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

Next quilt on the list please....

I'm trying to keep this roll going after the Sunflower quilt.  I managed to put two baby quilts together for Shala's newest grandchildren and enjoyed making something that was small and simple. The little pink quilt has an embroidered centre that I did while re-familiarising myself with the Janome MC500e Embroidery machine.  It was totally from my stash.  The boy's quilt is a little range of fabric I fell in love with in a quilt shop after Lucas was born.  Couldn't resist of course.

Now I have Kea's Star Wars quilt up on my design wall.  I'm using an incredibly simple pattern that was loaned to me called Bricks & Mortar by Red Mumma.  Its perfect for this collection of fabrics that I bought a few years ago.  Kea loves Star Wars if you haven't already guessed LOL.

Then I have a few photos of our spring garden.  Loving seeing all the bearded Irises and Granny Bonnets coming out.  Cant believe how tall my Granny Bonnets are - I'm assuming that's what everyone calls them - real name Aquilegia ?  I see from a quick peek on Mr Google that they are also known as Columbines.  Whatever you call them, I love them and some of mine are almost a metre (39 inches) tall this year.

That's all the talk this time and thanks for visiting me.

So there you have it.  A reasonably short blog for me I have to say.  I hope you manage to get in a lot more sewing in the weeks ahead with the Christmas rush already gaining steam.  It's the one thing I intensely dislike about Christmas - Jesus is the reason as they say.  But the commercialism of this season has become almost deafening (excuse my oxymoron).  The pressure that is put on families that are already struggling is huge when the main message is one of love.  I hope you manage to have a stress-free up to this celebration of all that is good and loving.

Well I did manage to chat on a bit more - it's a bit of a habit of mine lol.  I think I find it difficult to get off my soapbox which seems to be permanently fixed to my feet!!!  I wonder if it's because I'm so short, hehehe.


Oh dear, this time lovely people, I'm definitely signing off.
May you all be greatly blessed and hugged lots.

Clare
I'm linking to Oh!Scrap here  lovely eye candy and scrap busting quilts.

Report for 6 and 6 in 2018 and 18 in 2018

So how has your month been?  I'm reasonable pleased with mine as I did achieve a few things.  We're also allowed to not perform quite as well in February because it's a bit sneaky in only having 28 days.  THREE whole days of stitching lost. Hmmm...
So here we go:

Happy, happy.  I have finished the second to last applique block of my quilt.  Already started on the LAST block.  Happy, happy, can you tell?

 The pies and tarts have doubled themselves, which is not great progress, but I have been concentrating on the applique.  This one is definitely going to be a slow project as it's very hard on my hands.  Still love it though, so although I had decided to abandon it, the girls have encouraged me to keep on going.  Glad they did.

The pile of nine patches has grown for my Mystery Quilt.  Such happy blocks to make and not too much brain work involved.  It's quite incredible that a simple bunch of squares like this can make so many wonderful patterns.

 I have finally made a block for Danielle's quilt.  Got a bit fed up with all the cutting and sorting, so decided to make a block.  I am pleased with how it looks, but it is a tricky wee block to make with all those triangles.  So important to get the size right too, so wondering whether to abandon the pattern and make something else up with the units I have. More pondering and  maybe I'll make a couple more blocks before I decide.

 My sister came up for the weekend and we had an awesome time stitching.  We have become very close since I got sick, and I love our time together.  We went out for coffee before Joy headed home.  The other good looking bloke is my dearly beloved Kerry.  Definitely a keeper as he has trained up quite well and looks after me extremely well in my illness.  I praise God daily for him.

All the kidlets and their tribes are doing well.  This year we have two grandies achieving their 5 years old milestones and will be gorgeous little school kids.


In between all this I managed to sew a swimming and book bag for my great granddaughter Tiana in Perth, Australia.  I did make it much harder than it should have been and you would laugh at the stupid things I did.  Was going to be simple - yeah right!



And to finished on a smiley note - don't you just love the way sunflowers make you smile.  These are growing out the back of our home and way above the fence (1.2 m) and much taller than yours truly with the camera.




I hope you have enjoyed my wee summary of February and hope yours has been good too.  Let's hope we get lots more sewn in March cause we have three more days in it, and Easter means no work and we get a very laid back start to April!  Oh dear it's going fast again isn't it.

I'm going to link to - Oh Scrap and this will take you there - here
To Pomegranate and Chintz'   6in2018-february
and Lynette at What a Hoot for 18 in 2018 here

Hugs and blessings and thank you so much for popping in.

Clare

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

Pretty in Pink Baby Quilt

Finally arrived back to say hi.  Have not been doing a lot of stuff, but did manage to make two baby quilts to give away.  Loved doing something small and pretty.  Used up scraps with both of them, although confess to having bought a couple of pink fat quarters for one, plus a pink binding fabric.  My stash does not contain a lot in the way of pink.  Anyway, forgot to take photos of the first one, so here are the photos of the second one.

Love the little pops of yellow.  The backing fabric I found in my stash too, so that was an extra bonus.  Gives two sides to this quilt.  Loved the wavy stitch on my new Janome 9400.  It looks great the way it stands out on the white squares and adds a little texture.

Now it's back to grandson's quilt as you go blocks.  I am now up to 17 done, 23 to go.  Jessica's is finished but not quilted...will give you pics when finished completely.

Short post as just get too tired these days.
Have a great week and will catch you again some time.  Thanks for coming back to see me.

Hugs and blessings

Clare

Linking to Cynthia Brunz @ Oh Scrap.  Link is on the side of this post.  Take a look, you will love her quilts.

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.