What's under my needle

Just a quick post today as I am in the middle of a project and I want to get it done! 

But I wanted to update you with what is under my needle at the moment. This is a quick practice quilt to have done before I embark on mums quilt. I am glad that I have done it this way as the mistakes I have made on this one I don't really want on mums quilt.

Yes, it is taking longer to quilt than I thought it would, isn't that always the way though. Things are never as plain sailing as you think they will be, so I persevered through many obstacles and the end is in sight.

I can't wait to show you the completed quilt and YES it will be the first quilt completed in 2016.

Happy stitching everyone

Donna-Maree

Deadline looming

All of the Christmas decorations and paraphernalia are definitely down, packed up and are stored back up in the ceiling space ready for next Christmas. The house looks quite bare without it all and this coming year I must decorate the house a little earlier so we can enjoy having it all around longer than we did this year, I think it really does help to get into the spirit of it all.

Most of the businesses and companies in New Zealand are back to work today after the Christmas and New Year holiday break and what a mixed bag we have had weather wise. We did have a few days where the temperatures reached 28 degrees and we really enjoyed summer, alas last week we were supposed to be camping in a tent and the weather was not cooperative at all with wind and rain, we had to make the call to cancel that and so we did home based activities instead. 

The weather isn't much better this morning with a cyclone heading towards New Zealand, it should scoot past us but its presence will be felt with winds and heavy rains - just what every summer needs. The strawberry plants have slowed down as has most of the produce in the garden, hopefully everything will pick up again if the weather improves. 

I managed to squeeze a little bit of stitching in amongst things over the last week and have been making some oven mitts and have stitched more hexies. The hexies are a fantastic stitching activity when friends are visiting, it keeps your hands busy while chatting, is productive and sometimes your non quilting friend is so impressed with what you are doing that they leave with a hexie to start their own project.

I am meeting mum in Auckland next week for another appointment and decided that would be the deadline to have her quilt completed so she can have it with her while having treatment and I am running out of time. 

I am so undecided on how to quilt it and have had it draped over the door to my sewing room so I can ponder on it, but alas nothing is coming to mind. Any suggestions - please comment below, I need to get this beauty done.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2016

After the hustle and bustle of pre Christmas, I really enjoy the slower pace of the days following Christmas and before the New Year and as I mentioned in previous posts I always find it a time of evaluation and reflection. New Year means different things to different people and for me it is firstly to celebrate my husbands birthday and then secondly it marks the passage of time whilst giving me the opportunity to reassess where I am on my life journey. I enjoy taking stock of where I am on that journey and find it is a good time to think through goals for the coming year and to have a clean out of papers, emails, sort and de clutter areas that I don't usually get to during the year.

I have spent some time in my sewing room rearranging things back into sewing room mode from guest room mode and have started thinking about my top five for 2016. I have made a list of all of my UFO's - this is a very honest list for my eyes only. 

As I was compiling this list I was thumbing through my quilt planning book I use which works well but is seperate from my diary so I decided to create a chart to help me keep on track of my UFO's enabling me to see at a glance where they are all at and what still needs to be done on each one. I have attached this sheet into the front of my diary so I know exactly where it is and I have everything in one place.

I have identified my top priorities and will work on those first. I can now see exactly what needs to be done to get these to the finish line thanks to my chart and I can allocate time in my diary for each step required. 

This forward thinking and planning I find saves me time as I know exactly what needs to be done and generally just do it, otherwise I will sit in my sewing room with no clear direction and wonder what should I work on and not make the most of the precious sewing moments that I have which I find very frustrating. 

I still have some tweaking to do with the organisation in the sewing room but I have spent quite a bit of time in the weeks before Christmas getting things more streamlined and organised as I can't stand not being able to find things when I need them and get very frustrated with the waste of sewing time spent looking for things. The tweaking will happen on a daily basis as I spend more time working on stitching, but as things are getting more organised I am finding that I am enjoying my space more and want to spend more time in there. 

Over the last couple of days while pottering I have put together a couple of book covers for my club planning book and my diary. I enjoyed creating these and used some string pieces that I had already made and I look forward to seeing them both often this year.

That is all for now so until next time, happy stitching everyone.

Donna-Maree