Friday 19 January 2018

A Lovely Rain and other oddities...

We have been blessed to have had three good doses of rain this month, which is quite unusual for Hawkes Bay.  We spend most of our spring/summer/autumn praying for rain, as we are traditionally a very dry area with hot summers - well, our definition of hot anyway!  At the moment our lawns are green and still need mowing, much to DH's disgust.  However, the garden does look so fresh after good rains, and we don' t have to stand out there and water.

This day lily is so gorgeous.  It is actually a more rusty red than this shows, and has given us a magnificent display for many days now.  The one my friend gave me flowered for the first time this year and I forgot to take a photo.  It is a lovely clear orange.

This lovely little chocolate coloured Cosmos is making a lovely wee splash of colour in amongst lots of purples and pinks.  Have had to do lots of deadheading this week to encourage more flowers,
 Our snapdragons were all from very small self seeded plants from DH's sister,  They have done very well, much to our surprise.  This one is a new seedling from ours and the originals all flowered again in their second year and have now been discarded.  I love the way they are biannual, so you get great value from them.

Our Swan plants have self seeded everywhere, so this year we have an excellent supply for the Monarch butterflies.  At the moment we are trying to fight off the wasps that eat the eggs and small caterpillars.  It's quite a war to keep the beautiful creatures at viable numbers.  Next thing we will be desperate for food.!
At the end of last year our Tuesday Chat girls decided we would make Pies and Tarts something we could all join in and do.  This is the beginning of my efforts - half a pie is stitched together, one tart is ready for stitching.  This will be a bit of a long term project I feel already, but it is nice to have one or two hand work things on hand to do.  It's supposed to help use up some of my scraps, but I only totally used up one small piece of fabric when I cut some more on Thursday!!  Drats
My good friend Lorraine has taken the plunge and bought herself an Innova long arm machine.  Lucky girl.  I have been to have a play and it's beautiful.  As she is in dire need of some practice pieces, I am making the most of this opportunity to move out some of those tops on my " Waiting for Quilting"  list I made two years ago and has been reduced by very few. This top goes back to early shop days.  Naturally, no fabric was kept for the border.  I was able to find this rather nice tile fabric that has all the colours in it at the LQS, and a small piece of dark teal that I will use as a frame in my stash.  Awesome, 5 tops will get finished.  Can you see me doing my happy dance?












So there you have it.  Some progress is being made - I think!! Talk to you again soon, and thanks for dropping in for a visit.  How is your quilting going?

Forgot to sign off - goodness me and say that I'm linking up with Cynthia  of Oh Scrap , her link is also on my side bar. Also with Lynette at  Confessions of a Fabric Addict .  Do go visit them, you will enjoy it. 
Bye for now,
Hugs and blessings
Clare

Tuesday 9 January 2018

A New Year and new start..

Hello everyone, no doubt you will have given up on ever seeing another post from me.  Me too!!!  However, I have decided it is time to get back to some of these things.  Will try and be less wordy and more photographic.  Did lose a few good quilt photos when I changed phones, but never mind, lots of things come along to take their place.
We had a lovely Christmas and New Year and hope you did too.  Last weekend we headed down to Wellington and had a second Christmas dinner with Richard, Kea and Marcy.  We had to postpone going down as Marcy picked up whooping cough.  Although vaccinated, there are so many new strains around due to the non-vaccinated children.  Therefore we headed off in time to celebrate Marceline's 3rd birthday on Saturday 6th.  We had a great time.

I made Kea and Marcy these aprons as a Christmas gift.  They are  double sided and have cupcake fabric on the other side.  Rattled the brain a little as I remember how to make them.  LOL.


This is the huge quilt I finally got finished for Kea and Richard.
It is about 520 inches worth of binding big!!!
Can't actually remember the size, but it's blooming big and they have a king sized bed.  Wanted it to come down to the floor too.
It is actually a family-made quilt.  They all ended up helping me to make it - Kea, Richard, Kerry, and Marcy helped Nana by pressing the scissors button, LOL.

Most pleased it is finished, and did binding by machine both sides.  They don't really care, and it was too hard for my hands to go that far around in batik,

Now have to work on their spare bed quilt, as the one I made when Richard went off to university a number of years ago, is falling to pieces.  These guys love their quilts to death by using them constantly, and really, isn't that why we make them?


The old list below, and the new above.  Here's hoping for good progress again.




















Well that's probably enough for now.  I shall finish off and try to be a much better blogger from now on.  Hope you are all having a lovely new start to your new year.

Hugs and blessings,
Clare