Anniversary and piecing.

Today is our 14th Wedding anniversary! Where has that time gone, literally flown by. Having too much fun to notice its passing perhaps. We are going out to dinner to a lovely Italian restaurant tonight. They do a wicked Calzone there and a bunch of gorgeous risottos plus the usual delicious fresh pastas and pizzas. Yum!
This week I've had a busy schedule, on Sunday we had two classes back to back, Machine Quilting which is always a delight, and Beginner Patchwork-the excitement as they begin often their very first quilt is just fantastic, and I love to see them grow into the craft.
Monday was a day at quilting group- we had a fundraiser for the Cancer Council with a yummy soup and homemade bread lunch, heavenly pavlovas, cakes, and a trade table. I found this fabric from my friend Di's stash, for sale to raise funs, with the pretty flowers in pink and yellow, orange and purple. Had to be snaffled.


The marbled fabric next to it was my lucky door prize. Its bright and juicy and delicious!! Also donated by Di. I never win lucky door prizes, and think only did as there were perhaps seven drawn!!

I pieced this little blue and cream block (and it does need pressing and trimming...) as we sat in Judi's little custom designed and built quilting cottage near her pot bellied stove, drinking tea and coffee, nattering and stitching or for some, knitting. Both these are hand pieced. No applique. Brenda Papadakis' philosophy applies to my blue one,"finished is better than perfect!"
Jane's quilt is not perfect and mine won't be either!! That's fine by me for this quilt.

A lovely day off quilting then. The brown and cream block next to it is almost finished now.
I'm enjoying these little blocks so much when I want to sit and relax.


Tuesday UFO class in the morning, shopping for a gift for husband for anniversary (a new leather wallet as his last one is barely held together. That one was found in Italy when we were traveling there in 1997 and has lasted very well indeed), and in the evening a Block of the Month class to teach. We're doing Simply Delicious by Piece o' Cake designs. They are producing beautiful quilts too.
Came back from shopping and found all three of my furry friends asleep in different positions on the bed, in some sunshine. Nushka sleeps in the standard curled up cat position. Chaucer had his tongue sticking out.


And Isabella appears to have taken relaxation to a whole new level, in this position, belly up to the sun whilst snoring quite loudly! Beginning to stir.
How cute are they?


Last night I couldn't resist adding a metre of this lovely Kaffe Fasset fabric, love the overblown roses in the urn. Last piece off the bolt.
And had to have some Brandon Mably to play happily with my Kaffe stash.



These little scraps from the scrap bin are interesing- a nice bit of oriental and some very old Kaffe snippets.

I also bought these two remnant pieces-the blue last night and the pink spots some weeks ago...I found it giggling at me this morning inside a bag I don't use quite so often.

Today is day more or less off. Look at how the day started out! This is the sports field through the trees below our yard, photographed early from my deck.

Warmer though than yesterday when it snowed. Its been cold, cold, cold for a few days but at least now we have snow and a pretty frost. Shame the car does not have a garage and we must de-ice its windows in the morning with a watering can of cold water and a plastic scraper! I once saw a blog that had a picture of a quilt covering a car, and whilst that is perhaps going a tad far, I have thought about something, even a blanket, covering the windows on cold nights.
We are out to dinner tonight, in-laws are babysitting-yay! There will be sewing on the horizon today, I plan on finishing joining up some rows of a scrappy quilt started during summer.

Cheers,
Stephanie.