Hand Quilters

Caron, of Michigan Quilts is gathering a list of those who mainly hand quilt their quilts.

Please check out her blog and for those of you who love to hand quilt, hook up with her list of quilters that do so. When you follow the link above, you will be able to add your name to the list of hand quilters:)

I love hand quilting. For me it's a very pleasing look and feel, and I find it very relaxing. I've got a few projects on the go - both small and big. My hand quilting progress has slowed recently as I have a number of household projects that need to be completed.

Wall hanging finished

I’ve finished the wall hanging. Every aspect of this piece was undertaken by hand. That'll be the piecing, basting, quilting, and binding. Even the sleeve had the seams finished by hand.

Here it is; washed, dried and on the wall.

Wall hanging

I've been spending a lot of time in the garden. Taken lots of pictures, but have been rather slack at sharing them with you. Rather than try and catch-up I'm just going to leap back in and go with the flow.

Here we go... my latest small crafty project. It will end out being a wall hanging. For those that have read my older posts this might look familiar. The plan was that this block would become a cushion cover - but all that hand work really put me off. I had 8 covers to make! In my travels I found some upholstery fabric on sale and made the cushion covers in a flash with my serger. The blocks then had to find another use.

The hand piecing is complete. It's basted and I'm good to go. As usual I'm hand quilting it.


When I hand pieced it - I did iron the seams down. This became a huge problem when the piecing was finished. As I didn't have a mini iron, and I didn't want to stretch the bias, I tacked the seams down from the front. You can see the extra "seams" on top. They will all come out when the quilting is finished.

Vegetable garden

When I woke up this morning it was very dark outside. I had the vain hope that all the clocks were wrong, and that blissfully I would be able to have another hours sleep. Unfortunately no. The gloom, was clouds and rain. No surprise really, as it will be autumn soon - so I can expect more of the same.

At the end of the day, I swung by the garden centre and picked up some vegetable punnets and seeds.

When I got home I planted:

• Brussels Sprouts (Maxim) - punnet
  
• Cabbage (Pak Choi) - punnet
  
• Cabbage (Cannonball) - punnet
• Silverbeet (Fordhook giant) - seeds (my favourite variety)
• Silverbeet (Ruby Chard) - seeds
  

I think that was reasonable effort, especially considering that it was raining. The dogs must of thought that I was mad. One dog stayed under cover - watching me from the carport. The other waited under a fruit tree.

Now these vegetable are all very "green". Well apart from the Ruby Chard. So in the next few days (or the weekend) I hope to plant carrot (Touchon), parsnip (Yatesnip) and beetroot (Bulls Blood) seeds. We all need a little bit of vibrancy on our dinner plate.

In the weekend I planted the onion seeds (Pukekohe longkeeper). The plan is to harvest enough to see me through the year. Not sure if there were enough seeds in the packet. Got to start somewhere though :)

Hearts for Christchurch

I'm sharing the word... Evie is gathering hearts for Christchurch, and they are coming from all around the world.

These aren't the typical heart blocks that quilters are use to, instead they are the 'hanging' kind (think Christmas decoration).

More information including postal address can be found at:
http://heartsforchristchurch.blogspot.com

Original request can be found at: http://heartsforchristchurch.blogspot.com/2011/02/it-all-started-thus.html

Summer holidays

This is my first post for 2011. I hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year.

I must say that this has been one of the best holidays ever! It's the first time in years (possibly a decade) that I have taken a decent break off work.

The first week I spent relaxing and doing some housework. You know, doing those jobs that you never make time for. A few jobs were left on my "to-do" list when Mum arrived.

Mum came down for 2 weeks. We had a great time and did so much. Mum motivated me to get some jobs done around the house and she pitched in to help. The big jobs we completed were:

• re-organising and decluttering the kitchen
• dealing to my dreadful garage
• weeding the vegetable garden
• planting out the fence line
  

Seeing the list doesn't really describe now large the jobs were. In the kitchen I was afraid of what might fall out when I opened a cupboard door. I also had tinned food it a number of cupboards - it was really disorganised and I didn't know how to pull it together. The garage was just gnarly. There was heaps of recycling to go out. I also had rodent damage over winter - so there was lots of evidence of their existence (need I say more???). Some of the weeds had grown to over 6 foot - thanks to no maintenance while I had a broken foot! And the fence line was just plain boring.

There were lots of little jobs we did too. Not much of a holiday for Mum. We did the work in 30 minutes slots on and off throughout the day, depending on how hot it got. The hottest day we had was 34C inside the house.

There was lots of other things that happened that I am very thankful to Mum for but I don't wish to share those with the world. As always - I love my Mum and miss her dreadfully when she goes back to her home.

Okay - so how about some pictures?

This is the fence line "planted out". Will be great once the plants have matured. We planted white and blue agapanthas, a red canna lily and 2 dahlias.


A nasty discovery in the vegetable garden - bumble bee nest in the ground! If you look closely, you can see 1 bumble bee in the bottom of the photo.


Almost finished "turning over" the soil in the vegetable garden.


The largest rhubarb leaf in the plot :)


Passionfruit crop is going to be large and heavy this year. Pavlova anyone?


There is still a lot of work to do in the garden. Isn't there always :) I am in the process of purchasing some black currant bushes. That will push my fruiting / berry list to 15. So far I have the following:

• strawberries
• boysenberries
• blackberries
• orangeberries
  
• rhubarb
• grapes (2 vines)
  
• passionfruit
• plums
• apples (3 varieties on one tree)
• peaches
• lemons
• oranges
• tangelos
  
• mandarins
  

There is a lot to do in the vegetable garden in the next week. I must get my crops down for winter. In the past I haven't had much success with winter crops, but I would really like to try and see in planting that little bit earlier gives them the boost they need. Also there are some maintenance/tidying up jobs to do.

As you can see there has been little time for crafting. I'm trying my best to make use of this vacation to get on top of things.

Oops

Funny the things you notice when you are basting. Several times I have found the same fabric side by side. When it's the cream fabric you hardly even notice. When it's a patterned fabric it isn't too bad if the pieces looks dis-similar (e.g. another portion of the fabric pattern).

Then you get this...


which I couldn't help but notice. It played on my mind for over a week. Do I remove it or not? After talking to wise council :) I decided to remove the offending piece and replace it with another fabric. I am much happier now.

The basting still continues.