Christmas Break-Up

We enjoy meeting at Lorraine's house every Friday afternoon and today was our last meeting for the year.  So here is what we were doing.

Lorraine has finisned her Christmas wall hanging 

 and now is working on an orange and green piece.  She still has to decided if it is going to be a wall hanging or perhaps a table runner.

 

Mary has finished the celtic pattern on her supper cloth and is now hand quilting it in a small square grid pattern.

Noelene is hand quilting her delicately coloured Kaleidoscope quilt.

Pam has finished the top for a Dinosaur cot quilt,

and I am still doing surface stitchery on quilt blocks.

Naturally with all our hard work we needed to have a rest with a refreshing cuppa.

We all wish you a very happy festive season with plenty of enjoyable quilting in the New Year.

More Tote Bags

I decided I would try and make some tote bags in preparation for Christmas, i.e. do without wrapping paper and just pop each present into a tote bag for the ladies of the family.  The idea is to try and only use scraps left over from other projects.

For the first two I used patterns and instructions from magazines.

Includes Thai silk scraps

Has a button trim

 Then I branched out with ideas of my own.  There is a limit to the number of framed pieces of cross stitch you can fit on the walls so I thought why not include the unframed pieces into tote bags.  And at one stage a few years ago  I was very keen on Baltimore quilts but  after a few blocks I decided that those interminable stems and leaves done with needle turning was not my idea of fun so a couple of them are also becoming tote bags.

Cross stitch parrot

Baltimore Quilt block

 I've already given away the Baltimore tote and I'm hoping I can get enough totes made so that I can keep the parrot tote for myself as I rather fancy that one ! I love the colours in it.

And my favourite book for the month - Gregory Day's "The Grand Hotel".  It's the third in a series set in the imaginary coastal town of  Mangowak (think Airey's Inlet), a quirky, amusing tale of small-town Australian life.