Just some quick puppy photos, we're still busy dismantling the workshop. Today I want to take down the thread racks and box the spools, but the ones with already wound bobbins will have to be put in ziplock bags to keep them together, and then all the pegboard hooks taken out and put somewhere safe. I still have about four days of quilting left before the Statler is taken apart, so I probably won't be able to find the thread I want, sigh, but I don't want to leave it till the last minute either.
I hate to think of the dust we'll find when we shift the workshop furniture, because some of it hasn't been moved for years but we'll just deal with that too.

And I've been jumping every time the phone rings, because that little bump in this post is now three days overdue, and I'm expecting an exciting announcement! And in other news, first-born son John and his lovely partner Liz have announced their engagement, so we'll have to celebrate with them as soon as the move is over. My head's spinning a bit, but as John says, "It's all good!"
Isn't this so stinkin'cute? One little girl is the current leader for favourite puppy,look at those little paws....

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I've got my new design wall up and some blocks on it for inspiration, a few of my "gorgeous things" spread around and I'm ready to start a new project as soon as the huffing and puffing are over. The movers won't come for another ten days or so, which will give me time to concentrate on more customer tops and I may be able to fit in a bit of mindless sewing for myself. I just want it all over and done with.

There was a little break from quilting and packing last weekend when Keryn and I got to sit down and relax for a few hours. Bonnie and Macca (Dolly's parents) were expecting puppies again, and I had vowed I was going to drop everything the minute she went into labour so that I could sit with her. She conveniently started on Sunday afternoon and only took about four hours to have six puppies, so it was an exciting little interlude in between our other chores.
I don't know if our coaching helped her in any way, but she loved being the centre of attention and looked so pleased with herself afterwards. The pups are gorgeous, and as Dolly will be going to live with Keryn at the hall, I might be in the market for a dog. If one of them stands out as much as dear Panda did (I really would have loved to keep her...) then I think I'll be owning it.

Expect puppy updates in the future, they are always good blog fodder.....

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I feel so bad about neglecting the blog, but life has dealt us another surprise that has taken up whatever spare time there was. Our workshop is located in a rented building and the owners are coming back, so that means we have to move. And as Keryn lives in the house attatched to the workroom, she has to move too! Boy, I thought my relocation was upheaval, but Keryn has to shift all her printing and office stuff- paper, files, pattern stockpile, computers, printers and paraphanalia, the many bolts of fabric we have for sale and all her teaching stuff as well as the household, and I have to worry about the things related to the quilting side of things, boxes of customer quilts, rolls of batting and backings, threads etc, and most concerning of all, Millhouse. We're leaving that to the professional movers, and I'm pretty sure they've never seen a longarm before. They seemed puzzled that we actually mentioned moving a 'sewing machine' specifically so they might get a shock when they see it.

I've been trying to finish as many quilts as I can so that they can be picked up and out of here; the less customer tops I have to keep track of the better. I feel torn between quilting and packing, but they're both getting done in a frenzied sort of way.

So there has been much lugging of stuff and packing and an unnatural interest in cardboard boxes lately. It's much harder now to find a good cardboard box because a lot of them are broken down for recycling and we never see them. But the little supermarket next to Keryn puts some out the front and they are eagerly snapped up so we've taken to haunting the place lately. I know from moves in the past that this interest persists long after the need has passed, and it feels wrong to leave a particularly 'nice' box in the pile.

We've uncovered a few items that have been missing since Keryn moved into the place three years ago ("So that's where we put it!") and we're trying to downsize at the same time. I was feeding bags into the Goodwill bin the other day, and was quite embarrassed to find I'd filled it up and nothing more would go in.

One of the things we found was perhaps our oldest UFO, a Double Wedding Ring started in about 1979 or 80. Keryn drafted the pieces from a picture in an American Country Living magazine, and not knowing any better we thought it was made in square blocks, hence the seam through the centre piece. We chose the colours to make this graduated effect in the rings, and I'm still quite happy with that. But the horrible calico background and the seams in it put us off and it has lain untouched for all these years.
In our memory it was mostly in pieces, so we were surprised to find that the blocks were all sewn together except for the last row, which is missing two blocks. All it would take would be a blank label block or two, a few seams and a quick border. Not gonna happen this year, but now that I see how little work would be involved in finishing it, I will have a go when we're settled in.
I felt very sad when middle son Rob remarked the other day "Mum, your blog's Dead !!" and decided I have to resurrect it. I've loved having this record of the years, and months have gone by without a word. Internet problems will occur with the next move too, but we'll try to work round them and get back to regular posts. Stay with us, we'll get there in the end....

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I've nearly got my sewing room set up in the new place, which is actually the old place that I was living in before I moved to look after my mum. So it feels like coming home in lots of ways and I'm enjoying myself getting everything in order. But I haven't had any time for sewing and it's driving me nuts. And I don't count customer quilts as my sewing fix, that's work!!
This top was huge, and even though the backing was extra wide I still had to piece another bit onto the side to make it big enough. It was quite a job wrestling a 118" square bit of fabric around, and not good for the temper. But the quilt turned out lovely; done with my Featherme panto, and Keryn trimmed out the centre so that I could freehand some feathers in the white centre borders. The piece of fabric they surrounded was beautifully embroidered, so it was nice to be able to highlight that.
A friend dropped off this huge bag of scraps the other day, and Keryn and I had great fun sorting through it. Everyone was happy, our friend because she cleaned up her sewing room and got rid of the bits she wouldn't use, and we got to play around while we divvied up the spoils. I think we got the better end of the bargain though, I do love a good scap bag....
I don't have the internet connected at the other place yet, so posting will be sparse for a while.I'll do my best, and hopefully I'll be back in the habit of blogging regularly very soon.

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My backing squares are piling up nicely, and I think I have enough now but I have very little time to sew at the moment. I have to move house very soon and most of my spare moments are taken up with packing and sorting and throwing things out. After our Mum died four years ago I didn't have to get rid of her things as we were living in the same house, something I was very glad of at the time. It's much less painful to let some of those objects go now, but it does mean I have more work to do. But Keryn is helping, and it feels good to declutter and streamline possessions sometimes.
This is the orphan top I'm working on; it will probably have a few more borders around this centre part but I haven't decided yet. I don't want it to be too big so I don't think there's too much left to do here.

Yesterday we drove into the neighbouring town and were amused by these cloud formations on the way. The little blobby ones kept forming into bird shapes, splitting up and then becoming birds again.




Kept us entertained for at least ten minutes!

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Keryn has been chopping up piles of fabric like a woman possessed, and it's inspired me to attack my stash too. I've been trying to whittle down the brown section, but I've made at least four sets of blocks already and have barely made a dent. I'm never going to get anywhere just cutting out a block here and a block there. Time to get drastic.
I went through the fat quarter drawers (three of them) and tried to be ruthless. Everything that was nibbled at, was thin quality or just plain old got piled on the table. I ended up with 14 metres of bits and pieces, and the drawers slid in a little easier.
I had fun pressing all the bits, some of them were still precious and others I was glad to see the back of. The telly in the sewing room came in useful again.

I am cutting for two sets of blocks, one a Duck's Foot in the Mud,
and the other a Yankee Puzzle so I quickly used up some of the smaller pieces. The Yankee Puzzle will be blue and brown and red)
But the pile wasn't diminishing fast enough to suit me, so I cast around for another idea. Then I remembered something I'd seen on this blog, (Kathleen Tracy) scroll down to see the antique quilt.
The front is gorgeous but the back was just the ticket for my pile of browns. Of course mine aren't beautiful madders like this antique, but they'll do. I have a top made from brown orphan blocks which will look great with this. The trouble is I think I've got enough for two backings, but an extra one won't go astray!
I've cut out dozens of 5 1/2" squares (bigger than the antique one but I want this to go quickly) and I've sewed up about 50 of them so far.Blindingly fast and almost instant progress, a four patch is 10 1/2" and covers a lot of ground.
I think I'll try to make a few four patches a day, and I'll be done before you know it.

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For some reason I was a bit resistant to the idea of jelly rolls, and didn't succumb to their temptation until a few months ago, when Keryn and I bought three or four in rapid succession. Then mine sat on the shelf while I pondered what pattern to use and they became more and more precious and unable to be touched. I discovered I was making 'rules' in my mind about what I could and couldn't do- I must use ALL the strips in one quilt, I musn't add any other fabric that wasn't the same range, the pattern had to showcase all the strips, dark-light-medium and I would have to buy yardage from the same range if I wanted a border.

Needless to say I started to get a bit miffed with all these restrictions and all the patterns I found that could use the entire jelly roll seemed too simplistic or there weren't enough lights for the backgrounds of the blocks or some darned thing.

I realised that it was likely the jellyrolls would sit on the shelf, forever precious, untouchable and covered in dust if I didn't change my attitude towards them. So I examined how I like to sew my projects and decided I don't like to work within a single pattern range, I like to add material as the top develops and speaks to me, and I like to use unexpected fabric combinations and colours that don't necessarily 'go'.

With that in mind, and ignoring the 'rules' I went looking through my photo file of antique quilts and found this beauty. I added a cream fabric for the background triangles, and the rest of the block could be cut fron the 2 1/2" strips. So far so good, I had a pattern I liked and was finally ready to start sewing.
Then I found another thing that didn't suit my way of working... the measurements of the strips. Where do you regard the edge to be? From the points on one side of the strip to the points on the other was much more than 2 1/2". How do you sew an accurate 1/4" seam when you can't use the edge as a guide? What about sewing a straight cut edge to the pinked edge- which edge do you line up? Grrr, this is definitely not how I like to sew.
By trial and error I found I had to leave a little of the points showing as I lined the pieces up, but this really goes against the grain. I've worked on my piecing skills for decades, and now I had to fudge and disregard my own working methods. I'm not happy with this level of inaccuracy at all.

But I'm making the blocks and they are turning out nice and the fabric combinations are giving me a lot of happiness.(The range is Garden Party by Blackbird Designs and I truly love all the fabrics and the lovely colours)I'm finally enjoying sewing these, but I don't think I'll become a jellyroll convert.I know everyone else just loves pre-cuts and I'll probably get told there are lots of lovely pattern books out there for jellyrolls and I'm the odd one out... but I really think I'm happier playing with all my scraps and strips and making my own decisions about everything. At least I can say I've tried them now, and I'll know not to buy any more!

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The paisley album finally has it's pieced borders attached, but it's not finished yet. I still have to add another black border (a fussy cut stripe) to frame it and then I might call it quits, or it might need something else. I've lost the photo of the antique quilt I based this on, and I can't remember if it had another border after the pieced one or not.
At least the hard part is done and I can go on to other things.

This is a pretty applique and embroidery quilt I just finished quilting- I don't make feminine dainty tops like this, but I get to enjoy the fabrics and patterns by quilting them.
It was beautifully done- makes me want to get stuck into my applique again.

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We spent the weekend in Adelaide, catching up with Rob and Elisa, and John and Liz and it was lovely to see them all together.

Keryn wrote about the "Scroll -Off" here, and I must say it makes me proud that all of my sons can cook. As teenage boys with colossal appetites they always had a healthy interest in anything edible, but now they can produce the food as well as pack it away.
And the finished product....
John's batch is on the left, Rob's on the right. They were both delicious, especially warm from the oven. Yum!

Elisa and I went shopping together, to Hetties Patch, and bought a little bag of fabric, so that I could make a little quilt, which will eventually cover this little bump, when it makes it's appearance in September.
It's so exciting, I'll be a Granny for the first time! We worked out this baby will have 10 grandparents, and I haven't decided what I want to be called yet. Plenty of time to work that out....
Amazing, isn't it?

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Finally the Irish Waves is done, and I will never add a pieced border on the fly again. If I'd been sensible I would have asked Keryn to work it all out in EQ6 and tell me how it went, but it didn't even occur to me. I worked it out on graph paper, then impulsively decided to first add an extra border of squares, and then a solid border of mid blue. I didn't think at the time of how that would affect the corners, and I ended up just cobbling it all together.

I'm sick of thinking about it, and I've got all bogged down and I just want it finished. This pieced border has added nearly a thousand extra pieces to what was already a heavily pieced top. I need to closely examine my little exclamations of "You know what might look good.....?!" It turned out to be a lot of extra agonising in this case.

But I really like it, and I love the centre pattern which went together beautifully. I want to make another soon, but in a different fabric combination. I have completely used all my light and dark 1 3/4" scrap squares in this, so the drawer is practically emptied, which is what I set out to do. I used no yardage in this, it was all scraps and individually cut pieces. The pink setting squares were oddments of fat quarters left from our early quilting days, but sad to say there are still a few of them left. We did go a bit overboard on that dusty pink, which looks soooo dated now.

One top down, one more pieced border left to do and then I can devote my time to something else entirely.....

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Keryn has been badgering me to do another blog post- "I'm sick of that damned piece of toast!" were her exact words. Yes, the weeks have flown away and we're still busy, but the main problem was I don't have a good camera these days, and a post without photos isn't much chop in my opinion. I bought a new camera last week, but it's only a cheapie, and it remains to be seen if that will solve the problem.

I wasn't surprised that the jaffle irons are available under different names, they're too good an idea not to be widespread. I don't think Australians have ever put sweet fillings in them as Laura said, but we may try that at our next breakfast. My favourite was always spaghetti and cheese, tasty but rather messy to eat. And I'm sorry, but the square ones don't taste the same, I think because the crust gets cut off with the round ones, much nicer.

On the quilting front I've been plodding away at pieced borders for two quilts, and I think I've put myself off them for life. Hopefully they will both be finished this weekend and I can go on to other interesting projects. I've never felt so mired down and bored with everything, but I'm making myself go on. I may be so relieved when I get these done that I start a couple of new things, that always revives my enthusiasm.

I have two customer tops to do, beautiful applique patterns, both queensize and with lots of wideopen white space for feathers. I've been puzzling about what sort to put there, and decided to see if I could something along the lines of Jamie Wallen, really closepacked feathers with no background showing.

So I did a bit of a practice to see what felt comfortable and it was so much fun.
Sometimes one direction that you stitch will have better results than others, so I need to experiment and work out a pattern of movements.
I'm going to fill up this piece of homespun until I know what I'm doing, ditchstitch the applique and then go to town. I'll let you know how it turns out!
And yes Meggie, Macca is a gorgeous boof, but he's a boof with a flowerpot on his head at the moment.
He keeps scratching his ears until they bleed so he's been wearing this natty headgear until we could get to the vet. It's not kind to laugh at him, but he's hysterical to watch. He still plays all his fastpaced games, but he can't see where he's going half the time, and blunders around trying to find his toys. He's discovered that he can use the edge of the pot to flip the ball into his mouth, and that he can even catch it behind his head and let it roll round into his waiting jaws. This dog is unfailingly good natured, adaptable and ready to get on with life and fun no matter what. He has a lovely personality.

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On Friday afternoon I had removed a large quilt from the frame and was pinning on the second one of the day when all the power went off. Some work was being done down the end of the road involving the local waterworks, the phone company and now electricity was turned off. I didn't even feel the slightest bit annoyed, instead Keryn and I got in the car and went for a drive. We couldn't use the computers, the phones, the longarm, the sewing machines, nothing. So off we went in the beautiful sunshine, on a backroad to a neighbouring town, and admired the clouds and green fields and didn't even feel a bit guilty.

This morning I got a call from Matt that he was starting a fire, and did we want to cook breakfast out at the park. That sounded pretty good too, so we grabbed our supplies and headed off.
There's something about toast cooked over the coals, it was absolutely delicious spread with real butter and Rose's Old English Marmalade. Then sausages and bacon, and a childhood favourite, Jaffles.
I don't know if anyone else in the world has these, or a version of them; we call them Jaffle Irons. I can't use them on my electric stove, they need gas flames or hot coals to work properly. We laid a piece of buttered bread on one side, cracked an egg onto it and then laid another piece of buttered bread on top. Into the coals, and five minutes later, perfection..
This particular jaffle iron is nearly sixty years old and still going strong, it's seen a lot of use over the years.

The dogs had a great breakfast too, there was a lot of very nice 'sitting' and perfect 'staying' going on. It's amazing how focussed they can be when there's food involved.
And Macca will not believe that he's too big to be a lap dog, he managed to cram himself onto each of us in turn.What a big boof he is!
I think Sunday morning breakfast at the park might become a regular thing, it was just what we needed to relax after all our work.

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Yesterday I left the quilt I was working on ( the second of the day ) and tottered in to Keryn's office, when she was typing frantically at the computer, answering some desperate email and tearing her hair out over a photocopier that won't print nicely. "Do you realise" I asked her "That we have worked 17 days in a row?" She turned a half-crazed face to me and uttered a sort of scream that frightened Dolly - apparently my observation hadn't helped matters any. We can't go on like this....

Years ago, when my boys were little, they used to watch Star Trek, Next Generation at a friend's house. My sci-fi experience had been limited to John Wyndham novels and an enthusiastic embracing of the Star Wars movies when they first came out.

Because the boys enjoyed the series so much we began watching it at home, and then we progressed to Voyager and Deep Space Nine when they began to be shown.I was never taken with the Klingon's bloodthirsty ways, but the boys loved them and there were many bat'leth fights all over the house. (Word of warning, don't start searching Star Trek sites, there are some strange people out there...)

It was always a good weekend when there was a stack of rented episodes next to the main tv and we had our own little marathon. I quilted and pieced many projects to those series, and the boys drew, worked on the computer or played video games on a second tv with the sound turned down. It was very companionable and made for some good family bonding.

However, the boys moved on to other enthusiasms and somehow I was the only one left an ardent fan. I still am to this day, although half of my enjoyment is picking on my least favourite characters and groaning at the "Kill the Extra" mentality. I own all the series except the original, can't come at that somehow, and I regularly revisit them, just for a laugh.

Now those warrior Klingons have a battle cry of "It is a Good Day to Die!!", followed by a blood-curdling "ROAHHRR!!!" After the first seven days of quilting without a break, I tried to whip up some enthusiasm with my own little catch-cry of "It is a Good Day to Quilt!!", followed by the "ROAHHR!" Keryn was a bit non-plussed, and half heartedly repeated the words, but refused to do the roar. Wuuss.
Perhaps we could be the Duras sisters of quilting, Lursa and B'Etor! Except they were the baddies and it's getting too chilly for those outfits (you wouldn't want to get a cold in THOSE chests) and Keryn doesn't like the whole forehead ridges thing.

I'm facing at least three more big quilts before I can take a break, and I don't think I can manage the quilting cry today. I'll do my best, but it's more likely to come out as "It is a good day to quilt; squeak."

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