Christmas Dining

Yay!  It's finished!  Back in January I posted  twice about the Poppy Table Runner that I had simmering away in my stash of projects.  I initially wrote about it as my first item for the Book It Challenge that I decided to take part in.

To say the applique stitching on this table runner was demanding, would be an understatement - it was slow with all the little points and curves, then I got onto to the miniature blue flowers, oh my goodness, I am sure that they bred and multiplied while I was stitching them down - they never seemed to end!

Back of runner to show the stitching around the applique shapes.

  My husband said:  "Holy Cow" when I showed him......

Detail of poppy flower

Detail of feather quilting down the centre

And, finally, here it is - all 162.5cm x 39.3cm (64in x 15.5in) in stunning glory.  I have re-named Poppy to be Christmas Dining because it shall grace the centre of my Christmas table this year.

I am extremely happy and very proud of myself for finishing such an intensive project.  Apologies for the bragging, but I'm super stoked!!

Pattern: "Poppy" from More William Morris Applique by Michele Hill pub 2012

Birthday report.... feeling philosophical

Well, as it is my birthday today, and I am not working, I fully intend to spend the day sewing after completing my 'state of the stash' report.  

The state of my stash, is well, ummm, rather a large mess!  A few weeks ago we moved house.  I now have a much larger sewing room with some excellent storage - a floor to ceiling wardrobe, full of shelves along one of the longer walls.  The project tubs can sit one or two high on each shelf with nothing behind them, so it's all "at a glance" - which is heavenly.

The rest of my things are on the floor - pieces of fabric, reels of thread and goodness knows what else.  Unfortunately while packing for our recent house move, there were home office things put into spare carton space with quilting things and we needed to complete our taxes before the deadline two days ago, and, yes, the tax stuff was at the bottom of the carton, so upside-down it went - whoosh - erupting box and big mess ensued!

For the past few days, I have had my small Janome set up on the kitchen/dining table and am completing some machine applique on a table runner (Poppies by Michele Hill).  see here

I will have to 'face the music' of the mess in the sewing room when I want to quilt.  My local group has Michele Hill coming to speak and give a trunk show at the end of May and I would really like to have two of the three projects I have started from her books ready for show and tell, even if I am hand-sewing the binding on the day.

I have not yet completed a 'done done' UFO for this year.  My two finishes were both new starts, which were donated at the start of April for a fundraiser (two previous posts).  I have worked on several UFOs, making significant progress on each of them and feeling like I have achieved something.  I do need a quilting marathon, a piecing marathon and an applique marathon.  Applique is my marathon of choice for this week.  Next week will be quilting.  Baby steps, or rather, one bite at a time will see me complete the 60+ projects I have in my sewing room, which certainly does not include the knitting or embroidery projects that I also have.

My own self-imposed goal - which I may/may not break - is to have as many UFOs completed by the time we have to move house again 3 or 4 years from now.  I didn't think my "stuff" was too bad until it all had to be packed, then it seemed (to me not anyone else) a bit crazy.  Upon reflection though - I DO LIKE all of my projects, quilts, bags, knitting and cross-stitch and having to handle every project has been good - I want to complete them all, plus some glorious new starts along the way! 

So, feeling a bit philosophical, I am off to do some machine applique, drink coffee and just enjoy the day - it is forecast that we will have quite a bit of rain today - perfect guilt free sewing weather..... mmmm...