Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Stitching Update ...

Hi everyone,

Well it is Labour Weekend here in New Zealand, which is the traditional time to have your vegetable garden planted if you are wanting to be eating fresh produce at Christmas. I planted some seeds several weeks ago before going away on the trip to Opononi with the girls. The only seeds that haven't shown their lovely heads are the capsicums - everything else is above ground or should I say seed raising mix. It is my plan to get as much as possible planted this weekend. I also purchased a capsicum plant from the growers market this morning so that I have one plant ahead of my raised seeds (if they show their pretty heads, that is). The market was really busy - we must have a lot of visitors in Northland this weekend.

Okay in terms of stitching - I have been feeling like I have too many things that I am trying to work on at the moment and had decided to focus on just two things which would enable me to make better progress and get the quilt tops completed faster. Funnily enough I saw on Bonnie Hunter's post yesterday that she is feeling that she too has too many projects on the go and just needs to concentrate on a couple and get them to completion. See I am not the only one and it was good for me to hear that others have to re-evaluate and re-prioritize too. It was through thinking about this blog and that it was about time I gave an update as to progress on quilts that I am working on, that I came to realise that I haven't made as much progress as I would like.

I went upstairs to tidy the sewing room the other day and couldn't face it. The juki is permanently set up so I just sat down and did some mindless sewing on what was sitting right there. Hence I have got the red strings completed for Orca Bay and what a fantastic feeling that is. They are all trimmed and counted up- surprise, surprise I even have a few spares! I need to sit down and work out what the next step is with these, but because I still wanted to do some mindless sewing I just looked for the next thing on hand to sew and continued until my bobbin ran out.

Since the other day when I couldn't face sorting the sewing room, every time I have been up there since, I spend some time sewing and some time sorting and both are looking better for it! The thought of tackling the sewing room until it is done is overwhelming and depressing, so my answer is to do some of both - that way I can see progress as I go and I don't get bored!

When I was looking for a project to take on our girls weekend away to Opononi I discovered a few UFO's that I had forgotten about and one of them is Orange Crush. The interesting thing is that I have all of one set of squares completed but not the other and couldn't work out why until I realised that I had started this quilt before I had purchased the companion and angle rulers. So I have cut the triangles that I need and have started stitching these blocks and they are coming together well.

I have made a point to visit my sewing room for a session for the last three days and I can see where I have been. Both in terms of tidying up the mess that has just been dumped there for what feels like forever and in terms of the progress that I am making in my sewing. I have taken a leaf out of Bonnie Hunter's book and had a movie playing yesterday while I was sewing. It must have sounded like I was having fun as I sure had a few visitors checking out what was going on! My son even sat down and watched the movie for a while before carrying on with what he was doing. 

While I am doing an update here are some photos of mums cat Wilson, remember he was a kitten not that long ago and look at him now ...


Labour Day Monday we went out to our favourite beach, Ruakaka for a really good walk along the beach. I always love finding other peoples creations on the beach, they always make me smile. Take a look at these...

I thought this was awesome!

This one hasn't shown up very well.

A lot of work has gone into these.

It looked like there had been quite a bit of traffic at the beach on Monday, there were heaps of life guards and there were many more sandcastles along the way down the beach as well as some amazing big holes - I hope the tide fills them in otherwise they could be dangerous walking along the beach in the half light.

I was going to get photos of the projects that I have working on but I am going to have to leave those for another day or I will never get this post published for you all to read. You will just have to check back here to see what I have been doing.

Until next time, happy stitching everyone.

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