THREE Round Robin blocks

Now that Christmas is over it was time to get caught up on the RR blocks I've had sitting waiting for me all month long! First one is Helina's Autumn block which I did very simply. Hard to be creative when at that time of the year I've a busy bee with the harvest and canning for the winter food storage. I did however have to put on a mushroom button as she'd mentioned in her note that she loved mushrooms and I just knew the leaf beads had to go on hear too. The beaded seam are from the same item. A beaded tie back from the Dollarama! It's not all pricey in this hobby :)

I then got right to work on the one that inspired me the most. SUMMER!!!! At the time I was thinking is was a spring but summer is when I do most of my gardening.. I was thinking sunny days, butterflies, flowers and playing in the dirt. I had such fun with this block! This is thw work I did on Cathy's block:

Lastly we come to Colleen's Spring is Sprung. I went mostly with flowers and then a couple butterflies alighted near the flowers. I stayed within the colour theme of the block. And now to get those Winter RR blocks sewn together! There's always another project just sitting waiting to be completed. :)

final Christmas Cracker

Today I had my 3rd and final Christmas Cracker arrive... and what fun! This package came all the way from Portugal... a place that holds a special place in my heart. I had a boyfriend from Portugal and he and I are still dear friends.

This is what Maria sent me. I love the lace idea for edging the block she made for the outside of the cracker. I may just do that myself next year!

Christmas Cracker Fun!

I had an absolutely wonderful time opening up my 2 of the 3 to be recieved Christmas Crackers. My first one was from Linda M. Who spoiled me absolutely rotten and I loved every second of it! Here's the before pic!I first opened the little box parcel and found a container that the cover had a little CQed finished piece on it and inside was a wonder selection of tatting motifs.!! I absolutely love tattying but have not time to learn the craft myself so I'm thrilled with having a selection to use in my own CQing. Then came the hand dyed silk ribbons. I have just started using silk ribbon myself have but 3 colours in my stash... til now! They even came with some printed bobbins to wrap the ribbons one!. .... then came chocolate!! ... a beautiful tea towel with tatting on the edge and a a stitched snowman on it... and fabrics... and all this before the cracker was even opened! Here's a collage of the pictures of the packages.Here's a pic of all the goodies found inside the cracker! oohhh the fun I will have finding places to use all these wonderful goodies. Then came the cracker from Ely A. I LOVE the double sided fabrics and I'm looking forward to using these pieces and utilizing both sides of the fabric! There was lots of goodies inside too. A little baggies of buttons and beads... the flower shaped beads I've seen before and wanted but held off on getting any. Now I have some!

Thank you ladies for making my Christmas Eve a truly fun one! I chose Christmas Eve to open mine as that was the time I would be able to truly enjoy them... I still have them out to look at! :)

And the best part is I still have one more to come in!!

Robert's Wolf

This Crazy Patchwork Wall Hanging I put together but the stitching of the wolf was done by a dear old friend of mine. Robert is going to LOVE it!

Mom's Christmas Gift

It has taken me a few days to get this picture put up but at last here it is... the CQedvWall Hanging I did for my mom for this Christmas. I'll be sure to get pics of her with it on Christmas Day :)

Vintage Tea Time (naked blocks)

Today I put together the blocks for the Tea Time RR that I'm doing with the Crazy Quilting International Group. Mine are a Vintage Tea Time theme. I used vintage table runners and hankies to make the blocks around cross stitched vintage tea cups stitched on a vintage linen.

Sending out with these blocks will be another corner of the hankies used with the tatting on the edges for each participant to use in their embellishing along with a good selection of pastel buttons from the ones I inherited from my grandmother.

I hope ot have each participant use the corner of hanky and some buttons on each of the blocks.


Once these are completed and back to me and I've finished working on the last block for me to do I will then be making these into a padded book similar to one I've seen pictures of that another CQer made.

Finished CQed pillow

I finished this on the weekend but have only now gotten around to posting up pictures :) This is the pillow that will be delivered tomorrow to my son's piano teacher... I will be taking my camera with me to take a few pics with her and the pillow :)

CQed Christmas Crackers

Here is a photo of the Christmas Crackers I created for the exchange of CQed Christmas Crackers. I had such fun creating them and adding to them.. I added more at the very last mintue before wrapping them up.. LOL

Now to get them packaged up for the recipients :)

CQed Lap Quilt for my SS Karen

Yesterday I finished off this quilt for my Secret Sister and got it in the mail. I hope to hear from her this coming week to see what she thinks of her final gift. This is for a group where we have one gal to spoil for 3 months at a time. :)On this quilt I lovingly stitched one and a half dozen buttons from the 3 tins of buttons I inherited from my grandmother's home after she passed away.

I should also point out that it's laying across my double bed and almost reaches each side. It's a square lap quilt approximately 48".

Update and Christmas CQed blocks

Wow has it been a world wind couple of weeks! It all started off when my grandmother was admitted to hospital in a coma. That was Oct 22 and late on the 25th she passed never having regained consciousness. She had a massive stroke. She had one 3 years ago so we knew this was coming and at the age of 92 years young she lived a long and wonderful life. She lived on her own since my grandad past in Feb '82 and was still living on her own til the day she died. Just the was she wanted it!

She'd not want us to wallow in sadness so as soon as I could I got back to work at the daily things I needed to do and get myself caught up on the stitching that I'd gotten behind on.

Today I finished the 2nd block in a RR for Winter/Christmas theme and I've been loving them!

I've already sent out the first but here's a pic of it. This one is for Debbie.

She wanted a more Victorian theme, which was challenging for me. I first had to do a fan as they are Victorian to me. This one I dyed green and used pearl drop beads for the bottom. I then did some surfing for some inspiration and came up with the dove and ribbon. I used a butterfly lace motif to create it and added a few hearts around it. I had to put on a cameo button as the finishing touch after adding in some stitched and beaded snowflakes a little garland looking seam treatment and a hand dyed flower motif I dyed myself.

The next block I did is for Cathy. This one I thoroughly enjoyed working on for 3 straight nites. I'm almost sorry it's finished .. LOL To start with I embellished the silkes using wool thread for the fur trims and gold accents on hat and dress. A bit later I did the flowers as well. I kept within the 4 colours within the block and loved the way the little doll looked as it reminded me of the old fashion Christmas gifts little girls got, which is what came to mind seeing the little girl silkie... an old fashioned Christmas. I used several lazy daisy chains thinking of the paper garlands and of course more snowflakes for this block too. I did several different seam treatments for a busy but pretty and sparkley block I think. :)

Helina's Spring is Spring

Here is the photo of the CQed RR block I did for the Spring is Sprung CQed RR I'm in.. these are of Helina's block.. A challenge for me as my repertoire of flower making in stitches isn't as large as I'd like it to be. I do hope that Helina likes it none the less.

Helina's Summer Dreams RR block

Yesterday I received 2 sets of RR blocks. As Helina sends to me for both of these RR's the blocks for her Spring is Sprung and Summer Dreams both arrived at in the same envelope.

One of her Summer Dreams blocks caught my eye and I immediately saw a gold outline and beaded accents to the purple butterfly... I love butterflies and purple is my favourite colour so I went with it!

I enjoyed a long night of fun! I finished it last nite! So here are some eye candy for you to see.

Halloween Stitching!

This is the second time I've done any stitching for Halloween.. the first was a model of one of our own Pine Glen Designs by Frishawn Rasheed. This one is a SAL I'm doing of Helga Mandl Designs. It's rather cute. I'm using some of my Six Strand Sweets threads for it.

Here's part #1:

2nd CQed tin received

When doing this swap I'd done 2... and this is my second one to be received.

I simply LOVE it! the little legs on it are soo cute. this will sit on my vanity in my bedroom as it as all the beautiful purples. Thanks Elizabeth! :)

Two more CQed Christmas Ornaments

I got these finished a little while ago but hadn't had a chance to upload the pictures to show them off.. so here goes!

This is the first one I did.

This is the second one! :)

And here are two more that I got completed. :)

I'm not going to be able to do anymore this year as they need to get out really soon but I did do up a few for myself as I was making these so I will be sure to take pictures of them and show them off just as soon as I can.

Received CQed Tin

Here are the pictures of the CDed tin I received from Debbie.

I really love the birds!

This came with a wonderful assortment of beads inside as well as a baggie of motifs... I've already used a few in a couple Christmas Gifts I'm working on.

CQed Tin Swap

I finally got my 2 tin swaps completed... and I'm thrilled with the way they came out! My only question now is how do I part with them?.... LOL

MORE CQ RR blocks

Yep I've been at it again!

This evening I was back playing with fabric and got put together both my Spring Has Sprung and Summer Dreams naked blocks completed :).

Here are pics of them in their layouts...

Of course like the Fall ones these may not necessarily be all in the same direction as again I made them all the same.. .it's so much quicker this way! LOL Not to mention there's less waste of fabrics and thread as I can go thru each block and put the first seam in each one and then clip smaller threads.

The Spring one will have a green background though I'll have to go on a search for the fabric as I don't have in what I want to use.

The Summer one will have the same flower print with the sunny yellow background as in the blocks which is why I made sure that one wasn't on the edge of the blocks.

Mary's CD Block

I've been trying to upload these pictures within the yahoo group but they keep coming up as little red x's so I'll post here and let the girls know where the pics are to take a look at Mary's now complete CQ block from my first RR FFT#13.

Here is the complete block.

And here is a close up of the work I did. Along with this several of my butterflies in my stash came out to play in the pretty flowers and alighted onto Mary's block. I sure hope she likes butterflies!

CQ Fall Wallhanging RR

I've been inspired! I was in a mood of not knowing what I wanted to do.. I spent some time outside enjoying the wonderful weather and relaxing but then decided I needed to do something. I came in to get on with some stitching but decided I really didn't want to sit still just yet.

So I pulled out the fabrics I picked up recently for my Fall/Autumn RR. I went with the .6 M remnant piece that was in stripes of several different prints. I cut it in half and then cut each strip so that I have all the different prints. I then folded each strip to have 3 pieces and then cut them to make 6 all pretty much the same shape and size. So these were all made out of one .3M piece of fabric!

I then decided to make life easy and make each block the same and arranged the piles of pieces til I was satisfied they'd cover the blocks I was making.

Here's what the final 6 naked blocks look like.

Though I've not decided which they will go for now I've placed them all the same way. I will be letting each of the embellishers in the RR who will be working on them decide which way they'd like to put their block. I rather like the idea of them going in different ways.

CQ Christmas Ornie & Wallhanging

Today I've been spending time on my sewing... not only did I get a CQ Ornie finished up... here's the pic :)

But I also pieced together the blocks for an upcoming RR. This one is a Winter/Christmas theme and I went with the Christmas for mine. Here's the naked blocks put together to show how I will be putting them together when they return completed. Won't be for this year but I can look forward to decorating with it next year :)

Robert's Birthday

My son isn't one for parties and lots of attention on him. So this year we did it simple. I spent the money I would have spent on a party on an electric keyboard with lots of trimmings, which will be put to use once September comes and he begins his piano lessons.

On his birthday which was Sunday, the day after his baptism, we were able to make it to church. It was another hot day. We'd planned ahead for the trip as it's an hour's drive to the chapel and hoped the weather would give us some time at the beach.

We made it and we both came back with sunburns!

Here's the view!

Robert's out in the water with a couple boys he met that day.Here he is after we finally got him outta the water! covered in sand of course :)And after he changed into dry clothes and was collecting shells and rocks :)
What a relaxing fun day!