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.

Some Progress in 2019

Okay, January has already disappeared off my calendar and I didn't get to post.  I can see that this year is going to go even faster than the last, but I put some of that down to less time available for me to do "stuff" in. Health has leveled out a little and we are managing to get back to our sewing machine so that is the most important thing.
Here are some photos of what I have managed to accomplish so far...

 This is my block for January for the BOM running in the Kiwiquilters Facebook group.  It is a large block - around 22 inches.
Now to get onto February's block.  I'm trying to do it all from scraps in an effort to make a small dent in said pile.

In an effort to keep control of those wonderful bits of fabric called scraps I have got hold of this four tiered basket trolley.  The goal is to have all the colours in their own little spot so no need to rummage through endless bags and drawers to find them.  Let's see how well that works??

You may remember this - Danielle's quilt from Amanda Jean Nybergs book.  Have got two blocks assembled in the next size with the remaining four all sorted ready to be stitched,  Hoping this will be finished this week, then it will be onto the third size.  There's five in all.

My production line, lol. 













That's it for now.  Thought maybe I would be better at this if I kept the posts nice and short and then could do them more frequently?  We'll see.

Oh, did I tell you that my first block arrived today for my new BOM from  Sheila at Quilters Lane in Masterton?  It's a mystery quilt and we could choose from 10 different fabrics.  I have chosen Dear Stella and am very excited.  Only done one other mystery quilt and I enjoyed it.  You can check out Sheila's shop here and see for yourself.  Well worth a visit.

I'll catch you all later and thanks heaps for stopping by. 
Hugs and blessings to you all.
Clare

I'm linking to Cynthia's here for some more 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

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,

6 old and 6 new in 2018 -Making progress in record heat!

Oh boy, our air conditioner has been working overtime in the last few days, and there appears to be no let up for the next week.  A few days ago it was is around 42C,  (107F I believe), and that is just too hot for comfort.

Here is my report for the 6 old dand 6 new in 2018, plus I have joined the 18 in 2018 too!!  Just keeps me honest or mad or something!  I did at least make a little progress.

My goodness, it takes some time to get your head back into th right space with a quilt that was barely started in 2008.  All the counting has been done so I know what I still have to cut, and the next job is to finish off all the trimming of these HST's.  I think I might be a little short of fabric in the right colours, so, (every so sadly) I think I may have to go to a quilt shop. Hehehe.

Managed to finish the little tart as well as a pie this month, and have cut out and prepared quite a few more.  This project will definitely be long term as it is quite hard on my hands.  Another way to use up quite a good lot of fabric.

The second to last applique block for a quilt that has been in the making for quite some time.  I seem to have made a mistake in the drawing out of the pattern and had sewn on about five pieces and wasn't happy.  I decided to unpick, clean off my markings and start again.  Very happy I decided to do that.  The is so close to being finished I need to make a concerted effort to finish it.

I have decided that I am going to join in with Carole and My Carolina Home blog and do her Mystery Quilt and you can click on the link to see for yourself.  I usually don't get organised in time but this time I am determined to make it and of course we are given a month for each clue to be finished.  I felt it would be a great way to use up some more of that stash I am a little tired of.

Here is the River quilt all put together.  It's not a very big quilt, but will make a nice lap quilt or even a wall hanging.  I was so pleased the way the border fabric worked out so well, as it's always a bit of a problem after you have left it about 10 years to finish!!  Oops.  Never mind, it still counts as an almost finish for my 18 in 2018 list.















Most of my other projects have not been touched, but I did spend quite a bit of time resorting my fabrics and scraps.  Over the last couple of years as we finished this house, things got moved around quite a bit.  I have now managed to start getting everything back in the right places and can find things when I want them!  Well, that's what I'm pretending, LOL.  Actually, it has spurred me on to get moving on using some of these fabrics up, because although I still like them, I'm a bit fed up with looking at the same old stuff!  Keen to buy lots of new stuff in these lovely fresh modern colours!  Haha, that's famous last words.

I think that's all for now.  Happy stitching.
I'm linking up with Lynette of What A Hoot Quilts here
and Pomegranite and Chintz of 6 and 6 in 2018 here

Hugs and blessings,

Clare

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

Stitching on...

in this very hot weather.  We had 35 C yesterday and I'm afraid we just huddled inside with the air conditioning on.  It has never been my thing - hot sunny days at the beach.  I'm an autumn, spring sort of girl and don't even mind winter that much.  Mind you, compared to some places our winters are very mild.

I have managed to do a little stitching though, and have all the blocks made on the Craftsy BOM 2013.  Now just to figure out how to put it together and what colour joining strips I'm going to use.  The HST border does nothing for me, so I'm planning on a small frame then outer border.

I'm really happy with the colours in this quilt.  They are mostly hand dyed fabrics from a class we held at our shop quite a number of years ago.  I had been looking for a project for ages and the 2011 Shop Hop fabric my pal Barbara in Kansas sent me was perfect.  Mind you, lots left over yet and keep thinking a 9 patch would be lovely too.
Then about 10 days ago I fluffed around with these 4 patches in a vain attempt to join in with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for January. The colour was purples, so I  took all of my purple scrap 2" squares that were already cut, and stitched the whole lot up into these patches...now what!   LOL.

It was such fun, but I must not let them become another UFO!!

At Tuesday Chat today, Lynn brought along her gorgeous Hexagon quilt that she has finished.  Lynn did this as a BOM for the papers, but chose all the fabrics herself.  It is truly wonderful.

That's it for today.  The Tyson cat managed to get out of his collar overnight and now we are of 2 minds what to do with him.  His stitches had ripped open which is why he had the collar on after they were restitched.  Hoping it will heal this time without problems.  The shoulder is such a bad place for a cat.

Talk to you later.  Happy stitching.

Hugs and blessings
Clare
and I'm linking to Cynthia's here at Oh Scrap

Scrapping away in the heat...

to get all my wee scrap blocks finished for the 365 Challenge.  I have 1 to go for the week that finished on Friday, then I  need to make up Saturday and Sunday's blocks. I am most pleased with myself as so far I have managed to hang in there and it is so good using up some of my scraps.  Am trying to keep to the dark look for this border, but balancing the colours between blue, brown, green and red.

The brown fabric has light lines over it and it looks like it has loose threads all over it.  We have branched out into doing triangles now which is interesting.  I have had a big play around with my sewing machine to make sure I am sewing a "scant" quarter inch seam with these. I hate reverse stitching too. However, if it is too scant, then the block is too big and it is not always good trimming back as you can lose seam allowances on pointy corners (you know what I mean?)

Then, just to make myself really challenged, here is my first blocks in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2016.  January's colour was Blue with a purple accent. These blocks will be the start of a quilt I would like to make for a good friend of mine who loves purple.  I used a block out of Judy Hopkins "501 Rotary Cut Blocks," a book I haven't used for ages.  When I did the cutting I failed to notice that I was cutting out for two blocks until I wondered why I had so many quarter square units!!  Ha!  So, figured I would make them up differently if I had to make two and see how they looked.  Both are quite nice I think. On top of that, I had a little issue with my quarter square triangles!  It is a loooong time since I have made these and this was why I had to figure out my scant quarter inch seam.  It is a different scant to the little 3 inch blocks...go figure...as they say.







While I was industriously making all these blocks, I finally organised myself to try doing the "Leaders and Enders" thingy that Bonnie Hunter teaches. Have owned one of her books for a while, but having never actually got myself sorted the time had come.  Now I am hooked.  I have this grand little system all set up, because I also found this really neat wee tutorial on how to trim your Half Square Trianges quickly and... "Bob's your Auntie"...all these gorgeous little HST's have been stitched, trimmed and ironed.! Look at this girls, it's just so impressive, and...I have the next project all lined up to come out of the cupboard and get stitched up! Did I tell you I was determined to be disciplined this year and get some stuff done and moved out of my cupboards into somebody else's cupboard, bed or anywhere?

The stitching station...the container has ended up in the rubbish bin a couple of times and they have had to be dethreaded from this adventure.

The trimming station.  Love that you don't have to press it out first then fiddle around with the diagonal line and all that hassle.

This is the extra little step I figured out.  To cut those pesky corners off quickly, line your ruler up square to the bottom left corner of the size HST you are making and trim.  This gives you the correct angle of the cut.  (Ask me how I figured this out?)  LOL.

Did I mentioned these are only 1.5inch HST's.  This is the tail end of my madness.

Last step at the ironing board.  Each time I go to press something when making the other blocks, I iron at least 4 of these little suckers.  Sometimes I get carried away and iron 8 of them!!  Hehe

End of production story.  Hmmm, I wonder why they say that we patchworkers have an incurable disease?

Final photo.  Dragged these out of the cupboard.  Might incorporate them with the blue blocks.  Started these way back when I first got involved with blogs and the lady got sidetracked away from doing these each month.  A good start though for something?








Well, I have come to the end of this chat.  You probably need to go somewhere by now as I think it has taken ages to get down this far.  Thanks a heap for sticking in there with me.  It has been soooo hot here these past few days.  We are swelting under 36C, which is quite a lot hotter that normal for us. For those of you in Fahrenheit, it is just touching 98F. My question is this, if I am melting away in the heat, how come I don't look any skinnier.  Darn,  I have to try something else maybe, like not eating ice cream on hot days do you think?

That's it, the last words are here.  I am linking to Oh Scrap here
and Rainbow Scrappy Challenge 2016 here
So Scrappy here

Hugs to you all,
Clare