finally finished my cherry ripe baby blanket, very pleased with how this one turned out 
it’s now in my gift giving basket for babies.
I also started assembling the HST’s in preparation for sewing together, hoping to get started on this one sometime this weekend These are the leftovers from my charming stars blocks I’ve been working on.
Me that’s who!
The very talented Fiona was my swap partner this time and I have been totally spoilt. Fiona made me a beautiful roomy spotty bag which I’ll be using to store my rainbow ripple I’m planning to make for myself, a very cute needle book and pouch both with my name and the year stitched onto them as well as an appliqued mouse bag to put my ball of wool into while I crochet and see that little hole where her tail should be that’s where the wool will pull through and stop it from tangling up on me. I also have to admit that the jelly babies are nearly gone ooops 
Thank you Fiona, I have been thoroughly spoilt by you in this swap and I love everything you’ve sent me
I’m linking up with Anthea for Christmas Through The Year, I finally finished the quilting on this table runner last night and it’s now residing in my gift basket 
I decided to work on a new crochet project last night, this is the willow block and when finished will be a blanket for my nieces 21st birthday next year.
I added a few more centres to the pile, now to crochet the final two rounds and add them to my growing pile. Friday night also saw me finishing of this secret project……
Sorry this is all I can show you at the moment, these leftovers have now gone into my scrap basket and will become dots for a multi-coloured blanket using all my little scraps from other projects…….but not to leave you without a finish I’ll also show you a photo of my rainbow ripple blanket which is now in my gift giving basket…….
Don’t forget to pop over to Wendy's and check out what all the other participants were working on Friday night 
September’s block is now done and dusted for our Charming stars sew-a-long, I’m using the range “Midwinter reds” I only had enough of the cream fabric to make up 14 blocks with no sashing so 12 will be used for a wall hanging and the spare two will be made into a runner. I’ve already cut out and sewn up the points for each of my blocks but will select from these and make up one or two blocks a month till done.
I also copied Fiona's idea and made up HST blocks with the leftover corner triangles that would have otherwise been discarded and have plans of making a mini wall hanging as well as a cushion with these scraps…….Thanks Fiona it was soooo easy to make up these HST blocks 
Now I just need to wait for some more Midwinter Red fabric to arrive so I can finish my next lot of blocks……I just needed a few more creams and tans to even out what I already had in my stash. When this quilt is done I plan on making a larger version with my birthday red & white fat 1/4’s for our bed and I’ll also be using Fiona's trick again to make more HST for a few extra accessories to go with it.
It feels good to be back at the machine, it’s been ages since I’ve done any machine sewing Hopefully I’ll be doing lots more over the next few weeks.
Friday night saw me working on a couple of my crochet projects….
I went from two piles of pretty cherry ripe dots to…..
Four piles, ten dots per pile so that makes forty done and another forty one to work on and then I can start putting this baby blanket together. I also found myself working on adding a few more rows to this project I started in early August……..
After sorting through my wool baskets I found I had quite a few odd balls as well as odd 100gm balls leftover from other projects so now they’re all contained in one basket and from this basket I started making this rainbow ripple ( above ) and I’m planning to use the leftovers from this blankets to make a rainbow dot blanket next. Below is an updated picture of the six nearly seven rows completed last night, I love how soothing a ripple is to work on……Today saw me finally knuckling down and sewing in those pesky ends before they became too numerous 
Once these blankets are finished they will be going into my gift basket which is rapidly filling up with baby blankets lol….. I’ll be doing a bit of blog hopping tomorrow to see what everyone else was working on and if you’d like to do this as well why not pop over to our lovely leader Cheryl's blog to peruse all the lovely blogs of the other participants at your leisure over the weekend
My swap partner I was sending to was Michell and I’m late in posting a picture of what I sent to her because her parcel was returned to me and I had to re-send it and hold my breath hoping it would actually reach her this time. I don’t know what’s going on with Australia post as Michell in her email letting me know my parcel had finally arrived told me it wasn’t the only one that hadn’t reach her post box and had been returned to sender??
For this swap I sent for “R” a reindeer table runner….
For “S” I sent a stocking candle mat…..
For “I” Inspirational words I send a small wall hanging with the word “JOY”
I also sent some munchies and then added more after re-wrapping her parcel to re-send to her as a way to say sorry for it being so late ( I forgot to take a photo of these ) and Michell said they arrived just in time for her to feast on the clinkers after a hard day at work LOL….
This swap was a lot of fun to participate in and I want to thank Cheryll for being such a wonderful swap momma with organising this swap and for Michell for being a very patient swap partner 
These hexagon’s were worked on while I was travelling around Tasmania in April……..
I started stitching Sharon's blanket while travelling in the car around Tasmania….
I also started growing the rows as we stayed at various places while in Tassie….
getting bigger…….
and bigger……..
Until it was big enough to cover a queen sized bed…..Love, LoVe, Love how this blanket came together and all the colours with it’s little pop of red and orange…..
It was soooo good to finally be bale to hand over Sharon's blanket to her on Saturday and by the look on her face I think she was a bit stunned by the size of it but I wanted it to be big enough so she could snuggle under it on the couch.
When I finished making Sharon's blanket I had leftover hexie’s so I decided to make a smaller blanket for Sharon's daughter “Miss Lily” so she could also snuggle under one just like her mum’s but I forgot to take a photo of it by itself so here is a group shot of the blankets. Sharon's blanket is the bottom one then Miss Lily’s in the middle and then with the extra,extra leftovers I made a small round baby blanket to put into my gift basket.
Sharon has posted on her face book page photo’s off Miss Lily with her blanket but since I haven’t asked permission to have Miss Lily’s photo on my blog I wont be able to show you these but I do know she loved it so that makes me very happy 
Saturday saw me head of with my sister Anne to our annual pilgrimage to Ballan for our Mill Rosie meet up. I didn’t take as many photo’s as usual as I just couldn’t move around as quickly as I used so so I’ve borrowed some photo’s from Shez’s blog to fill in the gaps.
the beautiful cat softy I am holding in the bottom right photo was from the lovely Ofaigh and came as a complete surprise when she presented me with her and of course she’s done up in my favourite colours of red & white thank you O’faigh you made my day!
This meetings swap was to be a project from Leanne Beasley and Sue was the lucky recipient below…… I think by the smile on her face she liked what she picked 
I was also lucky enough to receive my beautiful gift from Marg below…
I was totally spoilt and the best thing was the fabric Marg chose to use to compliment the stitcheries was midwinter reds my absolute favourite fabric range it has such a lovely mxi of reds and creams….I think you can see by my expression I was delighted to receive this as well Thanks Marg it will be taking pride of place on my coffee table for everyone to admire.
This is the project I took with me to work on during the day, but as usual too much chatting, catching up and good food got in the way of too much being done on the day so after a 3 hour nap on Sunday I set to work on adding the final edging to these African flower hexagons……117 completed ready to sew together and another 164 still needing 2 more rows before I can add them to the finish pile in the bag Shez made me for my birthday this year so I better get a hop on and start cracking the whip at myself.
I’ve also been working on a secret project for my one on one swap with Sharon and last Saturday saw me presenting her with the finished blanket so just to tease you a little I’ll put a picture below of one of the work in progress pictures I’ve been taking and tomorrow I’ll do a full reveal
Finally I can show you what I made and sent to my swap Partner Michelle for our Tilda swap, you could either make a design of Tilda’s or use Tilda fabrics I chose to use her fabric, I had fun platting her hair and making her dress and pantaloons I’d forgotten had lovely it is to dress up a doll.
Meet “Tilda” the long legged doll I made for Michelle dressed in her prettiest Tilda finery, I also included a special something for her to hold……
One of my crocheted cotton blocks I’ve been making recently I thought it went really well with Tilda’s outfit 
I hope Michelle doesn’t mind but I borrowed this photo and the following two photo’s from her blog as I forgot to take one before posting her parcel off.
I also included some yummy treats…….
as well as a bottle filled with Tilda buttons, a pretty aqua journal as I know Michelle loves her journals as well as some soap I picked up on my travels in Tassie this year while on holidays with my sister Anne.
Michelle has emailed me to say she loves her new friend and has placed her on her rocking chair amongst her gorgeous quilts, so that’s a relief! I’ve loved making/sourcing/collecting bits and pieces for this swap now to start looking at our next swap which is themed “spots”
