Sweet William

The year is skipping by very quickly. I hope somewhere I find an extra month or so.
I am playing catch up today, Mother's day. I spent Friday afternoon with my darling daughter, my mother is visiting next week, so today is a quiet day on our homefront.

First job to do today was to get my new quilt online. I have had the patterns here for months, so with that job done, here is the link  to Sweet William to purchase patterns

I loved making this quilt, and it is leaving my home tomorrow to go to Toowoomba, where I will be teaching it in August.

My other quilt I am very busy working on, is my quilt Stonefields, my Block of the Month quilt. Its growing and I hope to have the centre all cut out and the hand pieced blocks done, by the end of this month. Then just a bit of applique ( well actually a lot of applique) and the centre will be done

Two weekends ago we had a sewing weekend in Wodonga, and this is where I am up to with Stonefields. The battery was almost dead on my camera, so no flash was working, but for those of you busily making this quilt, its something! It is a lovely project for me to work on, so I am very happy everyone sewing it, is enjoying it too. I have about 40 of the 121 centre blocks to make.

our next quilting weekend in Wodonga, will be the first weekend in October, so by then I should be finished the centre and almost have the borders completed (I hope)

I have decided to have my summer school back in Wodonga next year. It will be early as we need to use the school when there are no trades people working, from Saturday January 4th to Wednesday January 8th, with gorgeous new quilts and sit and sew.  

last but not least, over past years many people who share my love for little dachshund dogs, have asked for the pattern of my sausage dog quilt. Finally I agreed to publish it and this month it is inside and on the front cover of Homespun magazine. It has been presented really nicely in the new revamped Homespun. So a special thankyou to Homespun.

wrapping up last year

December came about very quickly. During the year we had a challenge with our sewing group. We had brought in fabric from our stash, anything, any size. Christine and I sorted it out and put it into unmarked paper bags. We were allowed to use 2m of one fabric to complete a quilt.
The results were pretty fantastic.

Lucy made this quilt with a jelly roll she had bought ages ago

Julieann's "pies and tarts" was gorgeous

Beth made this from her bag of stash fabric. This is the quilt that impressed me the most!So much work!

and I hope it is correct in saying this was Bridgette's quilt- not quite certain how Bridgette found a minute or two to sew this. The back looked just as nice as the front.

this is just the beginning of our December show and tell. It went on all day! More to come

and then came June

In June, I was contacted by the art director of a movie to be filmed in New Zealand and Ireland re buying or hiring some of my quilts and perhaps making a new one. When up in Sydney, I met with a representative and discussed options. The project sounded exciting, but lots of work.
Having done work for movies before, I insisted on having direct contact with the art director, so this has been happening for the past six months. Hundreds of emails have been flying back and forth of photographs of beautiful old quilts, photographs of the beautiful old home in Ireland, and we have decided what quilts of mine will be used, and what I have to make.

My quilt is called "Stonefields" and I started a month ago and I am loving working on it. It is to be a big quilt 96" square.

Meanwhile I have made a new quilt "Sweet William" which is an adaptation of a quilt that appears in the book "A Treasury of American Quilts". The original quilt is in pink, and a few extra baskets to mine.

I will release the pattern of this quilt in the next few weeks, I just need to catch up on a bit of work first.

our daughter has finally finished medical school, so this was a big occasion ( she has been at university forever) and the graduation was in early December. She is now working as an intern on her first rotation  in accident and emergency and loving it.

going back to April

It has been so long since I wrote on the blog, I had to search where to write, it has all changed.
I sort of had a bit of a year off from quilting last year.
I did no sewing until August when I had to force myself out of rest and recreation, away from the knitting needles, and sew a quilt for summer school in the Blue Mountains.
I fell in love with sewing again, so this year will be the year of the quilt and as I have lots of projects in mind, I promise myself to keep the blog up to date.

I thought I would head back to April and play catch up.
April we went to London and then to France, and visited our former housemate Jean-Baptiste.

My favourite place to shop in Paris, right across the road from the apartment where we stayed

a rare moment of sunshine in paris

The quilt show at Nante, such a gorgeous city

and beautiful Toulouse

The trip was wonderful, the weather dreadful but I managed to fit in lots of shopping, and fill my head with things I would like to see again, to make and explore a little further.

What I did do for winter was knit! Lots of knitting for new beautiful baby Mabel, a friend's grand daughter born on Bastille day, and a few things for myself
 I was lucky enough to know this special baby was a little girl and had a lovely time shopping for her in France.

I am going to play catch up all week!

catching up after a break

I promised myself at some stage I would take six months off from sewing, blogging etc  and I have done that. In that time I have travelled to England and France, lots of trips to Sydney and Melbourne and done lots of knitting and cooking. I have loved the break and come back to sewing recently with an  a new enthusiasm. And now I have lots to catch up on!
Summer school in January in the Blue Mountains is looming and Karen Cunningham sent out the emails over the weekend. If you havent received one and wanted it, let me know and I will forward it on to you.

I am doing two new quilts for summer school. One is entirely in a bag at the moment but the basket quilt is well underway and I love it. I enjoy hand piecing and the appliques will be fun little things too. I can sit down of an evening and cut out and piece a basket block and then cut out the appliques, very relaxing and achievable and from a basket of scraps. Has this made any difference to my stash? Unfortunately no.

This has been very soothing while I worked out the maths for the other quilt and paper pieces made. With the hard part done, I should have something up to show you soon.

a weekend of quilting

Last weekend, we had a lovely weekend catching up with lots of friends for a weekend of quilting at our old venue in Wodonga.

Show and tell at lunchtime was fantastic. I was a bit late getting my camera out so I missed some of the gorgeous quilts, but here a few favourites.

Christine with her Nancy Horsfall's baby quilt ( a pattern from Karen Cunningham)

Simone's Duck Hill Farm, made from a pattern from me. This is the quilt that was photographed for the French magazine "Quiltmania"

Carolyn's gorgeous tumbler quilt made for her daughter, Sophie.

And another gorgeous quilt from Simone, her version of the "St Neot Band Sampler"

.... to be continued

trip to Melbourne

I have just been to Melbourne for a week, went in the heat and came home to flooding rain. The weather has been more than unusual this summer.
First stop was to order some more templates to be cut, more on that later. Next stop out to dinner with Lucy and then to the ballet on Saturday evening. It was the first performance for the year of the Australian ballet, a triple bill.
I came away with mixed feelings about this bill, as it seemed most of the audience did also. Two out of the three were not really ballet, but dance so I was a little disappointed, but the music and the last bill were gorgeous.

Next day, I taught a class of the clamshell quilt. Lovely girls and a nice escape from the heat. And of course a bit of fabric shopping as always.

The next two days I went to patisserie school. My husband gave me this a gift for Christmas. Loved it!!!!
It was so full on I was brain dead by lunch time, but hopefully when I go to cook it will all come back to me.

There was such a wonderful mix of students, from pastry chefs from all over the world to a couple of people like me, where cooking is just a hobby.

And lots of very sweet petit gateaux to take home. My daughter took a fancy morning tea to the hospital for two days in a row, she was the favourite medical student of the day.

So when Christine and I are asked are we enjoying retirement from the shop, the answer is a simple yes.