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.

First Quilting finish for the year and a birthday party

I have had to start back at work again already, even though it is our hot summer time here in New Zealand.  We have our bi annual Wine Country Quilts exhibition coming up in mid-March and entrants need to have their quilts in by the end of February.  That is not so long when you have three quilts to custom quilt.
Being so organised (ha!) I have finished the first one.  I have only given you one photo as it is going to be in the exhibition so cant spoil it.

It was like quilting a garden with this quilt and Sue made a wonderful job of all the appliqued flowers.  Had to work hard with the eyes with such a dark navy background and my So Fine blue was almost too good a match.  I used a Magnifico blue down the centre of the feather fern and in the veins to give it a lift.  Thanks Sue, I enjoyed getting back into the swing of things with your awesome quilt.

This is a glimpse of one of the other quilts I have to get done.  I laid it out on my work tables to try and get some inspiration for the quilting designs.  Tyson decided to give me some help and is studying it closely LOL.  Thankfully Catherine knows this boy and I'm sure she will give him the 3rd degree when she sees him next.  It's a lovely round robin quilt that Catherine participated in a wee while ago and the colours are gorgeous.














Then it was off to Wellington for the weekend to celebrate our youngest granddaughter's first birthday.  We are both amazed that this year has flown so fast.  We had a wonderful celebration with Marceline's Mum and Dad - Kea and Richard, Kea's folks and some friends.  Wellington put on the most beautiful day that required sunscreen and all.

This is my cool Tonka Front End Loader that Mum and Dad got me.  I just love it and played for ages with it. Poppa is giving me some driving lessons while Mum looks on.

Gran Gran bought me this gorgeous new dress and was showing me some photos of myself.  I love playing with the camera and am happy to pose for you.  Nana took this one of me with Gran Gran (well just Gran Gran's knees actually).








We all had a yummy chocolate cake but Nana forgot to take a picture of that one.  Gee Nana.








Sunday we all went down to the Farmers Market at the Waterfront.  After buying some fabulously fresh fruit and vegetables, we checked out all the food stalls and had brunch.  The only thing with that is it takes me forever to decide what I'm going to eat and then I end up last!

This is me (Marceline) just hanging around with the oldies!




Please note, not a cloud in the sky and it's Wellington.  Love it.

Kerry and I decided to go look in Te Papa National Museum before we left for home and saw the Dream Works exhibition. It was great.  They take you on a dragon flight and wow, it was exciting.

On the way home we stopped in at Sawmillers Quiltery which is run by my friend Yvonne situated in Te Marua, just north of Upper Hutt.  Lovely fabrics and great conversation.  Next door is the Stonestead Devonshire Tea Shop.  Yummmmmm.

 Isn't this a most flattering photo of Kerry.  These made on the spot scones are absolute delicious.  Kerry had cheese while I went for the date, plus jam and cream of course!!!

My last gasp is this....7 little blocks, and I mean little!!!  I made the mistake of reading on Cynthia's blog quiltingismorefun that housework about this mad 365 day challenge.  You make a block a day for 365 days and at the end have this awesome quilt.  Hmmmm. Not all the blocks are 3" - these are the first border around the centre medallion.  I have also decided they must all come out of my stash.! Well so far I'm up to date with two blocks cut and ready to sew tonight which will probably end up being tomorrow as I ended up here instead which makes 15 blocks.  Let's see how long I can hang in there on this one. By the way, there are over 12000 quilters joined up...wow.  (It's free too)

So there you have it...life in the Moore household is still ticking along.  I hope those of you on holiday are having a great time.  Those who have worked through I sympathise with.  Those who dont work ....yippeee I wanna join you!  Mind you, I don't think there is anyone who doesn't work in some way or other.


Bye for now and thanks for reading all the way down to here.  It seems a long way to me too.  I need to stop talking so much maybe but I don't know, the words just keep coming out.  I will see you again soon I hope and take care.

I'm linking with Cynthia at Oh Scrap here.

Go over and have a look at her lovely blogs with lots of tempting scrap projects.  Actually I am blaming Cynthia for my falling for the above mentioned 365 Challenge, lol.

Blessings to you all,
Clare

Autumn Medallion Quilt

Here I am at last.  In all the moving around of the "stuff" I lost my cord for getting my photos onto the computer. Of course I found it when looking for something else!!  Isn't that always the way?

Been working hard trying to catch up on my customers quilts.  This beautiful medallion quilt of Maria's is a wedding gift and is going off to Australia.  Although it seemed like the never ending quilt for a while, I am so thrilled in the end with how it looks.  It was only a bit of a struggle because I am still in recovery mode.  The colours are superb.  My photos are not.  Sorry about that.

It was very hard to get a photo in a good light and these first couple were taken at Maria's place when I delivered the quilt.  They do show up the quilting well though.

Some of the border treatments.  The thread is Superior Magnifico 2063 - a lovely gold colour that really highlighted the gold edged leaves in the focus fabric.  In the cream backgrounds I used So Fine 405 which worked perfectly.

 I had to do the on point triangles using Plan C.  Plan A & B were too difficult with my smaller 18" throat.  I was actually really happy with this plan and it probably looked better that the first plan...lol.

Because the focus fabric featured beautiful leaves and berries, I used these images in the quilting.  The feather border uses the leaf style of feather and I was delighted with how it came up.  Only the second time I have tried this one.

Using continuous curves on these wee 3" 9 patches made them quilt up a lot faster.

Used the leaf feather in this square and another border of cc.

Thanks Maria, it was such a pleasure to quilt your lovely quilt.

One last pic...this is my most beautiful great granddaughter who lives in Perth, Australia.  I am praying hard that I will get to meet her at the end of the year.  She will be 3 in October and is called Tiana.  Dad Wiremu loves her so much and they spend lots of time together.

Take care and I wont make any rash promises about being back....just will do my best to chat with you again soon.

Hugs and blessings
Clare

Real Country Quilt finished from a class in 1998!

This is Jean's beautiful quilt that she began in a class taken in Palmerston North in 1998!!!  Now that is a year or two ago.  It took me some time to get my head around the plaids and strong colours and exactly what to quilt where.  However, in the end I am pleased with the result and Jean is too, which is the most important thing.  A happy customer is my aim after all. There are lots of photos as it was quite a large quilt...72 x 90 inches with lots of ditching to do and I found it hard to choose which photos to show you.  I do have to apologise for the quality of some of them...couldn't find my camera and used my phone.

I used Superior's So Fine #50 Tan 454 over the whole quilt.  I found it worked really well.  It was a bit scary when I decided to use it on the dark green and red, but it looks really great and this colour was perfect for a country quilt.  I had Bottomline tan in the bottom.

Lots of applique blocks too with some buttons and domes already sewn on, so had to be a little careful.  Loved the block of bugs, hehehe.

Mr Scarecrow puzzled me for a while, then my friend Catherine came calling and flung around the fact the I should just do some pumpkins in it.  So here you are then Catherine, I have done pumkins in the sashing and one or two flung around the background among the small loops.

This was a quite large group of blocks and once again it took a bit of thinking to get cracking.  Thank goodness there was lots of ditch work to do while I was trying to think, otherwise I would still be working on it lol.

Two sets of these little blocks to keep me occupied.  Everything had lots of sashings around and between it, and of such a width that something had to be done in them all. Hmmmmm......

This watering can was a lovely block.  Jeans applique was very well done.  The apples were cute too.

The village.  The trees were fun to do as they had perfect lines on the for criss-crossing and it made them look great.

More plaids to play with!

I was really pleased with the way this Wheelbarrow full of vegetables came up.

The birdhouse blocks looks really nice with the buttons on the flowers...just had to be extra careful going around them.  A lovely block...here's another view...

Did these lovely leaves around the sashing.  Was hunting for inspiration and found this tutorial on Pinterest.  The quilters name escapes me, but I will hunt it up and let you know.

At each bottom corner were these star blocks.  Went to a wonderful book by Eva Larkin called "Free Motion Quilting Made Easy" and put two shapes together plus one of my own to make a one start one stop design.  Loved it.
Along the bottom of the quilt was this great animal collection.

I did a feather in the border, but it is very hard to see with the colour on this plain.  You can see a little of it in some of the photos.  No photo of the back because it was patterned and you couldn't see anything.

So there you have it...the grand tour around Jean's beautiful quilt.

Thanks for stopping by and look forward to seeing you again.

Take care and blessings to you all.
Clare

A Gorgeous Scrap Quilt or two

Look at this, I'm back already and it's only been a couple of weeks.  Been quilting flat tack as I seem to have heaps of custom quilts waiting in the pile and they take time, time, time.

This is my dear friend Felicity's lovely wee sheep quilt with hand dyed hearts.  This quilt came up really well and was easy to quilt with an all over loops and star design.  That's Fliss (for short) holding her quilt up!!

 I used a King Tut 901 on the top and Bottom Line in the bobbin.  This variegation had all the same colours as Fliss's quilt so it looked really great.

Love this sheep fabric and used it in granddaughter Olivia's quilt.  It's such a fun fabric.

Then I finally quilted Fliss's wonderful scrap quilt that was like a walk down memory lane with some of her fabrics.  Fliss had been very patient waiting for me and allowing me to let others jump the queue ahead of her.  What fun it was to finally be able to quilt this for her and I just love the way it came up.  Be prepared for lots of pictures cause I love it!!  LOL.

I used So Fine 402 on the cream fabric and So Fine 454 on all the rest with Bottom Line in the bobbin.  It worked really well over all these scrappy colours.  The triangle applique blocks ended up with micro scribbling (from a Cindi Needham workshop) and took about 20 minutes each to do.  Phew!  Didn't actually intend to be so micro, but once I had started I couldn't stop! Feathers in the corners and pebbles in the four centre appliques.  My favourite is the chicken cause it looks like they are dancing on the cobblestones....hehehehe.
Border work very simple with loops at opposite directions looking like hearts or a big 'M' and stippling behind the almost circles.  In the star blocks I did line work and continuous curves around the outside and in the pinwheel blocks did something different in each one.  Thanks for being so patient Fliss.

So there you have it.  I have another one to show you soon but need to tootle off for now.  I hope you are all keeping well.  We are freezing here (for us) and the snow is very low!!!  I would imagine there will be some major frosty mornings coming up.

Take care and blessings to you all,

Clare