Altered Canvas Calendar

Over my next few posts I think I will be catching up on 2015 as we enter into 2016.

Back in October I flew to Brisbane and spent a long weekend with the lovely ladies from the Craftmad online forum.  This is the second time I have had the chance to catch up and the fourth get-together weekend for the Craftmad group.  A lovely bunch of ladies and getting together was as easy as feeling like we had had coffee a week ago.  

We all tend to give each other a gift and Kaye the host gave us all a Canvas Calendar kit.  I rediscovered mine, waiting to be done on my desk on Christmas eve morning.  Thinking this was the perfect extra gift I had been looking for for my Mum.  Even better was the fact that both Mum's and my birthdays are in March so although Kaye had catered the kit for me with a March background I was able to make it for Mum. :-)  Mum's favourite colour is green and she loves butterflies and dragonflies…….so it was meant to be.

I really enjoyed putting all the parts of the kit together.  Kaye had been thoughtful enough to stamp up the shirt, skirt and boots on pattern paper so we could paper piece the image.  I have coloured her with my copics and gave her grey hair (like me) and is totally on trend. :-)

This is the link to Kaye's original canvas.

http://craftykayesroom.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/altered-canvas.html

We had a wonderful Christmas day with our son and his girlfriend.  His girlfriend was madly sewing up napkins on Christmas eve….I must admit I was happy to see someone her age crafting ready for Christmas. :-)  This is a photo of the beautiful meal they provided for us and how amazing the table looks simply with a few candles, napkins, bonbons and yummy food.

Have a great day.

Merry Christmas everyone

Merry Christmas from me to you.  

These were decorations we saw up in Port Douglas last year.

Our Christmas tree this year which I decorated by myself …… first time in forever as no kids home.  Scruff supervised.  All the ornaments were given to us as gifts over the years.

This is what we will all be like just after lunch. :-)

A couple of my Christmas creations that I did make back in October for our annual Craftmad get together.  The tags I used my finger prints and a couple of lines to create the images.  The tree, there is a fake tea light inside so glows and looks pretty at night.  I have more items to show you but since upgrading our computer, the computer no longer recognises my SD card so trying to find a way around this….after Christmas though.

Me, getting in the Christmas mood.

I wish you a wonderful day however you get to spend the day.  

My next quilting journey….

I have dug out all my craftmad swap blocks today and put them roughly, very roughly into quilt fronts. The first quilt will be our new one for the lounge once Christmas has past…..so I had better get started on that. The remainder are on offer to our daughter and son or spares for us. I removed the reds and oranges from the rainbow quilt and made a seperate quilt top because for some reason I had four reds that I had made myself so used them on each corner. Plus I think this sized quilt top are as big as I want to do on the sewing machine.

My Christmas Quilt

Thank you, lovely people for dropping by and leaving such kind comments….I have missed you all and just wish my day would stretch a couple more hours.  Next year may be different, as changes are afoot.  Looking at spending all my time at the school (admin) in future and letting another lady discover the joys of bookbinding.  This won't happen until February at the earliest.

Today, I would like to share a quilt that I finally completed.  Over at Craftmad during 2014 (Jan-Dec) a couple of us swapped traditional christmas coloured quilt blocks.  Beginning of November this year I bit the bullet and decided that the quilt had to made for this Christmas.  We use a quilt on the lounge to as a protector for when people are laying on there.  I had that many blocks that I decided to have a blocks on the front and the back.  Never again as the back doesn't quite line up……although it did when I pinned it and started quilting.  All finished first week December.

Each month I would make two quilt blocks, one for me to keep and know what I had done and the other was sent to my partner.  The photo above shows all the quilt blocks that I sent out over the year.

This side of the quilt are all the blocks I received throughout the year.

This photo is for Loz. :-)  I did have it in my post yesterday but deleted it at the last moment.  After Loz's request, I thought why not share my cringeworthy dress.   This is a before alterations and it is 2 sizes to big for me.

This is pinned for alterations…..I didn't get a photo of the finished product.  The section that I removed I sewed and turned into a bow and attached it to the right hip of the dress.  I also made and added shoulder pads as I thought the shoulders needed more of a lift.

Take care.  I am off to check out some of your blogs now. 

Surprise…..a rare post with flowers from the garden.

Hi everyone, it sure has been a long time between posts.  I have been to visit a couple of blogs but not as many as I would like.  So hopefully, with my month of holidays, I will find the time now to catch up on all that you have been doing.

In my time away from bogland I have done a little crafting here and there, gardening and visiting family.  Most of the time was filled with work and looking after the house and 'just plain old resting'.

Last week was very busy but very productive.  I made and finished some christmas cards for my work friends and made some small gifts.  Altered a cringe worthy dress so that I could wear it to a 40th birthday party with a 80's prom theme.  Pink polyester with a drop waist and puffy leg of mutton sleeves.  I had to cut a section from the dress so I turned that fabric into a bow to attach to the hip and made some shoulder pads so that my sleeves really stood up.  Organised ten small gifts ready for a Left and Right Christmas gift exchange game at our Museum volunteers Christmas lunch yesterday.  First time a lot of us have played this and it went down well.

Now I want to share some flowers that are out in the garden at the moment.  The Mock Orange I received in a small pot from a special friend and this is the first time it has flowered.  The smell is just amazing.  They say it flowers when it's going to rain and we had a downpour yesterday which is just what the dry gardens and lawn needed.  Humid today but plants look happier.  Blogger is not letting me add captions to the photos.  I don't know the names of other plants other than the Fire Balls which all came out in the last two days.