Hilltop House

Another 2 quilt blocks

Yesterday, an unexpected issue arose within my family which required my atttention for most of the day. I am sorry but I did not get time to do my post about something crafty.

Today, things are back to normal and I made a start on a cute litlte thread catcher that I have been wanting to make for some time. It is not finished yet but I will share this photo with you. These little pinwhell blocks measure 2 inches square and look so cute. 

Here are another 2 blocks from Emily and Nicholas' quilts and I will show you another 2 tomorrow.

This block came together okay but I am not that happy with the puckered look in the white fabric. I will more than likely end up re-doing this block again!!

That's all for now and I will see you tomorrow and hopefully reveal my finished thread catcher to you.

Thanks for dropping by J

Evonne xx

Stitchery and Quilt blocks

We are already into the second week of the school holidays and my DH has taken this week off work to be with us.

I thought I might do something a little different with my school holidays challenge this week and post about something sewing or crafty related each day.

This lovely little Bronwyn Hayes' stitchery has been sitting on my fabric shelf for over 2 years so I got my threads together and started stitching last night. This project will be for ME which feels a little strange because I haven't made anything for myself in a long time.

I know I have been talking about showing you the blocks for my kids' quilts for a while now so here are the first 2 blocks in each quilt.

You will notice I have reworked the first block in each quilt because I was initially going to use a different fabric for each block but decided to keep it simple and use the same fabric instead. Both quilts have a sampler theme and each block in Nicholas' quilt will have a squarish appearance and each block in Emily's quilt will have a triangular appearance. Now that I am up to date with the blocks on both quilts, I will show you the rest of the blocks over the next few days.

See you soon.

Evonne xx

SH Challenge Day 5 - Lazy days

It was very late last night when I realised I hadn't done a post about yesterday's challenge so I thought I would do it today instead.

Yesterday's acitivity was not very exciting but I think both my kids needed to have a day doing pretty much nothing. After all, that's what school holidays are for anyway!

When I asked them what they wanted to do Nicholas said he wanted to play lego and Emily said she wanted to read a book that she borrowed from the library. Sounds good to me as I didn't really feel like doing too much anyway!

The lego has been spread out over the dining table for the last 2 days and the kids keep going back to it during the day. This is some of the building that was done today.

Nicholas has also been having HEAPS of fun with this mini seaside that he made. He has a small shell that he named "hermie" and the little house that we made the other day is for "hermie"!

Emily was a bit upset when the wind blew her little house over and some of the paint came off L Anyway, this is her little house and I am not sure what she will use it for but she had fun making it!

This afternoon I cut some of this lovely fabric for the quilt for my MIL. I find it is so much easier to cut all the fabric at once and then I can put a block together in next to no time. 

Well that is all from me for now so I will see you tomorrow with some sewing goodness.

Evonne xx 

SH Challenge Day 4 - Crafty stuff

Today's activity that I had planned for the kids was some art and crafty stuff. They have quite a big collection of shells from the beach so I suggested that we make something from these. I thought a seashell wind chime would be an easy project but they didn't like this idea much. Too boring mum! Instead, they wanted to use paint and glue and glitter and stuff that takes ages to dry. So I suggested we make a little house using empty yoghurt tubs and milk cartons and decorate the outside with some shells and other bits and pieces.

Because we used silicone to stick the shells to the plastic, we have to wait overnight for it to dry. So that this post is not photoless, here is a couple of pictures of the kids in action!

Waiting for the paint to dry on Nicholas' little house.

Emily chose to paint her little house purple.

I will be back tomorrow to show you the finished projects and hopefully some more holiday fun.

See you soon.

Evonne xx

SH Challenge Day 3 - Books

Today's activity was a trip to our local library.

I take the kids to the library every school holidays but the last few times I have taken them they have been borrowing too many books and don't get time to read them before they have to be returned. So these are the pile of books that we came home with, which is about half of what we used to come home with!!

After our visit to the library, we visited my sister for lunch. She lives in a high rise apartment that overlooks the Pacific Ocean but today the ocean vanished into a thick cloud of dust!

I thought I would share this picture with you because I have never seen anything like this before. Looks like I will be spending my weekend in the laundry catching up on the dirty clothes that are piling up:(

Well that is all from me today so I will see you tomorrow.

Evonne xx 

SH Challenge Day 2 - Rockpools

Unfortunately, this morning we awoke to extremely strong winds so today’s planned activity of a morning at the beach was quickly re-scheduled to a short afternoon walk around the rock pools fossicking for unbroken shells.

Apart from the wind, I love the sound and smell of the ocean and find it revitalising.

The blustery conditions didn't seem to deter this dedicated fisherman!! I wonder if he went home and told his wife some crazy woman took a photo of him fishing?? hehe

The sea spray was quite thick and there were lots of people doing the same thing as us.

Like most kids, Emily and Nicholas love exploring every crack and crevice.  

I have been playing around with some features on my camera and thought I would experiment by taking some photos from different angles. This one was taken on the ground and despite the awkwardness of lying down on the hard rocks to capture the image, it looks pretty good!

My kids sort through these scattered piles of broken and unbroken shells and there was great excitement when Nicholas found these two tiny shells which were still joined in the middle!!

Next January my MIL will turn 70 and I thought it would be a good opportunity to spoil her with a pretty quilt. I am not certain but I don't think she has ever had a quilt of her own before, or at least I have never seen one in her home. Her favourite colour is yellow so this morning I designed this quilt block which measures 8½ inches x 8½ inches. I really admire windmill style quilts and this block was very easy to put together.

The beautiful yellow fabric is from the Faded Memories range by 3 Sisters, which was released a couple of years ago. The pink fabric is from the Simplicity range by 3 Sisters and the red spot fabric is from the Savon Bouquet range by Verna Mosquera for Free Spirit.

I am almost on track with the blocks for my kids quilts and will update the photo albums in my sidebar in a few days.

Well that is all from me today so I hope you enjoyed your visit to my blog and I will be back tomorrow with some more holiday fun.

See you soon J

Evonne xx

SH Challenge Day 1 - Baking

There are so many things about the school holidays (SH) that I love. Sleeping in that little bit longer, letting my kids watch the TV after breakfast, doing fun art stuff with them and the overall relaxed feeling of not rushing anywhere. So I thought it would be fun to set myself a challenge to do a post on my blog each day of the holidays about one fun activity that we have done.

Today's fun activity was baking!  We made these yummy chocolate cupcakes to take with us on our visit to see my niece who has recently moved into her first home. They tasted delicious and were low fat which was probably just as well because I lost count of how many I ate! 

The weather was quite warm here today and on the way home, I decided to take the scenic route around the waters edge. The colour of the water was the most brilliant shade of blue/green and it looked so clean and inviting. Sometimes the beauty of our natural environment cannot be described with words so I will be back tomorrow to share some of my tropical paradise with you.

See you soon J

Evonne xx

Change is in the air

I am sitting here feeling a little embarrassed that it has been so long between posts but after making some much needed changes to my daily schedule hopefully I will be able to post on a more regular basis.

Having said that, my children have now started 2 weeks school holidays so I will try to post about some non-sewing related activities during this time.

I have been working on a new design and I am happy to share these few snippets with you. My new design has a friendship theme and I will be sharing some more snippets with you in the coming weeks.

Red, white, pink and green, one of my favourite colour combinations!

Could this be a little clue? Maybe!

Well that is all from me for now so I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I will see you soon.

Evonne xx

Winners !!!

Well I have drawn the names of the 2 lucky ladies who will each be receiving a free Candy Girl Party Bags pattern and they are......

The third name of the lucky lady who will receive a free pattern AND her very own cute Candy Girl Party Bag in her choice of design and colour is......

Congratulations to those 3 lucky ladies and thank you to everyone who entered my giveaway. I appreciate each and every one of your lovely comments.

My patterns will be available through a retailer very soon but in the meantime if you would like to purchase a copy of my Candy Girls Party Bags pattern ($6.00 AUD) you can send me an email and I will let you know all the details.

I have already begun thinking about my next design and if you like denim + lace + florals and are a sentimental kind of gal, then you will not be able to resist the delicious eye candy that will be unfolding on my blog over the next few weeks!!

I will be back in a couple of days to show some sneak peaks so I hope you will join me on my next exciting journey.

Evonne xx 

Yippee... the wait is over

I am very excited to share my newest design with you, which is appropriately titled “Candy Girl Party Bags”!!

For those overseas ladies who are reading, in Australia it is customary to give a small bag filled with lollies or candy to each child that comes to your birthday party. The bag is often a plastic one and is thrown in the garbage afterwards.

I think you would have to agree that these bags are definitely much nicer than the usual plastic ones and they would put a smile on any little girl's face!!

Each bag is fully lined and once the lollies have been eaten, the bag can be re-used for something special. There are four designs to choose from so if you can't decide which one is your favourite, why not make them all?? 

Now here comes the fun part....... the GIVEAWAY!!!!

Just leave me a comment telling me which design is your favourite (heart, cupcake, flower or butterfly) and on Tuesday, 14 July I will draw out 2 names who will each receive a free pattern.

I said this giveaway would be EXTRA special so I am going to draw out 1 more name and that lucky person will receive a free pattern AND their very own favourite party bag made by me in their choice of colours!!

I hope you will join in J

Evonne xx