One more Farmers Wife block & Christmas Greetings...

With Christmas only two sleeps away, we head off tomorrow morning to the Waikato.  We are going to go via Rotorua and call in and see our daughter Shala, granddaughter Tonya and great granddaughter Zoe!  Might get to see one the grandsons if he is around too. Then we will head off after lunch and aim to get to son Daryll's for dinner.  I am so excited that we can spend some time with Dayn and little Hamish.  On Christmas  morning we will head into Te Awamutu where we will all celebrate Christmas together (well, with three of our kids anyway).

It has been a very slow week in regards to work.  I did manage to get one more Farmers Wife block made so the pile goes up again.  Soon I will be down to double figures!!!

 When in Wellington the week before I spotted the stall that Stitchbirds had in the Underground Market.  Chose a couple of these, but then somehow we managed to end up in their shop in Kilbirnie...funny that.
Love this wee selection.  Now I am going to be firm with myself and no more fabric until I have used lots up.

This one is my favourite though.  Just love the cats and the cool saying.  I shall have to use this on something really special.

That's most of the news for now.

Kerry and I hope you have an awesome Christmas.  We are so thankful that "God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16.

We pray that you will be truly blessed as you celebrate with your families.  If you are on your own, we pray you will feel loved by the presence of good friends and if you cannot be with friends or family, we pray that you will feel God's amazing love for you.

See you soon.

Blessings
Clare

Fabric sneaking into my Stash!!!

Well for goodness sake, I'm not really sure how this happened....

Our Tuesday Chat group went out Tuesday of last week for our Christmas outing.  We did happen to call in at a couple of quilt shops...and somehow these wee pieces of fabric jumped right into my hand.  Honestly, I'm sure that's how it happened.....lol.  Just a few extra bits and pieces for my Farmers Wife blocks mostly, and just loved this one....

Isn't it just gorgeous.  Might have to sneak back and get another couple of pieces in the other colourways.
We had a lovely day out...there were 10 of us.  We visited the Museum in Napier to see the clothing collection of our ex Member of Parliament the late Turakatene-Sullivan and the wonderful display of lovely old aprons, tea cosies and other memorabilia from Rosemary McLeod's personal collection.  We certainly had a lovely day.

Then I thought I should do some further "sorting of the stuff" in preparation for when we convert this building into our home!!  Oh dear, it is going to be rather difficult going from two huge rooms for my studio and storage to...???????  I did manage to sort my basket of assorted strips...

Now all bagged up into their colours and all the 2 1/2" strips in one bundle.  Wow some awesomeness in organisational skills.   (those are my big words for the week!).

Then I got into making some more bags from my granddaughters Christmas Presents.  I shall put goodies inside them.  These are so simple and easy to make thanks to some wonderful blog postings too numerous to list here.  Also found another neat pattern in a magazine today but havent tried that out yet.

Yippee, only a few to go.  Off to the Waikato for Christmas this year.

Talk to you all again soon.  Thanks for visiting.

Blessings
Clare

Farmers Wife, 1930's etc..

Managed to get some of my own blocks done last week.  These two are for the paper bag challenge at the  Otane Patchwork Group.  I love the 1930's fabrics so really enjoyed making these two.

Then I managed to make one more of my Farmers Wife blocks.  Very challenging to get all these little triangles together and still look straight.  Now I have 7 made up....only 103 to go now!!  Have another three cut out so hope to get some more stitching time soon.

Even managed to finish another of these hexagon flowers. I have no idea of what I am going to do with them but I have quite a pile of hexies so will just potter on and make more up.

We spotted this very large butterfly resting on our peach tree a few days ago.  Not too sure on what it is.  Might even be a Gum Moth.

Husband Kerry had his cataract operation today.  We are so thankful for our health system.  It will make a huge difference to him.

See you again soon.

Blessings
Clare

A Tribute to Marilyn Quilt

Hello everyone.  I have been busy working on a very large quilt that is all about Marilyn Munroe with the odd bit of Hepburn and Bogart thrown in.  The quilt was 88" x 101" so it kept me quiet for quite some time.
Here are some photos, well lots really as it is such a big quilt with so many things in it...

Lots of single pics of Marilyn.  I used So Fine Charcoal throughout the quilt.

Busy posters that made my head hurt thinking what to do with them.

I think we all know this famous shot of Marilyn.

This shot gives you a little bit of an idea of the size.

This is what I look like in my bathing suit....hahahahahaha...

These were a bit tricky as very thick with licky sticky fusible stuff.

Another poster shot.

Such a happy photo.  What a shame it all went wrong for her.  Used lots of simple lines in the backgrounds of these photo blocks which looked really good and didnt detract from Marilyn.

 

And finally the border treatment.  Took ages to do all the circles, but the overall look was really good.

So there you have it, the reason for my silence.  I will try and post again soon.

Yippee it's Friday so the weekend is here.  Hoping to do lots of stitching for me this time.  Take care and have a great weekend yourself. 

Blessings
Clare

A small bag, roses and a posh tea!

Life has been fun the past week.  On Sunday Kerry and I were invited to share lunch with Kerry's sister Colleen.  After devouring a yummy feast, we went out to look at Colleen's garden.  These are her roses in the back garden...aren't they truly gorgeous.

Then yesterday I drove my daughter in law Kea up to Napier so she could stay with her Mum Linda while our Richard and his Dad work on making a table for her drawing.  We picked up Linda and went of to "Port of Call" in Ahuriri, Napier.  It is around by the inner port area and is a lovely spot.  We had a very posh morning tea with all the trimmings as you can see.

We then tootled off to the Baby Factory to help Kea make some needed purchases for our new grandbaby.  I am a very spoilt Mother in Law to be part of this time that is so special between a Mum and her daughter.
Then it was Hastings for lunch.  This is the side view of Kea...it is only 7 weeks to go!

Today I finished off a wee wristlet purse out of the scraps from the Nappy Bag that I made for Kea.  You can see my bag here.  The pattern came from a blog I found after a search for little bags and you can see this great tutorial with lots of photos here .

So there you have it.  I'm working on a large quilt at the moment and will show you more when finished.  I'm off home now to get the vegies on for dinner.

Thanks for visiting and talk to you again soon. I'm linking to TGIF here.

Blessings
Clare

A la Chicken quilt and a little nutty...

This is Rosie's fun chicken quilt that I managed to finish last week.  It took ages for my brain to come up with how I was going to quilt it, but am very happy with the result.  Rosie is too, which is the most important thing.

I used three different colours in the quilt, 1 variegated King Tut for the block backgrounds and outside border and two So Fines for the sashings.

The humour in the quilt is lovely and a very clever play on words.

Rosie used a lovely deep teal spotted backing fabric which looked really good.

Our cabbage tree is in full flower this year and looks quite spectacular.  We were given this tree as a wee seedling that was about 30cm (12 inches) tall.  Amazing to see its size now and it will get taller yet.

Then we were ecstatic to discover lots and lots of baby walnuts on our tree. It looks like we are going to get a really good crop this year.  It has been 10 years since we planted the tree and last year we got about 4 mature walnuts.  We ate them very slowly!!!

On Thursday our son Daryll and his partner Dayn and our gorgeous grandson came to visit.  Dayn's brother JR was out here on holiday from Thailand and they were showing him some of our wonderful country.  Look at this boy....what big brown eyes he has.

Off to our local A & P show tomorrow (like a county fair in the US but quite small).  Should be fun, the forecast is for galeforce winds.  Interesting.

Take care and see you all again soon.

God bless
Clare

Baby Quilt made in time

Hello everyone.  Not sure where my week went to and now the weekend is half over.  This morning we headed off to Napier to look at the Home and Garden show.  It was a lovely sunny day but the wind had a cold bite to it.
Saw lots of great stuff for your home but we haven't won lotto yet so couldn't order much!!  Fabulous spa pools, awesome cooking pans, garden ornaments and  other tempting stuff.

Getting down to business, I was so thrilled to get Kea's baby quilt made in time for her baby shower last weekend.  Only decided on Tuesday afternoon that I could possibly make it in time.  Kept it simple and I just love the fabrics in it.  

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Then we had Daryll, Dayn and baby Hamish come visit on Thursday.  My how Hamish has grown.

I have done this post via my phone and cant figure out how to put a space between these photos.  Will do another post once I have been to work and grabbed the cord which I left behind.Thanks for reading and see you again very soon, Clare

Woohoo Mary Rose Quilt is finished

Way back in 2005/6 (?) I made this quilt from a lovely new range of Quiltgate fabrics called "Mary Rose." It was a simple design I worked out myself and it was a class sample for a number of years.  It has always been one of my favourite quilts and pink is not even on my list of likeable colours!!!

Over our 4 day holiday weekend I decided it was a great chance to quilt one of my own quilts and Mary Rose was it.  I also wanted to try out this new (for me) free motion all over spiral pattern that my lovely friend Linda does so effortlessly. You can see her work here . 
This is what it looked like before I began to quilt...

I used a lovely soft green in a So fine, but afterwards, although it went really well with the quilt, I should have played safe and matched with the background while learning a new pattern that requires lots of backtracking!

This quilting style gives great texture to a quilt.  I'm so glad Linda showed me how to do it.

 Although I have done lots of free motion and many pantographs, I have not done much in the way of freehand edge to edge patterns, so have enjoyed learning this skill over the last few quilts.

This is a lovely old Singer that was passed on to us by a friend who wanted it to go to someone who would love it.  Kerry is going to give it a good service and then I will be able to stitch on it.  It has a motor but can also be used as a treadle.

Of course the problem with taking 8 years to finish your quilt, is that it is a little bit of a problem getting the same fabrics for a binding.  After an exhaustive search through my stash there was nothing for it but to go buy some.  I was such a good girl though...didn't buy any other fabric.  Having had to go through my stash there was no way I was going to add to it!!!

I feel very pleased with myself to have reduced the tops pile by one.  Some terrible person had the cheek to ask me how many more there were!!!  I ask you!  hmphhh....vbg....that is almost as bad as asking a lady her age.
As we had to go to Hastings to get the binding fabric, we diverted to Havelock North to have brunch in a wonderful organic food cafe that hubby knew about.  Sorry, the name escapes me, but the food was delish and their range of organic food items was wonderful.

Mr Moore drinking his coffee.  My photography skills do need work.  It was a very hot day with the sun blazing down, so by mid-afternoon we were forced to call in at Rush Munro's for a cooling ice cream.  Sat outside in the lovely garden area.

There it is.  All caught up.  tomorrow we are off to Wellington again.  DIL Kea's baby shower is tomorrow and I have managed to make a lovely wee baby quilt.  Photos next time.  Then on Sunday we are going to look at another house with Richard and Kea.

I hope you all have lovely weekends and will talk to you again next week.  Take care and drive safely.

Blessings
Clare

I'm linking to Finish It Up Friday here

Fabulous Nappy Bag and an Animal Quilt...

I am so chuffed with myself....I did it!!!!  Had said I would make this gorgeous looking bag for Kea to use as a Nappy/Baby bag which had a built in changing mat and lots and lots of pockets.  It also had lots and lots of zips....scary!

I read the pattern about seven times first, then I enlisted the help of my lovely friend Eve to help me get it cut out.  While Eve was helping me I got started on making it and  it didnt seem quite so difficult then.  While having to reread the pattern and think "what on earth do they mean?" sometimes it was just the different way us Kiwis think to our American friends.  Woohoo, got all three zippers in and my changing mat even worked out the way it was supposed too.

Here are lots of photos because I am so rapt that I actually did it.  Also, am so impressed with my Janome Horizon 8900 sewing machine.  That baby sewed through up to 12-14 layers and never missed a stitch.  It was impressive.
Umm...now what did that pattern say to do next?

The finished article.  It took some detective work to come up with the swivel hooks and thank goodness I have such a clever hubby.

 I always wondered how to make a zippered bag top like this...now I know!


The changing mat has a zipper on each side and opens up with a pocket that can hold a nappy and other neccessities for babies.

 Looks impressive doesn't it...lol.  Pushing my own barrow here.

 This photos shows the pockets that line both sides of the inner bag, so no lack of storage space.  Kea's choice of fabric was awesome too.

 And a girl needs a space for her cell phone and those important pieces of technology.

On Monday I had fun quilting Rosie's gorgeous panel quilt.  I did a freehand swirl pattern all over it and it really did come up nice.

 I used a So Fine in a soft tan colour which really looked good over all the colours.

 This back is actually an olive green colour.  Interesting what a camera changes.

Tyson wondering why this bag will only fit his head and shoulders, lol.  While he wasnt looking, Travis jumped on him  lol.

So there you have another wee catch up.

Have a great weekend.  We have a four day holiday weekend starting today as it is our region's Anniversary Day as well as Labour Weekend.  Yippeee.

Blessings to you all
Clare