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.

A little progress, sneaky fabric, butterflies and babies...

Decided today was the day to put hands to keyboard and do my blog.  I have been so slack lately with my blog but it is a bit of a tiredness thing, as I seem to slow down so fast these days.  However, I have made some big decisions in my patchwork life!!!

I have put aside the 365 Challenge for now.  It was becoming a total obsession and nothing else was getting done.  That was not what I had planned on.  The plan was to get some UFO's finished, not start something else that took me totally away from that goal.  So there you have it...I am back on track and really pleased that progress is now being made... here is the quilt I am finishing for a granddaughter.  My friend Lynn has done a lot of the stitchery for me as she loves doing them and has no daughters or granddaughters to do girly things for.  It made a big difference to my being able to see the end of this quilt that began um ? .....years ago!!

These are the blocks  that go between the stitchery.  I have 24 to make, actually only 22 left now.  I am doing these very slowly and carefully, as they are done the old fashioned way of cutting the triangles for the flying geese unit!!  Long time since I have done that, and I need these to be nice and accurate.

I have to say, one of the good things about having starting two mad projects that have small blocks - Farmers Wife and 365 Challenge - is that I have become a much more accurate patchworker.  It has also made me slow down and make my blocks and units much more slowly, and even this small thing will increase accuracy I have found. It did used to irk me when blocks would not come out right, and I think I have finally learnt some of the answers. Fast is not always first class sewing.

The other thing I did which I believe was extremely clever and funny, was at our Wine Country Quilts exhibition last month when I helped to man the Janome stand, there was an Elna Press on display.  So Clare took here 24 fat eighths that had been carefully folded up for 8 years and pressed them on it!  Wow, it was magnificent!  If I get rich anytime soon, I'm gonna buy one for patchwork!! LOL Actually, I have to confess...I only pressed about 8 of them...my friend Catherine did the others.  Mind you, it might have been the only ironing she had done during the week...just like me!  (I'm gonna run now before Catherine reads this)  LOL.

Here is my 365 Challenge stuff all neatly put into a satchel and into the cupboard.  My friend Eve showed me this neat pattern that uses 3 inch 9 patches and I have already worked out that I could use the blocks I have made and make some 9 patches to add to them and "wallah" I have a quilt done.  Hmmm, go to sleep brain.

I like these satchels.  They are transparent so you know what is in them and they stack quite nicely.  Come in lots of different sizes too.


Then, you'll never guess what happened!!!  Some blooming fabric plonked itself right into my stash!!   For goodness sake, as soon as you turn your back, you never know what might turn up!!!  Okay, I'll rephrase that for you.  I couldn't resist the pack at the Fat Quarter Shop of the Star Wars fabric...my lovely DIL is mad about all things Star Wars, and as it is her birthday next month, what better than to buy Kea some fabric and make a quilt for Christmas with it. I let Kea have a look case a quilt was not what she wanted, but it is now in my cupboard in the queue.

So, to keep this fabric company on its way to New Zealand, I felt compelled to buy this gorgeous, scrumptious, delicious collection of low volume fabrics.  I mean....who could resist?

This all means, of course, that I am now all fired up to get some more stuff finished, as I'm not allowed to start anything new without getting two things finished!!  Who made that silly rule I wonder?

I have also decided that I will only quilt my existing customer/friends quilts on my long arm, and will no longer look for new business.  It tires me out too much now, and if I get a cold like I have done in March and April, I am out for about 3 weeks while I recover.  Decision made, and now I'm happy with it.  Besides that, I will now manage to get my own quilts quilted!

In the middle of all this we have been watching our chrysalis and are so thrilled to have seen about 18 beautiful Monarch butterflies come out of their chrysalis'. this little video is of one sitting in the warmth of our autumn sunshine drying her wings before she flies away for the winter.  We were like little children, and on Thursday when about seven of them hatched, we wasted an inordinate amount of time watching them.  Mind you, sometimes you have to stop and marvel at these things.  There is no way I could believe that this incredibly complex sequence of a caterpillar totally changing its DNA to become the most beautiful of butterflies - could have been the result of haphazard evolution.

I hope the video works - as I not much good at editing these things it might be a bit long.  I hope you enjoy it though.





At the weekend, we had Richard, Kea and wee Marcy come to stay.  Richard was back to give his Dad another hand in finishing our house off.  It was so awesome that he was able to do this. Kea, Marcy and I headed off to Napier for the day.  We picked up Kea's lovely parents and headed off to the National Aquarium.  Not sure if we were impressed but it was interesting.  The weather was stunning, so that was a plus.  Here is Marcy have morning time in the "big bed" with Nana and Granddad.  She is wondering if that Granddad fellow is friendly or not...lol.

I didn't take a lot of photos as my phone was not charging properly.  Kea has lots and will send me some.  These weekends are so precious, and you realise that this time will never come again.  The little ones grow up so fast.








So there you have it - the update in the realm of the Moore's of Waipukurau.  I hope you have enjoyed reading all this most interesting stuff that makes up our lives.

What has been happening in your life?  Lots of huggy moments I hope.  Things like watching butterflies, and little girls learning to twirl, see a beautiful sunset and a chat with those who you love having in your life.  Smiling at those who need a smile and seeing it making a difference to that person. Life is a gift and we should remember to treat it as a precious thing.

Phew, well that was a right bit of the old philosophy  he he.   I think I'll go hug the cat...oops I mean my husband and see what difference it makes in his life!!

Blessings to you all
Clare
here is the link to Cythia Brunz  Oh Scrap.  Make sure you take a look, it's great eye candy.