 14½h”

I have made 26 blocks so far and look forward to putting them together as a quilt.

Even though I have been busy cleaning during the last week I did find time to socialise and went to my sewing group the Sandypatchers who met last Tuesday. I just have to share the beautiful quilt Sue a member of Sandypatchers has put together. Sue’s embroidery is spectacular. The quilt is from a book called A Gardener’s Journal by Anni Downs of Hatched and Patched.