Quilting this little quilt

Made this little one completely out of my leftovers from another baby quilt.  It will be a donation quilt for the neonatal unit in one of our hospitals...not sure which one to send it to yet.  Hoping to get another couple done before I send it off,  It's good to be able to finish something quickly.

Managed to get some practice with my ruler foot on my domestic machine.  Quite different action compared to my long arm machine I had to let go.  Enjoying learning though, and the Janome 9450QCP is such a lovely machine to quilt with.

We had to have the approval of the quilt controller, of course.  Travis takes this position very seriously.

I do love they different textures and patterns you get on the back of quilts with the different types of designs.

Very satisfying to add to the finished list.


















Thank for popping in.  I have kept this post short as still recovering from catching dear husband's bugs.  A chest infection takes a bit of working through for me, but getting there now.  Plodding through quilting one of the other baby quilts I finished last post.

Take care everyone.  Hugs and blessings to you all.

Clare

Let the Sunflowers shine...

Way back in September 2011, I visited my online quilting friend in small town Kansas - Parsons to be exact.  It was a very special time for me and I so enjoyed meeting Barbara and her daughter Jackie.  Because of Parsons geographical position, it was easy to visit four states within a couple of hours - it sits near the crossroads of Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas.  Such fun!
While I was there, Barbara asked me to give a talk to her local guild, then it became a few of the little outlying guilds until we ended up with 70 plus people.  It was a lovely evening of showing off our fabulous New Zealand with an awesome DVD of Central Hawkes Bay and other lovely stuff.  At the end of the evening, the President was thanking me and out came this positively massive bag of fabric!!  Unbeknownst to me, the entry fee was a fat quarter of fabric.  Oh my, I got all sorts of amazing fabric gifted to me and some pieces were way more generous.  Most of it had to be posted home as we couldn't fit it all in my bag!!

The reason I have told you this big long story is that I had  around 17 different sunflower fabrics in this amazing collection that I had not really touched in the last 8 years.  However, my (step) daughter was going to turn 50 last month, and I had asked her a year or three before if she would like a quilt.  As Shala is a very good sewist and has made a few quilts herself, I hadn't got around to asking.  The answer was an emphatic Yes!  Then it turned out that she loves sunflowers!  Oh yes again!!  Out came my stash and Shala chose basically all the fabric that had sunflowers on it.  Well Shala's 50th birthday was looming up and I decided about July that I would have a go at getting it ready as her birthday gift for when she came down on 29th September to celebrate with us.

Here you go with a couple of photos and I am smiling so much you wouldn't believe it.

This is one of the two large blocks in the quilt.  It's a beautiful piece  of fabric and the sunflowers just glow.
All the fabrics have come out of my stash, so this quilt managed to make a little bit a reduction, Yay,

 

 I was determined not to put any fabric back in  my stash, so used all the large pieces left to make up the back.  It actually came out really well,

Here is Shala with her quilt.  It was very windy so the quilt would not co operate with laying flat.  Never mind.  I actually managed to quilt it myself as well,  My awesome Tuesday girls pin basted it for me and I did an all over meander on it using a lovely So Fine mustard gold that blended beautifully with all the colours of the quilt.  Looked good as it didn't need anything fancy as the sunflowers were the stars, and then my fabulous Tuesday girls helped again with stitch down the back of the binding,

I can't tell you how amazing getting this quilt finished on time made me feel, as I do have a bit of a struggle with my health issues.  But God was so good to me and gave me the strength and tenacity to keep on and achieve something so filled with love for this very precious member of our family.

Now onto the next quilt...

Thank you for sharing my joy of this quilt and I'll look forward to showing you my next achievements.  I hope you are all having a great time with your quilting and your families.

Many hug and blessings to you all,

Clare

linking with Oh! Scrap here

It's officially finished!! lots of photos

I said to myself - I'm not posting again until Danielle's quilt is finished because you would all be sick of getting updates showing so little progress.  Well, it is done and dusted and as I type it is winging its way up to Danielle in Te Awamutu.  Our youngest son and his family are going up to visit his siblings up that way, so he is loaded down with the quilt and five beanies for delivery!!!

I'm sure most of you think I have fallen off the planet as I didn't realise it had been quite so long since I last posted.  Hmmm, been busy stitching and hanging on to my health.  But enough of that, I have a few photos to share and I hope you enjoy them.

The Beanie production line, lol.
I did have five of them, but the yellow one ended up being given to a dear friend and I am knitting another one for that dear DIL.

Love that my family like to wear them and that it is something else I can make when I'm not up to quilting.

The finished quilt for Danielle.  I am so very pleased with how it has come out.  My dear friend Catherine made a fantastic job of quilting it for me with an edge to edge pattern that let the colours speak for themselves.
It is sideways in the photos as it was too long to hold up length-ways and the grounds was still wet from the big frost we had this morning.

 I found this fantastic extra wide backing fabric at Counting Stitches in Hastings.,  It was the absolute perfect match for this quilt.

This shows a little more of the dark and light in the quilt and the flowers in my late winter garden.  The bees have been making the most of the wall flowers that seem to flower for ever and smell beautiful.

This is my incredible UFO finish.  I started this embroidery cloth when my eldest daughter was 10.  She received it at the beginning of June and Janeen is now 47 years old!!!!  only too 37 years to complete.  The  most embarrassing thing is it only needed a few inches of the crochet edging to be finished for most of the last 10 years or so.  Hehehe

Oh well, a finish is a finish and that is one less thing in the UFO cupboard.  Yay

 My mystery blocks up until May.  Had been enjoying them but had some troubles with June/July blocks and not sure what is causing it.  These blocks come pre-cut and I think there may be some small discrepancies in cutting.  Not ruling out operator error though. Lol

A small baby quilt to be sent to the preemie babies unit.  I used some left over strips from another quilt I had made and added a top and bottom border to make it to size.  Totally from my stash - yippee.  Halfway through the quilting of it and hope to finish off over the weekend,

Finally, a parade of elephants from the Tuesday Girls.  These animals are so beautiful I am almost tempted to start one,  But  I have not finished enough UFO's yet and need a project like this like I need another whole in my head.  Hehehe.


One day, as most of us quilters say about those projects on our wish lists.




I hope you have enjoyed your catch up.  I am currently working mostly on a sunflower quilt for our eldest daughter.  Not sure how long that's going to take but here's hoping not as long as Danielle's seemed to take.



Our weather is supposed to be quite horrible over the weekend and it has already become quite cold.  Big snow falls down in the South Island and we do have snow up on our ranges.  This is why we have had two boomer frosts.  Rain however is forecast and we actually have not had very much rain at all and it would be most welcome.  It is also an excellent reason for being in your quilting room!!

Bye for now and take care.  May you feel blessed in you have and do.

Clare
I'm linking to Cynthia at Oh! Scrap
and Sarah at Confessions of a Scrap Addict.  Click here to visit Sarah.  It's worth the visit.

Scrapping away still

I'm not going to talk about the fact that it's already well into March. Much better to talk about fabric and projects and everything else except how fast time flies. That's what you get when you look in the mirror I told  myself.  Just don't look and you wont have to think about it.  LOL.
In my attempt to reduce my stash,  I may have been a little successful since I spoke with you last, because at least I haven't bought any new fabric!!  Progress has been made on a number of projects, and I even dug out some (very) old UFO's and did a little on them.  I had to pinch myself a little at this point.  Hahaha.

The photo to the right shows that I have now laid out the fourth section of Danielle's quilt ready to be sewn up.
Section three has two blocks up on the design wall and the other two have be stitch into rows and just need making into the 2 remaining blocks.
That will just leave the fifth and final section to be done.  Woohoo as they say, sounds like it's almost getting there.  Must not speak too soon just in case.  LOL.















I'm trying to do some each day, but it can be a bit of a struggle some days.  All in good time.  The next three photos are of some eye candy from the Tuesday Girls who have been very busy of late.

This is Lorrie's lovely Christmas Redwork wall hanging.  It is really pretty.

Lorraine is doing a Boston Commons using hexagons.  These are quite large hexagons for Lorraine.  Often she is working with little tiny things that can barely be held in one's hand.  Mad, I think, LOL.  It's certainly going to be a beautiful quilt.  The fabrics are all French General scraps that Lorraine was gifted.

Not sure if I have already mentioned this quilt before but this is Lynn's Pies and Tarts quilt that looks fabulous.  It was interesting choosing the correct binding colour and I found a delicious rusty red in my stash that was perfect.

I have gifted my pile of completed pies and tarts and the cut out pieces and fabric etc to a quilter who needed it a lot more than I did.  I had to take a look at how important this quilt was to me in relation to my health issues and decided I did not want to continue with it.  Feeling really happy with that decision, and it has allowed me to continue on with other projects that need to be finished.

This is the first two blocks in the mystery quilt I am doing with Quilters Lane in Masterton.  I chose the Dear Stella colour way as a change for me and just love it so far.  The bestest thing though is it comes already cut.  I just have to sit and stitch it up together.  But guess what... I still only just got them done before the next blocks arrived. What.... that's just sad,  hahaha. Mind you, I had to pull out a few rusty old drawers in the filing cabinet of my brain to remember how to get these stitched up properly.  (whispering - I had to unpick a LOT...lol)  To change the subject....

This little quilt appeared in post here a while back and a couple of friends had suggested I make it bigger.  I'm never too sure what to do with little quilts, and the fabrics were not suitable to donate it as a baby quilt.  So I have added on a small frame and another floral border so far.  Have another floral border but with different flowers cut from the same striped fabric so will put in another lighter frame and put that one on too I think.  Then I will have to decide what to do with it from there as it will probably end up neither one thing or the other.  Might have to ask if anyone would like it and send it off somewhere to live happily ever after!!









So that's about it here for now,  thanks a heap for popping in and reading about my crazy life.  My health has been great the past two to three weeks and New Zealand has been sitting under this ginormous high and the air pressure has been so good for me. Now it's back to reality as this dratted little low came by and moved it out the road.  Okay, I know we all needed the rain, but gosh it was fun while it lasted.  Ignoring the fact that winter is definitely coming with the cooler autumn nights and mornings we are now having and realising the other side of the world is very happy about that.  Oh well.  See you again soon.

Hugs and blessings
Clare

I have linked to Confessions of a Scrap Quilter here enjoy your visit.
Also linked to Oh! Scrap here for even more scrappy goodness.

The end of 2018

Thought I had better try and catch up with you all before the year is gone.  November/December have been hard months for me health wise and I got back home for Christmas on Christmas Eve Day.  Yay, thank you Lord.  Spent Christmas with some of our family.  Photos coming.
Might not be a lot more posts in 2019, we will see what progress I can make.  However, there is still a strong urge to kill that stash, so I'm hoping to do a little more stitching yet.  Hoping to infect (lol) one of my granddaughters with the bug as much interest is being shown.
Have started to assemble Danielle's quilt at last and did get three blocks worth together before crashing.  Today is when I'm feeling like stitching again, yippee.... so onwards and upwards people.
Now for some photos to finish the year off.

The two blocks

Danielle's blocks - one has fallen down and all the stuff has been plonked in front of my design wall.  Sorry, but you get a vague idea.
Colours are looking great.

This is Meg from our Tuesday Group who does the most amazing handwork.  Sorry about the light behind the quilt.  Meg has also done numerous hexagon quilts of all types.

This is our family at home between Christmas and New Year.  My daughter Rebecca is standing in front of her 6' 5" son Bradley along with her three beautiful daughters.  My eldest son Daryll is sitting beside me and my sister Joy has my grandson Hamish on her knee.  Love this photo except by beautiful daughter in law Dayn is taking the photo.

 On the way home Rebecca met up with her youngest brother Richard, wife Kea and daughter Marcy in Napier.  Glad they had a chance to catch up as they live in opposite ends of the country.

Suzy's quilt got finished before Christmas.  She was so completely blown away that it was hers to take away and have. I must acknowledge with such grateful thanks my helper Lynn Murphy for making and stitching on the binding for me.

Forgot to take a close up of the quilting which was a beautiful big daisy pattern.  Long arm quilter was Gael Byrne from the Quilting Shed in Hastings.  Made an awesome job and loved the way she put the red thread front and back.  It gave a fabulous two sided effect, and I jolly well forgot to take a photo!!!!

This is one of my favourite finishes for 2018.  This quilt was totally made from scraps and stash - oops, I forgot - I bought the green sashing as lack of large pieces of stash. It was quilted by my friend Lorraine Baker of Masterton who is now an accomplished long arm quilter.  The centre blocks are made from leftover bits of WOF  that I couldn't quite bear to throw away as was about an inch and a half wide.  LOL.  What a funny little lady I am, and loving it!!!












That's all folks for this year of 2018.  One of so many ups and downs for me I can truly say.  For once I am very surprised at how many quilts I managed to finish and give away to family and friends.  My stash (old) did reduce by quite a substantial amount, but alas and alack, I fear the new fabric section may have grown a little,.  Hehehehe.  It just means I will need to try and make even more quilts in 2019.
God has blessed our family constantly and I can say with all my heart that He  answers those prayers we ask of Him.  Sometimes it is in His way and time, other times we get what we asked for.  He is always good and God is love.  May your 2019 be full to the brim of love and laughter.  Love will always overcome dark.
Thank you for coming to visit my blog and I hope to see you again next year.

Hugs and blessings
Clare
I'm linking up with Oh Scrap here take a look and enjoy some eye candy.

Almost there...

I am taking a short break from trimming the very last of the HSTs for Danielle's quilt.  Soooo pleased to have finally reached this point and that assembly can now begin.
I was a little delayed as I stitched up this quilt for someone we know who lost their house in a fire.  Kerry dropped it off to the LA quilter this morning.  A little big for me to handle these days.

It was made using two roll ups of Kaffe Fassett fabrics that I had in my stash - bought the 2nd one by accident, and is lovely and sunny and bright.  I will show you again when it comes back from being quilted, but very happy with it.  Nice and quick to make and the pattern is from a Layer Cake tutorial from The Missouri Star Quilt Company.












Our Tuesday girls had a couple of beautiful finishes too.  Here is Lois with her fabulous Cat in the Garden quilt she has made for one of her granddaughters.  Awesome job Lois.

The colour choices are gorgeous and don't those cats looks fabulous.  Well done Lois.  Quilted it herself too, such a champion.


















Lynn was our other star yesterday.

Lynn does beautiful handwork and this table runner is so lovely.  The colours are really nice and the ric rac around the edges makes for an awesome finish.  Clever lady.



















That's it for now folks.  Off to trim up those last few triangles.  Hopefully the next picture will be of the progress of assembling this quilt.

I'm linking up with Confessions of a Scrap Quilter here for Can I get A Whoop Whoop! Yay, go visit the eye candy.

Hugs and blessings to you all.
Clare

Finished Sajou Mini quilt

I have finished my first sewalong with Lori from Humble Quilts.  Here is a link for you to visit - Humble Quilts and I'm sure you will enjoy a visit to her blog.  Two of my friends have said I should make this bigger, but then it turns into a WIP and I'm not sure I want that.  Much nice to say it is finished.  Hoping to quilt it over the weekend to be properly finished of course.  What do you think?

Best of all, it has all come from my stash.  Making some inroads here (she says positively).  LOL.  Have a great weekend everybody.

Hugs and blessings
Clare

I'm linking to Humble Quilts Here  as well.

Progress has been made...lots of photos

My friend Lorraine said "your blog's been a bit quiet lately."  Oh dear, she is right, I have been so busy concentrating on getting stuff done, that the energy required for posting has not been there.

On top of all that I keep forgetting to take photos of finished quilts!!!  Hate that.  Here are a few photos of what I have been up to lately.

These first three are from the Master Guild quilt shown held in Carterton last month.

This is the guest exhibitor - none other than said Lorraine Baker who commented on my lack of posting!  Revenge is sweet!   LOL

All joking aside, Lorraine's quilts are stunning and her hand quilting has won at international level.

This is one of a display from a class the guild had taken.  Very beautiful hydrangeas.  Amazing work.

I am onto the very last size of HST's required for this quilt.  Seems to have been a long time in the making, but good things come to those who wait.  So they say anyway.

In the meantime, because I had nothing to do (yeah right)  I decided to participate in the little quilt a long at Humble Quilts.  It is a mini quilt and I haven't really done any of these before.  The best thing was everything I have used is from my stash.

 This was my Mystery Quilt that I made from the quilt along run at From My Carolina Home.  Enjoyed it immensely and the quilt is now finished and is being gifted to a friend who is going through cancer treatment.  It has been signed by lots of people at our church and he will received it shortly.  Again forgot photo, but hope to get one of the finished quilt when given to him.

This is Noah's quilt.  He has become the big brother to two twin brothers.  I made the twins quilts so figured Noah should not miss out on the fun.

This quilt has also been gifted and no photo taken.  Hmm.  This came out so pretty.

This was one of my favourite quilts from the Master Guild show.  Just loved it.

In the making for lady who has had her house burnt down.  Beautiful Kaffe Fassett fabrics that generate warmth.
Loving making this very simple pattern.

The baby quilts for the twins.  One has boats and the other has fishes.  One has Seahorses, the other has Starfish.  The same but different, just like them.

















That's it for now, hope you enjoyed these photos.  Talk to you again sometime????

Big hugs and blessings
Clare
I'm linking to Oh! Scrap here  Check it out for awesome scrap quilts.

Progress for 6and6in2018 and all that...

has happened in the last six weeks has halted some progress, but I'm quite pleased at what I did manage to achieve.  After the medical hassles mentioned last I managed to get a bladder infection and then react afterwards to the antibiotics.  Ho hum, it goes like that sometimes.  Now it's onward and upwards I reckon.

So I have managed to make some progress on Danielle's quilt which only needs the 5.5 inch and 3.5 inch HST's made.  Unfortunately, because I have changed the initial direction for the fabrics in this quilt I felt there was not enough variety to cut the last of these out.  It meant a trip to the LQS (sad), but it also meant I needed to go to the furthermost away one to get a good selection of batiks.  Oh well, my sister was here to stay for the week, so we had a wonderful day out.

There are lots of photos in this post to make up for lost time.  I hope you enjoy them.

 It hasn't grown much, but I did put the pale blue border on, and now have some idea of what I am going to do next in regards to colour.

This one is not long back from my friend Lorraine who is learning to do custom quilting, and doing a fabulous job.  I shall show you a better photo once it is all bound.  Very happy with how this quilt has come out and it all started with some tiny ends from some WOF's left over from my shop.  LOL.

A sneak peek also at the mystery quilt I did through My Carolina Home's quilt along and it was called Square Dance.  I will have two finished quilts to show you in the next blog.  Wow.

Aren't they beautiful. it was so hard to choose.  Hopefully I will get back to cutting these out next week.

This is the reason I haven't finished my HST's.  Been working on these three little quilts for a few weeks now.  A friend of my DIL gave us a lovely electric lazy boy chair that was almost new.  As she was expecting twin boys, I decided to make baby quilts plus one for the older sibling Noah who is 3 years old.
This one is all finished.

 This one has the binding sewn down on the front and tomorrow I will get it stitched down to the back.  I got these two quilts out of a 5 inch wide roll up plus some extras from stash.  Managed to make two different looking quilts even though the style and colours are very much the same.

This is Noah's one and it is slightly bigger, as it should be for the twins big brother.  This was a little collection that I had in my stash for some time and I added a few strips from another roll up.  Had to do some interesting piecing to get enough picture blocks...lol.

And to finish off these are the beautiful flowers my daughter and her family in Perth, Australia sent me for my birthday last week.  They have lasted extremely well and were certainly very beautiful.





As per usual, I shall try not to be so long in coming back, but for a few weeks there, I had nothing to report to you.

I hope your weather is good wherever you are.  We have had heaps of rain these past few days, which is most unusual for us and quite welcome really.  It will give our farmers a good start to spring and summer.
The garden is just starting to burst into life with my beautiful deep yellow freesias almost outdoing themselves in the gloomy weather.  I shall have some pictures for the next post.  Take care of yourselves and have a fabulous day.

Hugs and blessings
Clare

p.s.  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,