The New Decade has begun...

with very little being done by me.  Oh dear, I shall be hoping to get a lot better so there can be some progress made soon.
Had a  most fabulous visit to Wellington for the 5th birthday of Marceline Moore.  A schoolgirl now, oh my!  Where has this last five years gone I wonder, with so many major changes.  We managed to navigate the 29 steps up to Richard & Kea's house, twice I might add, lol, but it was maybe a bit much.  Should have used the brain and had a bigger rest gap between trips, but I was too keen to be out and about with the birthday girl.  All is good and on the way back now just a bit more slowly than thought,  and so no stitching is going on.  Darn.! Am working on a solution with a friend who is going to give me a bit of a hand with the bigger, heavier stuff.  Yay.
Not much in the way of photos either folks, sorry about that, but haven't actually been anywhere to take them.  I have done a little bit of cross stitch on a wee sampler I'm doing and enjoying too.  Haven't cross stitched for years.

Thought I would join in the RSC at so scrappy with the first colour being my favourite - green. Now there are only five days of the month to go... not a good start at all, but really keen to move out some of these scrap fabrics.

This is from springtime and now it's all dried up and looking a little sad for itself in the heat.  We have a week of temperatures of around 32 C at the moment.  Too hot for me and my garden, so on goes the air conditioning.









Hoping to make a start with my friend helping on getting the sashing triangles stitched onto the mystery hexagon quilt that I did last year.  Then I will put a small frame and final border onto it.  Looking forward to it getting finished at last as was hoping it would have happened last year, but sometimes things don't work out to plan do they?

The colours are certainly quite beautiful and very different for me to work with.  I have the recipient of this quilt all worked out and it is going to be a surprise.  Love that.


Well, I don't have a lot more to add today, but wanted to let you know what was happening in my world.  I may even get a beanie started this week as the urge is beginning to grow - a lovely friend gave me some gorgeous autumnal coloured wool, so that made the fingers itch a little bit.




Thanks for popping in and I shall try to have some more exciting news for you next time,.  Take care and keep on stitching,
God bless and big hugs,

Clare

I'm linking with Cynthia of Oh! Scrap here lots of lovely eye candy

Scrapping thru to the next Decade....lots of photos

Well golly gosh, here we are once more at the end of another year, and this time it will also be the beginning of another decade.  The mere thought of the year 2000 used to be such a far fetched fantasy, and yet now we are at the end of twenty years of this new millennium.  Many things have happened, most of them lovely, a few bad, but life goes on, and God is always Good.

Here are a few last photos of various things and I have included some of my favourite quilts over the past decade.  I hope you enjoy this little treat of photos.

 If all else fails, knit a beanie.  I have lost count of the number of hats I have made for my family and I do love making them.  Hunting out some of the yummy hand dyed wool is half the fun.  Thankfully they are still enjoyed by everyone.  Keeps me out of mischief.

 This year I decided not to hang up all the usual Christmas decorations and the tree as I didn't have enough energy for it.  Instead I asked Kerry for a "stick" or two on the wall in our lounge for me to hang a few things on.  This is what we ended up with and we have just loved it.  Along the top are our Remembrance Christmas bells for those who are no longer with us, and then on the bottom row I chose some of my favourite ornaments to hang.  It has been nice to be able to see them all at once, whereas on a tree you can only look at a part of the tree!  Plus the bonus is the cats have ignored them!!!

 What a tremendous achievement this was to get Danielle's quilt finished.  I had started this while not well, so had to do some remaking, grrr, but it was worth it in the end to get a good finish.

This finish is my best of the Decade actually.  I started to embroider this tray cloth when my eldest daughter was in her 10th year - 1982 to be precise.  LOL.  Needing only a small amount of crochet around the edges, the cloth languished in a chocolate box and was carted around the country as we moved!  The year 2019 was it's crowning glory of becoming a finished object of admiration.  It is now in Perth, Australia and said daughter Janeen loves it.  That saying,....you know...." all good things come to those who wait...."   Hehehe.

Hayley also finally received her finished quilt from Nana.  These were a precious collection of fat quarters from a shop no longer in existence.  They are really lovely together, and Hayley loves her quilt - thanks Hayley I hope you feel the hugs from Granddad and I when you snuggle under it.

 On our way to the supermarket yesterday, we spotted this tree with the new pine cones out.  They are the most loveliest shade of green before they dry out.  Quite unusual to see these days in town.

I am really enjoying making the smaller baby quilts for our great grandchildren and other babies we meet along the way.  Love using up scraps of pretty fabrics like this one for Nathalie.  We were testing an embroidery machine in our wee shop so did a butterfly centre for it.  It's actually now quilted and will have the binding stitched on over the next week or so.  Also ready to baste Nathalie's new brother's quilt so they can both get them together.

 Love this photo of some of our children and grandchildren, along with my sister, from Christmas 2018.  Feel so blessed to have made it to Christmas 2019 and in such good shape, thank you Lord.

My dear sister Joy comes and visits me once a month and we do stitching together.  We have a great time and it has brought us closer together since my ill health.  We are supposed to be working on some quilt blocks each month, but we have had a little detour, lol.  It will all come right in the end.

This quilt has now entered into the status of a WIP - work in progress.  It has morphed from a pile of half yards into blocks and rows, hahaha.  This is for Kea and I have had this fabric in the cupboard for a few years now.  Nice easy pattern, so will not take long once I get my energy back.  Looking forward to it now.

 This is Suzy's quilt - a friend who lost everything in a house fire.  It was made using Kaffe Fassett fabrics and a most simple pattern.  The colours just resonate with sunshine and warmth.

 This wee lap quilt goes back about 10-12 years I think when it became a finished centre.  Then I decided to get it finished and found this lovely border fabric at our little local shop.  Was perfect, and had just enough of the teal blue for the frame in my stash...love that,  Gave it to  my friend to practice her long arm quilting on and yay, it is now a finished quilt.  That didn't take long did it?

Richard and Kea's new(ish) quilt
It was started quite some years ago then put away for a rest. Oh and one of the loveliest things was the way the whole family worked on it . Mum, Dad, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

 Shala's sunflower quilt.  Oh I love this quilt so much.  It was fun to make and brings nothing but sunshine thoughts to your mind when you look at it.  It is full of awesome memories of my trip to America and meeting my friend Barbara and her quilting buddies as well as Jackie her daughter.  I had a better photo but cant find it.  Here is a link to the post with the good photos sunflower photo

A new photo of Travis among my Christmas gift plants.  He thought he was missing out on something,  LOL.  Just as spoilt as ever of course

His big brother who is such a roamer.  He goes to visit a lady (human) down the road and sometimes we don't see him again until night time when he demands more food.  Typical cat.





















Well I hope you didn't find this all too much.  Thanks a heap if you hung in there and have read all the way down to here.  I pray you have an awesome New Year and that you are blessed in ways you have never imagined before.  Remember God is always Good and He can see the bigger picture.  I keep forgetting that, lol.

Hugs Clare
I'm linking to Cynthia at Oh!Scrap  here

Christmas outing ...

Our Tuesdays girls had our yearly Christmas outing today.  This time we headed west and went to Palmerston North, which is about 1 hour 40 mins from here.  It's a bit longer these days because the gorge that you used to drive through has been closed for the last 18 months or so due to major slips.  The cost of repairing it was too major and a new road is going to be developed.  Unfortunately, it's going to take about another 6 years before that is completed!!  We are way down on the list of priorities. This is the only access road from east to west within reasonable distance.  In the meantime you have two options - the Saddle Road - steep, windy and hard work for the big trucks and is the most used one I think from north east traffic, and the windy, semi flatter one that goes from south east.  We went over one way and back the other so did a complete circle, lol. That way we could manage to fit in at least two quilt shops.

On the quilting front, I have been plodding only, as still getting my speed back up from the chest infection - had to do another round of antibiotics, but never mind.  I have finished quilting one of the baby quilts I made and bought some binding today to do the final installment.  I had a lovely wee spend up this time - it is only once a year ladies!  The excuse of Christmas that is, hehehe.

Most of these pieces I have in mind for small borders and binding on baby quilts.  The charm pack will make a really lovely little baby quilt and I bought a lovely yellow/gold matching fabric to border and bind this one with.  Sorry the photo is not very good but never mind.  The dark fabrics along the top are Fq's for my eldest grandson's new "big person"  quilt as his quilt was made when he was about 4 years old, lol.
The aqua/green FQ is for a skirt I am making for a granddaughter.  Gosh, I had better get busy.

Catch you later everyone.  Hope you are not finding the Christmas rush too overwhelming.  Thanks for stopping by.

God bless,
Clare
I'm linking to Oh!Scrap here have a look at the gorgeous scrap quilt ideas.

Plodding away

At getting things finished, but then that is nothing new.  I think it is everyday life for a quilter, don't you?  Mind you, we do all work at different speeds, and some of us are (hopefully) like me, stuck in low gear.  Hehehe.
The progress on Danielle's quilt is good.  I have sewn all the rows now and merely need to stitch last five rows into the final section.  Stitch all the sections together and we are up to the frame and border.  It sounds (and feels) so good to be able to talk about the border as if it is becoming close to a finished quilt top.  Yay  I have to say that I like this quilt more as each section goes on.  The busyness of the smaller HST's would be quite overwhelming in a large quilt for me, but it may be because of the darker colours I am using.

This is the hat I was talking about in my last post.  It came through my error ridden blocking process with no problems.

Richard loves it as he is very kind to his Mum.





















Keeping it brief today.  Off to try and cook some dinner for us.  That will be interesting.  lol

Hugs and blessings to you all.
Clare

Scrappy Week

I have been tootling away at some more scrappy hearts and hope to have about 20 to send away on Monday.  The response has been overwhelming.  Thanks everyone.
I finished another hat this week.  This one was for my friend Helen, and it was a lovely pattern called Irma by Aneta Gasiorowka, whose Ravelry username is agasi.  It took a little bit of brain work for me to get the hang of it and I was actually amazed that I managed it.  I've never unpicked so much before without chucking it in the corner and leaving it there forever.  However, instead of said throwing out the toys from the cot, I did persevere and it is well worth it.  I even washed and blocked it, something I have never done before.  It was interesting...I watched a clip on YouTube and the knitter suggested using a partly inflated balloon to put the hat on to dry.  What a brilliant idea I thought, and after much scrounging Kerry and I managed to find a balloon that was not perished.  Of course Kerry had to blow it up, as I don't have any puff these days (darn). Next problem - neither of us could tie the blooming thing!!!  So we tied it tightly with a bit of fabric strip.  Later that evening said green balloon had become deflated instead of inflated.  "Nec minute" we found a vase that was shaped like a head.  Popped hat on and went to bed.  Oh dear, the ribbing had ended up on the widest part of the vase and was awfully stretched...  Back to the basin to soak and this time, I laid it flat.  After all this I forgot to take a picture.  This photo is of the one I did just before that for GD Marcy.
Thank you Aneta for such a lovely pattern.

Now my photos don't want to behave and load on my computer so I'm afraid this is all you can have today.  I am working on finishing my next two hexagon blocks in my mystery quilt and need to get a move on before April's arrive.  Trying hard to keep up with this one.  More importantly, need to get the next section done on Danielle's quilt.
Here's a couple of older quilts just because...enjoy.

The quilt above is one of the  very early quilts when I began doing long arm custom quilting and free motion.


The second one is the quilt I made for my granddaughter Olivia.  It was such a happy animal quilt.








Hope life is going well for you all and that you are enjoying some family time over the weekend.
Hugs and blessings to you all

Clare

I'm Linking up to Cynthia's Oh Scrap here and hope you enjoy your visit.

A Winter rose...

What a lovely surprise to have Kerry bring in this lovely wee collection of flowers from my 25yr "Clair Matin"  rose.  It's the middle of winter and we have had some boomer frosts this past week.  Has been a real gift for me as I am just back from a weeks stay in hospital.

 Just a cold that decided to take a left turn instead of the exit!  All good now and the last 4 days were in our little local medical ward.  It's like being treated in the warmth of your own home, and the nurses and carers are so loving and helpful

We are so thankful to have this wonderful facility in our small town.
Today has been the most amazing winter's day - bright blue sky with not a cloud in sight all day.  Beautifully warm if you are tucked away from the winter breeze but suddenly very cold if you enter the shade.  It's one of those lovely things about winter.  Sort of giving us a reminder of the the lovely warms days of spring and summer to come and that our patch is just having a wee rest.  Hmmm, getting a bit poetic here!!  LOL.









On the patchwork front, it's all a bit of a shambles but there has been some progress of sorts...

This is my new BOM called Golden Days.  I have only just started by first block and block four just arrived yesterday, so the plan has gone to the pot quite quickly.  Oh well, it's not a race is it?  I do love the wonderful fabrics that come with this quilt.  Nice to have some new, modern fabric to play with. There are only 5 applique blocks and the rest are pieced - some with quite a challenge.

This has my knitting (son's next beanie), my challenge piece that might miss the deadline now and the next pile of HST's for Danielle's quilt.

The mystery has been revealed and I'm quite pleased with it.  Now need to choose a frame and border and then I'm going to donate it to a chap at church who is going through a cancer journey.


















So that is where I'm at right now.  Looking forward to seeing our granddaughter Marcy during these holidays coming up this month.
I trust you are all well and look forward to seeing you again soon.  Thank you for popping in.

Hugs and blessings
Clare

I'm linking to Oh Scrap here  and 18 in 2018 at What A Hoot here You will enjoy a visit to both these blogs,

Little Plant heads

Today I'm shamelessly promoting my DIL's YouTube channel and it does use scraps! LOL
Just slightly different scraps to our fabric ones.

A quick update on my scraps - the new direction I have taken on Danielle's quilt is progressing well.  Having such a lot of triangles already cut out has made a big difference.  Almost finished all the small sizes - 2"  and 25" and the larger ones will not take as long as there are fewer to make.  Now onto my DIL's scrap use.

I just love this series of videos my lovely DIL Kea has made, along with lots of help from Marcy her 3 yr old daughter.  They are made for the enjoyment of other little ones, and it would be great if any of you would like to subscribe to Kea's channel so that she can get her film name of Ficus and Cat on her link.  Need to have a 100 subscribers I believe.  It will be enjoyable I know.  )-:

Hugs,
Clare

I'm linking to Cynthia's at Oh Scrap here

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

Scrap sorting...

Got a bee in my bonnet about sorting out the two baskets of scraps that were hiding under the tea trolley in the classroom.  Spent about 4 days using my Accu Quilt to cut them up into various squares.  Love this tool.  Makes life so easy for me.

I did start to balk at the 1.5 inch squares as I dont have a die for them.  Might be a Mothers Day request.  Think I'll sew them into strips and then cut a block out.  Sounds so much easier.

Made this beanie for son Richard, who has put in an order for at least a buffer of 10 before I decide to leave this world!!  Nice I thought, to be appreciated.

Love, love love the sunflowers in our back garden.  Seeds came from our daughter Shala.

Made this wee quilt as a donation quilt from a couple of charm packs I had collected.  Managed to find a gorgeous orange FQ in my stash for the border.  Nice blue to bind with.

Off on holiday on Wednesday and staying in Wellington with Richard, Kea and Marcy.  Made this wee zippered bag for Miss Marcy to carry some of her treasures around in.

And to finish, once again we are playing host parents to a zillion caterpillars and subsequent chrysalii and butterflies.  It is so exciting to get them right through.  The population is in decline and not sure why.
Will catch up again when back from our first holiday since 2012.  Wow it's going to be so interesting.

Hugs and thanks for reading.
Clare

I'm linking to Oh Scraps and the link is on  my sidebar.  Do check out what other wonderful scrap quilts are being made.

Grandies, a Birthday, and my Garden - lots of photos

These three have all featured greatly in the past few weeks.  Last weekend we traveled up to Te Awamutu - a  journey of five hours which takes us all day basically by the time we stop for lunch and anything else that takes our fancy.  On top of this is making sure I have enough oxygen to last while away from the plugged in machine takes some doing. Our granddaughter Jessica turns 21 on November 15th and we arranged with her to have a quiet family dinner with her instead of attending the party Jessica was arranging with her young friends.  We had a lovely time and caught up with three of our kids and 8 of our grand-kids.  Awesome!

Said granddaughter loves playing around with fun photos as you can see.  Lol.

We ended up with a good sized crowd by the time we added boyfriend and a girlfriend into the mix.  Nice.

A c ouple of slighly more normal photos.  My eldest son's partner Dayn and I had a lovely catch up.

Friday morning we went to Patarangi School to attend Grandparents Day.  We were entertained (between rain showers) by each class room, then off we went to our own grandchild's class room where we were served morning tea.  It was a lovely time.  My granddaughter Hayley is 4th from the left.

Two of my younger grandies....Olivia and her brother Albert.  Such gorgeous kids and cheeky too.  Great to be able to catch up with them again.  Granddad's ear muffs were great fun.

Just so you can see I have been doing a little patchwork.  Have made a start on quilting this one, and have half the blocks done with the string quilt for grandson.






Wouldn't be right without a cat photo.  Travis was just hanging around trying to rest and would I please leave him alone?

My loo had a trip out to the front lawn on Wednesday while the vinyl layer came.  Yippee great progress as we now have the wet floor in and the whole floor finished.  Shower is ready to be hitched up to water.  Only problem was the wet wall did not show up on time.  After a little detective work at the store, found it had not actually been ordered until the day before.  Lots of scrambling around and hopefully it will arrive today.
This is the last big push on the renovation and my dear husband will be so happy to get finished.  We have a little bit of painting to finish but everything else is done!!!  Wow, he has done an amazing job.

My two new irises have flowered and are so beautiful.  May not get a flower of the 3rd one this season so will have to wait for that.

Phew!! That's the end of this catch up.  Thank you for dropping by.

Blessings to you all,

Clare