All the Things - August so far

Friday is here again and the weeks seem to be rolling by fast at the moment.  Dare I say it, there feels like a touch of spring in the air this week, although it was bitterly cold day on Monday. It almost snowed! As it's bit of a novelty for us, at work we were constantly looking out the window but it was mostly rain and hail. 

Today I'm going to catch up on some of the happenings around here, and good news, my stitching mojo has returned so I've been stitching like a mad woman on all my Jolly July projects. I've got so many things I want to start but I'm being restrained and really wanting to get some projects ticked off the list first.

I have a new recipe to share with you today, you can find it here:

These chocolate chip cookies are the best, and Glenn and Hannah demolish these so quick!

Hannah gave me this gorgeous orchid for Mother's Day in May 2020, and somehow I've manged to look after it and it's now flowering again! 

A very special occasion last week for my work - we were honoured to receive an award at the annual Civic and Community Awards, which was presented to us by our Mayor. It was a wonderful evening, celebrating the other award winners and all the wonderful contributions being made to our local community. You can read more about it here:

After quite a few weeks, my sewing machine is back out and I spent an enjoyable few hours sewing away while watching some of the Olympics last weekend.

My friend Wendy gave me this kit for my birthday this year and it was so much fun putting it together.

A fun delivery in the mail - 44 zips from Madam Sew! This was a great deal, less than $1 NZ each. 

Some recent shopping from my favourite shop in town, Curtis Fabrics. We are so lucky to have such a lovely local store that stocks knitting wool, fabrics, DMC threads and cross stitch fabric, and all other sorts of sewing bits and pieces.

The second kit from the Silver Needle shop club arrived recently too, it's always a good surprise to see which designer has been chosen.

This will be a fun project to stitch!

And lastly few books I've enjoyed recently:

Have you read any good books lately? 

See you soon x

Eat Sleep Stitch Repeat

Back in January I stitched this sweet little design by Lori Holt.  Following a tutorial by Kimberley from the Fat Quarter Shop, I turned it into a little bag. 

You can find this tutorial on Fat Quarter Shop's Floss tube number 35 video.

This is going to be the perfect size for storing threads, etc, and a good idea to use some of your unfinished small cross stitch pieces.  

See you soon x

Sewing with Hannah

Later this month, during the school holidays,  Hannah and I are heading to Christchurch for Hannah to attend Dance School, participating in a week of workshops for ballet, tap, jazz, lyrical and contemporary dance. We are travelling with other dancers from the local dance studio, their Mums and of course, Hannah's lovely dance teacher Miss Deb.  After the happenings of the past few months, Hannah's very excited that it's still able to go ahead and as well as the dance school, we hope there's time to get out and about to do some sightseeing around Christchurch. 

When we visited our local sewing shop recently, Hannah picked out some fabric to make some drawstring bags for her dancing shoes. 

We spent a couple of hours on the weekend at the sewing machine and she was very happy with the finished bags. We do need to make one more for her jazz shoes.

There was a little bit of fabric left over so Hannah made that into hair scrunchies. They are very easy to make.

See you soon xx

Queen of the Needle

Queen of the Needle by With Thy Needle and Thread was one of my summer holiday projects.

I stitched this design on 40 count Creme Brule fabric by R & R Reproductions and I used most of the recommended threads. I changed the blue of the lady's dress for a darker blue skein of Weeks Dye Works thread.

I spent a couple of happy hours at my sewing machine over the weekend and came up with a small bag for my stitching hoops and other accessories.

The fabrics I used are some of my very favourite Moda fabrics, I don't have much left now in these particular fabrics.

See you soon xx

Bags and more bags

I've been enjoying a few sessions at my sewing machine lately and over the recent long weekend, I finished off a few project bags I'd cut out and prepared the week before.

First up, these little bags were made using the Stocky Sock Bag pattern by Sandra from Cherry Heart Designs. These are going to be birthday and Christmas gifts for some of the ladies at work.

I've also made up several stitching project bags, mostly for gifts too.

This one I'm keeping!

Aren't the Santa charms cute?? 

If you are interested in making your own project bag, this is the tutorial I followed.

See you soon

This & That

Nearly half way through August means that Spring is now just around the corner. Although we've had some cold days, our winter here in my part of the world actually hasn't been too wet and miserable like previous years. We've had lots of winter sunshine, which is why I think a lot of the spring bulbs in the garden have been out for a few weeks already. I look forward to the freesias and irises popping up, some of my favourite flowers.

Last week, whilst in Hastings for a work job, my coworkers and I found time to stop by our favourite fabric shop, Dellbrook Quilt Company. It's been quite some time since my last visit so I did a good stock up of some lovely fabrics. I just love visiting this shop, I easily spend hours browsing all the gorgeous fabrics and sewing accessories.

There was a stop by Spotlight too - for a few more bits and bobs!

We are lucky to have an abundance of lemons and oranges at the moment, our orange tree is absolutely loaded this year.  I've been wanting to try a microwave lemon butter recipe for ages and found this one very easy to make. Yum!

I also used this recipe to make one of our favourite cakes, Orange Lightening cake. You put a whole orange in the food processor and blitz it, it smells divine!

I started a new shawl project during knitting group earlier in the week, the Pebble Beach Shawl by Curious Handmade.  This gorgeous yarn is Smashed Gemstones by Catrien of Yarnfloozy.

I also finally finished this little handmade Ouch Pouch too, I'd started it ages ago.  This will go into the gift box for a friend.

See you soon xx

Bunny Treat Bags

When searching around for a little Easter craft project to make for Hannah and my nieces, I remembered that I had bookmarked some Bunny treat bags last year, after Easter had been and gone:)

The tutorial and free template can be found here.

All set for Easter now, hope the Easter bunny comes!

See you soon x

The Weekend

Hi everyone

Happy Monday - I hope you've enjoyed the weekend. Many thanks for the lovely comments left about the Stitcher's Heart, I just love hearing from everyone.

We had a really good weekend, lots of fun and laughs at Hannah's disco Friday night, then spending the rest of the weekend hanging out with Donna.

Here's a little sewing project I finished on Friday - I've been spotting these thread catchers being made up on lots of blogs so thought I'd have a go myself. The pattern can be found in the Red Home book by Natalie Bird. Very simple and quick, I think these would make lovely gifts.

Donna and I at one of the local cafes, they make the best coffee and even better that its half price on Sunday mornings. 

Zoe and Hannah before the disco on Friday night - what a great event put on by the local library and council staff. Over 500 local children participated in the summer reading programme and there must have been at least half present, plus parents on Friday evening. Every child received a new book, a certificate and a medal, and then there was a free barbeque followed by the disco. Hannah had a ball!

Another hot day yesterday and out came "Henry the octopus", the sprinkler

And an update on our green house - Glenn is now making a front door - it's currently being painted so should be ready to be installed very soon.

He's also recently put in some shelves, made a little trolley for all the pots, etc, and I'm not sure if I've shown a pic of the workbench?

The tomato plants are now as tall as us!

We've had some of the first ripe tomatoes over the past few days - lots more to come!

Hannah's little strawberry planter has been doing well too, next summer we're going to put in another one or two.

Lastly for today, a pic of my happy place - our swimming pool, which we have been so thankful for over the recent weeks with the terribly hot days of this summer.

See you soon x