Look What I Got!!!

 Today's quote:  "Be gentle with each other, and always ready to forgive each other." Colossians 3:13

Wine Country Quilts exhibition this past weekend was a great success as far as I am concerned.  Our business Janome Sew 'n Quilt sponsors one of the categories and I attended the prize giving early on the Friday morning on opening day.  Imagine my surprise when my name was called out as a winner....

Wow, nearly fell off the wall I was leaning on, but quite pleased.  Category is for Professional Manual Longarm quilting.  The quilt was "Softly, Softly, Spring" by Lyn Murphy.

The quilt is in very soft colours and it is extremely hard to get a good picture of the whole quilt.  Beautiful applique by Lyn.  I did a feather background, feathers in the border and and angular design in the sashing.  Used So Fine by Superior Threads in a soft beige, pink and green.

Still having hassles with getting the photos off my phone, so cannot show you the other photos I took at the exhibition.  Some absolutely fabulous quilts were on display...gosh there is an enormous amount of talent in the East Coast.

Hope your day is going well.  Thanks for reading and see you again soon.

Blessings
Clare

My Le Moyne Star and a new back yard...

Here is the new look Le Moyne star I was talking about yesterday.  I think I am happy with this look?  I have used my Kansas shop hop fabric in the points as this is the theme fabric of this quilt.

 The dark green and lime green are hand dyed fabrics, the blue a Kona Bay fabric. Now I just have to sew it together and practice my set in seams!
Last weekend we poured the concrete in our back yard...thankfully it had done the initial set before the heavy rain arrived in the evening.  We are just loving the new look!

Now we just need some nice new patio furniture and it will look even better.

Dont forget the Wine Country Quilts exhibition starts tomorrow through to Sunday at the Pukeora Estate.  You can find out more info here

Catch you later and thanks for reading.

Blessings
Clare

Progress Report on my List

Thought I should update you on the list that I made in January of three projects that I was to finish by the end of the month. 
The Craftsy BOM has made a small amount of progress. ..two more months I think it was. Got stuck on the Le Moyne Star. Didn't like what I had done so it got put to the side (like we tend to do) until it annoyed me enough to get back to it.  At sewing the set on seams stage now.
Olivia's quilt has made great progress.  Cut the last borders today amd hope to stitch them on in the next day or two.
The Aunt Grace BOM is get exciting too. I have finished all the applique stitching om the centre block so that is finished.  Only 3 hexagons to sew together and the last flower is finished. Sew together with the other blocks made and row 4 will be finished. Just got the fabrics ready for row (or month) 5 and hope to cut over the next few days.  These are the fabrics for these two identical rows.
Have a great day and thanks for reading.

Blessings
Clare

A Scrappy 10 days....

Friend! How Sacred the Word.

Born in the heart of God, and given to man as a treasure from the eternities - no other word in the language is so heavily freighted with meaning.  With one friend I would count myself rich;  to possess more than one,, I were rich beyond comparison.  A friend is a priceless gem for the crown of life here and a cherished star in memory forever.
                    Cyrus B. Nubbaum

I though it would be nice to have a quote at the beginning of each post, and am going to work through this lovely friendship book I was given ages ago.  Enjoy.

Munch Faster 

The poor old caterpillars are fast depleting their food resources....we have had so many hatch and start munching that even our big plants are almost bare.

We had three big plants and numerous small self seeded ones and they are all chomped up!

We have continued to pick our beautiful big Beefsteak tomatoes and another lot have ended up in the freezer.  Isn't this just so yummy...one slice fits all....

 House Work!!! (Excuse the Pun)

We have also been flat tack finishing off the back porch and yard of our house.  This picture is the door to nowhere now looking very posh!!

We call it the door to nowhere because it is just a door that no longer opens.  Our house was built in the 1920's and this was the outside storehouse.  It has now been converted into the toilet that is extremely roomy and thankfully, accessed from inside!  Do you remember the days of having to go out the back door to go to the bathroom....my first house when I was married had the toilet out on the porch and the bath inside.

Then I painted the back door too.  Kerry did a terrific job of sanding and leveling the old door.  I get all the good painting jobs....lol.

The unpainted frame to the right is going to the the window to nowhere.  This is a clever disguise for the access panel of the hot water cyclinder.  Amazing how you have to invent things on old houses to make it all fit.  Just the scribers to be done and painting.
Saturday sees the concrete poured to make the back yard look lovely.  Our friend Mike is coming to help, plus youngest son Richard will be here.  Mike wanted to know what was I going to make for smoko, so cheese scones it will be!

My Special Toy!

Kerry has finished servicing and repairing my lovely old Singer Featherweight.  I took it home and set it up on my table in the corner and stitched my scrappy squares on it.  Oooh, it is just lovely, but takes a bit of getting used after using a Janome Horizon 8900 that has all the bells and whistles.  Kerry found a small cloth guide in the accessories, so we have set that up for sewing a scant 1/4" seam.  Works perfectly.  So spoilt, that's what I am.

I did finish my lovely modern quilt and have entered it into Wine Country Quilts exhibition.  Dopey me forgot to take some photos before it got whisked off.  Never mind, I will take some of the exhibition that is on the 21st to 23rd March....if you are close enough, it is well worth the visit - it is held at Pukeora Estate.  There will be about 150 quilts on display.

Well, that's the catch up for now.  We have had an awesome autumn day today with temperatures reaching 30 degrees. Phwew that's hot after a very cold autumn start.  Thanks for reading and see you again soon.

Blessings
Clare

Happy Scrapping!!

I had a lovely time today playing with the 2.5" squares that are a large component in the "Pretties" quilt I am making through my quilt group at Otane Arts Corner.  The challenge was to use only fabric from your stash, except for the background.  The double size uses 1005 squares at 2.5" plus about 200 at 4.5" in background.  I thought I would be clever and rummaged around in my sewing room to find all the leftover swaps from Y2K days.  Remember when we were all making quilts from 2000 different pieces gathered from all over the world?  Maybe you werent quite as daft as I was!!!!  Have to say though that the quilt was beautiful and was one of my husband's favourites.  It has been "borrowed" by son Daryll and his partner Dayn.

Back to the leftovers....right towards the end of the swaps, one of the ladies doing the quilt asked me to swap with a quilter from Belgium.  I agreed, but unbeknown to Mary and I, we were put on a list that was ciruclating around Belgium.  Endless little packets kept arriving in the mail pleading for us to swap as fabric was so hard to find in their country.  Boy, I sure got sick of cutting out squares!  Needless to say I did not need all these extras squares, so when the option came up to make this new quilt, I grabbed it as a way of using up some "stash stuff."  After gaily sewing up many squares into 2-patches and then 4-patches, I thought maybe I should do some measuring.  Things were not looking too square here.Consequently I have had a rude reminder of always measure someone elses squares....had to discard heaps that were too small and lots that were polyester!  We are talking 14 years ago here and some of the fabrics were just plain ugly, so out they went too.  Suffice to say there is no shortage of squares to replace them.

Never mind, I am loving the piecing of this quilt and looking forward to getting these first units finished.

Here is my wee piles at the end of the day....

I am trying to be brave and not match anything, but I cannot resist now and again, especially when looking for two segments to sew together.

I decided to include the signature squares in these blocks...after all they are a lovely reminder of the spirit of quilting around the world.

Tomorrow I shall have to get back to work.  Two posts in one day....well goodness me!

Take care,

Clare

Churning over the Churn Dash

I loaded this quilt a few days ago and have been pondering over it ever since.  It was made by my lovely friend Eve, who initially said just do an edge to edge on it.  However, I couldn't help but feel that it would be much lovelier custom quilted.  Eve brought over the pattern book for us to look and and we agreed that custom would be much better.  Now to figure out what!!  Talk about being indecisive.

This is the quilt loaded and waiting for me to get inspired!

The quilt is made of individual churn dash blocks, but with clever placement of the dark blocks, they form another large churn dash in the body of the quilt.  I felt that this large churn dash needed to be highlighted as it was the focal point of the quilt.  Last night I finally had a few small brainwaves...I photocopied in black and white the quilt picture in the pattern book and then used that to draw some designs on it.

This is my final look, although I was a bit lazy and didnt redo the outer blocks.  I tried two different versions, one with straight ruler work, the other with some background filler and just ditch quilting the corner small churn dash to echo the main design element.  What do you think?

I am quite pleased with the look of feathering the large churn dash.  Not keen on the lines like in the lefthand corner, but happy with the look of the right hand corner.  Little hard to see I'm sorry.

Now to get to it and do it!!!

Thanks for visiting, and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Blessings
Clare