Some stitching

I have been having some problems with my wrist the last week. My Mum and I had a bit of an embroidery session last Sunday. This is what I was working on:

It is Rose’s Spice of Life wall hanging from Australian Homespun! I fell in love with this design when she showed a sneak peek last year, and I was so eager to get it finished that I think I must have overdone it slightly. But I managed to finish the larger part of the stitchery yesterday, and I have been stitching on the smaller one today. I’ll keep you posted on my progress :o)

But since my arm has been acting up a bit, and the possibilities for cutting and hand sewing has been limited, I have been working on something I really should have finished a long time ago and was cut way back:

Some of you know what this is – for those who don’t, I’ll let you know soon… I still have some ways to go...

Hope you are having a great stitching weekend!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

Pickled Cabbage

Over the last few weeks I have been quilting on the joint project Rose and I started while I was visiting in Tassie:

I still have to do the binding, but I thought I'd share it at this stage. The pattern is Twin Sisters, but we started calling it the Pickled Cabbage quilt because the colour and pattern of one of the fabrics reminds me a lot of pickled cabbage (surkål) *lol*:

What we did was to make a whole bunch of blocks together and pile them up, and once we had enough, we picked from the pile as we stitched the tops together. That way we each got a bit of each other's work in our quilts :o) Rose will show her version when she is ready; up to now she has been busy working on her new designs - if you haven't already seen them, hop over and have a look at her redwork designs! And I know we have more beautiful projects to expect from this talented lady in time to come!

Wishing everyone a continuing happy Easter with a picture of what I woke to yesterday morning! ...and I thought spring was here!

Sewing Saturday

Butterfly and Nemo was here today, and we girls had a fun day, stitching and chatting. We all acomplished a lot - Nemo was working on a couple of gorgeous stitcheries:

Butterfly worked on a beautiful shawl and some drawstring bags:

Me? I had a goal of finishing the beautiful table runner Rose designed for the workshop, and I started while I was down-under.Before today's work I had stiched the center together, and added the blue border, so today I added the floral yellow, layered it and quilted it. I stitched in the ditch around the stitcheries and their frames, and then did some large stippling all over the patched parts. When the girls left I had gotten to the binding. And now, a few hours later, it's done:

I'm so happy with it! I wasn't sure how it would fit any of my tables, but it looks perfect on the one in the kitchen :o)

Hope you too had a great sewing Saturday! And enjoy the weekend!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

Quilted Diamonds

Catherine over at Quilt Obsession have over her latest posts been showing some of her gorgeous quilted diamonds - made from the patterns in Linda Franz's books Quilted Diamonds 1 & 2. I have had these books on my shelf for some years, and have wanted to try to piece some, and inspired by Catherine's posts I pieced my first three diamonds from the second book yesterday:

6: She was come to be happy, and she felt happy already; 49: Sensible, good humored, lively: 1: Miss Elizabeth's star

They are not perfect, but I'm happy with my first attempts - I think there will be more diamonds in my future :o)

Hope you all have a great weekend!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

Quilt shopping in Oz - and a surprise

Quilting girls let loose, and we pop'ed into six (6!!!) quilt shops while we spent our holliday together. While we were in Melbourne we visited Foothills Fabric and Threads in Tecoma:

And Mrs. Martin's in Monbulk:

Of course I forgot to take a picture of the exterior of The Country Quilter in Launceston, but here is a shot of the inside of the shop - an Aladdin's cave:

Calico Crossroads in Exeter:

Cranberry Crafts in Ulverstone:

Picture Patchwork in Latrobe:

These are the goodies I brought home with me in my suitcase:

Lots of goodies I absolutely had to have *lol*. In addition to this Rose and I bought fabric for our quilt project - which will be revealed soon :o)

Before I came down-under, Rose was telling me about an overnighter she was expecting as a surprise for me. This is what arrived:

My frog block from Leanne Beasley! Leanne, it is fabulous! Before Leanne came to Norway in October, Rose, the great friend she is, had asked her to design me a birthday block for my 30th birthday. Leanne didn't get the e-mail in time for her travel, but sweet as she is, she sent me that as well :o) Thank you so much, both of you!

Beautiful Tassie - part two

I thought I'd share some pictures of the last couple of days I spent in Tassie as well. On the Tuesday Rose and Les took me driving to Ulverstone - a lovely city on the north coast. We found some time to walk on this beautiful beach - no swimming temperature, but great to get our feet wet:

The day after, Rose and I walked up the Cataract Gorge. A beautiful area and a lovely walk!

We had lunch at the restaurant up there - and they have peacocks walking around on the terrace, snatching food from the visitors.

My friend K is an avid book crosser, and I had brought a book for her to drop off somewhere in Launceston. The book being Wuthering Heights, what better place to drop it than the Gorge?

The book was picked up while we were there, but so far no one has reported it as found. Rose also got me onto the chairlift - Boy was I worried when I saw those chairs hanging on just a wire! But I did it!!!!

We also dropped by the Penny Royal Gunpowder Mill

and the Gourlay's sweetshop and -factory. This guy is making some coconut sweets.

The day after I said goodbye (for now!) to the family, and Rose drove me to the airport :( Thank you so much for a wonderful holliday, sweetie! We'll meet again soon, I hope!

I've had some questions about shopping *lol* - I'll post about my shopping experiences tomorrow. Till then, take care!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

Award and tag

While I was away sweet Tamara at Quilting N Stuff awarded me with this:

Thank you so much Tamara! That is so sweet of you, and really made my day!

I know the rules are "to re-present it to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know through an email or posting to their blog so they can pass it on. You may get the award more than once, so if you do, consider yourself very loved! So pass it on!!!" but I have no idea which 10 of the wonderful bloggers I read deserves it the most! So I hereby give it to everyone I comment on on a regular basis!

I was also tagged while I was away. Jeanne at Luv 2 Stitch tagged me for 7 weird or random facts about myself - not sure I can think of that many, but here it goes...

The rules:
1. Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post THE RULES on your blog.
3. Post 7 weird or random facts about yourself on your blog.
4. Tag 7 people and link to them.
5. Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

About me:
1. I'm in a grim mood all day if I don't get my morning coffee.
2. I'm a fan of Terry Pratchett, the man has an imagination unlike anyone.
3. I'm not a fan of Halloween - don't like being bothered on my birthday!
4. My favorite card game is Bohnanza.
5. I really need to start walking or cycling to work again! (...guess why! sigh!)
6. I love BLUE (probably not a big secret *lol*).
7. My bellybutton is pierced.

Thant was really difficult!!! ...and probably not too interesting... Now to tag someone...................
TAG! YOU'RE IT!

Beautiful Tassie - part one

On the Monday, Rose took me driving to see some of Tamar Valley. I want to share some of the pictures I took of this beautiful area - so sit back and enjoy as this post will be little text and lots of pics:-)

View from Brady's lookout point - gorgeous!

Grindelwald - swiss shopping village - a strange sight in Tassie, but fun to visit:

From there we went to Launceston Lakes, Tassie's largest wildlife park:

The koala wasn't too co-operative:

...but the kangaroo was :o)

This little guy shared the pen with the 'roos, and scared "my friend" to skip! :o)

And of course "Devil's Heaven" has lots of Tassie Devils - these were the most co-operative when it came to taking pictures:

A gorgeous black cockatoo:

A sleepy wombat:

Emus:

Back later with more pictures :o)
Take care, sincerely Anne Ida

(sorry about the strange spacings - Blogger won't work with me today)

Summer Garden With Creative Women

I spent some time at my friend K's last night, and didn't get around to doing the post about the weekend workshop as promised, but here it is.

Saturday morning people started arriving early, and the hall was soon buzzing with happy voices - eager to begin working on the beautiful projects presented by the designers.

The four ladies had made such gorgeous projects for the workshop!

From left to right the projects were: the lovely quilt Fresh Breeze and the pretty bag Blossom & Bloom by Natalie Lymer (Cinderberry Stitched), lovely Summer Garden table runner by Rose Johnston (Threadbare Creations), the cute Sally doll and beautiful Summer Garden cushions by Rosalie Quinlan (Rosalie Quinlan Designs), and gorgeous quilt Summers Bouquet and the really pretty bag Saturday Morning by Gail Pan (Gail Pan Designs).

Sally from The Country Quilter opened the workshop and presented the designers, and they presented their projects,

and then everyone got to work! In the bag we got when we arrived we received the patterns for all the projects and a piece of fabric and some cotton floss to get us started. We could choose freely what project(s) to work on, and the designers walked around the hall, chatting with us and guiding us while working on their projects. It was all very casual, and it was a wonderful way to spend time with these wonderful and creative women!

Here is Gail Pan and I

Natalie Lymer and I

I shared a workstation with a lovely woman called Pat, here she is with Rose enjoying morning tea on the Saturday:

It was also great to get to meet blogging friend Christine! She is just as sweet in person as she is on her blog. Here she is with Rosalie Quinland getting some support on making her Sally doll:

and here she is showing her gorgeous red and cream stitchery cushion during show and tell on Sunday morning

What projects did I work on? On Saturday I worked on one of the stitcheries for Rose's beautiful table runner - Rose had given me a crash course in french knots on Friday evening, and her table runner is perfect for practicing them (believe me, it is a gazillion of them!). This is how far I've gotten on it:

Hope I can get more done on it soon, it is such a pretty project, and I want to have it finished so I can use it! And sweet Rose was generous to let me dig into her left over fabrics, so that I could have my table runner just as hers :o) ('cept for the binding).

On the Sunday I worked on Rosalie's Sally doll - here is Christine and I working on our dolls:

I actually finished my doll this weekend - this is how she turned out:

I didn't have any pink ric-rac for the hair, so I gave her cotton floss hair in different shades of pink and braided it, and in stead of painted shoes on her feet I stitched her some socks/shoes from some of the left over pinafore fabric - I think she looks ok and I'm very happy with my first attempt at doll making. She is now hanging next to the mirror in my hallway :o)

The weekend workshop gave me lots of inspiration - I want to make the other projects that were presented as well, and several of the projects in the display will be on my to-do list for the future, and will be keeping my hands busy for a long time.

I'll soon be back with some more pictures and memories from my days in Tassie.

Until then, take care!
Sincerely, Anne Ida