Already playing catch up!

Hello! I know, it has already been a while since my first post of 2018 and I apologise! I was away at New Year and, I have only just recently arrived home. As a result, I am already playing catch up with the new projects that I mentioned in my last post that I was starting in 2018.

However, before I tell you more about them, I have shared above a photograph of some of my favourite finishes for 2017. If you want to see them in more detail you can click on the 'Projects 2017' tab in the right hand sidebar of my blog or here is a quick link.

Now back to my new 2018 projects. As I have only recently returned home I am afraid I do not have much to show yet. However, I have chosen some fabrics that I intend to use for my 'Beyond TAST' and I have a very specific idea in mind with regards what I want to do. As I am keen to keep my free motion quilting up-to-scratch as well as my hand stitching, I have decided that for my 'Beyond TAST' project I am going to make a quilt-as-you-go-quilt using free-motion quilted blocks and then embellish them each with the 'Beyond TAST' stitches. I have decided the time I am going to devote to each 'Beyond TAST' stitch family will be a month, so there will be 12 blocks to complete which I will make into a quilt at the end of the year. January's stitch family is the running stitch and I am itching to get my block quilted and the hand embellishment started!!

I have also printed out the patterns and chosen theads and fabrics for the January month of Gail Pan's 'i stitch club' but I am afraid I haven't had the chance to stitch much yet..... hopefully I will get started later on today!!

Sorry there is not much else to show you for the moment and thank you for visiting me 😊

Happy New Year - 2018 Stitching Plans!!

Hello and Happy New Year!! I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I have had a lovely time and am lucky enough to still be enjoying the company of family members.  It is always lovely to be among family to celebrate the different holidays.

However, it has been a bit wet and windy here today, so apart from doing some food shopping to keep us all well fed, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to write a post wishing you all the very best for 2018 and to share with you some of the monthly projects that I am intending to participate in this year.

The first will be a little familiar if you are a regular reader of my blog as, I am going to be participating in the 'Beyond TAST' challenge run by the wonderful Sharon Boggon of Pintangle. The last couple of years I participated in the TAST Challenge run by Sharon and above and below, you can see a couple of the samplers which I completed by working the different TAST (Take-a-Stitch-Tuesday) stitches. This year I will be joining in 'Beyond TAST'  which I am anticipating will be a lot of fun. The idea is that you take one stitch family per month and work a project using that one stitch family..... taking it to a more in depth level.  The first monthly stitch is running stitch and I can already see that this is going to be a really fun stitch to work with.

The other new stitching group I am joining in with is the 'i stitch club' run by one of my favourite designers, the lovely Gail Pan.  Again, regular readers here will know that I love Gail's designs, so I just couldn't resist signing up for this BOM club which is due to start shortly.  If you would like to join in too why not click on the button below or on the right hand sidebar which will take you to Gail's information page about the club.

Gail Pan's 'i stitch club'

I am sure that I will be joining in many other stitching challenges as well as working on a few projects of my own design this year and I will share them with you as and when I get them started.  In the meantime, I can't wait to get stitching!!