Tuesday, August 20, 2013

a bee in my bonnet..... finally

For anyone who likes to spend time on the internet looking at quilty stuff, it is more than likely you have come across this quilt somewhere in your bloggy travels or pinterest browsing.....


This gorgeously cute quilt was designed by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet, and was offered as a free row-along on her blog for several months over late last year and earlier this year.

The tutorials are still on her blog, but all the cutting instructions have now been removed, as this quilt - and lots of other pretty projects based on it - are now being published in this book, due out in October.


One of my favourite quilts in this forthcoming book is this 'Apples' quilt, mainly in these gorgeous reds and greens.


I love Lori's row-along quilt, and thought it was a good chance to use lots of the brights, pastels and cute prints that I have bought and saved over the years, as my taste in fabric has currently gone back to the more repro/civil war styles.

So I roped in invited my friend Amanda to join me, as I knew she would love this quilt too, and we have just started having our own monthly row-along.  We had our first get-together yesterday, and progress so far is -

the beginnings of the 'butterflies' row


and starting to cut the 96 x 1.5 inch squares needed for the small squares row.



Lori uses a different technique in her tutorial for making this row, but Amanda did say that she thought that it made accurate piecing more difficult, and recommended I just do them the 'old fashioned' way.  This is just the beginning of cutting these squares - quite a few more to go yet!

Progress was a little slow, as having not seen much of Amanda for some time, lots of talking and not so much sewing was the order of the day....  Our lovely friend Gabbie joined us for a bit of a catch up too, and much chatting and drinking of cups of tea was enjoyed by all.

I also started another small project - this is just a 'sneak peek' and not too much can be revealed yet!


Hope you are all having a lovely week

Ollie & Tania xxx



Sunday, August 11, 2013

a perfect sunday morning.....

.... a perfect LAZY Sunday morning ~

tea in my favourite mug
a couple of favourite magazines
some sewing
the sun shining through the curtains
... and Ollie snoozing by my side

perfect.....


how did you spend your Sunday morning ?

Ollie and T xxx

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Hello again!

Just a quick catch up on a few of the things that were made while I was not blogging.
The ones below were for swaps, gifts and raffle prizes ~





My quilt, made in a Round Robin with a few lovely quilty friends.
This quilt is HUGE ~


...and the two below were for a mini quilt challenge in our Wednesday night group (the little heart quilt is actually about a quarter of the size of the mini log cabin quilt ~ more of a mug rug really lol)~


Back soon!
Ollie & T xxx



Thursday, August 8, 2013

a fresh start.....

Finally, a fresh start at blogging - thanks to Sue for her encouragement!

This past weekend, Sue, Tracee, Marg and I had a lovely weekend away at St Leonards, at the beach.  It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend - good friends, good food, a little bit of shopping, and lots of sewing.

Good food ~
Marg's fantastic Kangaroo quilt ~
Tracee's Perry's Place quilt ~
Sue's chookies, and a duck ~
And my hexies, mostly in beautiful French General fabrics, my favourites  ~
It was a wonderful weekend, and included a long walk along the beach on Sunday morning ~ the sound of the water on the shore was so peaceful and calming.

It was hard to come back to reality!

Back again soon ~

Ollie & T xxx