Two Little Things

Not too much to tell you about for today, just these two things I have been working on this afternoon:

the very beginnings of one of those lovely floating cross quilts.  It's the quilt called "Add It Up on this page of Fresh Lemon Quilts. I've always wanted to make one, and decided that I know just the person who would love it.

The beginnings of another star pieced in diamonds.  There must be an easier way to do this one, I'll probably have to work it out as I go along. Have 6 more points to piece, so I'd better start learning quick!

Block 2

So it's now Block 2 for the Bloggers Block of the Month.  This month came from Vicki Welsh at Field Trips in Fibre.  It is a great block (I love star blocks, and really quick and easy.

Okay, I know, but if you were passing by in a train going at 50 miles an hour, well you simply would not notice that none of the points meet, now would you??

I never said I was perfect  :) :) LOL

Again we finished at just over 8 inches.  I like it anyhows.....and thanks to Vicki.....

My Bloggers' Quilt Festival Entry

Firstly thanks very much to Amy for arranging this fabulous event in Blogland, and to  all the great sponsors who are giving some great prizes this year.   I have watched the festival for a few years but this is my first entry.  I hope you like it!

This was step 1 of my Tropical Circles quilt, that I finished in July this year.  I used the Curvemaster Foot for the circles, and learned how to use it very quickly.  It made sewing the circles easy, and I find it a good all round foot to use now, not just good for circles.

Here we are with the border on, and the quilting done.  It took me about 6 hours to quilt the piece,in 1 hour lots, it was my first attempt at free motion quilting, and I did a different design on each circle.  I was very pleased with how it turned out, and very proud of myself to have done so much quilting on it. (I'm usually a stitch in the ditch person - as long as it's quick and easy!)

Here she is - bound and draped artistically across my chair.  I do like the way the blue border sets off the colours in the circles.

So race along now to Amy's Creative Side and have a look at all the other quilts entered this time.  They are really fun...

Home at Last

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for their  messages of support while I was in hospital, they were much appreciated.  I arrived home yesterday, it was lovely to go out into the back garden and see all the plants getting ready to flower!  Just what I needed after looking at 4 boring hospital walls for a week.

A week made such a difference.  Just take a look at these:

The Pearly Shells Ginger is covered in flower buds all beginning to open.

This beautiful succulent with it's monster large flowers, they are bigger than my hand!

A close up. isn't it gorgeous!!

The Little Red Riding Hood covered in blooms.

The Canna with it's unusual colour combination - quite striking.

Lovely little orchid poking its head out from the ground cover.

Even the fish all came out to say hallo!

It is wonderful to be home!



Bloggers Quilt Festival

The Bloggers Quilt Festival starts on 28th of this month, over at Amy's Creative Side.

I'm thinking I might just enter a quilt, have to think about it.

Hop on over and take a look, it's always interesting.

One Flower Wednesday on Saturday

Because I have been in hospital, I have been able to make up 9 flowers this week!

Here they are:

They're looking a little pale' lying there all alone on the hospital bed! I'm very pleased with all I have done.

One thing I have learned this week about the hexagons - I tried the gluing method, where you glue the fabric to the paper and then wait until it is dry then sew the hexes into the flower.

I can't stand doing it!  By the time I glue the fabric, I can have 5 hexes sewn and done with, so for me it is more simple to do things the old fashioned way and simply sit and sew and enjoy!

Hop over to Journey of a Quilter One Flower Wednesday and see what everyone else is doing...

Just a Quick Visit to My Own Blog

Hi everybody, so sorry that I disappeared    so suddenly on Tuesday, but I have been admitted into hospital for some problems with my heart and lungs, that really required seeing to.
It looks like all is going alright now, and though I am still in hospital, Alan has brought the laptop into me so I can blog if I am able.

I promise to make up any days I miss  for Blogtoberfest, when the month finishes.

So don't give up on me, there's still life in the old girl!!
Need to show you this latest picture of the Swamp Orchid, Alan took it and brought it in because all the flowers are finally out and it looks amazing.

My Sewing Room

I am lucky to have my own room for sewing.  I don't think I will ever have it arranged totally to my liking.

Looking in from the doorway to the sewing table. Cutting table in front - I never put anything away when I'm working, it just piles up around me

The white cupboard here is filled with everything important - fabric, batting , all sorts of stuff,  bookcase full of books and other important bits (please don't ask!) Other rolling cupboards filled with scraps and UFO's

Towards the  entrance with UFO's hanging, trying to entice me to finish them

Fabric sitting waiting to be assembled into something spectacular - three jobs on the go at once here - and nothing getting finished!!

Introducing THE FISH

Couldn't resist this!

This is one goldfish in our fountain tank.  I didn't think he would show up, but you can clearly see his head, and vaguely the outline of his body.  He is resting in the sun and is one of seven.  This picture was taken from quite a distance, using the close up button as much as possible.

Block 1 of Sue Ross BOM

Is finally finished! Through Material Obsession, it's the Twisted Tradition, the next block is just about due so it's time this was finished

'

So I'm not real happy with my applique of the circle and may have to go back and redo  it if it annoys me too much.  I still love the fabrics though.

What to write, what to write, what to write.....

I'm wracking my brains trying to think of a subject to write about today, because of Blogtoberfest. I think I take this blog a day a bit too seriously.  Let's see what I can come up with.

A day in the life post!

Alan & I both had a very quiet day today , it started off with a cup of tea out in the hut.  It was lovely weather at that point, fed the fish, watched the lorikeets, realized I had to go to the local shopping centre, the Hyperdome, for a quick visit.  We took the dogs for the drive and Alan waited in the car with them while I raced inside to grab what was needed.  Got home and the weather was starting to come in. Did some hand sewing of hexagons. Had lunch, nothing spectacular, read the news on the computer,telephoned some friends ( we have 2 sick friends at the moment) and before we knew it , it was time to go to the dog park.

Had to leave there as quickly as we arrived, because a monster storm came over, and we have had rain ever since. Really wild heavy rain and everything was black like night time. It was only 4.30 pm!

It is said we are in for a wild and woolly summer, this is just a taste of things to come.

I know it's boring, and not even a picture!!

I'll choose a picture to end this with-

My Tropical Circles quilt, finished in July 2011 I think.



Update on the Swamp Orchid

Thought you might like to see a picture of the swamp orchid now - it's been a bit since it was planted.

It appears to be enjoying its spot in the garden - we have had quite a lot of rain which it seems to thrive on.  The smallest leaves have grown well, and the flower stalks are almost covered with blooms.  It is such a beautiful plant..

Trip to Fiji

A year or two ago, Alan and I had a lovely holiday in Fiji. We loved the island and will definitely go back there again.

 We stayed at the Warwick Hotel on the Coral Coast and can recommend it. The staff were all lovely and the scenery wonderful. Above is the front entrance of the hotel, as below:

 The gardens were beautiful, with plants that we can grow here easily.

This is a pic of the restaurant out in the water. 

The men light these flares every evening at dusk, and they place them along the walkway to the restaurant, to light the diners way.

Just along the beach was a little group of shops, run by the Fijians.  These ladies were sitting on the sand making items to sell in their shops.

You can see this ladies shop behind her - tin walls and dirt floor, but they were lovely to talk with and the goods were cheap.  I actually bought that white dress  with the big blue flowers that you can see behind this lady!

These ladies were catching fish in the water - probably for their lunch.  They simply walk out into the water and catch the fish with a hand net, or even with their bare hands.  Some of them use a light fishing line

They dry off very quickly after fishing in the tropical heat!

We took a tour in a long boat up into the mountains to a village where we had to drink the kava offered to us. Not the nicest thing I've ever drunk!  In the village was the local nurse and her little makeshift nurses station.  That's me above with some children from the village.  In those days I had very long hair which I wore in a plait this day, and the little boy in the red t shirt was totally amazed by my hair and wanted to touch it all the time!  They are not used to long hair that is straight so it was a real novelty for the children.

That trip up the river was an amazing experience, and one we will never forget.

Lorikeet tree

Alan was in the garden this morning, and he caught a really nice lorikeet picture:

This bird actually was posing for this picture, and I did enlarge it on the computer, but for some reason the picture keeps reverting back to a distance, so you may need your glasses.  He was such a cheeky fellow!

Hexagons

I've got two hexagons to show at my new group today.

I enjoyed making them, it is such a change to do some hand sewing occassionally, and they are addictive. I think I will just join them all together as I go, or really, I will have to, because I've only got 30 templates!  I'll sew them in pairs first and then make a very colourful quilt eventually...

I just adore the look of shock on the little owls face!  Hop over to the group of hex addicts that I have joined and have a look. It's at Karen's blog Journey of a Quilter and is called "One Flower Wednesday" and you can look at the sites and see what everyone is doing.

Blogtoberfest Day 9

Only a short post today -

Di and I were out in the garden today - our usual Tuesday morning thing, and she took some pics of me. 

I couldn't make up my mind which one I preferred - so here's both.

Visitors to The Garden

The Rainbow Lorikeets are plentiful around the garden at this time of year. 

They have their new babies, the first of the season, and are teaching them where to go and what to do. We often sit out in the hut and watch them as they come in to the red bottlebrush nearby, and feed from the flowers.

I'm not very good at taking photographs of them though I did try for you!  Even though I used the close up button on the camera, and thought I was getting great close ups of the birds, they haven't come out that way.  They move so fast and a lot of the pictures were blurred.   They are quite raucous and so funny when they hand upside down to get at the blossoms.

I'm sorry about that, it's really more a case of "Can you see the lorikeet in the tree?"  I'll try and do better next time.

Catatonic Triangle Palm

We have this Triangle palm in our garden, that has been in a catatonic state for at least 12 months. The fronds keep coming up, but they are not opening.

So today II gave the little sook a bit of a spanking with a stick, and told it that it's time to wake up and start doing something.

As I told him, it is time to grow those fronds and protect poor little Buddha, sitting there in the sun, and besides, you want to grow up and be big and strong like your relative over in the corner:

This fellows never looked back  and he's a happy palm and growing strong.

So we'll see if Junior listens or not - if he doesn't. he'll have to go and I'll plant someone nice like a Golden Cane, or maybe a lovely Fan palm of some sort.

A New Scrap Busting Block

I've been working on this block this afternoon, it's fabulous for using up scraps because you need 7 different scraps and only 2 inch squares, 5 x 2"      rectangle and 3and a half squares.  So it's really easy to get through a lot of scraps.

So if I don't feel like hand working the hexagons, I can machine sew these great blocks.

I did only get a couple done, but they are really easy, it takes longest to cut the fabric in the right sizes...

So you can go to the Badskirt blog where Amy has a really easy to follow tutorial.  I found I only needed to follow it once and then I was right to go out on my own!

It's the Bathurst Weekend!

We had a pretty quiet day today, went for lunch with an aunt at Wynnum and had a very nice time.  I took my camera with me, and as per usual, when you get talking and eating and laughing, nobody ever thinks to take a picture.  My aunt is going to the USA next week, travelling with her friend for 22 days, so that will be interesting. Can't wait for the tales from that journey, they'll be in New York first, which will be exciting for them.

Well early tomorrow morning is the start of the Bathurst 1000 race, so nothing will be done around here, for sure!  Alan will spend the weekend glued to the television watching every turn of every tyre. A mad Holden fanatic, he looks forward to Bathurst weekend every year.

I like to have an occasional look at the race, there's so much history behind it and it can be really exciting.  Sometimes I'll even sit down and watch it for a while, though it can get very boring when nothing happens and you just sit and watch the same cars going past the same spot over and over!

So we'll see how the next few days go.   Click on the Bathurst 1000 in this post if your interested in the details of this famous race.

I've Been Hexed!

Thought I should mention that I have caught the hex bug also.  Though I seem to be doing my hexagons in the the old fashioned way and sewing my fabric around plastic templates, not glueing it to paper templates.  I guess the glueing must be faster, a whole lot easier sometimes as well, so I might try.  My friend Tanya, was telling me about the gluestick to use, so I must have a look for one.



My little basket of goodies, easy transportation.

I cut my templated from template plastic, and I can reuse them indefinitely.  I have 30 of them.

One day I will haev a Grandmothers Flower Garden to show for them!

                                         

Day 3 of Blogtoberfest

I've been driving myself crazy, trying to rack my brains to come up with something interesting to post about today!

It's been a cold, overcast, rainy, day today.  One of those days when you want to go  back to bed and read a book, because there's nothing else to do.  Too cold to be outside, so no garden work was done.

I am lucky though, because I belong to a Thursday sewing group and we get together and have a great time, doing our quilting and chatting away about all sorts of things.  Or actually I should say everyone else does, I'm the quite one in the corner with the strained look on my face as I concentrate on what I'm doing! I'm not too good with multi tasking!!  We all do a lot of laughing every Thursday morning though.....

We took the "kids" to the dog park this afternoon, we go every afternoon to the local park where we have friends and we all talk about whatever and the dogs all socialise.  The dogs all get along well together and they enjoy their friends company. In fact, come 3pm each afternoon, ours are chasing us up to take them!  I thought this post could do with a picture!!

We couldn't wait to get home, it was freezing cold and raining lightly, which makes it colder. So home we all went and are now warm and cozy in the house.

Another Gardening Day

We spent time in the garden again today, just to finish off a few things that we didn't get to yesterday.  So again we had a busy day, but it is good to see the work getting done, of course it makes such a difference to have the garden looking just that bit neater.

So here is our old cat, Ms Penelope Superfoot, just having a few words with Buddha.   For some reason she insists on drinking the water out of this little pond, even after the birds have bathed in it and left their calling cards.  Good view of her rear end anyhow, she would have to be 16 years old now and the most placid cat I have ever known.  She is much spoiled.

So here is another view of the garden and you can see where Penelope was sitting previously.

The fountain in this picture is home to our 7 goldfish.  They have grown so large, I never realized just how large goldfish grew and they have the appetite of a pig - not being rude to pigs, but that's what they act like!  I didn't get any other pics today, I'll have to start carrying the camera with me all the time and use it whenever I can.  I'll do my best.

A busy day in the garden

Well today we had a very busy day working out in the garden.

We have a very dear friend, Di, who comes over to our house every Tuesday morning to help us with all the work in the garden.  She helps with everything, weeding and planting etc, and we would never be able to keep our garden looking so nice without her help.  It is such a lot of work and we are lucky to have such a friend.

To show how much we love her, I took a pic of her to share with you all.  I don't really think that Di thought I would!  What do you think?

Busy at work, and enjoying it!

Tomorrow I'm going to try and get some sewing done, if I can make the time!

Blogtober - Yes I will try!

Tinniegirl Has all  the information about Blogtober for you - it sounds really fun, so I signed up for posting each day in October.

So let's see if I run out of things or not - somehow I don't think so!!

It will be lots of fun to see what everyone does, there's over 200 blogs involved, so let's all try and get around to all of them to encourage everyone!!!

Playing Catch Up

I'm trying to catch up the Block of the month 's that I haven't got done.

This is block 2 of Sue Ross's Twisted Tradition through the  Material Obsession website.
I'm still working on Block 1, as it is circular and quite complicated.  This one certainly wasn't easy, but it wasn't  too bad overall.  I love the fabrics she has chosen.

Still have some more to get through, and I'll try not to get so far behind again!!

Block 1

Here's my block number 1 for this Block of the Month.  I'm doing it in my scraps along with a white background.  I think it will turn out quite pretty if this 1st month is anything to go by:

The block is just over 8 inches trimmed.