This past week.

I have been so busy this past week. Mostly I have been busy procrastinating! (As I do!) My daughter's sister-in-law was married last weekend and one of my granddaughters was a flower girl. She had her two eldest of her four nieces be flower girls which left two little girls without a fancy dress so my daughter offered to make dresses for all four girls. Four dresses is quite a lot and I offered to help. Jess did all the cutting out and the basic sewing and I did the finishing. This is my granddaughters at their fitting.

My daughter and her three lovelies

She loooooves this dress!

And we had two birthdays. Well, four if you count extended family, so there were lots of birthday dinners to cook and go out for. This is my baby who turned 15. Fifteen!!! So strange to have no little kids at my house. We had little kids for so long. 

Lighting the sparkler on his cake

 Oh. And at one of those birthday dinners we ate some of the broccoli I grew in our backyard. It was delicious! 

I'm hoping to get more sewing done this week. I have been English paper piecing ever since I last blogged, but it doesn't look that different! Perhaps I will do some quilting!

This Goes With That...

It's spring! Isn't this a lovely blossom tree? I discovered this one Sunday morning and took a million photos (well, about twenty or so, almost a million, right?). There were lots of bees admiring this tree too.

A million years ago (everything today seems to come in multiples of a million) I joined the Patchwork Apple's block of the month club for Sue Daley's Pies and Tarts quilt. In the true tradition of block's of the month I still haven't finished it despite working on it for years. (I think the top is finished. Possibly. I'm thinking about it and considering it.) I really loved the look of the Pies and Tarts so when I heard that Sue Daley had released another block of the month and that Hettie's Patch were running a club for it I was in! I was keen the first month, and then my interest tapered of slightly completely. (Also in the tradition of block of the month clubs!) This quilt is a hexagon quilt with a difference. The difference being that some of the hexagons are built from other English paper piecing shapes. I was looking for a handwork project to do a couple of weeks ago and dragged it out of the cupboard and have been working on it ever since.

I think I was inspired somewhat by the show and tell at Gum Valley Patchwork's Stitch in Spring. A lovely lady by the name of Vicky had made a couple of beautiful hand stitched hexagon quilts which just took my breath away. Of course, her hexagons were smaller than this, but I'm still claiming her as my inspiration! (These are 2 1/2 inch hexagons - that's the measurement of each side) I've decided to alternate a "built" hexagon with a solid hexagon in the hopes of getting this finished some time in the next decade. (Vicky's huge quilts were completed inside a year each!)

In other news I have been gardening. My boys built me raised garden beds following a design by Jess and now I have food happening in my garden! This is a teeny tiny broccoli that I photographed yesterday. Today I have some lettuce to plant out and I'm hoping to pop a bunch of seeds in at the same time. Wish me luck!

Finishes

Friday! My how the week passes! I sat in front of the computer on Monday morning to write a blogpost, and now it's Friday! (I haven't been sitting here all week - it just feels like it!) So, here's my Monday blogpost about my finishes from last week.

My first finish was a chevron quilt I started last year when we were living in North Adelaide. My daughter Jessica quilted it for me and I finally bound it!

I used a Bonnie and Camille diagonal stripe to bind it. It made really lovely binding. I bought a metre of this fabric from Lenora at Elm Grove Patchwork in Nullewarre Victoria. I made it all up into binding and used it for the two quilts I finished last week.

This is the chevron quilt up close on my clothesline after being washed. I love the quilting that Jess did for me.

The second quilt I finished was my beehive beauty that I assembled from the blocks I was sent by my swarmies. I joined the Instagram bee run by Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts and I chose the double star block designed by Christa at Christa Quilts I love how it turned out. This is me quilting the quilt. Even though I did a lot of straight line quilting I did it all free motion. (Hence they are wonky straight lines, but exactly what I was looking for.)

Quilted, trimmed and ready to bind. Did I mention that I love this binding?

I backed this quilt with a Denyse Schmidt fabric. It looked awesome with the binding too!

Here it is on the clothesline. Wet and scrunched up from the washing machine.

And here it is in it's intended place above my bed. Yeah. I'm not much into making my bed. Perhaps I should have cropped that shot? Oh well. I love it. I love the colours and I am thrilled with the quilting. Next up I have a couple of quilts in various stages of finish that I want to use on my bed. One is together as a top and the other is blocks. It will be a while before I get to them I think. They will be big quilts and I need to do some more quilting practice on little quilts before I start to quilt them. If I'm looking at them every day I will want to love the quilting on them!

clothesline view

Stitch in Spring

Friday morning I got up bright and early because Loz and I were off to Stitch in Spring held each year by Linda White from Gum Valley Patchwork. It was the second time I had been and it was as much fun the second time around. The tutors this year were Gail Pan and Helen Stubbings. I managed to work on projects from both of them over the weekend.

the view from our window

Linda's shop is in a little place called Cooriemungle in Victoria, but she holds Stitch in Spring at the Lifesaver's clubrooms in Port Campbell. Port Campbell is on the Great Ocean Road not far from the Twelve Apostles and it is a very scenic and beautiful setting. Loz and I stitched at Stitch in Spring on the Saturday and spent Sunday stitching at our accommodation. Last year we did the touristy thing on the Sunday and headed out to the Twelve Apostles, London Bridge and other geological coastal features. This year we told ourselves that we had already done that and stayed home and stitched. I think what really happened though was that we were both tired and just needed a rest, so Sunday was a lovely restful day for us.

progress on Sunday night

This week I have a huge to-do list of sewing. Sewing is what really makes me happy so having a huge to-do list is the best for me! I have things to finish for our home which makes me feel really cheerful. One of the best things about meeting and knowing quilty people in real life is that their homes are an inspiration to me. Loz, Shay, Claire and Val all have beautiful quilty homes. As soon as you walk into their homes you can tell a quilter lives there because their quilts are on show! I guess its more than just quilts being on show. Anyway, that's what I want my home to look like. This week I am keen to get my beehive quilt finished. It's going on the wall above my bed. It's about the last thing to do to "finish" my room. (Well, I am keen to get new quilt covers for my bed, but that's probably not necessary!) I am hoping to get all of our rooms "finished" over the next couple of months because in December we will have been here for twelve months - a milestone - and it would be good to have everything organised and pretty by then! I am also working on some quilted cushion covers and I have a couple of ottomans that need recovering. I'm going to take a leaf out of my daughter's book and make a quilted cover for my ottomans. She made one for hers and it is so lovely! 

In case you were wondering I gave up on posting from my iPad. After the two successes I had last month I couldn't get it to work again, so thats why I have had so much time between posts. Now I have a computer set up in my sewing space and I am good to go! Hopefully I'll be back this week with some finishes. Wish me luck, I have to get to the sewing machine!

Hoops!

I love to stitch, or embroider, or whatever you call it. When I was younger I used to say I'll learn to embroider when I retire, but the opportunity presented itself before then so I took it. I find handwork really relaxing. I also like the look of machine free motion embroidery. I often think one day I'll try that. I'm not much into trying new things. Earlier this year I joined a swap on Instagram. A hoop swap. (Are you in love with Instagram? I love all the pretty pictures there!) I decided to make a pretty hand stitched scene for my partner and that was that.

I also tried a crocheted covering for the hoop. I had pinned this on Pinterest ages ago and was thrilled to have the opportunity to try it out. I don't usually try these things for myself. I have to be "pushed" into it! After the swap date had come and gone I got a message on Instagram asking if I could be an angel for someone who had sent a hoop, but not received one in return. I was happy to do it and felt the pressure of a self-imposed deadline. It was sad that this person didn't have a hoop and I wanted to make one as quickly as possible for her. So I began to consider making a free motion embroidered scene for this second hoop. (Quick, right!) With a little hand embroidered embellishment. This is what I came up with. 

It was so much fun to make! I also crocheted a hoop cover for this one (It was easy to do!) and I really loved this one. I liked the first one, but the second one is my favourite. I (almost) wished I kept it. I figured I could easily make another for myself, but I haven't quite gotten around to it yet. I am keen to try some more free motion embroidery. Hopefully I'll try it again soon.

Such a long time!

I went to a class at Hetties Patch last weekend and ran into someone who I had met years ago and she said she used to keep up with me on my blog, but I don't do that any more. I was a bit stunned because I often think about blogging, but I never quite get there. Part of it is fatigue (I moved three times in thirteen months!) and part of it is not having access to a computer to blog on. I have my iPad always at the ready but have found blogging on that difficult. So today I woke up and thought, that's it! I love this blog and the record it is of my doings I'm just going to try harder to use the iPad and be done with it! So here I am blogging. Weird, huh?

I lifted some photos from my iPad for this post. This is my Sue Daly "Pies and Tarts" quilt in progress some months ago. Actually, now that I look at it closely I see that this photo was taken in the townhouse we lived in for four months in North Adelaide. That was immediately after we left the farm. The best thing about the farm was it was in the middle of nowhere. I loved the quiet. And not being able to see anyone else. I loved the Kangaroos I could see every day around the property and I loved the "big sky". And the worst thing about the farm was it was in the middle of nowhere. It was a 25 minute drive to the bus stop and I had to make that trip twice a day with my two university girls. It was too much! So we moved almost to the centre of Adelaide which was in direct contrast with the country experience. I loved it! We could walk everywhere! A free bus into the city took off two houses away from us and we really loved it there. We "did" so many more things there even though we were only there for a short time. Everything was in walking distance. The Botanic gardens, the zoo, the city, museums, the art gallery etc. Trying to park your car was a nightmare for us and visitors, especially when there was an event on at Adelaide Oval because they have more onerous restrictions during events, but I did a lot more walking there! We were sad to leave that location, but really felt like we needed to move closer to our grandkids and so we are living in the Adelaide Hills now. We moved here eight months ago (so long now!) and I STILL have things in boxes. Sigh! Anyway, I have been sewing and making and I intend to keep sewing and making and recording my life here at "Rosemary Hill" even if it's just for me to read and remember! 

This photo shows more progress on the Pies and Tarts quilt. It's officially huge these days and I am busy practicing my free motion quilting so that I can do a better job on this beauty. After all,