Trees in nature and patchwork

Thank you so much for the lovely messages after my last post, I really did appreciate all your kind words and messages of sympathy. My trip to New Zealand gave me a much needed rest.

I had a lovely time catching up with family and especially spending time with my grand children. My DD has a lovely old farmhouse to live in with fabulous country views surrounding the property as you can see.

I really enjoyed seeing all the wonderful spring blossoms which we don't see as much of in the area where I live.

Even the trees that hadn't burst into life yet were a sight to behold.

Before I left for New Zealand, I had started making tree blocks for a new quilt. I love this process of slicing and dicing and not using precise piecing.

I had a stash of Kaffe Fassett shot cottons that were languishing in the cupboard and a container of Batiks that I thought I'd never use. They couldn't have been more perfect.

The method involves inserting strips of different sizes between the cuts and is pretty easy to do. The pattern is Twelve Trees by Helen Howes. There are many variations and settings you could use with these blocks.
There is a free tutorial showing how to make these blocks on Helen's site here and also Kelly over at Pinkadot Quilts has also shown a step by step process here.
I started by cutting my background rectangles 16 x 10 1/2"

I decided I liked the setting that Helen used for one of her quilts and followed suit, I have a few more blocks to do to make it to the 25 I had planned on. I'm such a copy cat but why change it when I love it so much.

Here's a peek at what appeared at the edge of my design wall. As if by magic really, I didn't intend to play with another new quilt but I wanted to cut a few pieces of fabric in these colours to see if I liked them. I do.

I have a few things on my list to do yet before I get to play some more.

Two squares cut 2.5" and one rectangle 6.5" x 2.5" if you're curious.

 

Until next time, Janet

It's been awhile

I had a great three weeks in New Zealand visiting family and I arrived back in Australia last weekend but it seems I never left apart from trying to get back into some sort of routine.
Indulge me while I drag out some Nana brag photos.

Here are the three youngest grandkiddos, I don't think the twelve year old would appreciate a photo on my blog. The girls are wearing the dresses I made for them and they fit perfectly. Sophie on the left is six and wants to grow her hair like Rapunzel on Tangled. Ella is our polly pocket rocket, she wants her hair long but it just won't grow! She helped me make bread and is very good at shaping balls of dough so she's the little baker. Noah is two now and is just mad about anything to do with the movie cars.

Being the youngest of four kids means Noah watches everything and then copies so when I was taking a photo of the stick insect, he raced to find the toy camera and copied my close up style, lol.

The weather was fabulous, not too hot and not cool except for at night so we did get to go to the beach which is not far away and dig for pipis. I suppose the taste would be like clams and we even got a few cockles.

When you dig for pipis that are not far into the ocean and when the tide is going in, you have to  twist  your toes to feel them under the sand, it's quite a sight and good exercise.

We soaked them overnight in sea water for them to spit out the sand and my DD made some delicious pipi fritters for dinner the next evening. It took me right back to my childhood with every summer at the beach doing the same thing.

My older sister and I had a couple of nice lunches out together and both of us chose a beef and pear salad with blue cheese dressing for lunch on one of those days. It was so delicious that I had to try and make it at home. It turned out to be really delicious but I could have added a few cherry tomatoes and it would have been perfect. I served it with my sourdough which I've missed so much while away.
It has salad greens, red onion, avocado, red capiscum, avocado, pear and roasted pine nuts along with the beef.

The dressing was so delicious that I just have to share. After it's been in the fridge, it goes thicker and would make a rock star dip.

Blue cheese dressing

75g Costello blue cheese, chopped

125g (1/2 cup) creme fraiche

1 green shallot, end trimmed, thinly sliced

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tbs white wine vinegar

1 tbs light olive oil

1 tbs good-quality whole-egg mayonnaise

2 tsp Dijon mustard

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

To make the blue cheese dressing, place the blue cheese, creme fraiche, green shallot, garlic, vinegar, oil, mayonnaise and mustard in the bowl of a food processor and process until mixture is almost smooth. You can also use a mixing wand.Taste and season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl or jug. Serve at room temperature. Cover with plastic wrap and store in the fridge until required. It will keep for several days.

So what about the sewing? Well there wasn't too much of that but I did prep all my leaves for another panel on the Trailing Vines quilt before I left and I only have a few more leaves to sew on.
I don't think anybody is in a rush for the next panel to download so when I've drawn it up, I'll let you know here on the blog.

I did stuff another trapunto block for the Coxscomb quilt, each block takes me about four or five evenings to do so it's not a quick job.

You get the idea of what it will look like from the back view without the yellow pen I used. I was too lazy to iron it so it might look a bit rough. The only thing I didn't get to work on was the snowball quilt from my last post but better to have too much than not enough sewing to do.

I tried to keep up on my blog reading while I was away even if I didn't have time to leave comments.

I'm looking forward to catching up. I do have a couple of Coxcomb and Currant blocks to email to some of you so that requested it so if you don't recieve them within a day or two, could you flick me another request please.

Until next time, Janet

Holiday snaps from New Zealand

Warning, photo heavy post. You can just scroll down through to the bottom if you want the quilty picture.

In New Zealand, you can see a lot of Maori art and these next two were part of a memorial for fallen soldiers. Maori culture is very strong and incorporated into everyday life in NZ.

My children, grandchildren and a sister and brother in law live in Auckland, near the top of NZ so that's where we spent most of our time. I was there for the first week by myself and Mr Quiltsalott joined me for the next two weeks.

There are lots of old character homes around Auckland that have been restored, I loved seeing all the decorative details on them.

We needed to travel to Wellington at the bottom of the North Island to see another sister, bil and my mum. My mother has just been moved into a home as she is at the stage of Alzheimer's where she needs to be safe and taken care of. The short term memory is not good but otherwise she's in great health and I was happy to see her and spend some time out and about for an afternoon to catch up.

It takes about nine hours driving from Auckland to Wellington but the roads are excellent so it wasn't too tiring and there is plenty of scenery to look at.

The native Kowhai trees were nearly finished flowering but this was was at it's peak.

These remind me of home as there were trees planted all down my street where I used to live.

On the drive back to Auckland, I took some photos from a moving car of the two mountains, Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe in bottom photo. Both are active volcanoes.

This is such a stunningly green country, it's one of the things I miss about home.

When you drive, you will see farmland all around you and there were plenty of lambs and calves to stare at. If you click on the photos, you'll get a better idea.

Two of my favourite people, Sophie, 5 and Ella, 3.

Noah, born to be a gardener maybe. No photo of my 11 yr old grandaughter, not sure that she'd like that.

I celebrated my birthday while over there and my daughter made me a chocolate mud cake especially decorated in bling style by the three girls. It was a high fat one too, I loved it! I haven't had a birthday cake in years.

It was so great to see my Mum and Dad, three sisters, two kids and four grandchildren. Thank goodness they're only three hours away by plane.

As for the sewing,I did get the border on the left appliqued while I was away and joined it up to the top as soon as I could when I got home. It's shown over on the Glorious Applique blog as well.