WOW: Birds and Berries Block 1

It is Thursday already in Holland, so I'm too late for WOW, but I'm hoping to just make it to Esther's WOW before it closes.

As I was still struggling with colour choices for my first block of Berries and Bluebirds by Gail Pan, Kruimel decided to give me a helping paw. He has never before seen his mummy struggle for so long on one block!


After a bit of reshuffling, he came up with this:

Did I mention I love his paws?

Yesterday I *finally* managed to complete the first block. Please excuse the creases. I couldn't iron the block because the tracing hadn't quite vanished (for those who don't use magic tracing pens, the lines vanish by themselves but if you iron them, they are fixed forever).

Since Christmas will be upon us in less than six weeks, and after seeing Lynette Anderson's completed quilt, I pulled out my Christmas Fun project to see at what point it had got abandoned for something much more 'interesting' at that time. These are the WIPS of block 1 and 2, which still need quite a bit of work:

Thanks for all your lovely comments!

WOW & New Start & Flowers

Here is my new start: Christmas Fun by Lynette Anderson, a button BOM. The button comes with a very cute pattern.

I'm showing this start for WOW: WIP's on Wednesday, organised by Esther Aliu, designer of Heart's Desire. The link to her blog is in my sidebar.

The petunia hanging basked has become a standing basket, on a metal vase which stands on a pillar in our garden:

(I didn't have time to dead-head the plant before taking the picture, oops).

Our white hydrangeas are now also in flower:

And these beautiful mauve flowers are called Balloon Flowers (ballonklokje in Dutch). You can see why in the second picture (bottom left)

I'm also working on something else, but I will keep that to show you next time I post on my blog.

Thanks for all your lovely comments.

Two Sophies

Last night I finished block 4 of Henrietta Whiskers, the free BOM by Bunny Hill Designs. The Sophie sitting on the pumpkin still needs a necklace or other embellishment, but I cannot find anything suitable in my stash. Something will pop up somewhere that is just perfect for her. Back to work on the last stitchery for My Garden by Lynette Anderson, before the first block for the new Christmas Fun button BOM arrives in the post from Australia. There is still a lot of work to do on My Garden, because most of the courthouse step borders need cutting and piecing and then I need to assemble the whole quilt. Thanks for your lovely comments!

My Lego Motorcyle

That title is strange, right? Let me explain. I promise I haven't gone off my rocker:

When my better half was about 8 years old, he had to have his tonsils out. His present when he woke up from the general anaesthetic was a Lego motorcycle.

Since he told me that story, any present that we buy each other after surgery or other nasty procedure (which thankfully doesn't happen very often!) is called 'Lego Motorcycle".

After my recent operation, I received a healthy stitching budget as a present, and this is what I ended up buying over the past weeks, as soon as I felt well enough to go back to go stash shopping, both online and in brick-and-mortar shops:

That's pretty cool, isn't it? Included in that pile are some random fabrics which I fancied, my fabrics for the new Button BOM by Lynette Anderson called Christmas Fun (see below) and also the materials for Spring Knotgarden by Chatelaine, for which Ineke signed me up.

And also something else that I will share with you at a later date, as soon as I figure it out for myself.

Here are said fabrics for Christmas Fun:

And this is the sneak preview of Christmas Fun which Lynette gave us a few weeks back. I cant't wait for this project to start. This is the project that follows her My Garden button BOM:

Now all I need is about 48 hours in each day to work on any of this!