Sunday Stitchers Celebrate Christmas...

We had our Christmas gathering the Sunday before last.

Projects were worked on...

Birthday girls had lots of little parcels containing fat quarters to open...

We had a scrumptious spread of food for lunch and afternoon tea...

Cheryl had brought decorations for the table...

Secret Santa gifts were exchanged...my Secret Santa, Lynda, gave me this magnificent table topper. It was such a lovely surprise; the fabrics are gorgeous and the design is one I've liked for quite a while. Clever Lynda had looked at my Pinterest Board of Sewing ideas, and she guessed rightly that it was a favourite of mine. 

I was Secret Santa to Maree. As well as being a member of Sunday Stitchers, Maree also belongs to K4BN, so when I drew her name earlier this year, I had decided to make something with the knitting theme...yep! the Dillybag...here's Maree with the bag and the other goodies I popped in it.

And of course we had some show and tell, with some beautiful items shown...

Teresa's quilt...

De's

Ladies with the lovely bags they had made...

The Christmas QAL quilts' progress...

All year these ladies have bee doing the 'paper bag' row by row quilt...swapping each month. We finally saw the progress as this was all secret stuff! Lol

We were all spoiled by some of the Sunday Stitchers; these lovely people had extra gifts for each of us!

Gifts from Teresa and Maree J. 

Lovely decorations that I received from Susan, Debbie, De, Helen, Jeanette, Cheryl...

A great day I think you would agree! 

Out and about with the Sunday Stitchers...

I'm very fortunate to be a member of Sunday Stitchers, a group of bloggers who live in this area of SE Queensland. We meet up monthly at Ormeau Community Centre for stitching, food and friendship, interspersed with lots of laughter. But this month some of us have had some more opportunities to meet up...
Wednesday night of last week, one of our members, Debbie, became an Australian citizen and some of us were able to attend the Citizenship ceremony...
Remember that red/white and blue ruffle scarf I made...it was for Debbie!!
Reading the pledge...

Debbie receiving her citizenship certificate from the Mayor of the Moreton Bay Regional Council......

Posing with the certificate in front of the flag...

And then a group photo with her 'cheer squad'...

Then, the next day, 13 Sunday Stitchers gathered at a cafe called French and Mor at Albany Creek for a very luscious High Tea....

And then on Sunday we had our September meet up at Ormeau...

We had 2 very special visitors arrive...

Tatyana brought her gorgeous baby girl in to meet us...

We had our usual Show and Tell session...

Some of the ladies brought along their gorgeous Gossip in the Garden quilt tops...this has been an ongoing project throughout this year...

Jeanette's...

Maree's...

Other Show and Tell items...

Another of Jeanette's quilts...

De's....

Maureen's...she told us that there will also be a lion in the ark as well! 

Our very own enthusiastic 'paparazzi '...

And lastly a closer look at the Dillybag ( by Judy Newman) on the table in this photo. Maree made this...

So that's some of the things that I got up to in the last week! :-)

Sunday Stitchers; July Meetup...

The Sunday before last, this group met at the Ormeau Community centre...

There was the usual table of food goodies...

And lots of stitching, chatting and laughing...

And of course some wonderful items displayed during the usual Show and Tell Session...

The group made July the month to collect items for the Dream a Little Dream Premature Baby Support Packs...

This is a cause close to the heart of one of our members, Debbie, who organised the coordination of this collection.

Debbie checking out some of the items that had been brought in

The boxes and bags holding all the items that we collected...

Kat, from the Dream a Little Dream group came to pick up the items...
here is the hand over...including a card that we had all signed.

Kat was overwhelmed by the amount of items ...
Some of the ladies gave her a hand to take everything to her car...

We didn't have any photos of the actual items, but the lovely people at Dream a Little Dream photographed all the items and shared the photos, along with a big thank you, on the group's Facebook page...I've made a collage with some of the 17 photos...
The items include tiny baby clothes, personal items for the mums, gifts for siblings of the premature babies, drawstring bags to carry baby 'stuff'...etc

These items will be used to make up the Support packs that are given to parents of premature babies. (Knitted items came from Knitting for Brisbane's Needy)

A bit of this and that...

In the last few days I have...
Been taken out to dinner by DH to my favourite local restaurant, Des Alpes, for Valentine's Day. This lovely little restaurant is owned by Monika and Nick who are originally from Switzerland and the food is absolutely delicious...always!

As we were leaving Des Alpes, we were given a flower for me and chocolates for DH :-)

Went to a Knit and Natter at Gabby's beautiful shop, Yarn Over on Saturday morning and then in the afternoon, DH and I travelled up to Pacific Paradise on the Sunshine Coast for my great niece Lucy's 4th birthday. The little party was in a small park just near my niece's home.

DD2 taking photos of the cake...

 Close up of the cake. Little Lucy asked for a Barbie Cake...(that girl, Barbie, just keeps going on and on doesn't she! lol)

My niece trying to light the candle with the strong breeze that was blowing...

The candle stayed lit for a few seconds...just enough time for Lucy to blow it out and 'make a wish'.

Then on Sunday, Lynda, Cheryl and I headed off to Ormeau (a township on the way to the Gold Coast) for the first get together of Sunday Stitchers, formerly known as Stitchers Inc. We are all bloggers and we all love to stitch! The Ormeau Community Centre is our new venue and it is a really lovely place...
Some of the ladies are doing a Paper Bag Quilt Swap and yesterday they did a Show and Tell session with their first rows...

 I've borrowed some of Maree's photos from the Sunday Stitchers Blog.

In the next photo Cheryl is holding up the border section of a quilt top that I see regularly as Cheryl has been steadily working on this quilt at our Sisters of stitch afternoons...

I'm knitting there in the background. Looking at the photo I realise that the colours in the knitting are similar to those in the blouse I'm wearing! 

Susan working on some stitching here...another lady who loves purple! lol

The group has decided to run a Birthday Fat Quarter Gift each meet up for members who have celebrated a birthday since the last meet up. It was Lynda's turn this time and we all brought in a fat quarter each for her...it was fun looking at all the different fabrics in her new stash...

It was a great day stitching, chatting, laughing and eating. We are all grateful for the organising that Maree has done on our behalf.