are'nt blogging friends just the best!

So I made it over Burkes Pass ok, quite uneventfully, and Oh what a wonderful fun filled weekend, with my blogging buddies; Deb, Darlene and Michelle, and lots of new friends too, including Nicky who came up all the way from down south for Sunday's fun.

I was one of the chosen few who got to spend a totally fun filled weekend with Leanne and Rosie. stitching to our hearts content...

Lesley was the wonderful quilt fairy who organised this weekend, and is to be well and truly congratulated on her stunning organisation for the last 2 days. Everything was so superb, and I bet she is collapsing in a heap tonight. ...and the food, OMG... Well done Lesley!! every single little detail was so well thought out!


Now to look at some of the fun times that we had....

Here is Rosie, signing Miss Deb's book "Gift"...

Both Leanne and Rosalie use the most beautiful Lecien Cosmos threads, which are very hard, if not damn near impossible to purchase in NZ. These 2 just rave about them, lucky Michelle has the whole new "Season" range, having purchased them at Spring market in Minneapolis recently.

Leanne regaled us with a very clever and entertaining lecture on how we might begin to design our own quilt, a lot of this made very good sense, just need to put it into practice.. Leanne made it sound so easy peasy!


Rosie showed us all how to do needle turn applique...

and she ironed and ironed and ironed, bless her little cotton socks, all those transfers onto our hanky linen for stitchin...

and Leanne snapped shots left, right and centre!

look at their amazing table of goodies...


this is Leanne's amazing "Down in the Garden" (BOM) - stunning huh!!


This is my project, completed yay!!!

thanks ladies for making it such a wonderful event! Miss D, you were supposed to be in this pikkie, thank you ever so much for being such a wonderful wonderful host, and putting up with me for the weekend!! .... and a BIG thanks to Bill for the cheese toasties last night!!

(me, Leanne, Lesley, Rosie, Michelle)

This was just the most fantabulous weekend!!


p.s so made it back home, over Burke's Pass - very very cold here! (-2.5 at 4pm, but the cold day didn't stop the builders from working on my little project - more tomorrow....)

2 more sleeps...

I am off over Burke's Pass tommorrow, heading to Christchurch. Let's hope there is not too much snow or ice,and that the road is indeed open!

Deb, Darlene and Michelle will be there too!!!!

Leanne's "Let’s Design’ workshop is a project where you get to individually design your own original quilt with help from Leanne. This workshop will cover many elements of design, from fabric and thread choice to designing stitchery and appliqué and how to place it all together into a quilt. ‘Let’s Design’ can be made as a Christmas Quilt or with any other theme How exciting!!

Rosalie's workshop has 3 projects, oooh which shall I choose?? One of these.....

or this????

or all of them.....

How does a girl choose then,

there is only so much stitching you can do in a day but boy am I gonna have a fun weekend!!! Actually I am sure that is "girls just wanna have fun"

let it snow let it snow let it snow!!

how pretty is this then, who loves the snow?? and it doesn't really feel that cold at all,

I took these on my walk this morning, all the while the snow was crunching under my feet, how beautiful!!! So crisp and clean..

and this gate at our friends house, so distinctly colorful against the snow...

however, there will be no reading under this tree on this benchseat today!!

executive decision

do you remember this post here?... and here??

Well this building was to have been the home of The Rowan Tree, but it is not much further ahead and certainly not ready to move into - how damn frustrating, 'cos I've been waiting to open up my own little quilt shop...

So now, Rowing Man and I have seen the builder (s!!) - reliable ones that is... and they are set to do some rather large alterations on this...

and this... (back garden view).. yep... that IS snow on the ground, sparse but snow..

and this... (will be shop area)

and this... will be workshop

eventually, so today we got it painted, and the garage all cleared out

can you imagine all the quilts to make for this cosy (or what will be cosy) little cottage (little being the operative word!!).

this will be our bedroom - really funny area, 2 rooms which are 1, in a sense. Rowing Man and I have a thing with Resene 1/4 spanish white - but it is such a versatile colour,and oh the colour that you can then introduce...

oh isn't life such fun!!! Never, ever a dull moment...

look at the view I woke up to this morning!!!

Of course when I went to go outside to the deck to take a photo or 2, the ranchslider door was frozen shut!!! so I had to lean out the window...

we have been rather busy over the long weekend - Queen's Birthday weekend is historically the Masters South Island Rowing Reggatta, where lots of middle aged "crazies" get together and compete in a fun way - yep on the lake in their rowing boats, sculls etc, freezing cold 'n' all. I reneged this weekend and stayed at home playing on the quilty toy, as I had several quilts that I wanted to get done for a few friends, but I did enjoy the Sunday evening dinner and dance, oh what fun!!

On Saturday, our local quilt group held an exhibition,


some months ago, we set ourselves a challenge, and 10 from our group decided to take this challenge on,

we all started with the same group of fabrics,

each person brought along 3 strips 21/2" x WOF,

so we ended up with 30 random strips -

our own personalised jelly roll you might say,

we were allowed to add only one other fabric, for sashings/borders etc,

and look at all the different interpretations,

absolutely everyone has done something very different -

such a lot of creativity... how amazing!


do you belong to a group, and what do you do??

have a fun week,

cheers,



p.s. hmmm my signature seems to have disappeared again, strange things happening here in blogland - I don't always seem to be getting updates for everyones blog on my blogroll either....