This month's UFOs

In amongst all the other stitching activity I have been pushing myself to work on, I have been chipping away at my UFOs again this month. Though they are all small finishes, they are all finished and out of the UFO box, so worthy of mention.

Once upon a time, nearly 40 years ago) when I was going through a crochet stage, my Mum showed me an old picture of a doiley with pansies around the outside, and said she had always wanted to have a doiley like that.  Well I found a pattern for pansies and did my best to find pansy coloured cottons to use - no small feat in our little country town where we lived at the time.  I crocheted away and produced a number of pansies, but alas they were not quite as my Mum envisioned her doiley to be. I didnt have the right colours to be able to do multi coloured pansies as in her picture.  So I put my pansies into a jar and left them there.

Recently I saw this pic on the internet, and immediately thought of my pansies.  Just the right project for my pansies.  (I am still searching for where I found this pic so I can link to it.)

And here are mine, along with my little lot of pansies still to be used.

So far, I have used 5 of my pansies, and have another 8.  I may use some for matching needlebooks.  Or.......

Most of these will go into my birthday love stash box.

My other UFO finishes for this month are a Christmas heart which I embroidered last year, so just needed to assemble.

This little coin purse needed a suitable frame for it, and I finally found one I could use at the recent Craft and Quilting Fair.

1 Month to go.....

till Christmas Day.  I have been working away on some things that I cant share, but also I have one that I can show for my 1 Christmas Item for November.  It is not finished yet, but it will be before long.

I bought this kit at the Mad Quilters Gathering, earlier this year.  I liked the old Christmas Card style of the panel.

I will be back soon to show it finished off.

Secret Santa time

It is so lovely to make bloggy friends, and the people in this group - Stitchers Inc in Brisbane - are very special friends.  So it was great to meet up again yesterday, after not being able to meet for a while. (room unavailability).
We had a lovely afternoon - such yummy food, lots of chatting and catching up, a teeny tiny bit of stitching, and our Secret Santa swap, which was amazing.  What a wonderfully talented bunch we are.  :o)

I was thrilled to be able to make for Maria.   I searched through her blog rather thoroughly.  I discovered that she loves purple (well I did already know that).  I also found that her Christmas decorations appeared to be in traditional reds and greens.  Yes, Maria I did look that far back.

So to satisfy both those facts, this is what I made for her -

 a celtic table runner in Christmas fabrics.  I love making this pattern, as it always turns out so pretty.

 And a needle book in purples.(above is the front, and below is the inside of it.  The heart is in a mauve coloured doctors flannel)

 Here is Maria holding her gifts.

The "M" on the front of the needlebook is from Michelle's Stitchers Alphabet pattern - one of my favourites for stitchery gifts, and one I will use over and over again.  Debbie also used the "M" for her person, so we had to compare them.

Very different colours, but both looked good.

I was thrilled to receive a gift from Cheryl.  She gave me a gorgeous market bag in some of her favourite fabrics, which was so lovely.  Arent they cute - love those chookies and their eggs.  The lining is black with apples on it.

 This lovely plum pudding decoration is made in felt.

 And I love this most beautiful embroidered handkerchief with crocheted edging.

Oops, we do look like such a messy lot dont we?  But we had all that tidied away in minutes once it was time to leave.

  

I will be waiting to catch up with you all in February, in our exciting new venue.  (Thanks to Maree for finding and organising it for us).  In the meantime, I will catch you online.

A little progress for FNSI

The Grandies finally settled down on Friday night, to enable me to work on some stitchery for FNSI.

This is for a secret project, so cant show any more of it for some time now.

You can head over here, and scroll to the end of the post  to see what the other 47 people have been working on for their FNSI.

I will be back before long to show some photos of our Stitchers Inc get together and Christmas secret Santa swap.    

FNSI

I will be back over the weekend to show which of the many projects I decided to work on tonight.

Hope you all of you who have signed up have a great stitchy night.  It will be good to see what you worked on.

Grandies visits and birthday

I do love Grandie's birthdays.  Kai had his 8th birthday yesterday.  Such a gorgeous age.

As soon as he was home from school he dived into making his new lego models - a Batman one, and 2 boats.  Such concentration as he worked through the instructions and completed them.

 Charlie offered a bit of overseeing advice.

 These boys love the cakes their Mum makes for their birthdays.  Kai chose a castle.  We found a silicone form in the shape of a castle at KMart, so that solved the shape rather well.  Once it was iced they had fun directing the decoration with all forms of sweets.  It was a delicious cake.

It had blue jelly for the water in the moat.  Love those giant's footsteps leading to the drawbridge.

But the absolute highlight for them was finding these little creatures waiting outside for them when they woke up.

We have these 2 Grandies - Sammy and Henry, staying for a few days.

They are leaving tomorrow for Sydney, so it will be back to a quiet house for a few weeks.

I do love our Grandies!!!!  Did I tell you all that before?  Probably, but that's ok.