9 Patch Swap Sent (Oh, and did you know that it is November?)

I love swaps! So much fun! This is my pile of 72 9 patches that I sent off. Six different colour/fabric combos, 12 of each combo. Our Swap Mama will send me 72 squares back, but they will all be different! How cool is that. Then I will assemble my quilt top and quilt my quilt. This is the last swap for this year for me. I got a little swapped out and decided to take a break. I love the challenge of swaps (they really encourage me to try things I have never done before!) they have really increased my confidence and my abilities. I have learnt lots of new things this year and tried lots of new things too. Oh, by the way, it's November! This year has just flown by and I guess I am already thinking about the new year and the goals I will set for myself. I am looking forward to Christmas. Can't wait to set up my decorations and lights and make everything twinkley! Mrs 25 has already got her tree up. As soon as it hits November her tree goes up! I had a lovely surprise when I went to church on Sunday. Our new ward (congregation) often has organ and piano duets for prelude music and last Sunday they were playing Christmas carols! Such a lovely surprise!!! Usually Christmas carols are reserved exclusively for December and you don't really have enough time to enjoy them, so it was lovely to listen to them! I feel all warm and fuzzy now with all this Christmas talk! I'm off to sew now.

Rosalie Quinlan's Redwork Christmas BOM no 8

Finished number eight. Just number nine to go. Ultimately this BOM ends up as a quilt, but a couple of people have suggested that they would make small projects with the stitcheries. So I'm thinking about it. Thinking..........thinking.............thinking......

A day at the beach

My day started and ended at the beach today. I wish I had some photos of my beachy morning, but I didn't have my camera with me. It was sunny and hot. The water was clear. Some was dark blue and some was light green. I sat on the jetty on a seat under the shade and hung my head through the railings and watched the light green water and the sand below it. The sand hid a crab until it moved and it made it's way under the jetty. Once I had seen the crab I began to really look in the water and saw all kinds of fish. It was an Animal Planet kind of day (okay, Wild Kingdom kind of day for us oldies!) because I saw sea birds and even two dolphins!

My hot day had a weak cool change at about 3:30 this afternoon. We had always planned to go to the beach this evening and when we got there it was cool, windy, and overcast. Not sure what you call this. (sailboarding? kiteboarding?) If you do this you must be waiting for a windy day!

They were so fast and made it look so easy! (I'm sure it's not easy!) Everything looked so beautiful at the beach. The colours in my photos are not nearly enough. I really felt like I was looking at a watercolour painting. Despite the cool change Miss 12 and Mr 9 went swimming. It was a really lovely evening!

Northern Lights are returning to Adelaide!

Just cruising around blogland and discovered this exciting news on Michelle Hill's blog. It's old news, but new to me. I went to see Northern Lights last time and truly loved it! We were in the throes of a heatwave at the time and it was just wonderful sitting on the grass late in the evening watching the lights. Can't wait! Apparently there will be even more in 2010. Wow.

Getting the hang of it, I think!

The title of this post could refer to lots of things. Not sure if Mr 9 is getting the hang of drumming (Slightly unconventional stick holding!) but he is passing on his wisdom to grandson nevertheless. (You can see grandson's sweet face in the bottom right hand corner of the photo.) When Mr 9 finishes bashing away, grandson takes over. (Usually with a more conventional style of stick holding!)

These are some of the nine patches I have been working on. I was thinking that I must be getting the hang of blogging again, but realised that's not strictly true because I am still taking photos in the middle of the night! These are for a swap. I will send mine off and get the same number back, but they will all be different and viola! A scrap quilt! (I think that's how it works!)

This is the quilt I have been practicing my free motion quilting on. It's not a big quilt, but I am only halfway through it! Kellie must be a very good concentrator. It seems to take much more concentration than I have energy for! I really do love the result though. I love quilts that are heavily quilted and this one just feels lovely. My stitch length is dreadful, but I'm sure that will improve with practice! Mr 9 was touching the quilt today and said that it felt really good. "Now I see why you sit there for so long sewing and pulling all those faces." Yes, apparently I am an animated quilter! So much so that my Bradley had to take a video yesterday of my facial expressions for the Paton family video vault! Oh well, if I can't entertain my posterity what's the point? So, what will I be sewing tomorrow? Finishing off the nine patches, some more quilting practice, and maybe playing with some split nine patches too. Maybe I'll even remember to take photos in the daylight! Maybe.

Mystery indulgence class

Saturday I went to the Patchwork Apple for a mystery indulgence class. Classes two weekends in a row! It didn't go unnoticed by Mr 9 I can tell you. I had a wonderful time. We got to stitch/embellish fabric for a cushion. Sara (the teacher) said we would be looking at fabric in a different way. I thought it was a great idea. There are so many beautiful fabrics around at the moment that demand you just look at them! Some (like this fabric I chose) are just too lovely to cut into. I decided to highlight the bird with stitching and beading. It's a little hard to see from my photos (that's what you get for taking photos in the middle of the night!) but I think it's looking great. It really was a great day and I got to hang out with Lorraine again and meet a bunch of other stitchers too! Don't know yet what I will do with it. Maybe not a cushion. Cushions have a hard life at my house! Grandson piles them up and then throws himself on them! That's called a snuggle buggle at our house. You need lots of cushions and some rugs as well and then you snuggle, a lot! I can't see a beaded cushion being very snuggly. Mrs 25 was the inventor of the snuggle buggle at our house so it's little wonder that grandson is such a devotee since his Mum is the inventor!

I am looking forward to this week of sewing. I am free motion quilting a quilt and making some nine patches for the nine patch swap. Photos to come!

My week has wings!

This week has just flown by! My Bradley spent this week in Townsville for work so it meant I had to be two parents instead of one which makes me so much busier. (I don't know how single parents do it!) Our new place (kind of not that new anymore after four months!) has a courtyard and now that our thoughts are turning to spring (it's warming up here) we are thinking about the courtyard! I am sitting outside under our new shade. My laptop is on the new table and I am contemplating just where to put the bbqs! (You know me, always feeding the 5000 so I have to have more than one bbq!)

A couple of months ago I joined a quilting group at the patchwork apple and yesterday managed to finish my Rosalie Quinlan Redwork Christmas BOM month 7 whilst there! I thought I was never going to finish that one! I was on a roll. Don't know what happened, but I obviously fell off the roll and I thought I would never finish number 7. I just have 8 and 9 to do now. Not sure if I will finish it for this Christmas, but there's always next year! I have a lot of Christmas projects rushing around in my head. I really want to have a handmade Christmas this year. I've been trying to think how I would have felt about that if my mother did that when I was a child and I realised that she did. She often made our gifts and I loved them all. We live in such a brand new, shiny, disposable, status symbol kind of world that I would like to remove that from our Christmas if I can. Too much emphasis is on what we've got and what we're getting, rather than what we are. So, on with the sewing!