Special Birthday, Amazing quilts and a very good idea

Everyone was in party mood this week, Lyn celebrated a very special birthday, one of those milestone '0' birthdays.

Of course there was cake, rather a yummy one, orange poppyseed, with candles for blowing out and wishing on.

Karen got the job of lighting the candles, she seemed to be dressed for the job.

Debby is busily working on a pretty new longstitch 'Friends of the Ocean',

Way back at the beginning of the year, Wendy started the Esther Aliu 2018 free BOM 'Queens Garden', its been a lot of fun following the ladies from all around the world stitching this years BOM on Esthers Quilt Blog Group on Facebook

Esther posts a free BOM each year, of course if you decide you want to do the BOM from a few years back you can purchase the pattern from Esther or sign up for next years BOM on her site.

Getting ready for Christmas, Sheila shared her Christmas pillowcases created for her Grandies, she even uses them as christmas stockings, stuffing them with goodies.

Lorraine has been a busy little beaver, she got hooked on the Bonnie Hunter block 'Diamond Tile' and just couldn't stop making them. Result is this quilt, sashed in black with cornerstones.

She also created a lovely set of place mats and runner for the Alfresco dining.

Lorrain had all the info ready to share on her ipad, the block was featured in the May/June 2018 issue of Quiltmaker, there is a digital version of Quiltmaker available here. The block is from Bonnies 'Addicted to Scraps' series, there is even a youtube video by Bonnie, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2UnZQxrGxI. It runs for about an hour but Bonnie takes you through all the steps to create your own madness collection.
Lorraine also had this wall hanging to share, a mystery project created on retreat with her other quilting group.

Simple overlay construction and lots of sparkly bling from the paint and beading.

Heather was working on the binding on a christmas stocking for Olivia, mind you, she wasn't getting a good run at it, being part of the arvo tea team, she was a little sidetracked.

Lots of lovely charms stitched to the stocking.

Lastly, the good idea, from Wendy.
Wendy says she is one of those who's sewing table gets a little messy, the more she stitches, the messier. Stuff gets on top of things that hide, the more she looks the more she might.
Frustrated with searching, again, for something or other on her sewing table, a bright idea popped up. Why not have a little box to put everything in? she even took it one step further, a clear little box, see through in fact. The trick is to be disciplined to put everything in the box as you use it, but how easy to glance at your little clear box to find the very thing you need. Sometimes it's the simple things that make the biggest impact.