End of an Era and quilt progress

Most of you will no doubt be aware that the 96yr old Queen Elizabeth ll died on September 8th at Balmoral in Scotland.  Being British born and bred and a royalist through and through this was the saddest news. 

70 years ago a little 5yr old girl on a sunny day was standing, with other pupils from the small four classroom school, all waving Union Jack flags, waiting for the new Queen Elizabeth to pass by with her husband Prince Philip. She had ascending the throne just a few weeks before and was touring parts of the country, much as King Charles will be doing shortly.  

After a long, long wait the cavalcade slowly approached and luckily the Queen was on our side of the
road, I can still see the scene so very clearly, she was wearing a stunning peacock green suit, I think silk, with matching hat, and had that wonderful smile for us all. She was crowned the year after and we were all glued to the television screen for a few hours.

Her smile was always a delight to see, especially when wearing her beautiful brightly coloured outfits
with those stunning hats.

Sadly this is the scene as I write now, she lies in state with the Imperial State Crown, the Sceptre and the Orb also placed there, sadly the photo with all regalia seem to have gone awol. The Crown is much, much brighter than I could get on this photo.

Now it is God Save The King.

OK, I will get onto quilting matters, I just had to get the above thoughts down on paper.

I haven't read blogs, not sent emails nor received them because my computer was not playing nicely, now fixed, thank goodness. 

Progress has been made with the quilt for grandson Charlie, he likes bright and bold and that's going to be what he gets. Blocks on the wall, no placement order of course I just wanted to put them up there as I stitched to check on colours used. The last quilt I made for him he was 6 years old, quite detailed, with medallion style borders, diamonds and so on, I had bought dyed fabric for the backing which was extremely bright, swirly and a mix of colours. He told me a couple of years ago that he still used his quilt even though it was now too small for his bed size, the interesting part was that he has never had his quilt right side uppermost and always had the back showing as he preferred all the colour!! I intended all along for this new quilt to be scrappy and busy looking, no definite pattern to it, I think it will work.

25 blocks in all are needed to make a 70" x 70" quilt, the design wall goes to the floor so plenty of room.

Still haven't been able to calibrate the colour settings on my screen due to the computer issues.

All for now, back to sewing all the pieces cut and ready to go through the machine. I can now read blogs again also!!

Maureen

A sweet Spring day

The first day of Spring arrived yesterday here in New Zealand. Such a beautiful sunny day, blue skies,  birds singing, the scent of freesias just blooming and I felt a true lightness of spirit and a return of energy. Isn't it amazing that each season has its special memories, mine are definitely of Springtime as a youngster in England.  

I took a few photos of the first Spring flowers in the garden, I'll show them at the end of the post.

Progress with Slashed Squares has been made thanks to another lighter splint, these were already cut as necessary before my fall. I have just four sewn up so far and the colours are somewhat brighter I feel in 'real life'. Something to deal with in my settings I think.

There are a few more on the wall whilst I play around to find combinations that I'm happy with, one that doesn't excite me is this one below, again the block is dulled down but I think the blue will have to go! This is still in four parts wth threads untrimmed

Whilst having to take a break from my quilting, housework, gardening and so on, I've had time to think!!
Gradually it dawned on me that I had too many thoughts racing along in my brain preventing me from  sleeping, I was constantly worrying about everything. Many quilting projects are whirling around, most are ones I'd really like to make a start on in the coming months  and also there are some which are languishing in their respective drawers. I've begun projects without truly thinking through  and which I actually now don't like and don't know why I began them, anyone else have these problems? My unwanted 5 large bags of scraps (I still have two tubs more which I'm keeping) and old books and projects are going to be given to the local school and hospice shop in the village. Boy do I feel better after making a decision!

On to my garden, the early flowers are just opening, wish you could smell the perfume from the freesias,

the forget-me-nots are white ones which suddenly appeared, they're now covering quite a large area, 

Clivias are blooming and providing fodder for the snails,

and where would we be without lemons freshly picked from the tree,

mustn't leave out one special garden inhabitant below

he visits every morning and sits on the decking rail by the dining area window driving poor Leila crazy, soon as he sees us put out the two apple halves he heads into the garden.

Oh, I forgot my two new pieces of fabric, the local shop still had these on their shelves and they've always been favourites of mine

so one metre of each came home with me.

That's all from me at the moment, enjoy the early days of Spring or Autumn and Happy Quilting.

Maureen