Stitching Monday – who braved the snow?

The Polar Blast was well and truly visiting the Wellington Region yesterday.  It was so pretty to see the snow flakes falling, and even more amazing to see it settle all over the ground.  Would Pinestream Patchwork’s Stitching Monday still go ahead?  I guessed it would, as it was not too far away, the roads were all on flat ground, so packed my bag full of hand stitching to last me for the day and headed out.  My main concern was the Totara Park bridge, which had ice patches last time, so I drove very carefully across.  I saw my first local snow man so just had to stop and take his photo.

Hello Frosty

Luckily the lights were on in our hall when I arrived, so someone else had braved the weather as well.  Lane Park looked quite wintery with snow on the roof and all over the lawn, and dusting the trees in the background.  Hope the heaters are on inside to keep us warm! 

Our hall for Stitching Monday

Only four of us braved the weather yesterday to do some stitching, myself, Margaret, Heather, and Gaye.  Our club Librarian Christobell was there too for a couple of hours, not to stitch but to carry out some library duties.  She was busily checking out crate after crate of books for library cards and any damage, nice and warm in her jacket and woolly hat.

Christobell checking the library books

Heather has a new project in mind and came along with a big bag of men’s shirts.  She has been buying op-shop cotton shirts for some time and plans to use the fabric to make charity quilts.  She spent the day carefully cutting the cuffs, labels, collars and button bands off each shirt.  The buttons are going to a friend who knits for the prem babies, and Margaret happily took the labels, button bands and any other interesting bits and pieces to use on her journals and post cards.  Heather was very pleased with the amount of fabric she could harvest from each quilt, and nothing is wasted.  Her aim is to make quilts for the Wellington Ronald McDonald Home.

Heather cutting the shirt to pieces

There was some wonderful fabric in the shirts and we all checked them out.  Heather has only been buying cotton shirts, and I imagine these are getting harder to find with all the fabric mixes on the market.  This is just a small selection, we were told, there were many more at home.

Heather, Christobel, and Margaret admiring the shirt fabrics

Gaye had purchased a striking “outer space” panel and was stitching star blocks to go around it for her grand-son.  She had some gorgeous hand dyed batik fabrics, and was also using some commercial “glow in the dark” fabric too.  Sounds just the thing a young grand-son would love.

Christobel and Gaye looking at the star block and panel

Gaye’s stars in stars block

Margaret always brings plenty of projects to work on and I saw her whizz up a couple of bindings, do a little stitchery, and goodness knows what else.  After lunch she was working on her colourful wonky log cabin blocks.  This is another idea to use up more scraps and will eventually be made into a charity quilt.  Such a good idea, we all have bags of little pieces of fabric hanging about.  The blocks are nice and bright and will look wonderful when they are all together. 

Wonky log cabin blocks

I did home work on my stitchery blocks, then spent a little time taking the tissue paper off my burgundy and cream log cabin blocks.  I am really enjoying stitching the blocks using paper piecing as it takes all the guess work out of it.  I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to keep the logs nice and straight if I wasn’t using this method.  I’m leaving the outer strips of paper in place for when I stitch the blocks together. 

My burgundy and cream paper pieced log cabin blocks

During the day we kept looking out the windows to watch the snow falling down.  Such snow fall has not happened in this part of New Zealand for almost 40 years, we have been told, so it is certainly a novelty.  The heaters worked very well in the hall and we were certainly warm enough while we enjoyed pour stitching day together.

Looking out the window

I packed up a little early as I had shopping to do, a visit to Thimbles and Threads to get some light grey thread.  I had run out of this staple, and certainly needed it replenished so that I can spend time at the sewing machine if we get snowed in!  I was getting worried about the state of the roads, but thankfully there were no problems and I arrived home safe and sound, but my little blue car was covered in snow after a day out in the open.

My car when I arrived home

Our house and caravan, in winter wonderland