Winner Winner!

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by and commented on my last two posts about my first grown up girl foray into the world of free motion quilting. I loved reading each and every comment. 

So using a totally scientific method of picking a winner for my giveaway , I added up the total number of comments on both posts and then chucked the final number into Truly Random Number Generator. 

Enter a number:

I want a number between 1 and…

Result:

57

The winner was the 57th comment on both posts combined which was Kirsty who blogs over at Bonjour Quilts . Congratulations Kirsty . I'll be sending you an email soon. Haighs and some other goodies on the way to you my friend ! 

Time for a Giveaway

Almost two years ago I tentatively dipped my toe into the world of blogging after reading some quilting blogs by accident. I'd only been playing with quilting for about a year and wasn't  a hardcore quilting addict. 

In my early posts when nobody was reading I struggled with showing my actual personality. In real life I'm the kind of person you either really really like or really really don't. And because I wanted to be liked in the great kingdom of Blogland all  of my early  posts are about as exciting as watching paint dry. I worried that I might offend people by being me, which is sometimes a problem I also have in real life because I say what I think in the very moment I think it and often have to pull my own foot out of my mouth. I swear sometimes. I'm not always very rational. I have an unusual way of looking at things. I have strong convictions and opinions and sometimes I share them without being asked.  Some people call that refreshing and entertaining and others roll their eyes a lot and run to avoid me when I walk in their general direction.

At some point I put on my big girl panties and decided  I was just going to be me. So I started ranting on bad days, and saying crap and bugger if I felt like it and thinking out loud on my keyboard and people started to show me they liked what I had to say. And, unlike Vincent Van Gogh I didn't have to cut my ear off or wait until I was dead to get some positive feedback. 

Blogging has opened up a whole new world for me. I've made friends , real friends, and I love conversing with each and every one of you. I love to pop over to your place with a cup of tea or coffee and have a sticky at what you're getting up to . You inspire me , you lift me up, you make me laugh , and you touch my heart. 

This week I reached the magical milestone of 200 followers (!!!)  so it's time to send out some bloggy love of my own.  I'm offering this fat quarter pack of Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow in the Berry Palate as a way of saying "Thankyou". 

I'm going to put some guidelines around this giveaway to keep it fair. To enter all you have to do is leave a comment but you must be an existing follower at the time this post was published because it's all about celebrating the people who have come and commented, supported and read and generally helped make this blogging experience so much fun for me!

I'll draw this sometime next Saturday 15th October (Australian Central Time ) so you have a week to enter and I'm happy to post internationally. Good luck !

You guys rock my socks. 

15 Minutes and a Giveaway

Kate over at Life in Pieces has been challenging herself for the last few weeks to do 15 minutes of sewing/crafting  related activity a day . I've been watching her progress.

I'm a slacker. I tend to do my creating in huge hunks of time on the weekends and on my other days off. I start the week with good intentions and then  tell myself I'm too tired after work Monday to Thursday and sit on my pattootie in front of the computer instead of doing anything.

Kate has made it official with a linky and she's challenging us to report our weekly progress. 15 minutes a day is all it takes. Or 15 minutes every other day if that's what you decide.  I'm in. If you want to join in here's the link. So from next week my Tuesday posts will be all about what I worked on/did DAILY in the previous week.  Yesterday after work I went ribbon shopping. As far as I'm concerned that's craft related activity.

Elizabeth at Such a Sew and Sew and her friend Wanda are giving away a stash of Reproduction Civil War Fabrics and a copy of the Civil War Diary Quilt book so if you win you'll have everything you need to make a gorgeous quilt. Even though I desperately want to win them for myself after seeing this finished top by Loz over the weekend - I like to play fair  and  so I'm sharing the chance for you to win this wonderful giveaway too.

So hop on over here and throw your hat in the ring. Even though I'm going to win them...I'm feeling lucky this week.

The Land of the Living

Last week I planned to have a flat out week getting things done around here, in addition to all the stuff I do outside of here ,  but the whoopy cough got me. So I spent last week relaxing and resting, which did me the world of good. However, I go back to the real world tomorrow so I've spent the last couple of days easing out of being a total sloth. My blog title this week should have been  "I'm Living In My Pyjamas".

I found a fire extinguisher among the mess in my sewing room.  Which just proves that sometimes I'm so creative I'm on fire. Sewing room tidied - check.

I finished 10 more Blocks  for Indy and Lola's String quilt. Right after I spent a couple of hours cutting strings from my stash. A  basket of strings is a visual feast full of  unknown possibility.

THE BLACKWOOD CHAIR makes a re-appearance this week. It's naked-ness has been covered with two coats of primer.   Progress.

I primed this old picture frame ready to be made into something (hopefully) gorgeous. You'll see it if it turns out like my original vision. If not you'll never hear about it again.

I looked at a box of partially completed blocks that had been in WIP-Less Protection (I'm coining that phrase by the way )  since February and thought if "I don't start doing this  bit by bit it's never going to be finished".   I'm not feeling super confident that my points will match up but it's all a learning process. I sewed 50 pairs of these together this week.  

I bought these two leadlight doors as a feature for the kitchen windowsill. (Why do I keep buying things that need to be painted?)

I wish I'd never told Mr. P I have a blog because it's hard to keep my fabric buying addiction  a secret when he comes on here and reads about it. 6 yards of Hushabye  to back the snowball quilt (eventually ) at a bargain price.

And my finger slipped on another US eBay auction ...and I accidentally bought these appliques as well.  66 of them.

Spotlight and I got friendly yesterday and I bought more lime green thread. The other one is still in the void somewhere that also eats odd socks. Little P's quilt is now 2/3rds quilted. Said quilt did not want orange quilting in it. Everytime I tried to use orange it went loopy at the back. Finally I took the hint and did extra red.

I'm offering a prize to the person who can guess correctly what I'm going to do with the picture frame. Four fat quarters of Kashmir IV by Moda. (Featured in the windmill blocks above). If more than one person guesses correctly I'll do a random drawing from all the correct entries. You have until my Slack Tea Thursday post this week to have a guess.

My Goals for this week:
Back to work

10 More Indy and Lola Quilt Blocks

Paint the Blackwood Chair and Picture Frame

Finish Quilting Little P's quilt

Start the desk re-do (more sanding !)

So what are your goals for this week?

Saturday Allsorts

I signed up for my first ever Friday Night Sew in hosted by Handmade by Heidi  and it happened last night. Everyone in the Pyjamas household was briefed on the sew in rules ..ie I am unavailable between 7 pm and 11 pm unless someone dies  or requires serious  medical attention. If you disturb me you better make sure you have your running shoes on and the phone number for medical attention because you'll need it by the time I'm finished with you.  Everyone played the game -well mostly. I did wander out of my sewing room at one point and Little P and I played a game of chasey around the ottoman in the lounge and another game of "lets turn the floor lamp on and off for around 20 minutes" because that's heaps of fun. Have I mentioned in the last 5 minutes   how blessedly cute my grandson is? No ? Well he is. I love that he's learning he can influence his environment  and the people in it. That kid said Na- Na about a thousand times yesterday and pointed at bananas because he learned earlier in the day if you ask - you  will receive. Genius I tell you - that child is a genius and everything he does is one step closer towards the germination of an amazing human being.

Any-hoo. Focus. Sew In. I decided to start something new because I simply don't have enough on my plate at the moment.   For all my bitching about Christmas in July at work this week , I was inspired to start a Christmas quilt , mainly because I have approximately 187 yards of Christmas fabric in my stash and have never done a Christmas quilt before. Not being completely insane, (yet)  I decided to keep this one simple. I'm planning a second Christmas quilt this year that'll be more complicated but for now, I'm about a bee's whisker away from a complete meltdown. KISS (Keeping it simple stupid ) is the way to go.

So at 8 pm last night, I started with this pile of Robert Kaufman Sparkle All the Way Jelly Roll bits. Yes I was late to the sew in.  Have you ever noticed jelly rolls look sublime when they arrive but kind of look like spilled guts once they're unrolled?  They don't look nearly as pretty. They really are a case in point for clever marketing because if they slopped bits of random fabric strips in a baggie nobody would buy them.

And hey Presto by 11 pm last night I had this...lots of strips for a Christmas stacked coin quilt.

In other fabulously gossipy news this week, the delectable Jenni over at Baa Me Kniits had a giveaway recently for this lovely shawl and I won. Whooooooooo Hooooooooooo. I'm so going to parade this lovely at work and make everyone jealous. Thanks again Jenni. (and to her son who drew my name !)

Elizabeth over at Such a Sew and Sew  is having a giveaway  to celebrate her 200th post. You can win this abbey bag made by  Elizabeth  herself.  Don't you just love the fabric and cute little pin cushion?  Pop on over and have a gander about  how to enter and to congratulate her on the 200 posts thingy, which is actually a really big deal.

And I had a cook-a-thon this morning because it will be the last time I do one in my old kitchen since this time next week , it will no longer exist.  Plus we will need to eat while we are waiting for the new kitchen to go in, but we'll pretty much only have a microwave so I made enough spaghetti sauce for three meals, beef koftas for two meals, and enough curry for three meals. Then I made 7 dozen party sausage rolls for Little P's birthday party tomorrow. 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm Rendang

Little P's sausage rolls

Yesterday , I primed the meat safe (again) and today Mr. P decided I wasn't painting fast enough or well enough or something and took over doing the top coat. (has anyone else ever noticed every picture of Mr. P is on an angle? )

I've decided you can all suffer through the kitchen re-do with me in real time from here on in. So much is starting to happen that I  want  to spread the misery as far as possible   to share it with you in infinite detail. This week I contacted 5 tilers, two of whom actually turned up to quote me for a 40 square metre tiling job. The kitchen installer contacted me today and came out to do his final measure and walk us through the process. He confirmed they would be arriving early next Friday morning  to take out the old kitchen (and they'll even remove the sink splashback tiles for us while they're doing it.) The plumber will be coming next Friday as well to start installing the new plumbing for the dishwasher and to cap our old tap connections and put the new ones in since we're moving the taps...whooooooooo hooooooooo, it's actually happening! That's progress.

Have a fabulous weekend. My Saturday night will be spent looking at what other particpants got up to for Friday Sew In and I'll be partying tomorrow with the one year old crowd and all of the Pyjama's family.

And the Winner is.....

One of these days I'm going to teach myself how to do screenshots  and centre them properly and get rid of those page lines ...

Random.org  picked the following winner of the two Moda Vine Creek scrap bags.

Comment Number 12. Breanna. Congratulations!

I'm about to send you an email (and work on my screenshot skills) Thanks to everyone who left a comment.

Lost: My Sewing Mojo

I'm in  a sewing slump. I haven't sewn diddly squat for about 12 days.

I'm hoping to rectify that today and get cracking on pairing up some HST's. I'm posting this because hopefully it will make me get off my butt and actually do it! Theoretically this quilt top and the pieced backing need to be finished by about the beginning of March. I'm still waiting for fat quarters to arrive which are needed to complete it, so I have a feeling it's going to be mad dash at the end of February to get it done.

My backing for the Gobble Gobble quilt hasn't arrived yet.  So that's still on hold. AAAAARGHHH!!!!!  Thankfully I'm not working on a specific time frame for this quilt. Although I'm not going to have a finish for the end of February if it doesn't arrive soon!

I had a quilting party at home yesterday afternoon with Debbie and Lucy, two of ma' posse from work.   We ate good food and talked about all things quilting. Then we helped Debbie with ideas for a quilt she wants to make. I love the planning process, and visualising the finished product even when it isn't my quilt! We're planning to make this a regular get together. It was fun and a way to be inspired by each others creative processes and thoughts.

My giveaway is still going until late Monday. Leave a comment on this post to be in the draw for 2 scrap bags of Moda Vine Creek fabric.

And if you have time to help out someone in need pop over to Bluebird Quilts. Lyn is doing a giveaway but more importantly she's looking for people to contribute to a quilt she is coordinating for a friend of hers who is having a bad run at the moment. I always worry my work won't be up to scratch for other people, but since 9 patch blocks are pretty easy I'm  going to have a go. It won't take long to run up a couple of blocks. You can click on the link below for all the details.

And on that note , I'm off to start doing something with my weekend.

An Hour a Day and a Giveaway.

I had the brilliant idea sometime in the last couple of days that with going back to work this week, and the everyday routine kicking back in that I need to dedicate one measley hour a day to doing something that I WANT to do. I thought I was an absolute genius until  I realised I got this idea from Quixotic Crafter, who made it one of her 2010 "guidelines" . So, thank you Susan for inspiring me to think I was really brilliant for about 24 hours and for sharing your idea in the first place so I can now add that to my Fabulous February lineup.

I’m also going to kick Fabulous February off with a giveaway. I recently discovered Moda Scrap Bags and want to share the scrappy love. I’m giving away two scrap bags of Vine Creek by Kansas Troubles Quilters for Moda. Just leave a comment on this post to be entered into the draw. I’ll choose a random winner on February 8th (Australian Central Time) and this giveaway is open to anyone who wants to enter, worldwide. Spread the word and Good Luck!