Busy

Well it has been a very busy week here so far.  I haven't achieved too much sewing but have done a bit on my wren project.  I have also organised a couple of project boxes and pulled out the Farmer's Wife Quilt to do some sewing on it hopefully Friday.  Now I think it might even be a FNWF this week too which will be excellent.  Will have to keep an eye out for the sign up.

Lance has been to our local Dr and has been able to remove 3 blood pressure meds and lower another one which is excellent.  We were told that it would take between 3-6 months to take affect and that it only works for 50% of patients so all the drama has been worth it.  Lance will be off work for another week at least and we are travelling to Bendigo for an ultrasound tomorrow to make sure everything is healing the way it should.  He is still having trouble moving around but that is improving each day too.  It is so much better having him home than in Melbourne.

He's home ....

Got the phone call I have been waiting for this morning at just after 9am to go through to Sunbury to pick Lance up from the station there.  Perfectly timed somehow as I only just arrived before the train.  It is such a relief to have him home.  Thank you everyone.

Michelle sorry but not doing needleturn today lol.  But I think I have nutted it out after some youtube videos.  Its just ladder stitch lol why have I been scared off all this time.

FNSI

This morning I seen that last night was February's FNSI.  So thought why not do it tonight instead.  This is a quilt that my mum has started and passed on to me to complete the top.  There is a heap of squares cut out so all I have done is mark squares up for the half square triangles and get sewing.   I have made 30 snow ball    blocks and made a start on the 9 patch blocks.  The fabrics are from 'Grace' by Moda.

Hope everyone else had a great stitching night too.

Update

Just heard it will be at least another day before they will consider letting Lance out.  He's still in too much pain and the Dr might consider letting him go tomorrow but he can only travel as far as Sunbury and I will pick him up from there.  Oh its a long process now but I am happier about the whole thing.  Its just wait and see now.  

Might go and have a cuppa with my parents this morning and then come home and do some more, you guessed it, sewing lol.  I organised a folder full of patterns this morning so I will make a cover for it after lunch.

Some better news

Thank you to everyone for your kind wishes and for putting up with me too lol.   I am very pleased to say Lance is doing much better this afternoon.  It seems the procedure to fill the aneurysm has worked after all and fingers crossed he will be taken by taxi to a train tomorrow and safely put on it to come home as far as Bendigo where I can pick him up.     The site will be checked tomorrow morning and if all is well I will have him home by tea time.  It will be such a relief to have him home where I can keep an eye on him lol and it will take some time to heal as he has a huge haematoma there as well because of all the bleeding.  One very sore leg and a set of sore kidneys too will need lots of TLC.

Now didn't get too much done yesterday but look what I have completed today lol.  Nearly all those wonky little squares have been used up and I have enough left for a folder cover and a basic bag just to keep projects organised.  I have used up heaps of wadding scraps and calico and actually done something useful with it all.

Chair cushion

Random block made up into a fabric ATC

New pin cushion

Thread catcher

Now off to answer some emails and I might just get the folder and bag organised tonight and finish it off in the morning.  Hopefully next time you hear from me I will have Lance home.

Pear shaped

Well this is not a post I thought I would be making but things have gone pretty pear shaped today.  I wont have Lance home until probably Sunday at the earliest because things have gone wrong.  They have found that all the pain overnight was caused by a tear to the femoral artery in the groin which on ultrasound has shown he has an aneurysm in a, you guessed it, very difficult place for treatment.  When things go wrong we do it well!  So the upshot of it is they have performed another procedure at lunchtime to put pressure on the area  and as that didn't work they then decided to inject a type of glue into the aneurysm to hopefully stabilise it.  The next 24 hrs are critical because of the risk of it bursting or breaking off and blocking blood flow to his leg.  He is flat on his back with no chance of moving a muscle for that time.

This was meant to be the miracle treatment to fix his hypertension that is not controlled by all the medication he takes.  The Dr's tell me that the risk of this happening is less than 1% and that since he had the strokes that he is the perfect candidate for it.  Lets just hope that in the next 6 months that it will take for it to start working that there is a drastic improvement and that we will be laughing about it.  I don't feel like laughing very much at the moment.  At least he is in the right place and that they are keeping a close eye on him and I do have faith in them being able to fix it.  Its no ones fault that this has happened.  Its just the way things are. But he is 3 hrs away and insistent that I do not have to come down to see him as he will be home soon enough.  Might just have to override that idea depending how things go.

So I am going to have a pot of tea, which will keep me up all night lol, and a big block of chocolate and probably do some more sewing.  In other words, suck it up and get on with things.

Giveaway

Now I have been sitting here wondering what I would do with the pattern of the quilted cottage and thought why not have a giveaway.   It has the original design sheets intact as I had it only slightly enlarged which I have also included.  So basically it looks brand new lol.  Open to anyone and all you have to do is comment on this post that you are interested and I will draw it on the 1st of March.  There are a few non-reply bloggers about so just check or it will be hard for me to contact you.  Here's a pic so you don't have to trawl back through all my posts over the last few days lol and thank you to everyone for your friendship on here too.  Just realised it is also my 100th post!  I have finally reached a milestone on this blog too lol.

Another finish!

Have you had enough of my blogging yet lol.

This afternoon after finishing off those journals I decided to pull out a little box of squares that were cut for a quilt many years ago.  They are of course leftovers so thought I should make something up with them.  Pondered what for a while and decided I want to makeover my sewing area.  Really it just needed a tidy and Tess's toys fixed.

These are my wonky pile of squares.  I just randomly started sewing them together.  Some of them are a little out with the cutting so what I don't use I might go back through and re-cut some a little smaller and chuck the rest.

Here's my messy table looks quite icky really lol.

Had another go of machining on the binding and am much happier with the results although I could still do better.  

I've decided I need a new pin cushion and one of those lovely thread catchers.  Just need to find a pattern and I will be able to create some to match the patchwork topper.  I have decided not to make a cover for the machine as I do prefer to use the hard cover.

I have finally heard late this afternoon that Lance is doing well after his procedure.  Such a relief and hopefully I will be able to pick him up tomorrow.  It will take a little while before we know if it has worked so fingers crossed it has.  

Now off to play around a bit more or should this little night owl get an early night.  Maybe a cup of tea and a pattern search first.

New project

Now this is going to be my version of Michelle Ridgeway's latest project featured in Country Threads Vol 13 No 10.  Its all drawn up and stitched to the point of finding some fabric for the butterflies either end.  Not sure what I will use yet.  I must say it sewed up great to this point and I am looking forward to starting the stitching later.  Maybe I should finish my wren first.  Or at least the tree skirt I am still slowly working on lol.

I've even organised the wadding, backing and binding fabric.  I will bind it in the plain green and will do it the old fashioned way stitching it by hand I think.

See I said I would be very productive didn't I.  Haven't heard a thing about Lance yet and it has just gone 1pm.  Last I heard was at 8.30 just before he headed into the hospital so don't know exactly when it was all going to happen.  No doubt someone will ring me later.  Now back to work on something else to keep me busy.  I think I would like a mat to go under my machine and a matching cover for it too.  I have a little box of 2.5" floral squares somewhere.  Might just have to pull that out now.  Fantastic to be making things from my little stash of scraps etc.

Birthday Stash item

Been having fun playing around with some scraps this morning and have just finished running up 2 'Bloom' journal covers.  Don't remember where I seen the link for this tutorial but it is so quick and easy.  Its from one of you lovely ladies in blog land.

I didn't have iron on pellon so just used some very thin polyester wadding scraps I had.  No shops open at 5.30am to get it lol.

The purple one will be for the birthday stash namely Grace.  The fabrics are from her suffolk puff quilt scraps.  The other one made from more scraps from the table mat will be mine I think.  I still have plenty more of this fabric but might put it in the stash box and work on something else.

A finish! OPAM

After lunch I started work on this project which has been sitting around for quite some time since I finished the embroidery and cut the fabrics.  Today it went from this ...

to this ...

and finally this ...

I ditch quilted it and did that back to front machine binding.  It is quicker but my corners could have been a bit better than they are.  A couple are a little wonky but that's ok as there are a few wonky bits in the patchwork too lol.

The embroidery was completed last January and I used 1 strand of Cottage Garden thread to work it.  I also completed a blue version for my Mum's birthday last year.   The pattern is a red work design called Quilter's cottage in an orchard by Willow Valley Store.  I worked my border differently than the one pictured in the pattern.  

Here's a pic of the blue version featuring some William Morris fabrics.  This is just before I stitched down the binding.  Can't find the finished pic.

Now I said I was going to be productive lol.   Off to do something with those gorgeous leftover fabrics for the birthday stash item for February.  

A visitor

Today we had a little visitor and he has only just left ...  wander if he will come back tomorrow to sleep in our ornamental pear tree for the day.

Well not much to show ...

well nothing really.  Worked really hard to get everything done by Wednesday to have 4 full days home sewing on a quilt that my mum passed on to me and also some FW blocks but it just didn't happen that way. Thursday I did a bit of a shop and went to parents house to find a near flat tyre when leaving.  Ok fixed that by putting air in it and taking it straight over to the tyre place to be fixed.  Stupid car kept sending an alarm message every 5 mins all the way over and just put this down to the tire being low on pressure.  Nope the best part of the afternoon was spent at the mechanics after they said it was the electrical/computer system.  Lucky for us  it is under warranty.   Put me right off sewing I must say.  Did get the car back late in the afternoon as it was apparently a loose wire!  Thought it had better not come loose ever again.  Just too frustrated to sew after that.

Friday was a much better day and enjoyable but I still didn't get any sewing done.  I thought a good run in the car would be an idea to make sure everything is ok with it so picked up Mum and took her to Kyabram to that patchwork shop.  I found a few cheap fat quarters, as usual, and Mum had quite a few bargains and some Cottage Garden threads too.  I also had a call from the repair people that had our 6 mth old Kelvinator fridge and they were ready to bring back our fridge so teed that up for 1pm.  Thankfully they had loaned us one while they fixed it under warranty.  By the time we got back home and I got their fridge emptied and shifted the table etc the afternoon was gone.  Must say though I would use these guys from, guess where,  Kyabram again because they turn up exactly on time!  Never had that happen before with tradies.  Shame that Echuca had no one reliable for the warranty on the fridge.  Well they do but they don't stock loan fridges and would have taken 7 days to even come and look at the fridge in the first place.  Not good really considering we would have been without refrigeration for about 4 weeks all up.

So since the fridge came back I picked up 25kg of sauce tomatoes and set to work.  Saturday saw 15 meal lots of gnocchi/pasta sauce, 10 of spag bol, 4 pasta bake, and 6 lasagne.  Sunday saw about 15 bottles of tomato sauce and 4 more lots of a different lasagne.  I have enough tomatoes left to make up some tomato soup today also for the freezer.  Plus while stirring sauce for 4 hours I have a very clean pantry lol.

So after all this I do have a full freezer again and hopefully that is our 3 things gone bad out of the way for the year.   Lance will be having a procedure done in Melbourne this Wednesday and he will be away for 3 days.  Its a trial at St V's that is meant to lower blood pressure by ablation of the renal arteries to the kidney's.  Lance takes a lot of medication since his stroke so hopefully we will be able to stop 4 tablets by the end of the week.  That means I can save nearly $120 a month from the chemist.  Shame about the other 4 tablets that he will have to stay on.  Might actually get some flimsies quilted it that is the case lol.  Anyway I do think that work and sewing will help keep me occupied while he is away so you can expect some pics nearly every day for the next week lol.

More scrapbooking

Here's some shots of what I did on Sunday.  All of the pages and cards made over the weekend have been made using the same range of 4 double sided Kaisercraft papers and some plain ones from my stash that suited them.  It is great use of paper and the scraps have been used to create cards.   I very rarely purchase paper at full price so it is even better value from the clearance section of an online shop I used to buy from.

www.idealpapercraft.com.au/store/  Its been a while since I have ordered anything from Mary but it was always well priced, well packed and quick.

Scrapbooking

Today I thought I would enjoy some scrapbooking.  I spent about an hour organising some photos printed ages ago into date order and then filed into albums before doing these pet pages.  I think what motivated me was Sharon talking about doing it with her daughter.  Here's my take on some cheap and cheerful pages that didn't cost the earth to make lol.

The photos on this page are a little bad but as you can guess I came home one morning to find that Tiger had decided to pull the lace curtains down.  He was one very naughty cat lol but Bindi's best mate.  

Bindi was our previous dog and a real sweetie.

Looking at this one now I think it needs either the photos matted or a horizontal strip to give it a more finished look.

This is Merlin at around 41/2 months.  He is only just starting to get his colour.

Bindi was a little unsure of Merlin as I think she was still missing Tiger but they got on okay.

Wren

I've also done a lot on my blue wren.  Here's an update ....

I am enjoying stitching this little wren.

Dog toys

Here's the finished dog toys with those squeakers inside.  Fun to make and Tess enjoys playing with them.  Scrap fabric is okay but I might need to get some polar fleece or something tougher than polycotton lol.  I made a few spares and have already reused the squeakers and stuffing from one.

Suffolk puff update

I have now completed 356 puffs towards Grace's quilt.  Not bad considering we only started a few weeks back.  They are a great tv project when you need something easy to make that requires no real though.

Dog Bed

Well another doogie project from that scrap bag lol.  A bed (booster seat)  for the car.  Wool blanket top and fabric sides and base.  I have only stuffed it with old pillows at the moment until I get a piece of foam cut for it.

FNWF results

Well there was pizza for tea and I didn't even need to go and get it lol.  Had a great time too.

Firstly before tea I sat down and made about 20 suffolk puffs.  That brings the total to 245!  Might actually get this quilt made this year lol.  I wont bore you with pics.

Next I decided to make up one set of dog toys to see if Tess likes them before working on the others.  The fabric for them is from my Mum's scrap bag and some squeakers and rattles that I purchased online.  It only took two days and they arrived too.  Very fast.  So these are the first OPAMs for February.

Next I decided to start a new project from the latest copy of Inspirations.  Called Royal Blue by Trish Burr, it is an Australian Fairy Wren.  We have these wrens in our garden and they do turn a splendid blue like this one during mating season.   I think I will frame him when finished.

Well had better get a move on and hang out the washing, walk the dog and do some grocery shopping so that I can get back to sewing today lol.  Going to be perfect weather to sit outside and stitch too.  Nice and cool!

PINTREST

Who know's much about pinterest or whatever it is called.  Don't know how I came across it but googled my blog address to open it up in a different browser and up pops my Magnolia project in pinterest lol.  It doesn't matter but how on earth would it have ended up on there with my blog addy too.  I don't have much to do with these sorts of sites so don't really know how they work.

FNWF

Tonight is FNWF!  Heading off to Cheryll to sign up.