Retreat at Glenrose (in the House)

Last year I went to Glenrose (House) with a group of people - some of whom I had sewed with before, some not.
The booking for 2025 had been retained but none of the other ladies were able to go this year, so I took it over and roped in the usual sewing buddies.

The booking is from Thursday at 4PM to Sunday at 2PM, so it's shorter than a "week" booking, but we're always up for a retreat.

I was able to finish the I Spy top for Montana's 2nd Birthday coming up in July.

I joined the wedges for a Christmas tree skirt.  I have a red & green one cut ready to go too - but realise I will need to make the hole in the centre bigger...so can fix that before I sew the other one.

For DV projects, I put this Coin Quilt together (the strips of "coins" had been made & hanging around for a long while).

And I put the borders on this top - which had also been hanging around for a while.

 I had been saving this for a retreat with Helen as she had a nifty way of making the mitered corners....it was quite easy!

Some of the other things that the girls worked on
Maureen made several Crowns for the border of her Chuck Nohara quilt...these are just a few..

Maureen also put together this quilt top for the DV project

Helen made a bag - the fabric is so lovely

and added the borders to this DV quilt top

Sandi made and bound 22 strip-pieced placemats, which I will give to the local Meals on Wheels group. She also experimented with finishing the binding by machine—we decided that using the Ditch foot was the most successful method.

De made another giraffe quilt top - so cute!!!

Lynda put a quilt top together - but I missed getting a photo! 

Both Helen & De made up this Quilters Retreat Panel - all the Needle Girls have one to make up by November.

Here is Helens - no picture of De's 😖

The girls are well-trained and know to save the Teabags so I can collect the strings for Jo.

No retreat would be complete without some retail therapy and there is a new shop in Warwick - so off we went.   I found a new "must have" project, as did most of us....and we spied this cute wall hanging - well, we all like the machine part...maybe not the dingle dangles.
It's a machine embroidery design so I have - of course - purchased it...(Designs by Juju..)

The booking is in place for next year.   But I have a few more retreats this year - one next weekend!!!!!, then June, August & November...I am quite the expert in planning & prepping!

Be My Neighbour - March

Continuing on with Be My Neighbour - these are the March blocks.

Fiona has posted hers here - and joined February and March to make a street...She is a funny lady!

DV Quilts

I haven't contributed much to our DV quilting efforts recently - Christmas may have interrupted it a bit and then there were a few distractions with projects that I was tempted with . . .

But here are two that I have finished off recently - both made by splitting a panel, adding fabric and an embroidered strip in the middle.   My machine has a good variety of decorative stitches, so I might as well use them!
Both tops were made at retreat last November

Here is a close up of the stitched middle panel:

Sunday Stitchers - UFO Challenge 2025 - #9 - Three vases Cross Stitch

I got very flexible with my UFO Challenge list for March....Originally #9 was "Token Quilt - Progress"...but I decided that was a big ask . . . .so I swapped it to My Small World - Finish"
- which meant pinning and then quilting it.... should be OK I thought.....
There were a few distractions .. . and I had a string of meetings and such out of the house . ..still plenty of time I thought....THEN it was predicted that we could get Tropical Cyclone Alfred landing on us . . . .so some preparation was needed . . . I put it aside....

On the 9th of March I decided, it wasn't going to happen so I swapped my #9 again . . progress on the 3 Vases Cross Stitch would have to do...

Here is where I got to last time - & funnily enough it was project #9 last year - it was meant to be!!!

and now it's looking like this:

It's a bit like "Spot the Difference"!!!   LOL

Stitching the pink flower is tedious as the pattern is only in black and white and it is hard to discern the backstitch lines from the chart and symbols.....the stitching in the background is far more pleasurable...Anyway some progress was made , . . . on it goes...
More may happen later this year...

Tropical Cyclone Alfred

Fortunately, Tropical Cyclone Alfred turned into a Tropical Low before it really hit our area, though a lot of SE Qld has had damage, power loss, etc. At one point, over 300,000 customers were without power, some for days. Luckily, our power loss was short-lived—only 12 hours—so there was no food loss and no major inconvenience.
We had put bags of water in place along the doors leading to our pergola area in the hope of preventing any buildup of water seeping under the doors....

For those overseas...this cyclone could have been named Anthony - but Alfred was chosen instead.
We are due for Federal Elections very soon - our current Prime Minister is Anthony Albanese....it was decided to use Alfred for this one instead...to "avoid confusion". 
I suspect it was more like - so that the combination "Anthony &/or Cyclone" couldn't be used together....LOL
Whichever party wins, we won't end up in the mess that another country has...not mentioning any names.
 

RSC 2025 March - Yellow

Yellow is a hard one for me - I do not have a lot of yellow (or red or orange).  But I raided the strip collection and made two placemats - luckily someone had recently gifted me some fabrics they no longer wanted and there were a few larger yellow pieces so that helped with the backings and bindings of these.

Then I used the left over strips to start on the colourwash blocks.  I had to cut some pieces from my very limited stash of yellow.  I ended up with 24, so it will do for now.

NOTE - UPDATE
The problem I was having where I wasn't getting emails when you comment. seems to have been resolved.,...I am blaming the cyclone!

Be My Neighbour - February

A while back...in 2024....I saw a quilt called Be My Neighbour - a freebie from Moda  . . .and I no longer remember how it came to be that both Fiona and I decided to make it.

I drew up a plan for us to follow - to keep it simple, I spread it over a year or so - we both have numerous other projects to work on.  So, basically, it is 2 blocks a month - 16 in all.  And we gave January a miss!

At some stage I found this picture of it:

And I've decided to follow the general colour scheme....not my normal way to go...but it will save a lot of "umming and aahing" over fabric selection.

They are big blocks - Block 1 is 18" x 18" and #2 is 15" x 18".
I can already anticipate that Fiona will do a great job of quilting hers...mine??   - we will we'll see...

February blocks are done:  (They were finished before the end of February - the post is a bit late.)

Fiona is working with Tilda fabrics and hers are here.

Luka's Birthday Presents

DD1 suggested a new book pillow for Luka for his birthday - and a new hooded towel.  His current love is Spiderman (aka Spidey).

I got some Spiderman fabric from Spotlight - and some plain red & a blue blender and made this:

Then I needed to tackle the hooded towel.  I don't have one here to work from, so found a You Tube and some written instructions, combined the two and made this:

The You Tube I watched included some fabric binding which would have made it very "Spiderman-ish", but I was concerned that over time the fabric would wear away, so I decided on appliquing some of the images and Luka's name.

We watched Luka opening his presents...after checking out the towel he placed in on the table and rested his head on it "very soft" he said.

Seems he was happy with his pillow, towel, book and light we sent him.
Happy Birthday Luka!

Chookshed Challenge #10 - Sashiko Table Runner

Another longish term finish.

I started the stitching on this in June 2020...originally purchased May 2018) and finished it in February 2021.
I found the fabric I wanted to use as a border to finish it off....but then it sat...I don't really use table runners, so that kind of explains why it didn't get finished....but it's time to wipe it off the list, so it was included as one of my Chookshed Challenge Projects.

Hearts for NICU babies

Recently the Mater Hospital in Brisbane put out a call for cotton hearts - they need sets of 3 - one for mum - one for bub in NICU and a spare.

This was mentioned by Helen in our Sunday Stitchers group.  I made 9 sets.  One of our members works at the Royal Brisbane Hospital which also uses these hearts, so we are gifting our hearts to them,

Floral Fun

Last year, when a number of the Sunday Stitchers groups were at retreat, we spied a small quilt in Quilters Companion.  One thing led to another and it became a group project for us in 2025.

In typical "Mdm Organiser" style I created a plan to spread the workload over a year...even though it is a simple & fairly quick project, a lot of us have other things on the go, so we took the "go slow" approach.

For February, we had to make 2 x Unit 1