Gypsy Wife and one hungry cat!

I had a change of mind over Gypsy Wife, I figured if I put her away in a

drawer it would be quite a while before she came out again!

So here she is, all stitched up, not perfect by any stretch of

the imagination but she is mine!

I can't get a good full on shot, to get this pic below I had to practically

re-arrange my sewing room.

 Would I make another one - no. I would not.

I am tempted once again by Long Time Gone, I've studied the pattern

and think it would be easier than GW, need more time to ponder on that one but

it would use up a heck of a lot of the scraps in my boxes.

I have four projects on the go, I have quilts to quilt and a few

UFO's tucked away in the cupboard, but I find

I am tempted constantly to begin more quilts, especially

using my favourite fabrics - you know whose - KF and friends.

So, guess what I have just been doing

 only cutting strips for another quilt.

This is an all strip quilt in a KF book, and at 3 and  1/2inches wide

a great change from 1"ones. 

Just what I need right now.

Our little Tuxedo cat Leila is a real character, so very

different from the others we have

been privileged to have as part of our family.

Here she is telling me it's time for her dinner

that's one hungry girl!!!!

That's all for now, I am feeling positively euphoric

at having achieved a finished GW top and feel I need to sit

and have a cup of tea, a large glass of a good Shiraz would

suit me better but that wouldn't be a good mix with my medications.

Hope you're all having a good week, see you soon.

Maureen

Last section of Gypsy Wife now sewn up - at last!!

Just finished sewing section 10 and two words

used sometimes by our two grand-daughters sum up my feelings tonight -

I am "so over" Gypsy Wife!

This really needs to be seen in place with all the other sections, but I don't have

the room at the moment and I'm afraid she's not very

well placed in this photo.

GW has been in the works now for 18 months, I was off to a great start

but sections 9 and 10 saw me hitting the wall a bit, just

couldn't always get the mix of colours I wanted, lots of breaks were

needed then I would usually come back and things

would fall into place.

A four legged feline has also slowed me up at times.

The sections won't be put together for a couple of weeks,

I just want to put it away somewhere and catch up on all my other

projects.

So, I'm going to sit in a quiet corner with this

lovely little rose by my side

and this on my lap

spotted two days ago in the local book store.

I'll tell you all about it next time I post, if the cover is anything to go off

I think it's going to be a wonderful read!

See you sometime next week.

Maureen

A little more Gypsy Wife and fabric goodies

It's been one of those weeks where a lot of time has been

spent on thinking about WIPs and projects I should like to

make a start on over the next six months. Problem is there are so
many quilts on my "hope to do" list.
Added to the mix is the need to really sort out my fabrics, seriously my
scraps boxes need attention,

also I've been looking at up-dating my Mac computer to
the new model, this needs quite a bit of thinking time.

I did make a little progress with GW and below is the

far left hand side of section 10, I've changed out two of the

square in square blocks and made a wee kaleidoscope.

Three more blocks ready to go, the first one has a fussy cut

of the new range from Anna Maria Horner - a bit blurry for some reason

Goodies in the mail and brought home from the store, the

first two photos are store bought locally 

This one below are three of my favourites from AMH received in the
mail with a few others.

I fell in love with the patterned fabric below after seeing

pics of a class by
rachaeldaisy over at bluemountaindaisy blog

the dotty fabrics I picked up again at a local store, not
particularly to use with the tropical fabric but just because I liked them
then when I was taking these photographs I thought
they looked quite good together.

The weather here has been atrocious, wild and wet and cold!
Today the sun is out, still very cold and impossible to walk
on the grass in the back garden, but in my front garden
my favourite camellia is blooming - Lovelight

and was I surprised to see these little beauties peeping out

my lovely tulips from last year, I can't believe they're coming up so early!

I'm off to make the most of the sun by putting a load of
washing in the machine and hoping I can hang it on the line
to dry.

My weekend is going to be spent dealing with everything
mentioned in my first few lines of the post so I'll head off and make a start,
possibly a nice cup of tea would help the process!

Enjoy your weekend and happy quilting.

Maureen

This and That

It's been a funny sort of week for me, not 

as in "ha ha" funny but a pretty frustrating one.

 I showed a photo of a book by

Judy Newman some time ago, beautiful old-fashioned sort

of quilts, soft colours. This week was the time

to begin one that I found particularly lovely.

I spent ages pulling fabrics - some below - and as I'm not known for my soft pastel colours

 it was difficult finding fabric to use, some are below but

when I had the first row in place on the wall, it just wasn't

me!! Didn't work at all, I needed a colour fix

so on to Section 10 of Gypsy Wife. Two small blocks sewn - one

obviously a bit on the too small side - and a few strips later

my tendonitis flared suddenly which put

paid to any more cutting or sewing, I made it just this far below.

I took a telephone call from the hospital where they asked me

to please come in for an appointment Friday (tomorrow), I needed

to be seen sooner than my scheduled appointment in a few

weeks time, so that didn't add to my week.

There was a bright spot yesterday with a package in the mail of two books

 ordered a couple of months ago.

The colour in these two is amazing, I think of the two my favourite

is New York Beauties and Flying Geese, full to bursting

with colour!

I intend to relax tomorrow before going to the hospital with these two.

So, not a productive week at all but I did take a photo

of one of my beautiful hibiscus

and hopefully I shall be back at the machine early next week,

fingers crossed!

Hope you've all had a good week with lots of quilting.

Maureen

Gypsy Wife - sections 8 and 9

Yes, sections 8 and 9 are together, at least for the moment. I'm not happy 

with the bottom block on the LH side, so there

may be a little time spent unpicking at some point.

It's just getting that balance right, trying not to have

too many dark blocks clustered nor too many light ones and I think

I've failed with the above mentioned block.

I felt as if I'd hit a brick wall with these two sections, don't know why, but I'm

not doing any more on this until the end of next week, maybe the brain

needs a break from gypsies!

I took myself off for a walk the other evening when I was feeling

particularly peeved off with the whole thing, just before dusk the sky was

a delight to see, good for the soul! After that I arrived home

feeling much less stressed.

This was the view as I walked along the ridge looking out to

Rangitoto in the harbour - I've decided to try and take that walk most evenings

just before dusk to blow away the cobwebs!

Hope you're all enjoying your week and your stitching.

Maureen

Gypsy Wife

Slowly working on Section 9 presently.

I had to change out two of the strips which follow down the

length of the quilt, just breaking for blocks here and there.

The strips on the RH side above were the originals but I wasn't

happy with how they looked, I kept the two narrow middle strips

but added different fabrics either side along

with another strip element and a bordered

pinwheel block directly below.

It's really important to keep in mind which fabrics are

going to hit each other, something you think will work well

doesn't when you actually get the pieces on the wall.

You can see some of the top part of the quilt below,

I don't stitch the individual elements together until I have everything

for that particular section up on the wall, so you'll be seeing threads and

pieces which need trimming.

Taking me away from the machine were two new books

as different as chalk and cheese, as you can

see from the covers,  but both beautifully presented.

I'm setting aside some time to sit and read through the

Judy Newman book, or a good part of it, this weekend.

Maureen

Saturday again!

What on earth happened to the past seven days?

Is it just me or do the days and weeks fly by,  I don't think I'm the only one.

I have a list of quotes by Dr Seuss, they're real gems, this one sums up the time issue:

"How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon.

December is here before it's June.

My goodness how the time has flewn.

How did it get so late so soon?"

A message for us all!!

So, on the quilting side I have finished Section 8 of 

Gypsy Wife. I stuck it up on the wall yesterday alongside

the other seven sections, photo below.

No major seams sewn yet so it's a bit higgledy-piggledy!

Section 8 is on the left hand side.

I spent time with my GO cutter strip dies, pieces of very old Hoffman fabrics

and KF Collective

the left hand side are 1" strips. I have in mind a number of quilts using strips

of various widths, lots more to cut before I make a start.

Assigned two of my plastic storage drawers to

my KF Collective quarter yard pieces. I had culled these when I made a start

on Gypsy Wife, all the pieces less than 1/4 yard I set aside

for this project.

I began trying to stock up on 1/2 yards or larger a few years ago, I did a pretty good job,

there's no more space in my wire baskets!! No more fabric buying!!

The garden grabbed a little bit of my attention, but it's so very dry,

we really need rain and hopefully this weekend. My Canna lilies seem to

be perfectly happy even with the dry soil.

The "Peace" rose is blooming beautifully, goodness knows

we could use some of this in the world today!

And below she (I always think of roses as "she") had a visitor.

OK, I'm all done now and heading back to the cutting table.

Enjoy the weekend.

See you all soon.

Maureen

Friday Favourites - on Sunday!!

Yes, missed the Friday post this week, busy, busy and achieving not much at all!

Quilting on Jacob's quilt - simple straight lines

given that this is for a five year old and needs to hold

up well.

Not a very pretty sight, threads waiting to be dealt with and the

lines just eyeballed so the resulting squares are never quite 

the same size!

Made a start on section 8 of Gypsy Wife

and deciding on fabric for the outer strips

of the block to fit underneath.  Still playing.

I'm going to have a break now until the end of the year
or the beginning of the New Year, lots of plans including

working on the blog. I already have a new photo for the header, the centre

piece of Northern Lights - albeit not yet quilted. Grateful thanks to Melody of
mixitupmel for sorting out the size, lettering and centering for the new header.
More work on a better set up
in my tiny studio is also on my list of things to do.

My clumps of Hellebore  finished flowering a few weeks ago
but suddenly last week up popped this

and isn't it a delight!!

I'll end this post with a view from the beach last week

I feel another quilt coming on!!!!

Wishing you all a Happy and Healthy Christmas
and New Year!

Maureen

Colour My World - Gypsy Wife (section 7) and more

 If you should want to head to Gypsy Wife first
you'll have to scroll past the pics below.

Speaking of colour

this is one wonderful, wonderful book!!

I spotted it originally on Amazon, read a little review and

as it sounded just my thing I ordered it from

Minerva in Wellington.

What a treat when it arrived to see that it differed slightly from

the cover photo on Amazon, this zingy orange

elastic is attached on the back of the book, presently holding

the whole book but can be used to put over the current

page as your bookmark. But look at the effect of that orange!

Colour in the early morning

Colour from my garden and two cherished pieces from my cupboard

Colour in my quilts
Gypsy Wife Section 7

This had three partial seams to work through.
Only three more sections to go, 8 and 9 are quite small and the blocks are a good size,
section 10 doesn't look too complex.

And now before I put fabrics away time for a little black and white

Leila - not too pleased at being photographed!

Hope you all enjoy a happy quilty weekend!

Maureen

Gypsy Wife and beautiful blooms

For two weeks I've been battling with two infections and coping with the

effects of the antibiotics to clear the infections!!

Not the best and no sewing was done for a good 10 days or so but Wednesday this week

I headed off to my machine. 

Gypsy Wife - now completed Section 6 - hooray!! Here I must say that it

was partially complete, I certainly didn't do the whole thing

in two days!

Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, the odd point missing etc.

this was a mammoth job and one I very much doubt I would do again.

Just four more sections to go and then the task of putting all

ten sections together - what fun!

Mine is quite a busy quilt, I guess some would say a bit of a jumble, but I

wanted to try and create the feel of the Gypsies of old and the ones we used

to come across in my childhood. Research on the colours they used show

that rich colours were favoured and mixed  happily together, especially
in their clothing - no co-ordinating required here!

Their traditional caravans were beautifully painted, once again using

rich, bright colours. 

Keeping with the subject of colour look what arrived for me yesterday

a feast for the senses!!

I intend to spend some quality time this coming weekend with my head

buried in the pages.

More blooms - but pastel this time. Tulips are up in the garden

just opening

second day

a peek into the centre

fading today

I think that's it from me until early next week, have a lovely weekend!

Maureen