An Update From My Sewing Room… #5

Hello Friends!!

I’m back from a brief little hiatus from all things YouTube-y, blog-y and responsibility-riddled! Basically, I just needed a break where I could just relax, recharge, plan, think, dream, play, laugh, swim, eat, game, sew and just enjoy the seasonal atmosphere around me! To be perfectly honest with you, the last few weeks before and after Christmas just seemed to fizzle and crumble around me – I lost concentration, motivation, fun, enjoyment and drive. I found it so hard to dedicate time to my blog while trying my best to get the last of my QAL videos out – the stress almost broke me!! (Plus our crappy Internet decided to die just before Christmas, preventing me from doing anything!! A big con when you work online!) So the break away from everything was very much needed!!

So it’s now a brand new year, lots of fun and exciting things will be happening and I’m ready to face them head-on!!

But first, let’s catchup on some news!

FYI: Because I’ve had a little bit of blackout from my ‘public’ social media places, I’ve been slowly catching up on replying back to all of the messages, comments and emails you’ve sent me over the past few weeks! So I just want to let you know I’m doing my very best to write you back over the next coming days!

Christmas!! I had a lovely quiet and simple day celebrating with family and friends. Boxing day on the other hand, is quite the opposite in our household as it’s my brothers birthday and all the extended family come round and celebrate! The house is crammed full of people, chairs, food, chatter, drinks, tales of the day before, birthday cake, very full bellies and numerous plates and bowls full of leftovers! This year, with the release of the new Star Wars movie (which was brilliant by the way!!) and my brother being a fan, we did a bit of a theme for his birthday lunch! We dived into the crazy merchandise race and bought Star Wars party cups, plates, napkins, balloons, masks and a HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign to hang up. I also treated my brother to Gold Class Cinema tickets to see the movie together that night as we hadn’t seen it yet! Happy to say he had a great day!

New Year!! I’m quite boring when it comes to celebrating on New Years Eve. We stay home and watch the Sydney fireworks on TV. (A simple night for a simple person!) For the second year running, we took part in our annual Monopoly (Sydney Edition!) game where again, I came last and a parent came first! (No surprise!) Then once the fireworks were over, I was in bed sound asleep by 1am. I party hard! Whoo!!

During my little break away from life, I began a new project! (Like I don’t need another one!!) I woke up one day with this ravenous craving to start sewing a new quilt! I just needed one of those days where you just completely shut yourself off from everything and everyone and loose yourself in your sewing. I knew I wanted to do something with my fabrics scraps and I knew that a technique where I didn’t have to think about it was what I needed, hence the reason why I wanted to use my scraps! I also wanted an element of tradition in the quilt layout. So I poured through all of my block books and found nothing that really screamed at me… Until I came across this quilt…

It’s called ‘Ocean Waves’ from the book Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!! (Second Edition) by Diana McClun & Laura Nownes and was perfect for what I had in mind! (I had a tonne of little scrappy bits that I was terribly hoarding and didn’t want to let go of!) So sewing 3″ little triangles together was spot-on for what I wanted to be doing that day! Although the triangles in the original pattern have been sewn with a dark and light colour next to each other, I chose to ignore that with my piecing and blissfully started sewing random triangle to random triangle to random triangle and so on… So the update on this quilt-to-be: I’ve sewn about 20 triangle units together (each block takes 12 units!) and have a great pile of freshly cut 3″ triangles to piece together to make more. I’m quite certain that this will be one of those projects that I’ll keep coming back to over the next year or so when I’ve got nothing else to sew (HA!! As if!!). I’ll just keep casually adding more and more pieced triangle units to the pile until I have enough to construct the many blocks that make up the quilt! I’ll try to keep you updated…

Next, let’s dive into some YouTube news!

Over the break, my channel very excitedly reached the 10,000+ subscribers mark! Yay! (Our little YT community is now just over 11k! So hello to all of you who are new to these parts!) Seriously, I couldn’t be anymore astounded at how many people have chosen to subscribe and watch the videos I upload onto my little channel! The support, encouragement and beautiful words of friendship you leave me make my day, everyday! THANK YOU!!!

So, what’s coming up on the channel you may be thinking… We’ll a few exciting things actually! First of all, this week I’ll be chatting about and showing you my own personal quilt collection! This has been a highly requested video and I thought it would be a wonderfully motivating and quilty way to start off the new year! (I’ll try my best to honour the video requests you all send through to me this year! No promises though, I do get a lot of requests and sometimes things just aren’t possible due to my lack of resources, space, time, people-power and skills!)

Then next week, I’ll be doing two very exciting tutorials featuring a brand new fabric collection from RJR Fabrics called ‘In The Kitchen’ by Patrick Lose. It’s such a fun and vibrant range with some of the sweetest kitchen-y prints that I’ve seen in a long time! And I’ll give you a three-word hint to what one of the projects we’ll be making involves… Foundation Paper Piecing! OooOOoo!!

Now, in regards to my HST Sampler Quilt Along, I will be writing up a wrap-up type blog post in the next couple of days, chatting about the basting and quilting process as well as how to bind and label your quilt. It was something that I wanted to publish last year when the series came to an end but it just didn’t happen, simple as that. And, I also have to show you my finished quilt, which I’ve only really shared in the last video of the series! It turned out to be a beautiful quilt and I’m tremendously happy with the end result! A lot of you who joined in have been sending and tagging me in pictures of your finished quilts and I couldn’t be anymore proud of what you’ve all achieved!! Your quilts are beautiful!!

So a big thanks to everyone who have been keeping in contact with me and who have been sharing their quilts, their blocks, their projects, their skills – their everything! – it’s always wonderful to see what you’ve been getting up to!

And although it’s a bit late, I wish each and everyone of you a very happy, safe and creative New Year!

Happy Sewing, Friends!

xx