Late Early Bird finishes

Finally here are some more finishes for the Early bird Christmas Crafting. 

 At the Craft and Quilt Fair last year was a kit for this bird Christmas ornament.  It was so enjoyable to make, so I have made a couple to give away this year.

 I have made this little purse from the pattern of the teepee purses, but have sewn the last seam flat instead of forming the teepee shape.  Again the design is from Designs by Sick, and it is made completely in the hoop on my embroidery machine, apart from that last seam.  This one is filled with "necessities" to carry in a handbag - tissues, bandaids, hand cream,  anti bacterial hand wash, pencil, etc.all together in the purse to make it easy to transfer from one handbag to another as the recipient is rushing out the door. 

 A couple of the very young people on my gift list will enjoy these owls, also completely made on the embroidery machine apart from the opening for stuffing.  They are so colourful and such fun to make.  This is a design from Hatched in Africa.  It has been good to use my embroidery machine to make things other than straight embroideries, and to see how versatile they are.

This month has been filled with Family things, so sewing time was much shorter.  I was really pleased to get these finishes.

Also in the last two weeks I have been moving my sewing room from where it was in the dining room area of our house, to the garage.  I still have a bit of a way to go but it is working out well and should be good when finished.  Theres nothing like moving camp to remind us of just how much we have stashed away in our sewing areas. 

Peta has been enjoying using her cooking set with her playdoh this week - and the apron is being worn every day.  She seems to favour the cherry fabric side.  She is such a cutie.

The Party

Peta had a wonderful 3rd birthday with her friends.  She was wearing a Tinkerbell costume, and one of the Mum's there did facepainting.  She did an amazing job.

Peta liked her apron, and the best thing was she could put it on by herself without straps needing to be tied.  She did the velcro waist strap up straight away. She then explored the cooking set and was keen to be able to try it out.

Happy Birthday, Peta.

Tomorrow we are going to visit our Son, DIL and children for Peta's 3rd birthday party.  Not too far - just over an hour each way if traffic is not too heavy.  Peta is our only Granddaughter, the other 5 Grandchildren are boys. 
So today I dug out some girlie fabrics  to make her an apron, as we are giving her a little cooking set.  She loves to help Mum.  I used the pattern for the reversible apron from here.  But I substituted the straps from here.  Hopefully having the elasticated over the head strap will mean she can put it on herself, and the velcro on the waist strap will be easier and quicker to attach rather than tying the straps at the back. 

At our Machine Embroidery club this month we made tee pee bags.   They were so quick to make - even the zip was sewn in as part of the process in the hoop.  These will make great little gifts for the Early Bird Christmas Crafting over at Judith's blog

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We had a choice of quilted styles for the bottom of the bag, and quilted, embroidered, appliqued or embellished tops (or all 4 together if we wanted to.)  This design is from here.  I am going to make some more of these for Christmas gifts.

Settled!!!

These past few weeks have been so crazy.  I have been helping my daughter pack ready to move from near Caboolture to Moree in NSW.  That is a full on task with a 4 month old to care for as well.  However we managed to meet the deadline, and headed off to Moree on Wednesday.  Thursday  saw us constructing wardrobes from Ikea. 

We still had to add the hanging rails and the doors, however her husband is home for the weekend so hopefully he has been able to help her do that.

We also managed to reconstruct the bed before I had to head back for home.  We were very pleased that everything fitted back together.  (It is evident there is a baby living here.)

Harry was quite used to just "hanging about" while we worked.  Such a good little fellow.

It was sad to leave them , but sure is good to be home again.  It was so relaxing to sit at my sewing machine this afternoon.

Early Bird heart Challenge

I have been so pleased to have time to finish my heart challenge items for the Early Bird Christmas Crafting today. 
The pin cushion has a machine embroidered design, and I have added some of my favourite heart pins to finish it off.

The second item is this heart and roses cushion.  The hand embroidery is a design from here.  I liked this design so made it to the size I wanted, and embroidered it in pink DMC thread.  A piece of crocheted lace, some piping and 2 fat quarters of fabric finished off the cushion cover.  Still need to buy an insert for it.

Early Bird gifts

It has not been a very productive month with my Early Bird Christmas Crafting.  Sometimes life has other ideas - it has been a very busy month with our trip to Gunnedah and also helping my older daughter pack and prepare for moving to Moree in a few days time.  
I have finished two projects so far, with another couple almost done.  Maybe tomorrow will see them finished off.
I have made this coat hanger using  lovely light pink satin from my younger daughter's wedding dress and some white satin on the sides.  It has the secret zippered pouch beneath the outer decorative satin cover.

I have also finished this little lingerie bag made out of linen, with pintucks, lace and decorative stitching. 

It is so satisfying to try out a new embroidery stitch on the machine and find it is just what was needed.  I used one from the satin stitch section, which  when sewn with the right hand part of the stitch running along the edge of the fabric gave a scalloped effect.  The leaf stitch beside it finished it off nicely.  I love the lace - it has a vintage feel to it even though I bought it only a few years ago from Lincraft.

Computer woes

Isn't it a pain when your new computer has problems.  All was well the previous weekend.  We went away for a week, and now we are back it is refusing to open any programs, documents, just no action at all.  It is right now heading off to the store to diagnose the problem.

We had a good and successful time at Agquip in Gunnedah last week.   The weather held well for us until the last afternoon when we had light rain, making our packup time rather interesting.  Lots of drying out and washing off of mud to do when we got home.  But all is nearly back to normal.  There are now lots of contacts to be followed up on in the next few weeks, so business wise it should be very busy.

I so wanted to visit the store at Nundle, but just couldnt fit it in to the schedule. 

Now we are back home it is time to make a rush effort for this month's Early Bird Christmas Crafting over at Judith's blog.  I have planned some gifts to make this month but so far havent achieved too much. 

On our way to Gunnedah my daughter and I  made a stop at the town I grew up in.  I took a couple of photos of the view I would have seen from the front of "our" house - it doesnt seem any different from when I lived there, and I have been gone from there for 40 years.  We also went by the old house, and it felt as if we could just walk in and it would be just the same.  The outside was the same apart from a few minor changes in the garden.  The old sheds which were whiteant eaten 25 or more years ago are still standing - amazing.

Landscapes again

Here is my landscape as it looks this morning.  I have been working on the wattle in the background (lighter colour) in the last couple of days.  I now need to get back to working on the branches in the foreground.  It is good to see it photographed, it helps with seeing how the colours work.

The other girls in the workshop have also been working on theirs, and so they have advanced since I took these photos at the end of the workshop.

This landscape is from a photo taken in New Zealand.  Just behind the foreground grass you can see 2 cows.  There are more cows to go in yet.  The trees are looking good.

The photo this is based on was taken in South Africa.  In the foreground there will be aloe flowers and grass.

This one was taken from a photo in a book - It is an area in South Australia.  The colours are beautiful.  Most of the background has been achieved with paint, and the light and shadows are amazing.  Love the way the tree is looking.  This shows how we work - lots of needles and threads of all the different colours  to be used on the area being worked on - many shades of a colour to achieve the light and shade effect.

This one is from a photo taken in Scotland.  It doesnt appear to have as much work done on it, but there is one of those long fleeced sheeep to go in the green section in the middle foreground, and the sheep has been worked separately and will be appliqued on.  The sheep took a lot of class time to work on.

Lucky Dip and other things

Phew!  after a few days of being computerless it is great to be able to sit down and do some catching up.  I have lost (hopefully temporarily) all my email addresses - which are apparently somewhere on the computer but we have to wait to speak to the computer people after the Ekka holiday to find out where they are,  and "favourites" - well, to refind them I will have to go bloghopping and googling.  That will be ok.

On Friday I received a lovely parcel in the mail - my Lucky dip prize for the Early Bird Christmas Crafting from Judith.

Such a pretty bag.

With goodies inside - a pattern.  But there is more........

The stitchery pattern is Angel of Hope by Candlelight Creations, then there is a beautiful tatted bookmark in such pretty shades of green, and some lovely soft colours of DMC threads.  Thank you so much Judith.  All of them are beautiful. 

My landscape embroidery is slowly evolving.  I have been working on the wattle most nights.  So far it has  been done with french knots, mostly 1 thread and 1 wrap, except for the top wattle which is done in 2 threads and 1 wrap.  This was the progress about a week ago. Tomorrow I will take an up to date photo, which has much more of the wattle stitched.

I have  taken photos of the landscapes the other girls have done.  I will post them tomorrow also.

Today we had our first morning of the new group at the Bribie Island Arts Centre.  It is called Creative Embroidery and came about as a spin off from this landscape workshop.  We decided that we needed to meet regularly to encourage each other with our landscapes, and to bounce ideas off each other. We will meet twice a month, and the group is open to anyone who would like to come along.  We meet at the same time as the Textile Group and we find that our work overlaps with theirs. 

Now off to do some more bloghopping and finding my favourite ones.

More early bird Christmas goodies.

I have finished a pair of cushion covers for this month's challenge.  I have used some lace that belonged to my mother, combined with pintucks, some machine embroidery stitching and piping to create them.  Because I didnt have enough fabric, I have used a cream with outlined pink flowers for the back of the cushions.  They are ready for putting in the box until closer to Christmas, when I will put in the cushion insert.

Today I am making a pincushion, among other things (as the mood takes me).  Tonight I will have to do some more of my landscape.  I am trying to do at least an hour each day on it this week, until our next lesson on Saturday.