Colour My World

The colour for the RSC 2015 this month is light blue or even

a blue/green but I have been pretty slow to get going on teapots

and scrappy mountains!!!

However I've been busy working on other projects, I posted a shot of

fabrics for a quilt for my grand-daughter and good progress is

being made, blocks put together

here's a peek.

"High Flyer" is the name of this quilt - Alice, our grand-daughter, is 10yrs old and in a cheerleading

team, I think she's now in an elite squad. She is a natural and very, very good. When I was

young cheerleaders were girls at the rugby matches dancing and

usually waving coloured pom poms but now it's a whole different scene!

The gymnastics, the leaps and somersaults are amazing.

 Alice is a flyer in the squad and so we have the name of the

quilt, given that I have flying geese in there into the bargain it seemed a good choice.

I have hunted out my Fruit Salad blocks and have those up on the design wall, 

still need a few more and I'm determined that these

will be done by the end of the month and then I should be onto the borders.

The Pear Aboriginal Dot is still not showing well, it's a beautiful colour.

This is one of my pieces as contributor to 

15 Minutes Play.

And for "stress relief" I have begun my colouring book

I love dragonflies so this is my first choice and as a break from the machine for

a short time it truly is relaxing.

Of course now our four legged friends are asking for their

evening meal so that's my time at the machine and computer over

for the evening!

I'll be back Sunday or Monday with something to show for RSC 2015.

A Lovely Year of Finishes - February Goal Setting Party

Hard to believe we are into February already - and here in New Zealand we are on February 2nd.

One of my goals from January has had to be transferred to February, my Fractured quilt should have been completed last month but wasn't so fingers crossed for this month.

I am hoping to complete the last seven blocks for my "Fruit Salad" quilt and finish up my "New York Blooms" these last two will also need posting to 15 Minutes Play which I take part in.

Fractured

No borders will be added to Fractured, it's busy enough and I have to confess I'm not a huge fan of borders. I appreciate that some quilts would just not look good without having a border but if I can get away without putting them on that suits me fine.

Fruit Salad

New York Blooms

 Not sure what I will do regarding bordering Fruit Salad, it does need something, it will be four by four block setting and possibly I'll just go with the Aboriginal Dot, which is a more attractive green "in the flesh" than the photo shows.

New York Blooms will not have the Subway fabric top or bottom, I'm just going to bind the whole thing with the pink fabric and I have some pretty jazzy fabric set aside for the backing.

These last two don't need a lot of quilting, the made fabric has pretty small pieces and the effect would be lost with a whole lot of stitching

Linking up now with A Lovely Year Of Finishes

Quilting Weather

As Nancy J from All Points of The Compass tells us New Zealand is in for  an extremely cold spell.   It's a case of "batten down the hatches" keep warm and quilt. The wind is starting to blow here in Auckland and the sky has gone very grey indeed so I guess it won't be too long before the rain hits, maybe some hail in there as well. When the icy blasts come up from the South Pole it's quite a shock to the system.

I have been stuck in the house all week with a shocker of a cold and cough - in fact the whole box of tricks really! Not felt much like quilting or doing anything and the only thing I have done was to complete another small block for the Scrap Swap over at 15 Minutes Play so I now have  two  and I am just not happy with the result!! My intention  was to make four blocks and then figure out what to do with them from there, four together then borders or strips between each  block and so on. A shot of two together isn't doing it for me so might have to rethink. 

See what I mean?  The top one I am happy with but I think the bottom one will be a non-starter. They also don't look to be equal in measurement but they are, must be the angle of the camera. I think  because of my hand surgery and handling everything that came with my long time friend being so ill and then passing away two weeks ago I just haven't been in "the zone". Hopefully things will now begin to get better.

Bird watching at the feeding tables has been great and I get such a lot of pleasure out of seeing them all eating breakfast. For the third time in a week we have had a kingfisher sitting in the branches of the silver birch and he/she is so tetchy about being photographed! I did take two yesterday but they are not showing the beautiful colours.

In fact now I have inserted a pic I see that there is really no colour at all!!! However his lethal beak is much in evidence.

Now my moth orchid below is not short on colour - I look forward so much to the blooms from this particular one. 

I have had a few people emailing to ask about the photo of the Irish Setter on my page - this is my  darling Mollie. We lost her almost two years ago now to cancer.  Miss her so very much she was a honey, our four legged friends are counted as family. My husband still has regular doggie people stop him and ask what happened to her, one guy was so upset when told that she had died he said she was a real hussy!! We still have her brother Seamus and for old times sake I am posting one of my favourite shots of them 

down at the beach.

In fact here are two pics because these particular ones are two of my favourites even though Seamus is being difficult and not smiling at the camera.

Enjoy the rest of your week and happy quilting!!

A good day for quilting!

We are having some very wet weather here in Auckland not great for me to get into the garden but just right for time on my quilting! Even though the weather is wet we did go off to the garden centre yesterday and bought two more camellias to extend the hedge down the side garden.

We also found a few more hellebores (no photo of these as didn't get them in focus and I'm not heading out in the rain again to take another shot) they are also white and doubles. I do like white flowers in the garden splashed in with everything else, we have huge spreads of the white Japanese anemones which sadly take over the whole garden if not ruthlessly culled now and again.

The hydrangeas by the driveway are underplanted with miniature white cyclamen, these particular ones are scented and smell delicious

We also bought a new shrub a Tibouchina and this one is not the usual deep purple but a softer lilac called "Moonstruck" this can go near the apricot climbing roses  

On the quilting side of things I have made a new block for 15 Minutes Play using some of the fabrics from Helen in the scrap swap (will be posting this later in the week) and made a few more blocks for the one below, still need seven more before thinking about borders. Yes, I know I have a few stray threads on there,  forgot to tidy them up before taking a photo!

I have to spend as much time as I can this week on my quilting because after my hand surgery next Monday (right hand) I will be out of action for two weeks or so - plenty of books to read and a stack of movies/series to play. I bought series one, two and three of Downton Abbey, two documentary films by David Attenborough - I am crazy about wildlife programmes/films especially fronted by him, my son bought me the movie Howards End and there are others all stacked up including a couple of comedies which may be needed depending on how painful my hand is!

Hope you're all enjoying the weekend and will make my next post more quilt orientated.

Internet Woes and Sari Silks

At last! Back on line - our telephone landline went down early last week, a cable fault so we were told, we had no internet connection and all calls were diverted to my mobile. I hadn't realised until this happened just how much we rely on our landline access and the extent of our computer use. Technicians are busy this morning restoring services and lo and behold we are now able to use our computers. 

I had intended posting on Monday evening last week but time crept up on me and I decided to do it Tuesday morning - that's when everything went to custard so no post! I am getting this done quickly JUST in case we lose connection again whilst they are working.

There are a number of projects I should have been working on but haven't been very organised - time spent trying to work out a better arrangement for my sewing room and getting nowhere fast.

 I am busy on a piece for 15 Minutes Play and posted on there the start of the project below

 Sadly the Aboriginal Dot fabric is showing up as pink it's not, it's actually Pear a glorious soft green and I have tried to photograph with different setting, places on the wall and so on but it just doesn't want to play properly! This process is great and I can't wait to finish and start another! We re all going to produce a piece using the fabrics from our Scrap Swap. I also desperately would like to see my Pineapple quilt finished but that has been on the back burner for some time, I am going to post that one over on String Thing Along today here's  quick peek below

Nothing too bright in this one I went  for softer colours and have cut heaps of strips from lots and lots of my older fabrics, some I guess around 20 years old!

I love working with silk and have a number of hanks of Sari strips which I adore and  have made small pieces for gifts and also had them in a local Arts cottage. Now have more or less finished a larger piece which is just for me and I am about to get this framed - no glass. I have a small one on the wall in the lounge which was originally under glass to prevent anyone fingering the silk when it was in an exhibition but I just had to remove the glass - hated the look! I want to see the textiles, the shine on the silk and  threads not a shiny reflected surface. Haven't got a pic of this small piece so will include that next post.  The top two are close ups of two of the squares and the bottom one is the full shot - not happy with the colour of this in the photograph I need to change my design wall to another spot for better light. These are  couple of the hanks I have at the moment, I really should have taken one of the hank opened out - a myriad of colours.

Better not push my luck here so I'm going to post this now,  have a great week!

Babies and busy days!

It has been a few days since I last posted due to the above!

Our youngest son and his wife had their second baby boy (9lbs 11ozs) on 30th April and we will be going to see him after lunch. After we had the news yesterday morning we went off shopping for goodies for new baby, his 2yr old brother and the proud parents.

Sadly not much sewing done, in fact no sewing done at all  as I am still busy trying to sort out baskets of fabrics ready for my suitcase sale on Saturday at Guild. The idea that there would be lots to take along came to an abrupt end  as when I go through my stash I can't bear to part with any of it!! Back in the basket it goes but anything smaller than a quarter now goes into a large crate and so I should end up with about two empty baskets by doing this. There is a huge pile of patchwork/quilting books to take along though, so I won't be empty-handed.

 Done the stack on the left, mostly Kaffe Fassett and friends,  still have the one on the right plus another single stack and then onto my batik stash below

Still a lot of larger yardage on the shelf under my cutting table but that will have to stay put for the time being, not to mention sorting out my strips in various widths!  

I received a lovely package of scraps  in the mail from Helen in New York -  my scrap swap partner from 15 Minutes Play, lots of lovely pieces  which will used for made fabric, this is such fun thanks to Victoria for organizing. 

The above collection has more fabric than shown in this shot, lots of batiks hiding underneath, and the large piece below I just love - I posted on 15 Minutes and referred to it as my new piece of New York, New York fabric I'm going to hate cutting into this.

Look at this bright collections of scraps, lots of different ones her to play with here

I have found my Fox and Geese pieces which were cut about two years ago! Making it in shades of brown, cream and purples and had just started on sewing the mediums and lights together when  had to have a visit to hospital to have a pacemaker placed and I just threw it all in a drawer and just never returned to it.  I will try and sew a few blocks at  a time in between my two projects for 15 Minutes Play.

Time to go and see our new baby - enjoy the remainder of the week and happy sewing!