Just lately there seem to be a lot of quilts using rectangles cropping up in Blogland, so I thought I'd try some. We were using 2 1/2" by 4 1/2" bricks for some of our bushfire quilts, so I played around and came up with this design. I like it because it also needs a 1 1/2" strip top and bottom, and I was able to use some skinny scraps leftover from cutting the bricks. It's nice to find a use for everything.
It was very simple to sew, three bricks sewn together in the middle, and then a 1 1/2" by 6 1/2" strip added top and bottom. (I cut them slightly longer and then trimmed the block to size) This made the final measurement a 6 1/2" block, and they went together very quickly. I made positive and negative blocks, half with a light centre brick, half with dark, then rotated them in each row. Super simple, and no seams to match in the block, it was very forgiving.
You could piece three long 2 1/2" strips and crosscut at 4 1/2" to give the centre section, but I was working with scraps, so I cut individual bricks. It used up nearly all my brown bits, and that was quite a pile. I'll put borders around it when I have time, and probably piece a back for it, I do love weeding out the smaller bits from my stash.

I thought it looked like frames or openings, so I've decided to call it Doors and Windows.

We've been having some nice rain here, lots of cloudy skies and even a few storms. I adore a grey rainy day, and rather than depressing me it actually makes me feel happy and cosy. The countryside has responded and the fields are a beautiful green, the wildflowers have come out and the crops are getting lush. We haven't had a winter like this for years and years, and I'm really enjoying it.

A while ago I saw this rainbow after a soaking rain, and I don't think I've ever seen such vivid colours. It was positively throbbing, and the arc was unbroken. I was on the road, and the other end came down ahead of me, so it was like I was driving into it, an amazing sight. And the double arc to the right was nearly as bright as the first, and unbroken too.

I never did get to the end of it, so no gold, but it cheered me up immensely.

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The borders are finished on the little basket top, it turned out quite sweet I think.
And I found this set of blocks in a project box and whipped them together to make a baby quilt-another UFO tackled. I don't feel any guilt about the tops I have, only the bits and pieces sitting around, so my flush of triumph is usually reserved for when the top is in one piece, not when the quilt is bound. A strange attitude, but it's mine.

Even stranger is my elation, not at the prospect of a finished quilt, but having an Empty Box!! Oohh, what can I put in there now?I've been rearranging my projects quite a bit, and have finished a few lately, but my reaction seems to be "Look at all the empty containers!!Yay!" rather than satisfaction at finishing something.

Matthew bathed Dolly the other day, and Macca climbed in too, just to keep her company. She doesn't share her Dad's passion for water, and made it plain that it isn't her element. He happily licked the soapsuds off her nose and tried to get her to play, but she was most unhappy. Perhaps she'll like it better when it's stinking hot in summer but from the look on her face I doubt it.

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I love it when my floor looks like this, it means I've been busy cutting and getting lots done. You'd think I could take a bit of extra time and make sure the offcuts hit the bin, but I get carried away and just fling them off the edge of the table. Easy enough to pick it all up later when I've calmed down.

This is the other project I completed to the border stage. This is going to be a Big quilt, but I had such fun making the blocks I couldn't stop. I still don't think I've finished with them, even though there are forty-two in this top.
I do love brown and red together, mmm.Remember my Leader- Ender project that I said I wouldn't rush ahead with? I've been good and plugging away, but inspired with my other progress I decided to lay it out and see how far I'd got.


STILL not enough for a top, let alone one the size that Bonnie does. Sometimes I use parts of the main project as Leader-Enders, so that can cut down how much I get done on this, but I thought I was nearly done here. I need another ten or twelve sections I estimate, so it's not going to finish any time soon unless I break my vow and concentrate on this alone. Which is very tempting at the moment...

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Sally emailed me and asked about the pattern for the quilt that won the prize. It was designed by Robyn Falloon, her 2008 BOM and it's called "Bronte's Garden". It was available from a shop called Fragrant Cottage in Warnambool, and that's as much as I know. The fabrics were just beautiful, I would have liked to add some of them to my stash, that's for sure.

Last week I was very busy, and besides doing customer quilts there was a lot of travelling. Keryn pointed out that I'd been to a different town every day, and so by the weekend all I wanted to do was stay home and not go anywhere!

So I did, and I got lots done in the sewing room. Three bedsize quilts to the border stage, a customer's problem borders pieced and attached, and a small quilt pieced together. It's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't let yourself get distracted. Admittedly I'd pieced or appliqued most of the blocks already but it still felt great to be able to sit for hours at the machine and finally see progress.
These tulip blocks will have a border of triangles and then a cream border around the outside.
This little basket top will have a pieced border next, but I haven't quite worked it out yet.

I'll take photos of the other projects tomorrow.

Keryn and Matt and I took the dogs for a walk one afternoon, and we all had a lovely time.
Dolly tried the water in a rock pool and decided that it was Horrible stuff, unlike Macca who had to be persuaded not to jump right in.

Matt says he's climbed up the top of this hill, and little Jessie managed to keep up with him- she might be tiny but she's got incredible stamina.This time Matt went to the top of the green patch, but the descent was hair-raising; he slid halfway then stood up and ran the rest of the way, completely out of control. I expected him to dive head over turkey, but he made it in one piece.

He carries a big walking stick he made and I call him Gandalph and have threatened to make him a grey wizard's hat to go with it. He laid it down for a minute and Macca decided to carry it for him. Taking this photo was all well and good until he ran between Keryn and me and clocked us both in the shins with it- you'd swear he'd done it on purpose except he's too good-natured for that.

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It was our local show last Saturday, and unfortunately Keryn and I didn't get to go. But the quilt in the last post won the trophy for the best quilt, so I was pretty pleased.

I've been really trying to make a dent in the customer tops, and was making good progress until Wednesday, when five new ones came in. Back to square one with all the shelves full, and more promised to us...I feel like I'm running on the spot! But that's better than sitting around twiddling my thumbs, after all, this is what I do for a job! A friend of ours has 90 customer tops waiting, I think that would freak me out, having that many, I'd feel like I'd never get them all done.

Rob and Elisa have been going to dancing lessons, originally so they could do a wedding dance (which knocked everyone's socks off, they were very polished), and their instructor encouraged them to enter the GDS Dance National Competition in Canberra. They went off expecting to have a bit of fun, and came home with three trophies, First in Modern Jive, and Elisa came second in Dance with a Stranger (where they swap the couples around) and Rob came third. I'm very proud of them, and my Mum would have been over the moon, she was a wonderful dancer in her time.But the evening ended on a dramatic note, with Elisa having an asthma attack, being raced off in an ambulance and spending the night in hospital. Poor girl, from the Highs to the Lows, just like that.

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Keryn and I had a quilting marathon, which Keryn wrote about here. I spent most of Monday at our patchwork group, and Wednesday and Thursday we'll be in Adelaide so I needed to get the work done and not feel guilty. I have a big candlewick top to tackle next, and if I can get it loaded on the machine and started today I'll feel even better.

I love doing pantographs and enjoy the custom work, but every now and then I get a top that I just go overboard on and this was one. I loved the colours, the buttonhole applique was beautifully done and I really wanted the quilting to enhance the workmanship.

I was thinking feathers somehow in the border, and Keryn said "But there isn't enough room!" No there wasn't a lot of space, but I could see the end result in my mind and it turned out as I thought it would. (That's always a relief!)

There's a lot of quilting in this and some of it you can't even see because it doesn't show up on the black, but I was really pleased with the overall effect. I enjoyed working on it from start to finish, and can hardly wait until this customer brings the next top.



Or perhaps not, I just remembered she's doing the Michele Hill design pictured in this post .....!
Aghh!!! The pressure will be on then!!

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There's been a thing going around about first quilts and last quilts, and it's always interesting to compare the two. My first completed quilt was a red and black and white Double Irish Chain that Keryn bullied me into helping her with in 1978. She'd been quilting for quite some time, and I was fairly lukewarm about it, my interests being lace knitting, art and poetry. This patchwork thing was OK , and I'd started a few smaller projects but a whole quilt seemed too much.

Keryn took no notice of this attitude, and like a brisk English nanny she handed me a stack of cut pieces, some advice on how to put them together and firmly expected me to get sewing. The only solid cotton fabric we could get was lawn - far too flimsy or headcloth, a thick coarse weave that was very um..., sturdy, shall we say.

I'm quite amazed at how I put that first block of squares together; I went wandering around with my needle attaching bits here and there and filling in the gaps later. It worked, but for some reason the notion of seperating it into rows didn't occur to me until later, probably another tip from Keryn.
I was quite impressed when the top was finally in one piece; I thought my job was done. Not so, we had to quilt it now Keryn announced, and she organised lengths of wood, clamps, a black and white houndstooth check for the backing and some un-named batting for the centre. I helped by tacking and rolling things when I was told to, but I still had no real understanding of the process or what we were going to do. Stitch through all three layers I supposed, and waited for Keryn to show me.

Then began a very happy little space of time that I always look back on fondly. I was newly married and apart from a few farm duties had no real commitments. Keryn lived about five miles away in a neighbouring town and every afternoon I jumped on my little motorbike and whipped around to her place. We set the frame up in her lounge room balanced on four chairs, sat on little stools and watched telly for hours while we quilted away. We became great fans of Coronation Street because it was on for about an hour and a half each afternoon and we copied the accents and the characters to amuse ourselves.
We did outline quilting and needletracked a grid into the plain blocks so we didn't have to mark anything, which I thought was pretty neat.

It was quite exciting the day we finally finished and unrolled the whole thing from the frame. During the quilting I was still merely just interested in the process, happy to be able to say that I'd 'done' quilting and patchwork but not sure I'd keep at it. But we went outside, hung the quilt on the line and sat sipping a cup of coffee, admiring it as it lazily flapped back and forth in the breeze; and something strange happened. I fell in love with patchwork in that very minute, not during all the stitching and quilting that I'd done, but there sitting in the garden looking at the finished result and thinking "I can't believe we did that!" A finished quilt has some sort of integrity, some final significance that is quite intoxicating, and all I wanted to do was start another one. Which I did immediately, and I've never stopped, nor have I wanted to.

The poor old quilt, over thirty years old, has definitely seen better days, is grubby and stained and one of Keryn's children left an open pen on it so it's permanently marked. I still love it, and I'm proud of what we did back then, when there were no magazines or information available except for a few scattered references in craft books.

Mary asked recently if we could see ourselves losing interst in patchwork, and I'm pretty certain I never will. It's been thirty-one years so far, and I am really grateful for the fact that Keryn and I started when we were so young. We very often hear women lament that they wish they'd started quilting sooner, but we don't have that regret. I love the fact that we have had this interest to tie us together through the years, and that our enthusiasm is still there, and that now we're helping others get their quilts finished.

I'm sure we never could have foreseen where our love of stitching would take us, when we were sitting in that garden thirty-one years ago but it's been a good journey, and it's not over yet.

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Keryn and I have had a really busy fortnight, full of classes and travel and things that had to be done.We've only got one appointment this week, and some customers coming to pick up completed quilts.I'm looking forward to a bit of quiet time, and perhaps getting some of my own sewing done. Although I can't quite remember what I was working on before we got so rushed.

I've been quilting for customers in between classes and travel and this little top was one of them.

The range of fabrics was very vintage looking, and I loved all the spots in the top.

Chenille was used as the backing, and it turned out very cuddly and warm. It's rather heavy, so I don't think it would be suitable for a bedsize quilt, but as a lap or cot quilt it's very cute.


I did large freehand hearts all over it, to keep it soft and drapeable- too much quilting would have made it stiff and inflexible.

Matthew looked after Dolly while we were away, and snapped this moment of Mother/Daughter love. They look like they're about to kill each other, but no, they're just playing. Bonnie play-fights all the time but Macca never reacts like this, he's always perfectly patient and gentle with Dolly, which is lovely to see. It would be a madhouse if he was as silly as Bonnie is.

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Firstly, the potato recipe.

Fran was a darling and found it on the net, saved me all that typing, but the photo is the one from the book. The actual page is really stained and spattered, which only shows how much we've used it over the years.

We used to watch Kurma on SBS when we lived on the farm, and we were often inspired to try the recipes, eventually owning two vegetarian recipe books of his. But finding the right ingredients was quite a problem; where to get asafoetida powder or curry leaves in Crystal Brook?

Rob used to have to visit the diabetes clinic at the Adelaide Childrens Hospital every three months, and on one of these trips we discovered a whole food shop in Central market that seemed to have everything. Kalonji seeds, chana dal, curry leaves, urad dal, besan flour, all the ingredients we'd wondered about and couldn't get.

I'm definately not vegetarian, but wouldn't mind if I had to be; I don't think I'd miss meat that much. Nor am I whatever religion Kurma is, not interested in that side of things at all. I just like really tasty recipes, and I have very fond memories of Sundays in the farm kitchen with the boys, chopping and stirring and cooking and having fun. Rob was my main partner in crime, and the others ate whatever was served without complaint. Usually. Although John did once remark that when Rob chopped an onion the pieces could choke a horse. He has much more finesse now I think.

I can now show you a secret project because the intended recipient has it in her hot little hands.

Last year when Rob went away Keryn and I made a flannel quilt for him as a going away gift. It came to my attention that Elisa would like one of her own, (I heard there was a bit of competition over who got the blankie when they were watching tv) and so I started sewing this as soon as I could.

There were those at Patchwork who thought it must be for an intended grandchild, because of the ducks, but no. Elisa is mad on ducks, she even had a "Duck's Night" instead of a Hen's Party. So when I saw this fabric I knew I had to use it somehow. It was very cute to work with, and Keryn specially designed a duck panto to quilt it with, so it's ducks all the way! I don't know if I'll ever get a call to use it on a customer quilt, but the pattern is there if needed.

Ducks anyone?

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Henrietta asked for the recipe for Spicy Bengali Potatoes and when I track the book down I'll post it. I've lent it to either Keryn or Matt and I can't remember who.I whipped this UFO together on the weekend as a change from the bushfire tops and customer quilting. The blocks were begun by Keryn, from scraps of blue and cheddar. She rapidly got sick of them for some reason and on one of my visits to her talked of throwing them out. Into my suitcase they went and at home I made more from my scraps, until I had twenty of them. They didn't want to be set together with anything in my stash at the time, so they sat and waited for a few more years , until this green came along. It looks rather like a woven coverlet pattern, and I think it might get a pieced border, but I haven't decided yet.


The scraps for this came mostly from our longarming friend Kaye, who is generous to a fault.She has a bin where bits of backing and oddments get thrown and every time we go there she says "Take what you want!" I don't need to be told twice, but on Keryn's recent trip to Syndey she did the unthinkable. When Kaye said "Pack those scraps up and take them home for Meredith".........gasp.... I'm feeling faint.....hyperventilating a bit..... Keryn LEFT THEM THERE!.

She claims it was because her airline baggage was already 6 kilos over the limit and she'd posted home over 30 kilos of fabric and goodies (!) but still! Scraps! Free! and left in Sydney. Sigh.

Keryn has an alter ego called Greedy Jean and mine is Ima Pigg. They surface whenever there is Stuff to be had, and we do try to control them, honestly. But really cheap fabric is Greedy Jeans trigger, and Ima's weakness is scraps. As Keryn was unpacking all her haul from Sydney, (and sharing it generously with me I hasten to add) I looked at the groaning table and the piles of wool and fabric and sang "Greedy Jean came out to play, now Greedy Jean won't go away!!"

But the bolts of new fabric are for our little shop and some of it will be made into backings for bushfire quilts, and Sydney Show comes but once a year, doesn't it? Nuff excuses.

Dolly can be sooo silly at times. The other day she spent about 15 minutes like this on her back,waggling her paws in the air and barking at the ceiling. Every now and then her back foot said something reeeally cheeky and she had to chew it ferociously, while wiggling in a circle and growling at it. Her tail is equally impertinent, and several times a day she attempts to catch it and teach it a lesson, but she hasn't succeeded yet. This is accompanied by squeals and growls and groans of frustration- Staffies can make the most incredible noises at times. I didn't realise they were so vocal until we had Macca.

And sometimes she just lies and dreams her own thoughts, all toasty under a blankie......

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I finished quilting this Bear Paw and it wasn't until I hung it up that I realised how big it is. Phew, it's good to have that done.I did some freehand in the border, I think cream just cries out for feathers.....
The same customer did this embroidered baby quilt too, lots of little piggies on this one. She obviously likes blue and cream,and so did all the other people that saw these in the workroom. It's a timeless combination.


I sewed up lots of bits at Patchwork on Monday, and by next day I had 112 of these little four patch blocks. And one lone four patch left over.


By gum, they flew together, having the four patches on hand meant that I was more than half done before I started. I think I'll just sew them all together willy-nilly and see what happens.

Is 'willy-nilly' less challenging than 'random'? We have a dear friend at Patchwork who does the most beautiful amazing work and is known for her perfectionism. Whenever someone mentions 'random' settings she gets a worried look on her face and pretends to hyperventilate. She declares that she's cutting 2 1/2" squares and one day she's going to put them all in a paper bag and then just sew them into pairs, whatever she pulls out first. We say "Yes Dear" in a soothing tone, we'll believe it when we see it!

And I probably will play with these as I lay them out, because I don't like the same fabrics touching and I like to distribute the lights and darks.... so I don't do willy-nilly that well either, do I?

After typing 'willy-nilly' so many times I had to go and look up the phrase and it was quite interesting. I like 'hitty missy' too, might start using that!

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Last Friday night Matt and the dogs came in for a sleepover, and we decided to have a DVD night watching some favourite shows. Matt cooked his famous Spicy Bengali Potatoes and made chicken scnitzel, which was absolutely delicious- I felt very spoilt to have tea put in front of me. We'd just settled down in our comfy chairs with the dogs clustered in front of the heater.... when the power went off. Great!

We lit some candles and told ourselves it wouldn't be long, but after fifteen minutes I went and got the cards and we played for the next two hours. I was longing for coffee, and the heater to come back on, it was Cold!

I reminded Matt of a time when we lived on the farm, and we quite often had prolonged power failures. One lasted for eight hours, and we were all pretty sick of it by 9 that night. We were playing cards by candlelight to pass the time and tempers were getting strained. In an attempt to make everyone laugh I pointed dramatically at the light switch and in a slightly hysterical voice declaimed "At the count of Three, the power will come back on!!" And it did!

Matt was about nine, and he glared at me, outraged. "Why didn't you do that SOONER!" he said.
Ah, if only it were that easy....

It's supposed to be patchwork today, but it's pouring with rain and I'm going to wait until it eases up before I make a dash for the car. I've got a little kit packed to work on, just got to decide which machine to take.

Years ago my son John saw these boxes being thrown away at his work place; a whole pile of them still in a flat pack. He asked if he could have them, because he knew that I'd find a use for them. They are only about 7" deep, but I find they're great for packing up kits and keeping larger cut patches together. I hate waste, and it irked me that stuff like this gets thrown out before it's even used.


These four patches measure 3", made from 1 3/4" strips. Once again they were made from the shopping bags of pieces from the patchwork shop in Rocky- I must have made at least six tops from them so far. They are never-ending! I sewed all these three years ago, as well as 160 nine patches. Just from the 1 3/4" strips mind you, there are 1 1/2" and 2" and 2 1/2" and some other wider bits as well. I'll be sewing these until I'm a little old lady!

And the pieced strips below are going to be a border for this quilt. Every time I trimmed the 5" strips into the four patches I was left with 1 1/4" offf-cuts. I started sewing them all together and was staggered at how many there were and how quickly they added up. When I look at bits like this I think I really must be mad, but I just couldn't put them all in the bin. Could I? Keryn would say a resounding "YES!!"

When Keryn comes to visit she sits in this chair and puts Dolly on her knee for a cuddle. Since she's been gone Dolly's learned to climb up by herself and lies here looking very forlorn. It's not the same without a comfy lap to sprawl on, sigh.

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