Two more sleeps until Christmas Day

Two more sleeps here in New Zealand that is!

I'm conscious that I haven't done a post for just on a week or so now 

and didn't even link up with Angela for the next to last

Saturday in the RSC 2014. Not been too well and just didn't manage

to sew more than four cats together in the past week so nothing much to show

on that score. I can show the beginnings of

a new piece which I posted to
Cultural Fusion Quilts early last week, this is
a new blog from Sujata Shah of The Root Connection and I am thrilled to be a contributor
to the blog, please go and visit, it's going to be great!

Sailing Through Suez

Just at the stage of playing around with colours and going with the Flying Geese setting
based on the Hourglass block from Sujata's book Cultural Fusion Quilts which you can see
on the links above.

 New fabrics arrived in the mail this week which cheered me no end
and I needed some cheering as blood tests
 tell me that in addition to other health problems I am pre-diabetic - pretty high results!!
Sugar is a no-no and fats are also on the "careful watch" list, please think of me
when you're all enjoying your Christmas turkey or ham and and all the trimmings,
not forgetting yummy mince pies and cream!

Over the next few days I hope to spend time planning out projects for next year,
Vicki over at Field Trips in Fiber
has some great ideas which will keep me busy! Pay a visit - the more the merrier.

I must end this post with photos of the sunset yesterday evening

Just Glorious

Wishing you all a Happy and Peaceful Christmas
Maureen

Play time

Forgot to write a post yesterday, a busy week on the home front and not much achieved on the quilting front.

Cotton Candy

Four more rounds added to Cotton Candy and I know this is not the best photo, there are a few wrinkles there as I haven't smoothed the top down I'm trying to manoeuvre around an ironing board which is much to large for my small room, my new sewing cabinet and so on. Most important on the agenda over the next two days is to get myself a better working arrangement in this small room.

playtime

On my table I have a basket with the lovely dyed strips from Vicki Welsh and started playing around pulling any size string/colour and just cutting and stitching, throughly enjoyed and found it very therapeutic! This is a two block practice but I do intend to sit myself down one day just go for it and see how far I get.

Wednesday Words and WIP

Cotton Candy

Only three more rounds added to Cotton Candy this week I've been busy sorting through fabrics most of the time. I notice that Wanda over at Exuberant Color seems to have been doing the same thing !

I was amazed at how many yellows I have in my stash, an abundance of green also. Blue is pretty well represented, red and pastel also but not too many real darks. May have to remedy that before too long.


One good thing about reorganising is that you sometimes find fabrics you had forgotten about, I was over the moon to find a small piece of one KF or PJ fabric (can't remember which now) and a larger piece in a different colour way

Just remembered the colour way of the small dark piece "Oxblood" - correct me if I'm wrong, and wished I had bought more yardage of this, same with the yellow, turns out I had  - found a half yard of each in a different basket, goes to show that it's best  to put away first off with like colours!

I  went off today to have a  pre-admission  check prior to  knee surgery, the problem had improved somewhat but we had still planned on going ahead, however when I met with the Clinical Nurse Co-ordinator for a chat it was decided because of the long list of health problem I have they felt it was safer to see if things settle further over the next six months, boy was I happy with that!!!  As the hospital was really handy to a quilting store we couldn't miss a call there  and I came home with a few quite different pieces of fabric - shown left. They will be put in my stash in their proper place!

I have been looking out for a small sewing cabinet to fit a particular spot in the studio for some time and just what I was looking for was on a brochure on the counter in the store, a small Horn cabinet should be with me on Friday and my Bernina Virtuosa 155 will live in that. My Aurora 440QE is set into a larger table for machine quilting smaller pieces.

More cats need to be worked on now so I'd better get busy.

Wednesday Words and Work in Progress

   

Re-arranging my blog template and having great fun with colour combinations - a work still in progress  right now.

Pulling out a variety of greens to start off something new -  a pattern in The Quilt Life  (August edition) from Stephanie Serrano aka Venus de Hilo. Do go along and visit, colour just explodes from her quilts! More to be posted on this new project next week.

Red Sea Sunset

Busy pressing Red Sea Sunset as I stitch the diagonal seams

Next round of strips for Cotton Candy, love this Spot in Mint colour way
and had hoped to have added another three rounds to the quilt today but just didn't work out that way.

Such sad news yesterday that Robin Williams had passed away - a tragedy. What a brilliant guy, I have seen a number of his films but my favourite has just got to be the comedy Mrs Doubtfire, I could watch this movie over and over again and still fall on the floor laughing. Tonight we were told that Lauren Bacall had also passed, a great actress.

On that sad note I'm off to my bed as it's a very, very cold night here in Auckland, New Zealand and we have a King Tide about to hit the coast just around now!

Scrappy Cats and Ice Cream

First off in the post four more cats to add to my collection

and I'm linking this to all scrappy fans over at scrap happy Saturday

Two more seams to sew on my Red Sea Sunset, then I will  be putting the last border on Desert Rose and that will be two more for quilting. I have three more projects to work on but they will have to wait a while. Yesterday we had a sad visit to long time family friends of over thirty years,  the husband is terminally ill so we try to see them as often as possible. My intention had been to come back home and work on Red Sea but I felt so sad after our visit and decided I really wanted something very simple to work on, no matching of points required just back to basics. Naturally I started another project! I found this extremely therapeutic and the quilt will be a lovely memory of M. This is a keeper.

Cotton Candy

It's a Kaffe Fassett quilt pack which I bought possibly three or four years ago from Glorious Color, the original quilt is called Ice Cream and is in Quilt Romance, I've given it a different name.
 The simplicity and colour way attracted me and this has been sitting in a box with three other fabric packs from the same place collected over the past few years. It was a dream to sit and sew straight lines, read instructions for strip width and length and just go for it! Can't wait to sew more strips tomorrow.

I was hoping to get into the garden today but it's really cold out there so contented myself with just looking through a couple of gardening magazines, did a visit to the garden centre at the end of last week and more hellebores were in stock this one was particularly eye catching

didn't bring one home as they were quite pricey and I aim to have a look at the new Kaffe Fassett book "Quilts in Morocco" so I'll have to choose between plant or book!

Better go and do my link now, have a good week

Cyclone weekend coming up!!

Here in New Zealand we are hunkering down ready for a cyclone to hit this weekend.

We sometimes get these, or at least the tail end, coming down from the tropics and they can be nasty.

Information coming to us presently is that we must remove heavy objects, fasten things down, have emergency rations and plans in place, prepare for possible loss of power and telephone coverage, land slips, heavy rain, flooding and storm surges on the coast. Add to all this gale force winds and we have a weekend which is great for folks wanting to catch up on reading or playing with Gelli Plates but a not a lot of use for outdoors folk!

In readiness for all the above I am hoping today to work on a cot size quilt today for our youngest 10 month old grandson, a very simple strippy quilt which now needs quilting and as we have power today I am playing safe.

This began life as alternating owl fabric strips and flying geese strips, cut everything out and started to put the geese together but in a moment of non-concentration I cut the triangles as quarter squares and of course had huge problems, the fabric was so stretchy. After fiddling around for a day with these they all went into the rubbish bin and I had a rethink.

When he moves into a bed I will make a special quilt.

Given the prospect of all the above weather predictions I am gathering things together. On the reading front I have a couple of lovely Home and Garden type books on the table, latest magazines from SAQA and Quilt Guild UK and a very special book which arrived yesterday.

This is absolutely delicious!!

I knew Kathy at Material Obsession had written another book but until reading about it in a post by Wanda over at Exuberant Color
I didn't realise that release was imminent.

Added to my book shelf is now a beautiful copy, signed by Kathy,  all ready to join me when I curl up in a chair with a cuppa and listen to the howling wind and rain.


If I feel like being a little more adventurous here is the Gelli Plate I mentioned in an earlier post and I have plans for that over the weekend.

Hopefully my sewing studio will not be getting the direct force of the cyclone and I will be able to work in there safely. We have been told to prepare for possibly having to have windows repaired/replaced!

Hope you all have happy quilting weekend, or a happy whatever you are doing weekend.

Maureen

Back Home

Yes the quilt for my daughter has arrived back home!

Thanks to Linda at  RazzleDazzleQuilter for all the lovely quilting,

I now have to stitch on around 400" of binding - not looking forward to that one bit.

No quilting done at all this week unfortunately, Christmas preparations seemed to take most of my time,  but tomorrow the family are all getting together for a Christmas meal and I am looking forward to catching up with children and grandchildren.

I am conscious that on 1st January 2014 all of us who have pledged no fabric buying for six months will be working our way through our "to do lists" and our "want to do" lists using up the fabrics from our stash with NO more fabric buying for six months. I am seriously considering putting in an order today and even though the parcel would arrive after the 1st, technically it will still count as stash as it was ordered before the 1st!!

If you would like to know more about Fabriholics Anonymous click below



We have rain forecast here in New Zealand for Christmas Day, shame as we have had a run of super sunny weather but it sounds like we will all be indoors for the day!
Usually the Pohutakawa trees are blooming merrily at this time of year but they are a little late, known as the New Zealand Christmas Tree down here  they are a sight to behold when full of blooms. We managed to take a photo of one just flowering

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Peaceful New Year
Maureen

Early Spring cleaning day

Sewn together half of the blocks in the quilt for my daughter, she asked me why I didn't have a go at quilting it myself, thought about it for a few days and decided to do that. I haven't attempted such a big quilt before, this will be around 80" by 100" so I will do quilt as you go by splitting the blocks in the quilt into two halves, quilting each half and put them together then add on the two narrow  borders and one wider border I can then easily go around and quilt those. That's the theory anyway so watch this space. 

The three fabrics I had ordered arrived two days ago from a range called "Savanna Safari" they looked to be quite a bright buttery yellow on the store site but  are a bit more subdued than I had thought and now I am trying to pull two or three fabrics to add a bit more colour. Not sure about these. I love the blue rings from Brandon Mably, it picks up on the green, tan and the soft purple in the fabric and the blue background gives it a lift but I think the Kaffe stripe could be a bit dull, the green with small dots is just OK - I'll leave them on the table and go back tomorrow, see what I think then.

It's raining with a vengeance here at the moment so guess the blossom on the cherry tree will be all over the grass by morning. It was looking lovely. There is a young vireya bush in the side border of the garden with absolutely huge buds, first time of flowering and for the past few days I have rushed out to see if they have opened, but nothing yet so hope like crazy that they haven't been damaged by the very heavy rain.

I took the photograph yesterday along with one of my waterlily camellia, I have one pink and this one

As the weather is atrocious it's an added incentive to go and shut myself in my room and get busy on the machine!

Have a happy weekend
Maureen

Sunny sewing day

It's an absolutely glorious day here in Auckland, warm and sunny and an ideal day for getting busy in the garden. Also a great day for quilting, I have a machine on a table under the window and look out onto the camellia hedge it's a lovely spot to sit and sew.

I have 52 of the quarter log cabin blocks complete and another 28 to go! My display wall is just not large enough and I won't be able to fit the full quilt with sashing and borders on it, that will need to be photographed outside. As my sewing room is quite small I can't really stand far enough away to take a good shot, these blocks will all need trimming and re-arranging before sewing together but leaving them on the wall is an incentive for me to hurry up and finish the remaining blocks. I would like to do that this afternoon but I have two of our grandchildren coming after school and another little one is coming here while his Mum and Dad and baby brother go along to a funeral, not good for sewing. 

I had a walk around in the back garden earlier and took my camera with me, I see that one of my plants is flowering, can't remember what this one is but probably a member of the bromeliad family, if anyone recognises this please tell me the name

One of my favourite roses is still flowering

This one is Crepuscle a climber and one of my favourites, the blooms just glow when the sun hits 

We had a ride along the waterfront in the city on Sunday after visiting with family, we came home just before sunset and the shot below is looking back towards Auckland

Looking out over the Pacific, the island in the distance is Little Barrier.

Maybe I can just squeeze in a half hour of quilting time before the grandchildren arrive, I'll give it a try.

Have a good weekend

Maureen 

Moving forward

I had intended writing a post on Sunday morning but we awoke to find that we couldn't connect to the Internet, this has happened a few times before. My husband spent absolutely ages on the 'phone to the provider being passed from "level one" technician up to "level three" before he could get anywhere, then told it would three or four days before the problem could be looked into. So here we are five days later, problem fixed but now the 'phone line is dead!!! Another 'phone call on mobile and only after he (husband) explained about my Medical Lifelink Alarm did he get anywhere - guess they didn't want the responsibility for a bad outcome if I went into v.tach and couldn't use the alarm for the medics! So, they are now working on the land line and I just sat down to write this post - the internet went down again, you can guess what choice words I used, after tethering the mobile or whatever it is that he does, I can at least finish this, I hope.

I have decided not to add anything further to my NY Blooms above, just put on a pink binding after quilting. I had started on a pieced border same sort of thing as the blooms but just wasn't happy with it, I needed the blooms to be the focal point, so getting ready to quilt it next week. Something simple as because I just don't want to detract from the subway fabric.

A few more blocks finished on the quilt for my daughter, I laid them out on the deck yesterday to take a pic and Daisy promptly sauntered up and lay down in the sun on the blocks

I have more to write but as  my other half needs his mobile set up I will have to keep fingers crossed and post again on Saturday.

Happy quilting

Getting there!

Not the progress I had hoped for after having my 6 week post op. check on my hand. I have a problem with pain and extreme skin sensitivity over the scar site and along the inside of my wrist and lower arm (told it is referred to as pillar pain) so only able to work on quilting a little at a  time and working in the garden - not at all!! However with the exercises I have been given improvement should be pretty quick, back to hand therapy next week.

Golly - what a shock looking at this photo of my progress with the New York Blooms,  the colour was true when I downloaded and cropped etc. but here just looks dulled down. Only put on the side border in the pink so far, the top and bottom to go on tomorrow and then  think what to do next.


I put the four blocks together then added a border of one and a half inches of the subway fabric sent over to me by Helen and received yesterday, next a very narrow border which will be around 3/8ths of an inch finished and this is the part of the photo which has lost out - it is actually a very bright rich magenta/pink and looks gorgeous, brings out the colours in the subway fabric and the blooms. I'll take another pic in a day or two when I should also have more blocks stitched on the quilt for my daughter.


Speaking of colour the gardens here are a bit lacking in that department at the moment, at least mine is because the rain has ruined a lot of my camellia blooms, so to compensate I have a photo of one of my all time favourites in the flower department - paeonies, love them to bits. Sadly this is not grown in my garden but bought at the local florists around October/November last year.

Isn't it gorgeous??

On the subject of gardens although I said above that mine was lacking in colour  I did have a walk down the back garden earlier and the daphne bushes are just about breaking into flower, if you haven't been able to walk past a daphne in full flower you don't know what you're missing - the perfume from them is out of this world. There are also green leaves from the bluebells starting to show now, this is one of the things I miss about "home" (England) the drifts of bluebells in the woods in Springtime, it really is too warm for them here in Auckland but I usually manage to have half a dozen flowering!!! Gosh, roll on Spring.

Daisy is looking forward to Spring I imagine, she is old now and loves to be outside but doesn't seem to know when to get out of the way of the rain and so many times I have found her absolutely dripping wet. She has an old chair just outside the lounge and loves to sit and soak up the sun when it's shining, but still sits on the chair when it's wet so to solve the problem of having to repeatedly go out, dry her and bring her inside I have put an umbrella over the chair - most people think I'm slightly mad to do this but hey it works a treat, I can angle it away from her when it's a sunny day or if it looks like rain I straighten it and she sits there quite happily with the rain pouring off her umbrella.

Time for our evening meal - chicken with herbs and garlic tonight, the smell coming from the kitchen is making me quite hungry, so I will go and eat.

Have a good weekend and happy quilting to all.

Maureen

Enjoying the welcome sunshine!

What a glorious day we're having here in Auckland, cool early this morning but been sunny and warm until now, the cool evening is creeping up on us. It would have been a great day for gardening but our soil is still pretty wet although the weeds would have come out easily I should have thought, which is immaterial really as I didn't set foot in the garden, certainly not to work but I did take a photo of one of my roses "Heritage" (at least I think that's the name - lost label) it's a David Austin rose, most glorious perfume, real old fashioned. Still a few drops of very early morning rain on the petals.

Guess who came to visit again today?  

Yes - my old friend the magpie (see earlier posting on my aversion to these birds), hope we don't have 

many more visits!

In my post Tuesday I had a shot of strips of fabric ready to make a quilt for our daughter which got off to a slow start, however I did complete the sub-cutting of the strips and was able to get under way with the sewing yesterday. The photo below has the blocks just pressed up on my old flannel design wall, in total there will be 20 blocks so it will be a good size when the two narrow and one wide borders are added. Not sure about the fabric in a block on the left, this is the same as the centre squares and I think it stands out too much in comparison to the rest of the fabrics, maybe I will wait until tomorrow and make a few more blocks and decide whether to take it out or leave in, perhaps if I have it in another two or three blocks it might work.

The light was fading a little when I took this so it possibly looks a bit dull. Daughter saw the fabrics and said she would love a quilt, she thought it had a Pacific feel to it. 

Been looking at a few more blogs and found a lovely one from Tauranga, about a three hour drive from Auckland, lovely gardening and quilting so I have added that to my blog list - thank goodness not everyone posts on the same day or there would be no time left for my quilting and all the household chores.

Don't know how many of you are fans of Kaffe Fassett and friends fabrics but I love them now got a fantastic stash together, but if you are a fan of his have you seen his new stripes?? First saw them on the new blog from Glorious Colour and they really are lovely have a look if you are a "follower"of his fabrics!

Seamus (old Irish Setter doggie) will be needing his tea soon so better go and feed him, hope everyone is enjoying their weekend and happy quilting.

Maureen

Surgery and a sad day

Had my surgery on Monday of last week for carpal tunnel release on my right hand, all went well and I had this done with local anaesthetic, which was great for the fact there is no drowsiness as with full sedation and no totally numb arm which is the case with a full arm nerve block. Surgeon did warn me that when they put the local in the area to be worked on that it would sting. Not to worry said I, had locals before for things like a punch biopsy, not the same she said by sting she meant REALLY sting! Wow, was that an experience and for good measure she put three lots in! Usual procedure with a tourniquet on for a set time so that it would be easier to do the surgery dry rather wet, and within 15 minutes I was reclining in a great chair with a cup of tea and bikkies. I am still padded and bandaged but sutures are due for out on Thursday, looking forward to that. Nightmare with my right hand out of action and can not do any quilting. Told no lifting anything heavy for four weeks.

The good side to all the above is no housework, no cooking and once I had better use of my fingers was able to order some gorgeous batiks from BatiksPlus - they are currently on their way to me. I have also decided, more or less, to get a hold of an Accuquilt Go cutter. We have access to the Go or Baby here in NZ so have been researching the Go, if any of you out there have a Go would you mind telling me what you think of it please. I am hoping that by using one I could cut down on hand stress. I would be probably using squares, half and quarter triangles and of course strips, probably go for a 1.25", certainly a 2.5" and maybe one in-between, also maybe a tumbler and I haven't yet looked to see if they have the dies to make the kaleidoscope pattern.

Three sets of Kaffe Fasset sampler strips from Terri at Quilternity's Place are still sitting on my table whilst I decide what to start with some of these

On a sad note, those of you who have been reading my blog from when I first started may remember a quilt which I was making for a friend, I said she was unwell, the quilt was called "Vintage" from a Kaffe Fasset book. She was actually fighting metastatic breast cancer (she had been clear for 13 years until 3 years ago) and the secondaries had spread to very many organs, but she was thrilled to be able to use her quilt for two months whilst undergoing more chemotherapy and radiotherapy. I was with her two weeks ago and had arranged to visit again Thursday last week but she deteriorated quickly and went into the hospice that day and  passed away on Saturday. She was a darling friend for 33 years and I and our little patchwork group will miss her dreadfully. She loved to wear pink in all it's various shades and decreed that the flowers on her coffin should be nothing but pink! So in memory of her I have two pics of flowers below from a small group which my husband bought for me last week. 

Hopefully back to my sewing machine next week as I am really getting withdrawal symptoms now, I need to be working with yummy fabrics which is great therapy!!!!

Have a great week

Camellia Season

Outside my sewing room we have a hedge of about one dozen sasanqua camellias in cerise, white and pink/white which is the one pictured here. They don't really have what could be called a perfume more of an earthy smell to them, however I just adore them, especially when the petals start to fall they carpet the ground and look amazing. When they have just about finished the bigger japonicas take over and we have a number of those in the back garden along the fence line. Looking forward to their flowers!

The hibiscus here is flowering away for us, the blooms are about six inches or more across. They love the humidity in Auckland  it's semi-tropical and can rain quite a lot.

As Nancy J has mentioned in her moving post today we have a public holiday for Anzac Day and if you would like to know a little more about our special day just hop over to her blog. She is on my blog list on the right of my posts - All Points of the Compass.

Been busy making blocks for 15 Minutes Play and really enjoying  this new venture, it's addictive! If you have time go along over and have a look at what everyone is doing.

In a "previous" life I was crazy about Shibori, and worked with silk, a beautiful fabric to work with and takes the dye so well. The piece here was made a number of years ago using the Arashi form of Shibori and I had an exhibition of work in a gallery here in Auckland, Shibori pieces and quilts and I had a great review in the Art Section of the Auckland Herald - our daily paper. I was so pleased. This one is called "Touched with Fire". No quilting of course. It's not the best photograph I seem to have straightened the middle out along the flannel wall more than the top and bottom. It really is correctly proportioned.

The hanging on the right is also a few years old

and was made with graded dyed fabric from Alaska Quiltworks,  beautiful soft cotton and a joy to work with. Sorry this is another photo taken in a hurry and not positioned well at all - note to self to take my time when photographing.

I am rushing as we are expecting our daughter and her two over for a meal and I really want to finish sorting two more of my wire baskets holding heaps of quarter metre pieces before they arrive, I'm working my way slowly through fourteen large baskets from my sliding stack units, already done four with Kaffe Fasset/Philip Jacobs and about four with batiks, I also have the larger pieces on a long shelf under my sewing table and  I need to get all these done and fit in my quilting before May 27th when I am due to have my carpal tunnel release on my right hand, guess who will not be doing housework for a little while! The quilting also will be on the back burner for two or three weeks.

I have just bought the newest edition of "Studios" and I hope to be able to sit down and look through this later tonight, I had a quick flip through and how I wish I had a room the size of some of them in the magazine, it's quite a tight squeeze in a 9' x 10' room, my husband is always saying that I have tried to fit to much in here and I suspect he is quite right. Must rationalise things.

Enjoy the rest of the week,  have a good weekend and happy quilting!

Fabric Bonanza!!

Well not much achieved on the quilting front this week due to two days with hospital appointments, one day looking after one of our grandsons who wasn't well and visits with a dear friend who is very unwell.

However, yesterday my fabrics from the new Kaffe Fasset and Philip Jacobs range arrived:

The ones above and to the right are the blues and
greens, plus the lovely lime Millefiore, I had also
ordered a lovely Yellow Brocade Paeony but that
one wasn't in so will have to order that later, I
can always find more fabrics to make up another order - no problem at all.

Three of the colourways for Brocade Paeony are here on the right, really fell for this pattern  but these small shots just do not do them justice you really need to see the full width of the pieces. These are all one yard each.

 I am not usually fond of grays but because of the other colours in there I needed to have some, I already had bought two yards of the Gray Brassica a few weeks earlier. Have no plans of course for a particular project using my new pieces, for the moment they are sitting on my cutting table where I can just walk past and stroke them.

These four are the last, apart from two more yards of the  Pear Aboriginal Dots  which I adore.

I have also ordered three of the sampler rolls which are a mix of the new fabrics, couldn't say no to those when I saw them on  the quilternity site. Those will probably be only a few days away.

The only thing I have done is finished cutting and fusing a block designed by Ryan McKenna, I bought the nine blocks in the set about two years ago but after spending absolutely ages cutting around the small pieces I am having second thoughts about trying to do any more! My quilting will be on the back burner for a couple of weeks soon as I will be having the carpal tunnel operation on my right hand. I can already feel withdrawal symptoms setting in. I will post a shot of this block next time. As I have based my post really around my new fabrics here is a photo of a quick table runner I made a short while ago using Kaffe Fasset fabrics, which as you will have guessed I absolutely adore.

I had great fun making this and would love to make a full size quilt with this simple nine patch and square.

Okay, lunchtime  so have to dash, hopefully more of quilting next post - before my op.

Have a good week.