I Like/Love #24

This is the first gratitude post for 2019 for me. I join in with LeeAnna each month at Not Afraid of Color. She hosts a weekly link-up on Thursdays where you will find many like-minded, gratitude-aware peeps. I just link up once at the end of each month. It's not that I'm not being grateful the other three weeks, au contraire, I am always aware of how many blessings I have (just ask my family, who get annoyed by me in a loving way when I often acknowledge my gratitude and loves aloud). I try to limit my monthly list to ten items.

1. I love my kitchen. I love early morning, and I love these fairy lights, and their warm, soft, golden glow. On a bitterly cold morning like today, it makes me feel even more cosy in my little house. Yep, I still have a sparkly silver-sprayed wreath in my door to the deck, and four red berries twig wreaths in each window; I like them all and the ambiance they create. A few of the pics in this post are taken in that warm golden light this morning.

Getaway Island Batik Bloghop & Giveaways Week 4

Wow! Inspiration overload, right? Wrong! One can never have too much quilt inspiration and eye candy, at least in my humble opinion. Fabulous fabrics, gorgeous, creative quilts, ahhh. We are entering the final week of the month-long hop. My own post where there are three giveaways (I remembered I have an extra copy of January/February American Patchwork & Quilting, so I'm giving it away too), can be found here. The finished quilt can be found here, and seen below!

DrEAMi! #24

Welcome to the first DrEAMi! linkup for 2019! This is the third year I've hosted this party for those of us with Quilter ADD.  If you're not sure what I'm talking about, have you ever come across a quilt project (pattern, actual quilt, idea, etc) that just BUGS you so much that it takes over your life? You have to literally stop everything you're currently sewing, forego any house work, ignore social media, your kids, your husband... and sew your hiney off until that project is done and you've got it out of your system!

Oh! The Places You'll Go! Finish!

My first finish for 2019 is a wrap! This is also a goal on my Q1FAL. My list is here.

It's not the greatest of photos, but let's just say my trusty quilt-holder was a little exasperated that a quilt put us behind schedule...
This is the quilt I made as my final challenge for being a 2018 Island Batik Ambassador, a position that has really helped me grow as a designer. I am so grateful for being accepted as an ambassador, I'm honoured to have been able to showcase these rich beautiful fabrics, I'm happy to have made new friends, and excited to have been offered new opportunities. Most of all, I am still in awe of receiving such beautiful fabrics from Island Batik, gorgeous threads from Aurifil, and wonderful batting from Hobbs Batting. All shine in this quilt. I'm also super-excited to start my second year as an ambassador in February!

Modern by the Yard New Issue and I'm in it!

And it's not a quilt of the fabric kind but a block of the digital kind!

MbyY, in case you are not familiar with it, is the ezine put out quarterly, for free, by Benartex Fabrics. You can get your copy by going to their blog, Sew in Love With Fabric, where you will find the link to the ezine on the sidebar. When they contacted me to ask if I would like to design a digital block, the assignment being a modern twist on the Log Cabin block, I jumped at the chance for several reasons. First, I love a good challenge to my creativity and second, it was another opportunity to work with EQ8, and third, well, being published is always a thrill that never gets old. Fourth, I'd just played with a log cabin challenge for November's Island Batik challenge, so log cabins were still bouncing around in my head. You can see that quilt top here.

Getaway Island Batik Blog Hop Week 3 and Giveaways

Welcome to Week 3 of the hop! The first two weeks have been amazing, and the third looks to be every bit as good!

Here is the list of all the ambassadors for this month-long hop in case you've missed some:

Q1 FAL List

First of all, I am jumping in again for the Q1 FAL!

I did rather dismally in Q4 of 2018, the worst ever in fact...
Out of my nine hoped-for finishes, I finished two, and one flimsy.

Log Cabins

Fallen Sky

Love is All

Getaway Island Batik Blog Hop & Giveaways

It's Week 2 of the Island Batik Blog Hop! I hope you got a chance to view all the quilts from last week. If not, no worries; the list is below of all the ambassadors showcasing various Island Batik collections, and they are all stunning. Lots of drool-worthy fabrics and quilts. Lots of giveaways, at the Island Batik blog, as well as at most, if not all, of the stops on the hop!

If you missed my own post, it is here. I have a couple of giveaways for you!

Getaway! Island Batik Blog Hop and Giveaways

Who doesn't love to hear that phrase, "Let's get away!" be it January, cold and dark in the northern hemisphere, OR January, summertime in the southern hemisphere, school's out and let's head to a great camping spot or the big city or the ocean...
I try to be all-inclusive, and I have realized especially over the past year, but even years ago when I had a grade 7 student from South Africa (whose mum was my first Yin yoga teacher😊) who spent a month, December/January, in the southern hemisphere summer visiting their family each year, that we northern hemisphere peeps do not recognize our sister/brother southern hemisphere peeps' seasons. So I am right here right now. Sidenote: said grade 7 student is now a doctor, as in M.D.!

And welcome to my spiralling mind! It's how I roll, both on the blog and IRL, (in real life). I always have been like that; menopause exacerbates it, and I sometimes leave my dear husband, aka MacGyver, in the dust with my spiralling and jumping around and assuming he is following my meanderings. Anyhow. Let's focus, shall we?

I am so excited to show you my quilt I designed for this hop! It's the biggest one I've made for Island Batik, measuring 69 X 84". All the fabrics were provided by Island Batik, the batting by Hobbs Batting (I'm using 100% wool, pinch me!), and the threads by Aurifil. I should also tell you that I found out this week that I've been accepted for a second year representing this wonderful company as an ambassador for their fabrics. I just love their fabrics, truly. I've been a batik lover forever, have used them solo, or mixed them in with other cottons. Here is the group I got to work with for the hop. It is called Crystal Ball.

TBT #13 Stars Upon A Christmas

Welcome to the first edition of TBT, Throwback Thursday for those quilts you made before you started blogging. This way we can record them, their makes and stories, because every quilt has one, right?

Today's quilt and a few ornaments were made quite some time ago, and are Christmas-themed. I don't know about you, but although I have taken down our Christmas tree, I still have several Christmas items around the house. This tablecloth is one.

The glass tree in the centre of the table is new, as are the vine and berries wreaths in the windows. I was on the lookout for them, as I had a lonely one, and saw this look on either Pinterest or an Instagram account I follow, and wanted to copy it.