It's finished!

I finished the red hearts quilt a few weeks ago and it's now hanging in our hallway - I'm very pleased with it (apart from some mistakes in the label which I only noticed after I had sewn it on!)

Confetti !

It has taken a while but I have finished my quilt and love it ,so thank you for all your blocks!You can see how slow I am by the sight of the unfinished Christmas quilt! I have discovered 505 spray and it has speeded up the layering .

Good wishes to all my quilting friends.
Margaret

100 Day Creative Challenge Update

100 Days.... almost!

I nearly got there and then we went on 3 1/2 weeks holiday in the South Island, dropping Devin and Acacia off at their universities and then doing some sight seeing. The wheels feel off after about 3 days on holiday. I have 92 blocks made and have been home 10 days and have not started the last 8 as yet.... but I will. Here they are thus far:

 

The last one I did on holiday is not quite finished - you can see on the left side - it's currently a big hexagon that needs trimming down to a circle and appliquéing on.

 

There are a few blocks I hate but there are many I love.

 

It was fun, stressful and challenging all at the same time. A great experience.  Some days I would have several ideas of what to do and then the next no idea - the previous days unused ideas seeming all wrong 24 hours later.

 

It is certainly going to be a very unique quilt!

 

Joanne.

Fresh Fig Relish

I've been trying to keep the birds away from our Fig tree for the past week after tasting a friends chutney - she uses a very old recipe. The plastic bags seems to help so I've managed to gather enough figs for a double batch of relish. It's a 2 step process. Day 1 is complete. Tomorrow I'll boil it until it looks right - my friend says it is more like half an hour than 3 hours!

A Great day for a Quilter

Yes as Susan mentioned, I had an exciting day today.  I entered a quilt into the local regional competition. I won first place in the Contemporary Quilts over 1.5m and Second place for Hand Quilting. Needless to say I'm absolutely thrilled.

Change to content of Blog

Hi All
I was just thinking I should mention that since we have completed our one year of quilting I have had a number of you requesting doing another quilting bee for a year. I just want you to know that I have got something up my sleeve but I just need a bit more time to be ready for it, usually the start of winter is a good time to get something up and running.
In the meantime, I am happy to expand our blog content to more than just quilting, i.e. knitting, gardening project, cooking, preserving or just anything that you have been busy with and want to share.
Susan

Knitting!

Hi All

I have been rather tardy with my quilting lately as summer in NZ is way too hot to be handling too much fabric so I have turned to knitting for now.  I decided to make a patchwork blanket to go with a 'quilt as you go' quilt I am planning to make in the coming months. I chose the same blues/greens/greys & whites as the fabric I bought for the quilt. Jackie, you might recognise the fabrics as you were here in NZ with Joanne when I bought them and then again you might not as that was the day you arrived and hit the ground running around the quilt shops before going on to Hawkes Bay.  Here are the stack of squares I've knitted so far... I need 88 in total!!! So will be a while yet.

 

 

As well as knitting these squares, my son asked me to knit him a winter scarf as he has moved to Wellington for University and it is much colder there than up here in Auckland, not as cold as the South Island but definitely colder than here. The squares have been put on hold and the scarf is growing really well. I got the basic pattern from Joanne (thank you Joanne, Jason will be very grateful in cold, windy Wellington this winter), Jason chose the colours, chocolate brown, forest green and red burgundy and then he decided he wanted random width stripes. My mind is so neat that I really have to force myself to keep making sure they are different widths! Not an easy task!!! Here it is so far... (why do our toes ALWAYS want to sneak into the photo???)

 

 

It's about 1.3m so far. I think 2m will be sufficient, maybe not that long, will start trying it on me at 1.5m.  We have had the most lovely summer! weeks and weeks and weeks of hot, sunny weather. Not much rain at all which is very surprising for Auckland! I finally got around to organising some geraniums for my balcony. I wanted real terracotta pots not the plastic ones but they are so expensive and take ages to weather and give a rustic look, so I went on TradeMe (like eBay) and bought a whole lot of used ones for the cost of two new ones! Fab bargain. This is now my view from one angle of the balcony. I just love the deep reddy/orange flowers, they make me smile (and Wendy's bunting, see Wendy, I still have it and use it).

Wendy, I am expecting to see your 'circles' quilt on here shortly and Joanne, I think you have about 70 odd green circle blocks to put on the blog  too! Joanne did a fantastic job of completing 100 days of producing different blocks with a circular theme, such dedication! Well done Joanne, you are an inspiration to us all. She also has some other news to share from a trip out today... I will let you share that Joanne...

Anyway, that's me, believe it or not, after 8 years of study I have to do more!!!! which I should be doing now and not blogging. I have 8 banking modules to finish by the end of the weekend as am on a course for 3 days next week where I will be using what I have learnt (or learning what I thought I had already learnt!). There are 8 exams and you have to get 80% to pass and only 3 attempts to pass! each exam has randomly selected questions too meaning no two are the same, so you can't learn from the one you failed... aargh! (Luckily, I haven't failed one yet, 5 down 3 to go, better get back to it!).

Susan x