Stitches and craft...

Yesterday I went, I saw, I spent.....

It was good to finally see the dress that i have seen so many photos of....

Although I didn't spend that much money, the majority was spent down the "aisle of bloggers"... The stalls were all so full of people, yet there was so much floor room around them... I felt like a stalker seeing all the faces of the people that write all those blogs I read, yet they didn't know who I was... But what do you say... "Hi, I read your blog so I like what you do... Bye".

Some of my purchases...

A highlight was definitely seeing the "Handmade Nation" doco. I felt such empowerment while I was watching it. And being a fan of Sublime Stitching, it was good to see Jenny runs the business from her house and she stitches such complicated portraits of people. Like her, I find it so relaxing to hand stitch.


On the way home i just had to spend my $10 Spotlight voucher on something that I didn't need but wanted... It only ended up being $13... How could I resist. As soon as i got home i was searching for thread to put on a bobbin. It's so cute..

I needed magnets...

I made these magnets with supplies I got off Etsy last year. They're a tad addictive... The small one's are only 1/2 inch, yet they are strong enough to hold a tea towel on the fridge...

The photo is of some friends outside my house who decided my engagement party needed to be extended.... so they sang at the top of their lungs till 3 in the morning when the local police came round to shut it down. They said there was a complaint about the bad singing...

2008 Angus & Robertson Top 100 book list

I've got into a habit in the last few years of only reading books off the Angus and Robertson booklist...

And I've read over half of the current list. 64 and counting...

The Bold are the ones I've read...


1 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
2 Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
3 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
4 Obernewtyn - Isobelle Carmody
5 My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
6 To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
7 The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
8 Breath - Tim Winton
9 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
10 Break No Bones - Kathy Reichs
11 The Power Of One - Bryce Courtenay
12 Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
13 Magician - Raymond E. Feist
14 The Bronze Horseman - Paullina Simons
15 Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin
16 Memoirs Of A Geisha - Arthur Golden
17 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
18 Cross - James Patterson
19 Persuasion - Jane Austen
20 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
21 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
22 The Secret - Rhonda Byrne
23 Marley and Me - John Grogan
24 Antony and Cleopatra - Colleen McCullough
25 April Fools Day - Bryce Courtney
26 North & South - Elizabeth Gaskell
27 In My Skin - Kate Holden
28 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
29 A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
30 The Other Boleyn Girl - Phillipa Gregory
31 Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult
32 Atonement - Ian McEwan
33 Shantaram Gregory - David Roberts
34 Pillars Of The Earth - Ken Follett
35 The Pact - Jodi Picoult
36 Ice Station - Matthew Reilly
37 Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
38 Jessica - Bryce Courtenay
39 A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle
40 The Princess Bride - William Goldman
41 Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
42 Anybody Out There? - Marian Keyes
43 Life Of Pi - Yann Martel
44 Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly
45 People Of The Book - Geraldine Brooks
46 Six Sacred Stones - Matthew Reilly
47 Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
48 Brother Odd - Dean Koontz
49 Tully - Paullina Simons
50 Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
51 The Catcher in the Rye - J.D Salinger
52 Eragon - Christopher Paolini
53 Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
54 It's Not About The Bike - Lance Armstrong
55 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
56 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
57 The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
58 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
59 A Fortunate Life - A.B. Facey
60 The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
61 The Notebook -Nicholas Sparks
62 Water For Elephants - Sara Gruen
63 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
64 The Host - Stephenie Meyer
65 Dirt Music - Tim Winton
66 Eldest - Christopher Paolini
67 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
68 It - Stephen King
69 World Without End - Ken Follett
70 Emma - Jane Austen
71 Temple - Matthew Reilly
72 Little Women - Alcott Louisa May
73 Lean Mean Thirteen - Janet Evanovich
74 Scarecrow - Matthew Reilly
75 American Gods - Neil Gaiman
76 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
77 P.S, I Love You - Cecelia Ahern
78 All That Remains - Patricia Cornwell
79 The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch
80 Past Secrets - Cathy Kelly
81 The Persimmon Tree - Bryce Courtenay
82 Husband - Dean Koontz
83 Plain Truth - Jodi Picoult
84 Wicked - Gregory Maguire
85 Spot Of Bother - Mark Haddon
86 Always And Forever - Cathy Kelly
87 The Road - Cormac McCarthy
88 Cents & Sensibility - Maggie Alderson
89 Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
90 The Shifting Fog - Kate Morton
91 We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
92 Everyone Worth Knowing - Lauren Weisberger 93 Hour Game - David Baldacci
94 Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
95 The Woods - Harlan Coben
96 Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
97 Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
98 Scar Tissue - Anthony Kiedis
99 Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
100 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

My sewing Mojo is back!!!!

During the week I finished 2 quilt tops and backs for Bernadette to quilt for me...

This Kit is from Amitie and I got it from my MIL as my birthday present last December. I got my mojo back last weekend and whipped it up in 2 days... I then used the left overs to make a Chinese Coin Quilt inspired backing.

And then I got inspired to finish off the Quilt top that I had finished last December by putting a big ladybug on it. It's fleece so I couldn't stop patting it. I really wanted to make the Quilt pop somehow and I'm so happy I did the ladybug. People close to me know that I just love ladybugs.

Hello... my Dear Jane starter kit has arrived... I'm putting off looking at the software as I know I'll be looking at it all day... I'm going to do the quilt in vibrant fabrics... Bernadette please be my teacher and help me....

Mummy's Quilt

A very late posting... I made this quilt for my mum for Christmas... I used a pattern from spotlight and got my mum to pick out some fabrics she liked there.
Bernadette quilted edge to edge hearts on it...
And i got some purple variegated floss to do a Label on the back....

Devil riding a reindeer????

A well loved 1st Birthday present for a friends boy....

It was made at Christmas time (thus the scenery).

I used the pattern from 'Softies'... So simple.. He's red brother adorns the cover.

1st post for the year...

Yep... It's been 3 months since my last post... WOW... time does fly..

It's been a little quiet on the sewing front in the last few months as I've been buying organising an engagement party and a wedding, as well as going to NZ for a friends wedding. OH... and I may have got a little addicted to my birthday present of a Nintendo DS... If you have one try "Professor Layton and the curious village" it has great puzzles in it for adults although i did have to look at cheats on the net...But enough with excuses..

I DID make some new curtains for the bedrooms... One of my bedroom windows takes up the entire wall.. and i have 9 foot high ceilings... Needless to say i was buried in fabric trying to do them... And i had to put up the rods in 40 degree heat sweating my bum off (we were sleeping in the lounge room because it was that hot in the bedrooms)... But I was a woman on a mission....

It's getting windy outside now which is a tad scary because I'm in a semi rural town 45minutes for Daylesford PLUS I am about to get ready for work which involves flying in and out of Melbourne Airport for 7 hours... I'll definitely make sure there is a sick bag in EVERY seat pocket..

For a bit of Pic goodness... here is my bamboo ladder covered in quilt goodness...

And I got this table from IKEA recently and I promised my fiance that once my holidays were over it was going into my sewing room. My holidays ended 3 weeks ago!!! But he hasn't said anything so I'm not... And can you see the silver light? IKEA too... It just clips onto the side of the table and I just point it to where i want it... I love it!!! Did i mention i like to watch TV while i sew...