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.

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,

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

It's February already...

and I have been working hard on my tasks I set myself for January.  The grandsons quilt is now almost together and I will not show you another picture until is is finished for real.  Also managed to finish all the applique stitching on the wall hanging.  Now to choose the border fabrics....hmm.  Rummaging through my stash is always distracting and actually quite difficult until all the college sewing machines are out of our spare room!! (Don't ask) lol.

This is going to be a quick post with so little to show you. But how about this beauty.
Sunflowers just make you smile and this one is no exception.  There are two other flowers comming on as well.  Today's rain has made them grow instantly.  Such goodness in natural rain.

Catch you later.  Off to pamper the cats who both have wounds - one had to go to the vets because of an abscess (ouch to the wallet) and the other might be developing an abscess of his own.

Thanks for popping in,

Clare

Almost there...

I have been making a huge effort to get all the blocks finished with Bradley's string quilt...there are only 4 more to go. Just as well as my bin is getting very empty, especially with the longer strips for the middle.
It is just too hot to be outside at the moment, so apart from watering (every 2nd day, hand held hose only) I stay inside.  Means I can stitch for more hours than usual. Tomorrow I have to quilt a small top for my friend, so wont get them finished until Thursday.

Tyson was checking things out though.  You can see how dry our grass is.  No need to mow, except for the edges of the garden where we water.
The snapdragons (antirrhinums ) have really come on and are flowering beautifully.  They were tiny little self-seeded plants from my sister in laws.  All different colours too.






Thanks for popping in again.  See you again soon.

Hugs and blessings
Clare

Linking to Cynthia Brunz @  Oh Scrap   Take a look, you will love her quilts.