Our January FNSI get together

 Hi All,

 and welcome to 2024 and our first FNSI for the year!

I apologise for not posting for a while.....Cyclone Jasper got me before Christmas.  He mucked up all the telecommunications up in the north and although he didn't impact us physically, he certainly made his presence known by limiting what we could access.  I thought it was a computer update but I found out later it was waterlogged communications.   I did have the post organised but couldn't post...so annoying!

That does mean I have a few draws to catch up on!  So let's get into those before I progress!

So, each lady has won a $30 voucher to go towards their purchases at our wonderful sponsor Kitty Rose Cottage!   I say, go towards because there's so many beautiful things there, it is hard to limit yourself!!!!  That doesn't mean you can't just use the $30 but I bet you won't be able to resist!!!!

Our winner from our October FNSI was stitching along with 23 other ladies from around the world and we had a marvelous night.   The winner for October is:

In November, we had 27 ladies stitch along. We had a lovely time and I always find it very inspiring and gets me motivated to catch up on things I've started and put down "for a bit"!  Our November winner is:

December was as much fun, although with people preparing for holidays and Christmas and parties, our FNSI only had 17 people join.  Despite that, we still managed to get lots of Christmas gifts finished and our winner for December is: 

Congratulations to all three ladies.  I hope you've got your shopping lists ready and I'd love to see what you purchase with your voucher when it arrives.  Feel free to post a picture in our Facebook group so we can all ooh and aaah together!!!!  

  I must sincerely thank our sponsor, Dawn at Kitty Rose Cottage.  

She is, and always has been a huge supporter of our group and a very active member (although I can't add her to our prize wheel....that might be a bit weird!!!)  Thank you to everyone for joining in for 2023 and here's to a bigger and more exciting 2024 FNSI.   

Now for this month's FNSI sign ups. Remember it's open worldwide so don't be shy!  You know the drill......you sign up below OR on the Facebook group post for this month.  Can't wait to 'see' you this Friday night. Here's to a bigger and mightily inspirational year ahead for all of us. 

Big sweet sugary hugs xox :o)

February’s FNSI both virtual and face-to-face!

This month I’ve had two weeks holiday to come and spend time visiting this little monkey….

 And his gorgeous parents of course! 

When my lovely Brisbane-based stitch friend Susan discovered I was going to be down, she wanted to plan some time together.  

I arrived on Saturday afternoon and spent the weekend with my gorgeous grand baby. 

Susan and I got together on Monday and did some serious fabric shopping!   She coordinates a group of ladies who are all making fabric ABC books and I couldn’t resist. After all, lil Ryker is still only 15 months old but it gives me plenty of time to personalise one for him to enjoy. Then we went to her place for a little lunch and some stitching … and she kindly allowed me to search her stash of abc fabrics. Susan is AWESOME! 

Tomorrow we’re off on another shopping frenzy with these two wonderful friends - Michelle and Shez so imagine what mischief we will all get up to! 

And Friday being FNSI, Susan has organised a get together stitchy morning tea/lunch/afternoon tea with all our stitchy Brisbane and surrounds-based friends. I’m so looking forward to it as living in the tropical north, and being isolated geographically and by COVID for a couple of years, I haven’t seen these ladies in what seems like forever! It almost feels like our former annual Lets Get Stitched retreat, only much smaller! I wish Dawn could have been here! Wouldn’t it have been lovely to have our sponsor for FNSI to come up too?   I hadn’t thought that far ahead unfortunately!   

Anyways, I’ll keep you posted on our shenanigans here, and in our Facebook group page!  

In the meantime, sign up to our FNSI here OR in the Facebook group under this month’s FNSI post so you can go into the draw for a gift voucher exclusive to KittyRose Cottage. 

 And don’t forget to post pictures to inspire us all.   

In the meantime, have fun and big sugary sweet hugs to you all 

Xox o:) 

Friday night Sew In and some winners....finally!

Can you believe it's time already for our virtual get-together??  It comes around so quickly, and for that I am grateful!  I always love knowing I'm not stitching alone, even though I'm bunkered down in my lounge room with all I need to keep me going with a good movie playing and a cuppa and chocolate!   I can appreciate that we're all doing our thing, together...It's great, isn't it?

But firstly,  I need to catch up on some overdue prize draws.  You ladies have been super patient with me and I know that Kitty Rose has some wonderful prizes just waiting to be sent out to the lucky winners for May, June and July. (oops, how did I let that many slip??)

Here goes.... firstly May.  We had 23 lovely ladies joining together in May and we had some beautiful projects happening to inspire us.  Our winner for May is:

KNITTY QUILTER USA!

(don't know what happened to my photo and how it became blurry but you can still see the winner!)

In June we had a whopping 28 joining in.  Our lucky winner for June is:

CHRIS FORSTER!

and Finally July where 22 wonderful friends got together to stitch the night away.  Our winner for July is:

LEANNE HARRISON!

Congratulations to all three of our lovely winners.   Pop me a message with your postal address and I'll have Miss Kitty Rose aka Dawn, send out your prizes.

Now, without further ado.....here are the sign ups for this month's stitch in (tomorrow night! *eek* it comes around so quickly!)

have a wonderful day and see you tomorrow!

big sugary hugs xox :o) 

 

Four lucky winners today for our FNSI/EWSI.....are you one of them?

How was your Easter break?  Did you manage to squeeze in some Easter traditions,....some yummy hot cross buns and of course, chocolate over our stitching weekend?  Did you manage to get away for a well deserved break or like me, did you just relax at home soaking up the peace and reflecting on the reason for Easter?

I love being able to just stop and breathe, without having 'hundreds' of jobs to be done before I start the rat race all over again.  But that would be the same as all of you, wouldn't it?  I do love to be busy;  working gives me purpose and makes me feel satisfied but there's nothing like stopping every now and then for some well deserved calmness just to reset the mind and body.

And that's what our stitching weekend did for me....I hope it had the same effect for you?

Before I show you what I got up to, I have to draw winners for February and March. 

Our wonderful and generous sponsor, Dawn of Kitty Rose Cottage has been waiting patiently for me to get my act into gear so she can post these beautiful prizes out, soooooooo, no mucking about here.......you've waited long enough for these......here goes:

Ta da Ta daaaaaah....

From the 32 stitchers who joined with us in February, either in our Facebook Group page or in  blogs, Our February Winner was drawn and she is..........

    DIANNE MARCHESINI......congratulations lovely!  

I'm sure you'll love the special treat Dawn has in store for you.

Now for our March winner............drumroll please............26 joined with us in March but we could only draw one..........

    congratulations to PINK ROSE!  

 Another fabulous winner who will get to enjoy a lovely prize from our awesome sponsor!

I was keen to put my Birdhouse 'Heartstrings' quilt together but only got as far as handpiecing and stitching the centre panel, but I'm quite happy with that.

I love all things designed by Natalie Bird....she's an amazing Aussie designer and this one really caught my eye.  I've been using my Tilda "Windy Days" fabric range for the EPP and even though I hadn't been organised enough before I started to think of what threads I should use to match the range, it still works beautifully.

I used my Sewline fabric marker to draw the grid lines for placement of my dresdens.  I've never had much luck with the blue water markers...they always seem to  're-appear' for me, but the Sewline markers are made especially for fabric and work a treat, especially when you use the Sewline eraser pen which just makes the lines disappear before your very eyes! 

I did get the inner border stitcheries cut to size and their sashings but haven't yet stitched them together, my 'helper', Mocha was interested to see what I was up to so I never got as much done as I'd planned, sooo...that's a job for the next long weekend which is coming up in .....two days!!  Aren't we lucky here in Australia with all these holidays one weekend after the other?  Although I won't be taking it for granted as it's a very important public holiday, celebrating our Anzacs who fought for our freedom.

Now it's time for our special EWSI draw....I did promise there would be two lucky winners....one who will receive a fantastic prize from Dawn and another who will receive a special gift from 'moi', just to say thank you for putting up with my lacksy-daisy organisation of our get-togethers....I do get there but life often gets in the way! 

I don't know what Dawn has up her sleeve for a first prize but my supplementary prize for someone special is this....

one of Natalie Bird's Birdhouse patterns, the 'Blooming Lovely' pincushion and some scrappy Tilda fabric to make it!  'squeeee'.....The picture is just indicative of what you might get in the way of fabrics but I'll put some together so that you can make the gorgeous pincushion ...and I might even find some threads to throw in too so you can stitch the design without having to wait! Isn't that exciting???

Let's just see who our two lucky winners are....the coveted First prize from Kitty Rose Cottage goes to......

HELEN McCULLOCH........wheeeee! 

 Congratulations Miss Helen!

And the supplementary prize provided by me goes to .....

ANORINA MORRIS.......woohoooo!!! 

Congratulations to you too Miss A!   

And a special thank you to all of you for joining in.....you don't know how much pleasure it gives me being able to stitch along with you all.   Being in a remote-ish, rural area in far North Queensland away from many of my stitching pals, there isn't much opportunity to join in with others so I'm grateful to you all, every single month.....THANK YOU! mwah!  (If only I could give everyone a prize!!!)

have a wonderful week, or what's left of it and from me to you,

Big Sugary Hugs always xox :o)

a Christmas in July winner for FNSI

FNSI is always so much fun.....

I love the fact that we can be in all four corners of the globe and still get to stitch together and feel no pressure to 'perform' whatsoever and yet know we can progress on projects with the gentle encouragement of our cyber friends, don't you? 

I got a little bit done but was distracted with a movie I was watching called "The Mountain Between Us"

The movie is one with Kate Winslet and Idris Alba and is a 'plane-crash-in-the-mountains-survival-type' movie but I really enjoy those kinds. A bit of a chick-flick, feel-good, everything's right in the end movie.   If you like those sorts of movies too and you can get a hold of it, it's well worth the watch.

My progress for the night consisted of a bit more stitching on block 4 of my Fig n Berry Creations 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' stitchery.

I'm really enjoying stitching these blocks up in my two colours of Cottage Garden Threads.  I'm going to make sure I use a colour catcher when I eventually wash these as I know they are prone to running and seeing as I didn't pre-wash the cottons, I'm prepared for it *fingers crossed*. 

I also made an infinity scarf.  I'm part of a Fat Quarter Shop Quilt-a-long and I'll be sharing more on it later on in the week.  You can check out some photos on the FQS links on my Instagram page  HERE but here is the scarf I made....and it only took 30 minutes (truly!).

 and of course I'd have to model it...…. *insert icky face here* 

but seriously, I was really happy with how it turned out. Keep watching this space.... I'll tell you more about it on Thursday.   In the meantime, I'm sure you'd like to know who our winners are for this month's and last's FNSI? 

Catch up for me with prize draws, and seeing as it's July and despite not having drawn June on time, I thought we could do both with the Christmas in June/July theme.  

June's draw...…… wait for it...……

And the winner is... Narelle - Qld, Aus!!

Congratulations Narelle, your prize is...…..

A gorgeous Christmas pattern by Marg Low called "Christmas - A time for Giving".  I hope you enjoy it! 

Our July winner is...…

And the winner is... Sue H in USA!!

Thanks for joining in Sue and congratulations!  Your prize is.....

another Marg Low design called "Holiday Cheer".  A great one for gift giving, that's for sure!

Thank you all for joining in for another month....next month's FNSI will be held on the 17th August with sign ups starting on  the 13th, so don't forget to pop the date up on the calendar. I'm already looking forward to it!

xox sugary hugs :o)