Looking Back at 2024

I can’t quite believe that we are already at the end of another year.  It is time to have a look back at what we have been up to over the last twelve months.  This is something I have done for the last few years and I do enjoy having a quick read over them and seeing how we have fared.

At the start of 2024 I made a post with my wishes for the coming year.  Let’s see how things panned out.

As usual, I set some goals for my stitching and joined in with some challenges.

Once again, I joined in with the One Monthly Goal challenge.  I missed achieving my goal for a couple of months, due to travel, but caught up by the end of the year.

A new challenge this year was the Chookshed Stitchers’ Challenge arranged by Deana.  This consisted of nominating and numbering ten projects or tasks. Deana would then select one number at random each month and we would work on that project or task.  Having only ten projects gave us a couple of extra months to make up for any time we were unable to complete the task in the nominated month.  I’m pleased to report that by using that extra couple of months I was able to meet all my goals.  I’m looking forward to joining in again next year.

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge featured again this year.  I worked on a few projects, but completed none.  

Firstly, I continued to make the split nine patches I had started in 2023.  

I also made a few crumb blocks and started a few hexy flowers.  

What ended up being a lot of fun was working on the Fishy Business Quilt blocks in rainbow colours.  Sadly, I fell off the wagon in the second half of the year, so they are an ongoing project.  I hope to make two donation quilts using these blocks.

The Rainbow Fish were such fun that I started a second version of the quilt using batik fabrics.  I’m loving how this is turning out.  Once again, it came to standstill in the second half of the year, so is ongoing.

I did manage to make quite a few donation quilts.  Some went to a local charity that supports victims of domestic violence.

One was used as a raffle prize at the church fete.

There were a couple of things that didn’t progress how I had hoped, one being the Blue Quilt.  I need to remove a couple of borders, as they were flaring, and adjust those borders. They are the checkerboard border you can see here as well as a narrow border that was added after this one.

I have become somewhat obsessed with hexy flowers since autumn, when I made a couple of random ones as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  This morphed into making the Bigs and Smalls quilt pattern by Anorina Morris.  I have stitched 111 one inch hexy flowers and 8 two inch hexy flowers.  I am currently in the process of appliquéing them to background squares.  It has surprised me how much I have enjoyed the process,  It has also meant that other projects have been put on the back burner.

I started a little stitchery when we were overseas and rather than just adding a simple border, I had a play and made a little wall hanging.  It was a bit of fun.

This year I again played along with working on something crafty for 15 minutes a day.  It really motivates me to get at least some little thing done most days.  The hexy flowers were a perfect project.

This is how I ended up:

December = 26/31

Year to Date =  336/366

Success Rate = 91.80%  That’s a little bit down on last year, but I think anything over 90% is definitely a win.

Being a bit of a nerd, I set up a spreadsheet with some goals.  This is how I went.

Complete 24 projects = 25

Quilt 12 quilts = 12  (I had hoped to achieve more here, but Monique has not been playing nicely for the last few months.  Once she is sorted, I should be able to make some good progress - and complete some more UFOs.)

Complete 12 UFOs = 9 (I had listed 24 UFOs to choose from)

Complete 12 donation projects = 10

I started 25 new projects during the year and have completed 16, so there is the start of next year’s UFO list.

I am really enjoying the social side of stitching, continuing to attend my patchwork group on a Wednesday and the U3A group on a Friday morning.  These groups mean that I get much more handwork completed these days.

Participating in the Chookshed Stitchers Zoom sewing sessions continues to be a favourite way to spend time.  It is such a lovely group of women.

Finally, visiting Baradine for sewing retreats is the best fun.  This time with a second retreat in the spring being a bonus, as well as a free motion quilting workshop at the craft shop in Coonabarabran.

What else did we get up to during the year?

Things started out on a sad note, as we farewelled our cat Joey.  He was sixteen and his time had come.

Travel is always a feature.  The main trip this year was rather unplanned and impromptu.  We decided on the Friday afternoon to go to the Isle of Man for the TT motorcycle races and had everything booked that evening and left on the Monday morning!!! I still haven’t got around to blogging about most of the trip.  I may still get to it.  I do hope so.  Anyway, we had a great time while there and in England.

We had quite a change with our caravan trips too.  After the ute started to give us grief, we made the decision to buy a small truck to pull the van.  Enter “Frank” the Fuso truck.  We are very happy with him.  He is shorter than the ute and Mick finds him surprisingly zippy for driving around town.  The vision from the cab is terrific, being so high and, best of all, there is no worries about being overweight when towing the van.  He has already done quite a few miles.

Our first trip was to Baradine for Scrub Stitchin’, when the above photo was taken.  

We then took him to Canberra in May, so that we could see the Rajah Quilt, the Ancient Egypt exhibition, both Parliament Houese and Mr Squiggle.

His next trip was to Queensland, where we visited Dalby, Bell, Gayndah, Cania Gorge and then on to Rockhampton to visit our friends.

We have also taken him to Forbes and Lake Cargelligo.

And finally, Braidwood for the Airing of the Quilts.

As usual we had quite a few days out.  Quilt shows and open gardens seemed to feature a lot.  We went to the Blue Mountains Quilt Show, the Rajah Quilt Exhibition at Canberra, the Sydney Quilt show and the Braidwood Airing of the Quilts.  We visited open gardens at Cowra, Bathurst and Crookwell.  

Meanwhile, we are also enjoying just being at home.  Mick has become really involved with his lawn bowls.  Not only is he playing twice a week, he goes down and practices on a couple of afternoons and has started taking an active role in looking after the grounds. 

I have continued to read some books, but still not as many as I would like and tried quite a few new recipes, but once again, not as many as I would like.

So that wraps up another year of retirement.  Life is definitely good.

Blue House Sampler Completed

This is a project that I have had a lot of fun with.

It all started with me very quickly tracing off a few stitcheries to take with me to the Isle of Man back in late May and early June.  I made a start while sitting in a church yard beside the race course.  I didn’t get a great deal stitched while over there and then gradually added a few stitches now and then once we returned home.

I finally completed the stitching earlier this month and initially planned to simply add a two inch border of blue fabric, as per the original pattern by Gail Pan.

However, for some reason I can’t remember, I decided that it would be a bit boring and started to wonder what else I could do with the stitchery.  Maybe a bag, or what about a more detailed mini quilt to hang in my sewing room?  That’s when I made a huge mess on the dining table, pulling out vintage trims, laces, various fabrics and had a general play.

At the end of that day I had this vague idea.

The size would be determined by the vintage coat hanger I wished to use as the hanger.  This has been waiting for the right project for many years.

Over the next few days I gradually added bits and pieces, just making it up as I went along. 

Let’s have a bit of a look to see what I used. Firstly, I added the fabric borders.  The floral fabric on the left is one I have had for many years, probably since the 90s, and I just use little bits every now and then.  Initially, I was going keep everything blue, except for the front door, but once I added this fabric it seemed to set the colour scheme for the project.  The stripe at the top is a scrap from my Blue Quilt.  It is actually joined from two pieces and I didn’t do the best stripe match, but decided to leave it.   The large blue piece of fabric is from and end of bolt I purchased for next to nothing at Spotlight shortly after I started quilting, so in the early 2000s.  It has been included in many of my projects over the years and has been so very versatile.

The linen that the sampler is worked on is an offcut from the Vintage Linens Quilt that I made a few years ago.  It even had a hand stitched hem at the bottom, which I left in place.  The pale green huckaback with the white crochet lace edging is the offcut from a hand towel, also used in that quilt.  The final offcut from the vintage linens quilt is the narrow crochet lace across the bottom of the sampler.  It only had about an eighth of an inch beyond the crochet, so I carefully hand stitched it to the linen hem and then did a stitch in the ditch by machine to secure it to the huckaback.  The ric rac is blue and white, which is rather unusual and was found in my stash of bits and pieces.

Decisions, decisions.  At this point I did add the two lace flowers to hide the ends of the narrow lace,  There were just the two flowers and a bit of a stem joining them, so they were perfect.  You can also see that I had added some decorative blanket stitch to the right of the flowers.

I had two pieces of this sweet lace edging and wanted to use one.  I thought it would go OK here, but that tape at the top didn’t look too good.

Maybe cover it with some little hexies?  Nah, it still doesn’t really cover it.

Then I remembered some trims made with a very fine silk ribbon.  There was a green one that may work.  It didn’t, the colour was too grassy green, but there was a very narrow trim with pink flowers.  That did work.  

I kept fiddling and decided that this would be my final layout. 

I thought I would attache the little fabric scraps at the top with decorative stitching, but it didn’t look very good at all, so was removed.  Simple running stitch was all that was required.

Once I had all the trims attached, other than the buttons, it was time to think about quilting it.  I knew I didn’t want a binding, as I wanted to have the lace edging on the bottom.  What to use for a backing?  I have a few vintage damask serviettes, so I selected one of those, opting for the one with the least distinct pattern and the thinnest fabric, as I was going to hand quilt it.  For the batting, I joined a couple of little off cuts.  Here it is, stitched on three sides, ready to trim and turn right side out.

Now it’s starting to take shape.  Thread basted and ready to turn under the bottom hem and then do the quilting and add the buttons.

This really has been a project of using whatever bits and pieces I had to hand, even down to some sewing cotton that has been hanging around for years to thread baste and using scraps of crochet cotton to do the quilting.  The blue was used around the stitchery and the cream for everything else.  The cream one came to me from one of my stitching friends when she was sorting out her mother’s craft supplies.  It’s nice to use it.

Not quite “Ta Da”, but nearly there.  That top right hand corner neeeded something, both to fill the space and to anchor it more for hanging.  But what?  Some boro quilting,  more buttons?  I needed to think on it for a day or so.  I thought about adding a small quote, but everything I came across was too long or I wasn’t fussed.  I didn’t want “Home sweet home” or “Home is where the heart is”.  

In the end I just stitched “Home” and a couple of hearts, taking elements from the sampler and added a border.  It is probably a bit larger than I would have liked, but I wasn’t going to redo it.  If I come up with something better, it won’t take much to remove it.  I also found a little pink bejewelled heart charm, so added that as well.

So, here it is.  Ta Da!

And the back.

Let’s have a little closer look at some of it.  You can kind of see the sweet little floral trim I added to the lace. The tiny hexies were made a year or so ago from scraps from my Splendid Sampler 2 quilt and have just been loose in a little baggie.  I still have a few more and plenty of more scraps.  The hexy flower was made at the same time.  The buttons are just ones I found in my button stash.  The two little blue buttons were just the right colour, so had to be included.

In addition to what I have already shown in the bottom section, the floral braid came from Mum’s stash.  She has some lovely laces and trims.  The buckle was in my bits and bobs.  I seem to collect old buckles.  The “JM” is French laundry tape.  A lady in France used to blog and she was selling it, so I treated myself.  

So, there you have it.  My little stitchery, traced off with no plan, just something to stitch, has ended up having a life of its own and giving me a lot of fun along the way. Added to that, it has even ended up being a sustainable sewing project.  

Fortunately, there was still one spot where I could hang it in my sewing room.  It suits the room rather well.