I'm Back! Finally I have internet access again, I was going mad after nearly three weeks without it. I like living in a small country town, but services are pretty erratic, to say the least. Musn't grumble, and patience is a virtue apparently...

We've been having a cold spell, the coldest June nights in 20 years according to the weather reports. I left my car out of the shed one night, and this is what it looked like next morning. I know it gets a lot colder in a lot of other places, but we're not used to this.

Years ago I made a big quilted jacket out of two layers of fleecy with flannelette for filling. I used to wear it when we lived on the farm and I was never cold, but the boys hated it. One of them dubbed it my "hobo coat" and forbade me to be seen wearing it.It's so cold I got it out again, I figure they'll never know that I shamelessly walk to the letterbox in it and even wave to friends going past instead of diving behind the fence. It's too tatty for a photo here, and I think next year I might lay it to rest in the wheelie bin. If the weather's not too cold....

We've got a new concrete path by the front rose bed, instead of the old rustic pavers that were there before. They looked nicer, but Mum couldn't use her walker on them safely. I have room for more roses now, I think it's a disease. I've bought three new ones this year, we dug up some of Mum's from her old place, and I had 30 or so in pots.... so even after planting 19 along the front path there are still twenty to go in the ground. EEK!! By spring it should all look stunning.

I promise that one day there will be quilting related stuff happening again, this is the longest I've been without my 'habit' for decades......

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GRRRR!!! Why is blogger spacing out my photos all funny? It looks perfect when I write it and then when I hit publish it goes all elongated and full of blank bits! I haven't got time to work this out but it's bugging me!!

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Here's my new bedroom, the walls painted a lovely
greeny gold instead of the metallic blue green limewash they were before-erggh!

The quilt is a Kansas Dugout based on a quilt I saw on ebay years ago. That one had a red border too, but this gold fabric was lying on the top one day, and it suddenly seemed like the perfect finishing touch. I listen to what my quilts say to me, so the red border was abandoned and the gold sewn on.







The quilt on ebay had a strippy back of indigo and cream, but I didn't have enough of the blue fabric so I added the russety brown, and I liked that effect even more.












Each octagon is quilted in a different pattern, and I had
fun inventing them. I wanted it to look like a welsh quilt so there's a centre motif and welsh spirals in the border. It took me months to handquilt, but I really like the effect. I'd do a lot more by hand, but I just don't have the time.











This photo was taken before before it was completed, which explains the baggy area on the right.
And the fabric is my haul from the trip away, I found the bag yesterday, and as I hadn't looked at it since the day I got back it was like buying it all over again! I do love a good gloat over new purchases, but I've been too busy in the last month to do anything involving quilting. It's starting to get to me, but the carrier should move the last of Mum's furniture next week and then perhaps things will settle down. And I can start posting regularly again and replying to comments, I feel like I've neglected everyone terribly. When the computer is moved to the new place I PROMISE I'll do better!

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I've been away for a few days with some patchworking friends, and had a little break from the house. We went to a friends 'shack' on the river Murray at Blanchetown. I'd never been there and we arrived in the dark so it was a surprise to wake in the morning and find this view outside the window.













The river is literally at the back door, and although it might seem small the distances are deceptive. The little line of scrub at the foot of the cliffs are actually full size gum trees, so it would be quite a drop from the top.

We went to two exhibitions, one on a paddle steamer at Mannum that was very interesting. The local patchwork group meet once a month in the steamers dining room, which would make a lovely sewing room, windows on either side and lots of tables, with the river flowing gently past. Very pleasant.

I of course had to buy some fabric at the shops that were set up in marquees, what's the use of going away on a patchwork jaunt and not getting any fabric to show for it! My camera has lost it's batteries so I couldn't get any photos, but trust me, I got some nice stuff.

We stayed a second night at a caravan park in the Adelaide hills and the caretaker was most interested to know what quilters got up to on holiday. I told him it was 'Secret Quilter's Business" ( You'd have to be South Australian to fully appreciate the joke in that), and he was even more intrigued. But we only played cards and had show and tell of all our purchases.

We went to an old chocolate factory as well and so we had plenty of munchies and bags of goodies. It was fascinating to see the old equipment that they still use today, but the chocolate coated peanuts and other lollies were just rolled around in ordinairy cement mixers. Never used for anything else of course, but it looked a bit funny.

I haven't been doing any sewing, but the sewing room at the new house is ready to be set up as soon as I can move my tables into it. So there's no photos of anything quilty, but here's some treasures of Mums.

This is and apron my great grandmother made, and it must have been from a pattern because I found another one just like it in an antique shop. The satiny background material is rotting away but it's still beautiful, and as I'm not an embroider's bootlace I really appreciate the work that went into it. The colours of the silks are still vibrant and shiny, so I don't think it's seen the light of day much. Love of textiles definitely runs in the family, I have a piece of material from my great- grandmother's stash, and I treasure it too much to use it. When I feel guilty about my yardage I look at this piece and think "Oh well, it's genetic, I can't help it"

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Today was Anzac Day, and my SIL and I went to the Dawn Service at the little war memorial in the main street. We drove down in the chilly dark before 6 a.m, passing groups of people walking along huddled in their coats, seeing the lights of other cars converging around the shadowed park. It was very moving, standing beneath the trees and thinking of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers who landed at Anzac cove all those years ago. I looked up at a little sliver of a new moon lying on its back, cradled in the arms of a gum tree, and listened to a bugle playing The Last Post- one of the most poignant memories of Australians everywhere.













Don't you just love old houses? In the back hall is a huge floor to ceiling cupboard, which we hadn't opened until today, and then we found a little door at the back of it. Wouldn't we have loved this find when we were children, raised on a diet of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books. Would there be a secret passage beyond, an old trunk full of treasure, a faded map with an X on it? Or, in Daphne Du Maurier mode....a huddled skeleton sitting in the corner.....















Of course I took one look at the cobwebs and sent Matt up instead, and listened to his crashing and clattering and shouted comments, contenting myself with a peek from the top of the ladder. It must have been a storage space under the original verandah roof and there are boards laid across the rafters so that matt could crawl along quite comfortably. Nothing came to light of any interest, but it kept us all occupied for a good half hour, a change from our cleaning and painting and shifting.














Here's Bev sitting in the window seat, in our nice clean lounge room, having washed the walls down, scrubbed the skirtings and the window and polished the floor. She's exhausted, and I was up a ladder painting or I would have helped. But I'm tired too!

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I feel so guilty that I haven't posted for a while, but life is as hectic as you could imagine. There is some painting going on- the brown sample square has been voted blehhh and the wall may end up green, who knows. The rest of the room will stay cream, this is a very long sunroom built on to the main house and I think it needs to be light and airy. It's 32' 9" and 11'9" across, so it's going to take a lot of furniture to fill it up. The other end has a slow combustion stove, and we lit it and sat around it last night, after a busy day of shifting.






This is the fireplace in Mum's room, bit over the top do you think? Or just plain gorgeous.





















This is a small top I made from leftover strips that Keryn gave me. She usually passes on the bits and pieces that she's sick of, and I love getting parcels of scraps and strips to play with. I've got the backing and batting folded up with this and it would only take a few hours to quilt, but it will have to be after we've all settled in at the new place.








This is the side view of the house, I can just imagine sitting on the verandah, or on the bench under the tree, looking at the roses that line the path. I do love gardening and there's lots of scope for flower beds here, I can hardly wait.

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We've been shopping for some things for the house, and the spare bedroom looks like this now........

The bolt of curtain fabric will end up as curtains and table covers and perhaps cushions for a comfy chair. This will be the guest room for my brother and sister-in-law when they come to visit and SIL did a good job of choosing things without having seen the room first. (They live in Western Australia)

Check out the fireplace in their room, very nice!

Here's an old Weathervanequilt I made out of dressmaking scraps, many years ago. Some

of the fabrics are very unsuitable, seersucker, twills and even some rayon. Nevertheless, it's stood up to repeated washings and is still my favourite quilt to have on my bed, because it's so soft and cuddly.

I'm also lovin' my stripey socks, perfect therapy for a too-busy mind. I don't have time to sew at the moment, but I can pick up my needles and do a few more rows here and there. It has a very calming effect on me at the moment.

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Guess what I'll be doing over the next few weeks?

This is the house that my mother and I are going to live in, gulp, Together! She's 84 and needs to be with someone so we're setting up home in this large Federation style house. It's just around the corner from where I live now, and I'll leave all my sewing there for the time being, so that I can go and escape the throes of shifting Mum's stuff.

Son Matt will continue to live where we are now, so I'll have two homes virtually- lots of room to spread out.

This is me opening the door for the first time- Yaay!!!!

There are some rooms that need painting, so it will be a fortnight or so before we really move. There's not a lot of sewing going on at the moment, just a bit of pottering with the leaders and enders and sorting of old projects. So I might have to resort to ancient quilts if I want to post photos.

The house is set on half an acre, so there's lots of lawns, garden beds and trees all around. Fortuneately I love gardening and I can hardly wait to get stuck into all the pruning and tidying and digging and planting.

Don't worry, there will be plenty of quilting going on soon, even if I've got all this other stuff to do as well. Just as well I get up at 5.30 in the morning!

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Hmmm, what to do with all the off-cuts of the little squares from my bowtie quilt? Common sense would dictate that I throw the little blighters away, wouldn't it?

Am I known for my common sense? In most matters, but not when it comes to even a whisper of wasting fabric.

So the 396 pairs of tiny triangles are becoming.....

...tiny pinwheels. These will finish at 1 1/2", which means each triangle will be 3/4". I don't think that's being too obsessive, do you?

I suppose if there were only a few of them I could chuck them away, but 396 pairs? That's quite a pile.

I don't know what I'll do with them just yet, but they're being leader-enders at the moment, which suits me fine.

Because I've realised that I'm in a self-perpetuating top manufacturing cycle here.

These are 30 crosses and losses blocks, enough for another top, and they were effortless, because they were leader-enders. I can't produce another set of blocks for every project I finish, or I'll feel like I'm running on the spot.

So I'll have to choose patterns like Bonnies that use squillions of little pieces and take ages to accumulate enough bits to set into a top.

And does anyone else have leader-ender guilt? Sometimes I get so excited about the little pieces that I find myself sewing the leader-enders after the other project's done. I feel guilty because I'm only supposed to do them in between the main piecing, and if I use up all the cut bits for the leader-enders then where will I be?

I find myself sewing away surreptiously and telling myself to stop it at once.... Just another example of how I can get distracted. Bonnie must have heaps more discipline than me.

Sigh.

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The borders are done, so another top joins the pile. I like how this one turned out, even though blue and yellow isn't a colour combination I have much of in my house. When this is quilted I may even put it up for sale in our local art and craft gallery. I'll be happy if I just have the photos to remember it by.

It's not a big top, and I think it would look nice hanging on a wall, so I'll have to make sure it's got a sleeve on it when the quilting's done. I've already made the binding, I like getting a bit ahead of myself like that.

As soon as it gets cooler here I want to really start quilting up a storm, or everyone will think I never finish anything. I have a pile of tops it's true, but I've also got lots of finished quilts on the beds ( there's 13 piled one on top of another on the spare bed!) and I've given quite a few away and sold some. Keryn's got a heap more though, it's almost embarressing!

I've got another set of blocks almost sewn too, I was using them as leader-enders. They're just blue and white Crosses and Losses, so they were simple to keep track of. I like lining all my patches up on an old plastic lid and putting it next to the machine, it all looks so organised. I've got 20 of these blocks cut out but I might do more, depending on how I decide to set them. My drawer of blues is overflowing and won't shut without a struggle, so I might hack a few more bits up.

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This is the little Singer I do all my piecing on. It's sort of in between a Featherweight size and a normal sewing machine. It does a marvellous straight stitch and purrs happily away for hours on end.

Yesterday I was forced to try and piece on my Janome 4000 and it drove me bats, chewing the end of triangles, and not sewing the proper seam allowance no matter how much I fiddled. I gave up in the end, no wonder I just keep going back to this uncomplicated little darling.

It cost me all of $25 in a secondhand shop, I've had it for about 7 years and have sewed on it nearly every day since then. I have to love something this reliable and sturdy. I do adore my Janome 6500 for my quilting, but for piecing this is my little sweetie.

Today was a non-sewing day, that always makes me cranky. Tomorrow I have to take my elderly mum shopping, but I should get some early morning stitching done and then some late afternoon time. People think I get a lot done, but I probably sew at least two hours during the day (I get up at 5.30 to sew) and then I handsew for three hours every night. It really does mount up, so no wonder I've got a pile of tops to be quilted and all my stacks of blocks waiting to be set.

Lucy wanted to know how much fabric the little triangles in my bowtie top require. You'd need at least 20" of the two colours - 10 strips 2" wide in each of the feature fabrics. (That's about 52 cm if we're talking metric.) You need 198 squares of each colour for the 99 blocks that I did: phew, it sounds a lot when you add it all up.

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The blocks are in one piece and looking quite lively.













There are borders being pieced and the dreaded maths being done to make them fit. That's the worst of not planning ahead, you have to fudge measurements and do the calculations in the middle of the project. The star blocks are 6 and 3/4" finished, a really odd size, but I probably thought I'd set them straight so it wouldn't be a problem. Ha! I can be relied on to do things arse-end round, as we country persons put it.

I think I'm still on a book-bargain high, and I'm being quite a bad sport over my luck ( as in "Nyah nyah, lookee what I got for a DOLLAR!!) No-one likes a Gloater, as they said in Blackadder, but now that my friends here have displayed suitable envy and teeth-gnashing, I'll condescend to share my bounty. Only a lend of some, mind you; I'm still in the stage of hugging certain volumes during the day, so they won't be prised out of my possessive little paws.

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Em..... the local library had a book sale on today, and I may have bought a few things. This is the front seat of my car afterwards.

How could I resist, all hardback books were $1 and paperbacks were 50 cents!

Lookee what I got!

Art books.

Craft books. The russian embroidery book is wonderful and the Country Quilts one I must have borrowed about 10 times over the years. And now I get to keep it for a buck!

I got heaps of decorating books that are just crammed full of gorgeous photos and wonderful colour schemes. I'm going to get so many ideas from all this.

This is a huge cookbook by Stephanie Alexander and it cost $65 a few years ago, and.....I got it for $1!






















What a haul, and it all cost less than the price of one new hardback book! I have a huge collection of books now, bookcases in every room and yet this sight warms the cockles of me little heart. I think I'd rather have books than material right now, and I certainly don't feel guilty about this "personal library enhancement".














There may be something occurring in the star department too.....

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Borders are on and the top is in the huge pile waiting to be quilted now. Everyone seems to like this pattern, and I may try to explore the idea of emphasizing the circles, and using scraps in the corners.....when I've got some spare time.

I don't worry much about placement of fabric in scrap quilts, apart from trying not to have two adjacent pieces the same. I just noticed there are three fabrics in the third row together- two for the bowtie and a scrappy block of leftovers next to it. I had the block rotated, but when I was sewing it together I must have flipped it to get the seams to nestle. This will irritate me a little bit, but I hardly ever unpick things. I really don't care enough. Or I'm just lazy....

It's the first week of autumn here in Aust. and I thought it might cool down a bit, so I started a sock from an old skein of three ply wool I found in an op-shop. That was the signal for the temperature to climb again, and it just somehow seems wrong to knit in front of the airconditioner. Bit like Matt in his quilt.

The book is from 1953, so it's 5 years older than me. The basket was my great grandmother's sewing basket and in it there's a row counter from a knitting machine; Keryn found it and sent it to me as a little oddity but it's very cute to use. I love collecting old stuff but I like it even better when I can find uses for it.

I think the next project will be some of that gi-normous stack of 8-point stars, I've got something in mind for the blue ones.

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This is my latest scrap project. I was looking at Bonnie's star quilt made with Indian Hatchet blocks and wondered what would happen if I just sewed a triangle across one corner. Four of them rotated with the triangles to the centre make a sort of fancy Bowtie.

I used 3.5 " squares with a 2" square for the flippy corner; the block ends up 6" but would also work in 4.5" squares and a 2.5" corner, to finish at 8".

This must be one of the most mindless blocks to sew, it goes very fast and is perfect for chain piecing. I used lots of little odds and sods bits that were clogging up various containers, but even though I made it 9 x 11 (99 blocks) there doesn't seem to be any appreciable difference in my scraps, there never is. Just once I'd like to see an empty space after I'd finished a quilt, but the leftover material just seems to shuffle in to fill up any gaps.

I'll probably put a border on this and give it to my son Matt as his tv watching quilt. He's using an Ocean Waves quilt I made about 6 years ago, and it's definitely the worse for wear. ( As I write this he's asleep on the lounge underneath the air-conditioner with the quilt wrapped around him. I don't know how he can stand it, I'm too hot with a t-shirt on. Guess he must love the quilt!

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This is the knitted dress of our Mum's that Keryn referred to in her blog yesterday. I think it was made of 3 ply wool and it was knitted before or during the second world war. There are two lacey vine stitches and waist and yoke are a smocking stitch. Even the shoulder pads in this are knitted! Mum used to boast that Dad could join his hands around her waist, which measured 18". Unfortunately there are a few moth holes and age stains on it, but I'll never throw it out, too many memories.

The tumbling blocks quilt is one that Keryn made for Mum years ago and it always lives on her bed.

I can remember Mum asking us on one of our birthdays, ( I think about our seventh) what we wanted and we both asked for material of our own. We always had plenty of her dressmaking scraps, but we wanted new stuff for our doll's clothes. So she took us to a large store in town called The Co-Op ( short for Co-operative) and with great difficulty we chose some half yard pieces from all the tantalising rolls of fabric. I can remember a printed orange gingham with a sprig of flowers on it, and a white fabric with a purple rosebud. We bought material that we both liked so that we could swap bits at home, and we still do the same thing now. Keryn sends pieces of her treasures to me and I send mine to her.

Once when Keryn had come home for a visit we went to a quilt shop on the way to the airport when she had to fly home. We had a pair of scissors (this was long before 9/11) and we sat in the waiting area, spread our purchases out and proceeded to cut it all in half to swap. We got some funny looks, but it was better than waiting around feeling maudlin about being separated again. One day we'll live together, but heaven help us if we combine stashes, we'll need a whole 'nother house just for that!

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