It's Jolly July and winter is here..

Wow, what an amazing autumn early winter we have had.  Fancy having 19 degrees (C) in July for goodness sake.  Unfortunately for our farmers it's not so good - drought from summer right through to winter is a bit hard on them.
It's been a month of a couple of finishes for our Tuesday Chat group.  At long last we finished the Grandmother's Garden hexagon quilt that we chose to finish off some 4 (?) years ago.  This quilt was part of a couple of boxes of fabric remnants dropped off by a quilter's partner after she had died. We decided to finish the quilt off and raffle it with the proceeds going to cancer research in her memory.  When we popped a little piece in our local paper about "was it you who dropped this in to our shop" the chap turned up and filled us in.  Ivan asked if he would be able to have the finished quilt as he had not realised exactly what it was...we agreed if he paid for some of the finishing costs, which he agreed to and included a donation in his partner's name to cancer research.
As I have been unable to do large quilts needing custom work now, I asked my good friend Linda from Razzle Dazzle Quilter to do the honours for us.  Linda did an awesome job as you can see.  You can check out Linda's blog here and encourage you to have a look at Linda's beautiful quilting.

This photo shows Ivan with myself, Lorraine, Lyn and Eve.  Missing that day was Lois who also did a lot of work on the quilt.
The border was a gorgeous blue from Kona Cotton range and it really did lift up the colour of the quilt.

It never occurred to Ivan that all that stitching had been done by hand.  It quite blew him away, and he began to realise why it had taken such a long time for us to get this finished - especially as it was done in between our own projects.
In this photo you can see the lovely feathers Linda has done in the border and a little of the all over pattern that created such wonderful life and texture in this quilt.













Then it was on to our next finish of the week.  Lynn has been the first of our group to finish her Farmers Wife Quilt.  Oh boy, Lynn did all 111 blocks and it didn't take her very long either it seemed.

The colours are lovely, and Lynn used a lot of reproduction fabric garnered from all around the country and from each other.  Once again we sent this one off to Linda as it was too much for me to handle these days.   What an awesome job again from this amazing quilter.

 Here Lori and Norma are admiring all the different blocks and the styles of quilting.  One of these little 6.5 inch blocks has 64 pieces!!  Gotta be mad to do that one I reckon.  Shhhh, don't ask what's happened to mine, lol.

Linda did something different in every block - wow!!  The sashing design was so clever - it creates a star at every cornerstone.  What a clever lady Linda is.


















I have managed to get a little bit of stitching done over the past month.  Almost finished these blocks on my granddaughters quilt. Only 3 more to go thank goodness.  They do look pretty.

It has been a good lesson in sewing slowly with accuracy.

Another block or two in grandson Bradley's quilt goes on the pile.  I am really enjoying this one, and am looking forward to how fabric it will use up out of my stash.

That's it for now.  Everything else is trundling along. We have made some progress with the bathroom and are now practicing the theory that "everything comes to those who wait." Love it, hehehe.

Take care everyone, and who knows, maybe I will manage to come back sooner instead of later.  It's an energy problem as I love chatting with you all.  Keep warm or cool wherever you may be.

God bless,
Clare
I'm linking with Cynthia at oh! Scrap check out all the great links.