Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you have a lovely Christmas day with family and friends.  

This Christmas I'll be in Auckland with my husband, our two sons, and my mum and dad.  I'm really looking forward to seeing mum and dad and our eldest son again.  They've all been stuck in the Auckland lockdown since mid August, and I've missed seeing them.   

This year I've changed my decorating around a bit. I've only included one house from my Gingerbread Village this year - it's the Retreat Cottage, and it's sitting on top of the piano, next to my beautiful house from Department 56 in USA.  

In case you're missing my Gingerbread Village, you can see a photo from last year below, and read all about them on the Gingerbread Village tab at the top of my blog.  I promise to have the Flower Shop finished for Christmas 2022!

Merry Christmas to you all, and thank you very much for your support over the years. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.  

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NZ Quilt Shops - a helpful journey planner

It's nearly Christmas, and almost holiday time.  I know a lot of Kiwis will be hitting the roads and exploring new parts of New Zealand over the coming weeks.  

I've complied a very handy list of quilt shops in New Zealand.  You might want to make a few stops or detours on your road trip. 

The quilt shops are all listed in a separate tab on my blog here:   https://wendysquiltsandmore.blogspot.com/p/new-zealand-quilt-shops.html

Be sure to check the Christmas hours of the shops before taking any big detours! 

Have fun exploring new quilt shops, and enjoy your summer holidays. 

Christmas Embroidery

It's only a week until Christmas Eve, and I'm sorting through my Christmas embroideries.  I think Christmas cross stitch is the best kind of cross stitch. I've made a few gorgeous Christmas cross stitches over the years, but of course there are still many more that I want to do some day. 

Celtic Snow by Northern Expressions Needlework

A Treasured Time by Dimensions Gold

A mystery stitch a long by Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery

A free pattern by Victoria Sampler from 10 years ago. 

And in the "still to be completed pile":

My Gingerbread Flower Shop

Christmas Ornaments by Dimensions Gold

I found it very hard to stitch the Dimensions ornaments on the 18 count Aida.  So I'm going to stitch the rest of them on 32 count linen.  They may come out slightly bigger, but I don't mind.  They will be spread around the tree anyway.  

I follow a number of bloggers who have wonderful Christmas trees filled with hand stitched ornaments.  If you'd like to see more check out Katrina from Hawkes Bay, New Zealand here http://kiwistitching.blogspot.com/

and Carol from Pennsylvania here https://stitchingdream.blogspot.com/

I know there's many more cross stitchers out there, but these are two of my favourites who do wonderful Christmas stitching.  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been up to this week?  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

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Stone Flower by Kaffe

Last week I was at one of my local quilt shops, and I saw a piece of Kaffe fabric in the bargain box.  It was a fabric that I'd never had it my stash, so of course it was calling my name. How could I leave it there?

 

So I bought it home with me and immediately started going through my stash to see what else I had that would work with it.

It turns out I had quite a bit, because it's my favourite blue/purple colour.  

The Stone Flower piece that I bought is a Free Spirit sateen wide back, so slightly heavier than quilting cotton, but still perfectly fine for the front of a quilt.  I'm thinking that I'll made a feature of the motif and build a medallion quilt around it maybe.  I had a quick flick through some books and liked these ideas:

From Quilts in the Cotswolds

from Quilts in Italy

Although now that I look at Cloudy Skies again, I think I mainly like it for the colours.  I'd prefer to see larger pieces of the other fabrics, like in Glamping Medallion above.  

So this might be something fun to start between Christmas and our holiday in January.  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

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Christmas Quilts

 This week I bought some Christmas fabrics. 

Well, one real Christmas fabric and some complementary fabrics to go with it.  The skiing reindeer are called Jolly Season by Abi Hall for Moda.  I bought mine from Stitchbird in Kilbirnie, and all the other fabrics in this photo are from there too.  

I don't do a lot of Christmas sewing because Christmas falls in summer time in New Zealand, and we don't need quilts on the beds.  I think the last Christmas thing I made was a table runner because the fabric was just so cute (sounds like a similar story to the fabrics above!).

I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the blue Christmas fabrics yet.  Maybe I'll just think about them until November 2022, and make something for next Christmas.  

In the mean time I've got these pretty Christmas quilts to keep me happy this year. 

Oh! Christmas Tree 

Flocks by Night

Holiday Patchwork Forest

These quilts all reflect what Christmas is like here in New Zealand - bright and colourful. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

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Tea Party part 5

I made a lot of progress on my Tea Party quilt this week. 

And I'm loving how it's looking.  I was slightly worried when I put the first border on and the red crosses were a bit concentrated in the bottom half (see below). But I kept going and the next border has balanced out the colour placements.  The next round of blocks will disperse the colours even further, so I'm confident that it's all going to be OK.  

The next round is the 16 feature blocks - I've finished 8 of the blocks already, but I still have to do the wool felt applique on the 8 blocks with tea and coffee cups.  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.

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Tea Party part 4

 I did it! I started the centre block.

It's quite hard to hand applique on a piece this big, so I'll be pleased when I'm finished this block.  Then I can machine sew on two borders that I've already got ready, and then suddenly I'll be able to see real progress.  

Here's what I'm aiming for.  There's still so much left to do!

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below. 

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