Here is the old quilt I based my Skinny Cross on. Not much to go on really, the colours were terrible and the photo quality poor. I completely left out the brown and black blocks, they didn't add anything to the quilt in my opinion.
But sometimes you only need the tiniest spark to give you an idea for a whole quilt, and that's what happened here. I saw a way to use up all my old pale florals, and it worked. All gone now.
This quilt has been hanging around for years, and has had so many fabrics auditioned for it and rejected.
For years I've been buying madder fabrics and have enough for four more tops at a conservative estimate. Keryn's thoroughly sick of hearing me say "Oh, this fabric might go in my Madder quilt..."
But finally it's in one piece, for better or worse, and ticked off my list. Good heavens this top is big, one of the biggest I've made, and I was wracked by doubt all the way through. Why was I making it so huge? I don't know, sometimes the quilt dictates it's own dimensions, and I just have to shut up and go along with it. Not that I don't argue all the way and dig my heels in..... The quilt usually wins, so I should just go with the flow and do as I'm told, sigh.

Once again it was based on an old ebay quilt, but I think the photo is lost in the mists of time, so I can't show you.

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The doors and windows top has borders, and I have to piece a backing for it now. I have this plan to make the backing and binding as soon as I've finished piecing the top and I've been good for the last three tops. I still have to quilt them but at least everything is prepared.

This is my latest finish, a Skinny Cross based on an old quilt on ebay. It was very shabby and faded, and there were a few black blocks mixed in with the soft florals and sprigged prints. I couldn't bring myself to replicate it to that extent, so I made do with some old but pretty fabrics in my stash.

I find these old florals too busy to use in my usual style of top, so I put them all into this one. Whatever was left I cut into 9 1/2" squares and pieced the back from them. It used up every bit of them;- I was scratching at the end and had to actually piece some blocks to get enough. I weighed the top and backing afterwards, and according to that I used 8 metres of material. How wonderful to get that all out of the stash, some of it had been hanging around for nearly thirty years!
There isn't much contrast between the blocks and the setting fabric, but I liked this effect. It reminded me of soft English quilts made out of sprigged cottons, and it looks very light and airy. If I get it quilted soon it will be my summer quilt, and I have some vintage blue and white pillowcases that would go very nicely with it. I can see it already.

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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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