A very busy weekend

We headed down to Batemans Bay on Friday to attend the 25th anniversary of the opening of Sunshine Bay Public School. Our girls went to this school for all their primary years and had a wonderful time. I taught there casually and worked with the P and C and seemed to be there for some reason or other on many days. Our girls both enjoyed their years there. Before the Friday night "do" we sat on Denhams Beach and enjoyed the view and the lovely weather.

There was an assembly at the school and this lovely cake. It was a copy of the one they had 25 years ago, I am told.

The assembly brought back many memories of my girls in the choir and of singing the school song and saying the creed.

The courtyard was as pleasant as ever and we shared morning tea and lunch there.

We then headed towards Sydney as our nephew James and his lovely Sarah were being married on Sunday afternoon. On the way we HAD to stop and Berry so I could look at Sew and Tell, which is a wonderful embroidery shop and now has wools too and giftware. Well worth a visit. Here are a few pictures of Berry, which is such a lovely place.

I'd like to stitch this house.

Last week....

We have had a very busy weekend away and I will post about the various places we visited soon. Best catch up on the lovely stitching from last Wednesday first!
Maxine has been busy making her bookmark using the canvas pattern we have been doing. The other scissor keeper is Jill's. The variegated threads make them look so good.

In the evening, it was so nice to see Audrey's beautiful bag. She decided to stitch the woven wool felt applique onto a fabric bag instead of the patchwork. Looks so good, Audrey.

Sue has also been very busy making 2 of these lovely dolphins. I think she is called Dee Dee and is a Melly and me design.

A kit prepared and Wednesday's class

We did this little (it is only 45cm square) quilt last year at the May stitching day and I have the pattern at Hobbysew now and they asked me to prepare some fabric kits on Tuesday. I really enjoyed hunting for the right fabrics for my little houses, trees, grass, roofs, doors and windows.

Luckily we have lots of beautiful small print fabrics so here is the fabric pack.

In class on Wednesday afternoon, Margaret had played with the Starry quilt and made bigger stars and has used brighter fabrics but it is going to look so good and be much easier to make. There were over 600 little 2 1/2" squares in my version.

Margaret has also been stitching the journal cover in colours to match her fabric and it looks really good.

I have also joined a Stitch-A-Long with Chookyblue and lots of other ladies. We are working on Anni Downs' beautiful Gardeners Journal quilt, which you know I have already started! I thought I could keep up if I have a head start and it will be fun to share the making of the quilt with others. It will also keep me on task if others are doing it too!

It was  got so exciting on Wednesday to see the beautiful Scandinavian Christmas quilt on Lynette Anderson's site and several of the girls from the night class are going to do it.....me too!!

Wonderful skies

My hubby had a great time taking photos last Saturday night at Skyfire here in Canberra. We almost didn't need fireworks with skies like these.

We had a lovely picnic with friends and the weather was so mild and pleasant. There were so many people out and about. Then there were the fireworks and they were really spectacular. I am not usually that amazed by fireworks but these were really good. Aren't the photos great?

Bowral and a little stitching

Our second stop was at this wonderful shop in Bowral called My Place. I have been here before and it is a lovely shop to visit. There are so many beautiful quilts, fabrics, patterns and giftware. We decided we might need the whole day in Bowral next time.

I loved these teatowels.You could buy the linen to make the teatowels by the metre.

I have been doing a little stitching. My nephew is getting married next Sunday and I wanted to make a card for them. The invitation had cream laces and trims on it so I thought I would do a little simple crazy patchwork with embroidery. Must get the card to put it into today and some wrapping paper for the gift.

I have enjoyed stitching this little scene on felt for a class next term.

Friday's excursion to the Southern Highlands

A few of us had a lovely day put last Friday when we went to the Southern Highlands for a visit. Our first stop was in Mittagong to visit this lovely patchwork shop called "Timeless Threads". It is an old house covered in Boston ivy and we all had to get a few fabrics and patterns.

This is the room in the back garden were they run classes.

Here is Penny and a wall of the ivy.

This was one of the beautiful quilts on display. I think it is so lovely but I am fairly keen on blue!

Here is a closeup.

Here is one of the lovely corners in the shop. I just love shops in old houses with their little rooms full of special fabrics and trims.

We then headed to Palate Pleasures for a delicious lunch.

Very special sheep and some hardanger

I have had some very lovely but busy days recently so have run out of time to blog! So a quick post to show you Donna's wonderful sheep. They are grazing on a navy blue blanket and are so beautiful and soft with all their grub stitch wool. Donna hasn't finished yet and is adding the more grass for the sheep to eat.

This is the lush grass she is stitching. Lucky sheep!

On Wednesday evening, Sue brought some "hard"anger that she has completed. She assures me it isn't hard but very time consuming and you have to be able to count! I find it hard to be completely accurate and you have to be to be so accurate to do this lovely work. Fantastic job, Sue.

Scary Dinosaurs at Hobbysew

Joan has been a busy girl and has designed some fantastic appliqued dinosaurs! Her choice of backgrounds and the wonderful batiks for the bodies work so well. She is going to make them into patterns and perhaps a BOM later this year. Just check them all out!

This fellow is my favourite.

Well done, Joan. Thanks for sharing them with us at stitching.

Stitching progress and Canvas work

Just thought I'd share my stitching progress on the other version of the sampler. I've made the one using the wooden button but thought I would make a cushion with a smaller stitched version.It is still a work in progress. Here is the stitched tree.

I chose to fuse the house on this time and stitch it with whip stitch.

I forgot to show you Paddy's, canvas, scissor keeper last week. This pattern is one of my favourites.

A block stitched and roses

Even though the weekend was busy, I did manage a little stitching on this Crazy Christmas block. They are fun to stitch.

Caroline brought some lovely roses with her on Saturday. They are such beautiful colours.

Here is a closeup.

Fun Saturday

We had a very special day here to welcome Penny back from frozen England. She is here to visit for a couple of months and it was fun to have some of our friends from church here to catch up with her. We had such good food! We started with the most delicious pancakes and a lovely berry sauce for brunch (thanks Sue), continued on with cheese, dips and chocolate and some of my favourite peppermint crisp meringues. We then had takeway pasta for dinner and even dessert. We all ate far too much.

In between all the chat, a few people worked on this puzzle and we played a mad Australian game (thanks Kathryne!).

We were so lucky to have Roz with us as she played my neglected piano and we had an Abba singalong. It was such fun.

We then watched bits of this DVD and joined in with the singalong words. Absolutely mad but such fun.

Thanks to all the ladies for bringing such yummy food to share and for coming and enjoying the day. Penny and I are going to have a very quiet afternoon of stitching, reading and perhaps a nap to recover.