Meet Baby Patrick

With much love and joy, baby Patrick weighing 7lbs 7oz was welcomed into the world by his proud parents Anna and Steven on Thursday afternoon. Anna and Steven are the parents of Angel Baby Bridie in whose memory Bridie's Blossoms and Blessings are named.

I am sure that you are all as thrilled as we are that such a gorgeous little boy has come into their lives to join their loving family.

BOM progress

Sunday began a string of rainy and dreary days. The beautiful sunrise on Sunday morning heralded the grey and inclement weather that we have been experiencing.

Block 6 has been sent in the Embellished Cats BOM

I endeavoured to take apic of the Rows 1 and 2 stitched together but a cetain black feline ket on sitting in the middle of it.

Block 5 has gone out for the Embellished Dogs BOM and Rows 1-3 stitched together can be seen below.

I am busily stitching blocks for more of the Bridie's Blessings lap quilts for women and children in local shelters and I have 8 or so lap quilts cut and kitted up ready to stich together. My arm is sore from so much rotary cutting but where would we be without the rotary cutter and mat?

Busy week again and the first Bridie's Blessings delivery

This week has flown by once again. 

Yesterday I delivered the first lot of quilts in our Bridie's Blessings project to a local women's shelter. I handed over 8 quilts to the ladies who were just so apprecative to receive them. I asked them if they would like some embroiered/knitted/crocheted toys and they would also welcome any gifts of those.

Bridie's Blessings Quilts 1

It has been a cooperative effort to get this first lot of quilts done. I have had some Loony Tunes fabric for quite some time but do not have a Brother Embroidery machine with those Licensed designs on them so a kind friend who has such a machine has stitched out some blocks for me to use. Think that I will get 2-3 quilts out of the fabric. 

Remember those tulip designs from Sew4Home, they will be made into 3 lovely lap quilts. The fabric is a beautiful piece of Japanese poly cotton. ( Don't tell the quilt police).

Our little Tuesday sewing group had a visit from Robyn, one of my loyal blog followers who was visiting from New south Wales. She gave me a beautiful present of these lovely fabrics. She know the colours I love well! It is such a pleasure for me to meet my blog followers and the ladies had a lovely afternoon together.

Elizabeth completed adding the strips to her Embellished Dogs Block 2

Elizabeth's Embellished Dogs Block 2

I hope to have Block 5 of Embellished Dogs and Block 6 of Embellished Cats out to those receiving these BOM's some time over the weekend.

More freebies-Bernina baby quilt and a finished Sassy Cats quilt to share

Over at the Bernina blog they have had a baby quilt mini project running for the past few weeks.

Part 1  which is the layout and instructions can be found here. Make sure to hit the Google translate button if you need to .

The other parts can be accessed from this page. Once you visit each page the links to download each design will be written in red font. The designs are applique and two of the oultine shapes can be seen below.

Sharon has sent in a pic of her finished Sassy cats quilt. Isn't it fabulous!

Some great freebies-ideal for charity quilts

Flair magazine have a great set of freebies called China Blue by George le Warre. They are just perfect for charity block sewing. They come in a number of sizes and do not have many colour changes. There are 6 designs in the set and  9 of them sewn out would make a great lap sized quilt using the sashing technique I use from here. They are a lovely versatile set that would look fantastic with my favourite black white and red colour palette, or perhaps the jewel colours of puprle, green and hot pink. Yellow and blues would look bright and cheerful or perhaps tone on tones form the brown-autumn colour palette.

I have just posted this , so if you live in Tasmania or want to to similar in your area please feel free to do so. Click on the flyer to bring it up larger in your browser.

Bridie's Blossoms has spread its wings

Those of you regularly reading my blog will know that a few months ago I started the  Bridie's Blossoms project to supply Tasmanian hospitals with packages to support bereaved parents and their angel babies. Now that the project is up and running I have extended the Bridie's Blossoms project to also include the new Bridie's Blessings.

The mission of Bridie's Blessings is to make and gift lap sized quilts to women and children who tragically find themselves in the position where they need to seek safe haven  in a women's shelter. The forgotten women are those who find themselves alone and without any support well into their middle age.

As with Bridie's Blossoms the signature items in Bridie's Blessings will feature machine embroideries.  A local shelter likes to give a blanket/quilt to those seeking their help so this can amount to quite a few a week.Obviously I cannot make 10 or so quilts a week at least so perhaps others can help make blocks etc as well to be made up into quilts.

How many of us have orphan machine embroidered block sets that have never been placed in a quilt? I have found 20 of these candlewick blocks and today have set them into 2 lap quilts so a start has been made.

 I have also found  an embroidered heart quilt top that I made many years ago and was still waiting to be sandwiched and quilted. It is nothing earth shattering in design but quilted it will come up quite well and will provide comfort. How many of us have quilts keeping the shelves warm when they can be providing comfort to others?

Perhaps you can embroider 10 blocks and set them into a quilt for a shelter near you or maybe make some ITH teddies for our young folk finding themselves there.

Home Again

After getting up before sunrise we are home, unpacked and having a lazy afternoon catching up ion local newspapers and magazine that have arrived by mail while we have been away.
This sulphur crested cockatoo was having a goof hard look at me yesterday morning as he was sitting in a tree just outside our daughter's back fence. Sulphur crested cockatoos are very common in Canberra

Kaye has finished her Sassy Cats quilt  which we have recently done as a BOM and sent in a photo for us all to see. I just love the colours and the border print.

Now that I home I need to get back in to the sewing and completing the  BOM's that are runnign as well as doing  some more small projects for us to do.

Still on holiday-sort of

We are still in Canberra visiting our daughter with much gardening, cleaning and general house duties being undertaken. We have not filled any skip bins this time but there is a large amount of garden rubbish in the corner of the back yard.

One of the exciting things we like about being here is the many different birds we have visiting that we do not see at all in our garden at home.There are many magpies who come for a visit and at the moment they are not out to get you.

Yesterday I visited the Sewing Bug in Belconnen and taught a class with many of the same ladies from last year when I was here. This time they were making the Chic Scrunch Away folded tote that can be found under my free projects tab at the top of the page.

The beautiful totes the ladies made can be found below

 Isn't it great to see all the different embroidery designs and colour schemes they come up with!

I have also recovered the dining chairs in a print very similar the Parisian Love Letter designs from Urban Threads. 

I have also taken a pic of the canvas print I had made using one of the giraffe embroidery designs from the Giraffe BOM. If you remember I used Embird to save an image of the embroidery design and then had that image printed on a canvas by a specialist printer.