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

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,

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

Happy New Year, may the scraps be with you!

Oh my gosh, it has been so long since I posted you probably have all given up on me.  My computer doesn't work very well these days and I need to figure out how to post on my phone.
The year finished with a wee flurry and I managed to get three Christmas ufos finished up.  Am so pleased with that.  My Christmas bunting never got finished in time however, so that is now my first finished ufo for 2017.  LOL.
Have joined in with #17ufosin2017 and I've made a list of those 17 projects I want to either finish or make good progress on.  Already started on grandson's quilt with another 8  blocks finished and dragged out my Agapanthus wall hanging which is supposed to be January's project. (no. 3 on the list was drawn out).

Here's a couple of photos.  The first is a 3 zipped pocket bag I made my sister for her birthday.  Used a combination of stash and bought specially fabric.  Joyce loves cats so couldn't resist the gorgeous purple cat fabric.

This Christmas wall hanging is one of the ufos I managed to finish.  Am so pleased with how it has come out I don't want to take it down...hehehe.

So there we go.  Small catch up and will try and stick to small posts in future.  Thanks for coming back.

Hugs and blessings to you all
Clare
Linking to Cynthia Brunz @  Oh Scrap   Take a look, you will love her quilts.

Lovely day out to Quilt Show (lots of photos)

Hello everyone,

On Saturday I leapt into the car and with my good friend Colleen we set sail (well car actually) for Carterton.  We stopped for a coffee halfway in Woodville and then tootled off again.  Picked up our friend Lorraine in Masterton and swooped down to Carterton, threw my sister into the car and off to the show which was run by the Master Guild whose membership comes from all over the Wairarapa.

We had a lovely day.  Lunched in the Cancer Society run cafe on the premises and had the freshest sandwich ever - made while we waited.  The Show was very good and only purchased 4 fat quarters for a quilt in mind and resisted the rest.

Enjoy the photos and see you again soon.

Hugs and blessings to you all,
Clare

Almost a finished quilt...

I have finally been able to finish the quilting on Rebecca's quilt and I am so pleased with it.  It has taken me ages as I have found it quite hard to quilt for long periods of time now.  Love the modern look of the lines and the way it lets the fabrics speak.  The binding is all made and ready to go on as soon as I can get hubby to move my sewing table close to the big tables to take the weight for me.
He is so busy right now getting the wet floor sorted in our bathroom.  Very  messy and noisy and extremely hard work for him, so don't want to both him too much.

Travis is checking it out for softness and how well it works for sleeping on, or under if you prefer.  It think it gets the mark of approval as he doesn't want to move off it.

I used a lovely soft silver grey Magnifico thread from Superior Threads and it looked great over all the colours.  Had no problem with it either - I always use a size 18 needle in my longarm and have no hassles.

 My sister came to stay for this week and we have been stitching up a storm.  Well Joy has.  I've been struggling a little this week, but have still managed to achieve a couple of things.

This is the gorgeous table runner Joy is making.  Because she has a small table, there has been enough in the kit to make two out of it.  Lovely batik colours and a quick and easy pattern.
















Lastly but not least, it wouldn't be right without a pic of the boys.  This one is Tyson trying to see if he does a better job of hiding that his brother Travis did.  What do you think?  lol

Well that's my lot for now.  Thanks for stopping by and will catch up with you soon.

Hugs and blessings
Clare