That time of the week…...

Yes, Saturday (Sunday here) and time for a post about Purples.

I'm posting  the Mountain Majesty blocks again from last weeks' post, the

colours looked very muddied, this taken on a good day is clearer

but taken on a funny angle!

With this Saturday and two more to go in April I wondered what on earth

I was going to make with purple, I didn't need more purple Mountains but

I love Ohio Stars so I'm making a second quilt.

The one above looked better on point

but it seems I didn't take a photo of that setting

however I think I will go with on point. Six each month set diagonally should make a

good quilt, the blocks are 6" finished.

I'm using up some of my older tiny prints for the background where possible, I have heaps 

going back years and years. My Kaffe scraps just have to be in there

and confession time …… I have just had a delivery of the

new range so I may just have to have some of those in these two quilts.

Don't forget to visit everyone at
the Rainbow Scrap Challenge
I need to play catch-up over the next few weeks to make more of the two
different blocks in Blue, Pink and Yellow!!

The week seems to have flown by and I feel as if I'm back on a roll with my

quilting! The blue hexagon quilt should be all put together in a few days and

not many more H blocks to sew.

As it's a purple month have a look at the tiny cyclamen patch

below - they are actually more pink I know - and

 about three inches high at most. This is just a small patch there are more,
each year after flowering I wait for the seed capsules to mature then

sprinkle under the hydrangeas, they seem to love it there.

We have family coming for dinner tonight so it's time for me to head to the kitchen,
Summer Quiche tonight made with shortcrust pastry, sour cream, shallots, tasty cheese, eggs, courgettes,
basil and of all things - lettuce! It is just delicious and every bit as tasty when cold
for lunch the next day.
Maureen

A change of direction ...

Happy Easter!

Over the past few weeks I have been making Wild Geese style blocks in

the colour of the month for Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2015 check out all about
this yearly challenge, and if you check out this post HERE you will see
my last yellow block.

This month we have the colour purple - below blocks made today,

apologies in advance for these colours not showing quite true, we have a very dull day
here presently and it's almost 5.00pm, these shots
should have been taken this morning but as I hadn't even cut out
the fabric squares at that stage it was not possible!! You will also notice
the "deliberate" mistake in the bottom two set of blocks.

As you can see  I have moved to Scrappy Mountain Majesties, I have wanted to make
a quilt using these blocks for ages, now is the time. I love the blocks I
started off the year with but on the last two I found
I was having to fussy cut so much and had heaps of fabrics out looking
for just the right piece, yesterday I decided I didn't need the hassle! They will be
used in something further along the road.

The twelve blocks above have only been set like this for ease of photographing, they won't be set in
the quilt I have in mind in pairs as above.

Yesterday I posted my story to
Cultural Fusion Quilts
about my latest piece made specifically for that blog, Sailing Through Suez, hope you'll
take a few minutes to link up above (or there is a button on the sidebar) and have a peek, this is the back
fabric and quilting

You can see a small section of the front of the quilt in my last post, just scroll down.
Before I head off to link up with Angela and fellow RSC folk have a look at
the first Camellia of the season in my garden

time to link up now with
Rainbow Scrap Challengers

Happy Quilting
Maureen

Back to the sewing machine

At last life is more or less normal again and I'm back

in the studio although I've not made a huge amount of progress

since Monday. We have visitors here in the village from the UK, friends we

haven't seen in around 35 years, so we've been spending catch-up time with them.

There are quite a few more H blocks in the basket and I don't

have to make as many as I first thought, the bed is not a King Single

but a normal single size. I ordered the backing - Purple Dancing Paisley - from Glorious Colour, presently on sale, orders usually take a week to ten days so the quilt should
be ready for quilting by then. Fingers crossed.

The quilting on Sailing through Suez is now all finished and in the process of being bound,
 I'll post a photo here when it's finished but the full story behind the quilt will be
over on Cultural Fusion Quilts. I initially had rolling waves spaced
quite a distance apart but that just wasn't enough, just didn't gel so I went overboard (no pun intended)
 with lots more waves!!

Here's a tiny section, taken with my iPhone so not the best quality, sorry.

Aurifil is my favourite thread of choice and there was a great variegated on their shade card
which was a perfect  match.
The Country Yard here in New Zealand stock these threads, if they don't
have the colour needed they order in and I usually have them on the machine a few days later.

Everyone in the Northern Hemisphere will be heading into Spring now,
lucky you! Our mornings and evenings are becoming distinctly cooler, but I enjoy
this time of the year, another few weeks and it will be great
weather for quilting and wrapping up in cosy sweaters and jeans.

I have a new plant keeping me company in the studio, my daughter brought this along
for me last week

just love these colours!

Back to the cutting board - enjoy your week and stock up on Eater Eggs!!

Maureen

That was the week that was …. (WARNING rather wordy)

…….in our son's words "the week from hell".

It sure was! If you can bear with me do read to the bottom for 2 quilty pics!!

 Saturday last week Daughter-in-law 'phoned us at 7.00am

been very ill all night, a 2yr old and 4yr to care for and husband

away in Australia, could we help?

 We brought the children over to our place so that

she could sleep and they went home mid afternoon.

Sunday - spent most of the day tying down & putting away in readiness

for the cyclone which was due with winds up to 160km per hour.

We had a little windy weather and rain here in Auckland so

Monday spent putting everything back again!

Tuesday evening - husband became very ill, 

briefly unconscious and vomiting and I had to put him

in the recovery position on the floor and call an ambulance.

Fluid inhaled into lungs so taken to hospital, (sorry for graphics) and  passed out

again in the emergency so had to stay there. Back home Wednesday after much thorough testing.

Early Wednesday  called our two sons and daughter to tell them about their Dad. Eldest son

telling me that our grandson had been terribly ill with migraine etc until

the early hours of the morning. His cat was let out out the house at 6.00am 

and at 7.00am they found her on the drive having been hit by

a car. Off to the vet and in overnight to ascertain

full extent of injuries. Too bad to do anything to save her and sadly they

had to euthanise her. Horribly sad experience.

Wednesday night daughter had issues with eldest grand-daughter  but won't go into that

in any detail!

Thursday chest x-rays for me and more blood tests!!

So - no quilting - but taking a cue from Sally T I rummaged around in my

bits and pieces box and found this

bought many years ago and popped in the drawer to "do something with one day"

a beautiful pukeko - to see more of these colourful characters go
HERE and HERE
and now working on an idea!

Also I came across the photo below from years ago,  just a quick mock up of
a block, my intention was to make 20 blocks, I made 2 and realised
I could not make a whole quilt with just a handful of colours - the whole lot was given away!

The more fabrics in my quilts, the merrier I am!
Long live bright and beautiful.

Praying for a happier week ahead.
Maureen

Sunshine (RSC 2015) and Cyclones

Thank goodness the weather, due to Cyclone Pam, wasn't

as bad as we had thought for us here in Auckland.

Other areas of New Zealand have been hit hard and of course

there is tremendous devastation in the Pacific Islands with a huge

relief effort underway.

To bring a little sunshine into the day I have another yellow block to post

it looks to be on a funny angle here  with 

smaller blocks on one side but that's me not having it straight

on my design board!

I'm still laying out the pieces for my hexagon quilt on the wall

so just a quick idea of colours here

hopefully I can have most of it sewn by the end of the week and my Cultural Fusion quilt

need to have the quilting finished up.

To see more sunny yellows go along to
Scrap Happy Saturday

Enjoy the week!

Sunny Side Up

Our first week using Yellow in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2015

and at last I summoned up the energy after two weeks

feeling absolutely awful

to get to my machine and make a block!

And what a nightmare taking a shot of this. I used my camera with
 three different light settings, I used my iPad but both results were too much on
the green side.
I moved the design wall over onto
a different wall and repeated the exercise, still not happy,
Eventually got just the exact colour with my iPhone. Downloaded once
more to my computer and opened Elements but once again the
colour changed!! Into preferences
was the next step and there are various
set-ups in there for the colour and now I have more or less a pretty
good match but not as sunny a yellow as
it should be, I'll try again tomorrow. The light outside was pretty strange today and
that wouldn't have helped.

I crept out into the front garden bed on the weekend to take this photo
of the last of my day lilies to flower. Officially we are now into
Autumn in New Zealand so the garden will begin to get ready for
Winter slowly over the next two months.

Going over now to link with Angela and all at RSC 2015
and as the block I'm using for this year is designed by Cynthia Brunz I'm linking with her at
Oh Scrap! the button will shortly be on my sidebar.

More from me during the week, happy quilting.

Maureen