A Birthday and a Banana Cake

Yesterday I gave my niece the quilt I made her back in May, and she seemed to like it - although she was somewhat distracted while I took the photo! She wasn't feeling entirely well though, unfortunately. I however, was feeling quite unreasonably proud at making a handmade present 5 months ago just as I sometimes dream of! (I will conveniently forget that minutes before the party I was rushing around to find a big gift bag, pulling things out of the craft cupboard .... oh well!)

She had 2 beautiful birthday cakes to share among the crowd - one a heart with an amazing candle which "exploded" and then opened out into a lily shape, and the other a butterfly, both covered with colouful lollies.


This morning I minded Little A, and afterwards enjoyed a piece of delicious banana (baked by Jacqui) with a cup of chai tea.

Wild About J and a Project Finished

An overdue birthday card for a very cute nephew.

And I don't think I mentioned the other day that I finally finished this quilt ... at last! Poor Laura has been waiting so patiently. At least there are a few more cool days and nights left this year!

Strangely enough I finished both quilts for my girls on days when they were home sick. I'm not sure if that says something about my too-busy schedule normally, or my sympathy for them when they are sick - probably both. At least Laura's was finished within the year, not like Emily's which began as a cot quilt and took 10 years!

You will be glad to hear that the poor sick girl struggling to smile here is back at school now, happy and healthy.

A Thrifty Quilt

At long last I have finished my quilt. Well, actually it is not entirely my quilt. A few years ago in an op shop I found 6 pieced quilt blocks. Just sitting there. $1 each.


I had just been planning a red and yellow theme for our study (mostly timber and neutrals but a few red and yellow accents, to go with the curtains, and there it was - a pile of red and yellow and calico quilt blocks.



So I took them home, and last winter bought some extra yellow, floral and striped fabric for the sashes and joined them together. I couldn't find an exact match for the deep red but wanted to use a brighter red anyway, and I loved this fabric with the roses. The joining was a feat in itself, it turned out that each block was a slightly different size - eek!



I started quilting, and then in fits and bursts have worked on it ... the rest of the time it has sat on a chair in our living room.


I love the way whoever pieced these blocks matched the pattern so carefully when she cut the pieces.


The matching and the precise hand-piecing is way beyond me, generally I'm a straight lines kind of girl when it comes to patchwork. I am so not a perfectionist when it comes to quilting. (as you can see if you look closely!)

It was fun to quilt each block in a different way, I hand-quilted them all except later I added machine stippling around the Dresden plate block.

And last night, I finished it! I sat and watched Pride & Prejudice (well, listened while I stitched, really) and sewed on the binding, and now it is done!

Now I just have to tidy the study - again! And re-upholster the council-cleanup armchair find to coordinate with my decorating scheme. Always another project to do :-)

Vintage Teapot

Welcome back for Vintage Thingies Thursday! Today I want to show you one of my most treasured possessions. This teapot belonged to my Nanna, and now it sits in a glass cabinet in my kitchen.

I love the design so much - the muted colours, the beautiful woman, the ethereal forest in the background, it is so romantic, in a kind of Anne of Green Gables - Lady of Shallot sort of way, but it is actually portraying Anne Page from Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, not Tennyson. Here is a better photo:

It is quite crazed all over, so I am reluctant to use it ... not wanting to damage it ...

I guess this was a wedding present perhaps for my grandparents, and so dates from the 1930s.

Isn't she beautiful? Lucky me.

In these photos the teapot is sitting on my red and yellow quilt with the thrifted squares ... which is almost finished ... stay tuned!

Country Welcome

This is the scene by our back door. As you walk down the hall into our living room it is hopefully the first thing visitors see, with a message for them:

I started this wallhanging when Emily was a baby, and finally finished it about6 years later, so it's been hanging for a few years now.

I have grouped my favourite country crosstitches below, I still love some of that 90s country style, but not all over the entire house!

Check out more Weekend Decorating over at A Beautiful Life.

Warning: sunglasses required!

Here is my "quick quilt" I whipped up back here, and actually finished yesterday at craft! The colours are soooo bright, and not my usual thing ... it started as a baby gift quilt, but got bigger and more girly, so it will go to my niece. I will pack it away until her birthday in October. Can you see her name in the quilting?

This was my first attempt at machine quilting, and the loops are super-huge and were super-tricky. I "scribbled" around the border. But it was a good learning experience and I like the way it turned out all puffy with the polyester wadding. This quilt is quilted much more closely, and with 80/20 cotton batting, so it's quite different, and much better to quilt (although it seems to be taking forever!). It was nice to finish this little project, (if for no other reason than to get one quilt-in-progress out of the living room - one down, two to go!)

Almost Perfect

Sitting in the warm sunshine by the heater on a wintry day, a pretty quilt on my lap, trying a new knitting stitch (after many vows never to knit again) and seeing a scarf form before my eyes, listening to some Italian Concerti Grossi, drinking a cup of tea from my favourite mug accompanied by some delicious lemon cake - could the morning be any better?

Well ... it's not what I had planned. Laura and I are both a bit sick in the tummy so we are having a sick day. At this moment I should be leading bible study so there is the inevitable guilt and regret and wondering if I should have tried to be there after all. Laura had half a day off yesterday, she felt well around 11.30 to go to school (go figure!) But today we are at home again.

After my brief moment of perfection Laura decided she had had enough reading so the beautiful music went off and ABC Kids went back on ... so the soundtrack is not so relaxing but the scarf is coming along and I'm not up to much else, so I'll get back to it. Although it looks disturbingly different from the scarf in the picture ... I guess I'm not a knitter after all. But I am liking the scarf so I will stick with it.

As for my quilt made at craft group, this is the latest:

I'm not sure why the border looks puckered, I hope it comes out ok in the end. I added a border to the quick girls' quilt I made on Thursday, and started machine quilting it, it's not too bad but not great .. then I ran out of thread ... photos to come when it's finished.

Well back to my sunshine ...

Candy Colours

Yesterday was quite a productive day. At craft I stitched away at the border of the red and yellow quilt ... it's getting closer to finished, I will be so glad when it is! Then I came home and began a new quilt! Yes, I have the strip piecing bug. In one hour I made the middle section of a new quilt for a child ... not sure who yet ... photos of both quilts to come, it is a grey day here. It is just so cool to make something so quickly. Of course there is still plenty to be done, I need some border fabric and then is the backing and quilting and binding ... !





Then last night I was tidying my desk and came across a pile of scraps and stamped images, so I used them to make these cards, I am loving these colours. The cupcake stamp is new.

I embossed this flower ages ago, with the ShapeBoss system, but hadn't used it.

I am particularly happy with how the stamping down the side turned out, it needed something extra.

And this little notecard uses up a stamped image which had not stamped properly in the middle. Covered it up with the "thankyou" and voila a cute card using pieces I could have thrown away!

5 Things that are making me happy now:

(not necessarily in this order!)

1. Quilts

2. Candy colours

3. Hearing the girls practising and improving on flute, sax and piano.

4. Friends

5. Having a somewhat tidyish house (for a change).

Look What I Did Today!

Today our craft group had a quilting workshop with a wonderful quilter called Yan. I pieced this garland quilt top in just 5 hours!

I chose the fabrics weeks ago and I'm so happy the way they turned out. It's for Laura and she wanted pinks and purples.

The border fabric is much more funky than it looks from a distance, I wasn't quite sure if it would all work together, but it has. The photo hasn't turned out so well, on this dark day. The darkest squares and the thin border strip are purple, not navy.

I was so pleased to get it all pieced, hopefully I can get on with the backing and quilting soon, although it might be a while -without a teacher cutting and planning and telling me what to do.

This was so much fun. I've been in an anti-sewing mood since my sewing frenzy a few months back, so I wasn't expecting to enjoy a day of sewing. But I did. We had about 12 machines humming away and lots of chatter, yummy chocolate biscuits, cheese and crackers, and Thai for lunch. A perfect day out!