Wordless wednesday

little pleasures

Hellooooo my friends!! I'm back from my whirlwind week in New Zealand. It's so good to be back home and I'm so looking forward to getting my old routine back.

If there's one thing I've learnt over the last month and a half, it's to stay positive and to enjoy the smaller pleasures life has to offer. It has been a really challenging year so far and that's an understatement.

Enough of the deep and meaningfuls and onto some nice cheerful chatter.

It was such a good idea to start playing with hexagons. I packed a pile of fabrics, the supplies I'd need and had some nice times with needle and thread during found moments. Thanks to my DD who is a star fussy cutter extraordinaire, I now have these sweeter than sweet flower delights.

The pile grew quite nicely and I've decided how I'm going to set them together.

I love the cheerful scrappiness of the Vignette hexagon quilt from Leanne Beasley. I didn't think I'd last the distance if I embroidered the hexagons that fit in between blocks so opted for my cheats version. The cherry fabric from the Sew Cherry fabric line is the perfect fit for a one inch hexagon, how amazingly wonderful is that??

Row one has begun but now that I'm home, who knows how far I'll get. Does it matter? Nah! This is about having fun people and a needle and thread in my hand is my idea of  pleasure.

I can't remember the last time I actually wanted to get in the kitchen and cook. I'm not talking about having to cook to sustain us but the "I feel like cooking something" feeling. Mmmm, maybe it's the Masterchef effect. I'm addicted to watching that cooking show and something must have rubbed off.

Lamb shanks cooked with red wine with gremolata and served on a bed of polenta. Does that sound a bit cheffy? I used some random recipe off the Internet and did my usual tweaking just because I can and I think it makes me look like I have a talent in the kitchen.

                                   

Strawberries for afters but just for me because the only other person living in this house is allergic.

The last lovely pleasure of the day is this heavenly smelling bunch of flowers just delivered to our door. Some friends were thinking of us, how thoughtful!

I hope to catch up with you soon, thanks for dropping by for a visit.

Back to sewing and blogging

I had a lovely afternoon in the sewing cave the other day. I shut out the world and enjoyed a bit of me time.

I've been battling bronchitis the last two weeks but I'm feeling more like my normal self now thank goodness.

Poor David has had it too but not as bad and on top of all that, had a day in hospital  (nothing serious) and a bit of minor eye laser surgery. It sounds like we're falling to bits!! We're good now and life is slowly returning to routine as much as it can.

I felt like a little sewing project that was easy, inexpensive and fast to do from whoa to go.  You can see I couldn't stop at one and I even tried a couple of different sizes.  These are great as thread catchers, containers or to put gifts in.

They're even reversible, how good is that? I found the tutorial over here if you need to whip some up.

Have you seen Mary's hexagons? I needed something happy to play with and made a few of these big ones. I was going to surround them with a row of white but now I've changed my mind and might come back to these a little later on. It's a bit of  frivolity and may not grow up to be a quilt.

I decided to simplify and go for the single petaled blooms for now.

As you can see, they've been a great distraction and I'm enjoying the simplicity of English paper piecing.

Look what came in the mail!  A fat quarter pack of Sew Cherry by Lori Holt, I had to have some after seeing them on Nannette's blog. I even got some yardage that I have plans for. Yummy!

 

I've also been doing a little painting. These two boards will have different colours on the backs. They're to help me with photos for the blog. I have such a dark house and very little natural light so it's hard to find anywhere to take photographs. I read about this great solution from Amy and swung into action.

 

That's all for now, except to say thanks a bunch for all the wonderful messages you've left me. I couldn't bring myself to reply to you all individually, I know you'll understand. I'll be doing my best to catch up.

Janet xoxo

Catching up

No baby news yet so I'm just catching up with a bit of this and that. Here's the wonderful banner my three granddaughters made and greeted me with on my arrival in New Zealand. And just so I would know which bedroom was mine, they made this great sign.

I was fortunate enough to be here when my DS turned 24 last week so we went out for a great Japanese meal in Auckland city. Not everyone likes Shashimi but we love it. Favourite dish was the raw octopus in wasabi.

I do have something quilty to show you. This is my DD's wisp. The first quilt she started and it's not that far off being finished. I taught her how to quilt it using the big stitch with perle cotton.

Since the quilt is for one of the children she had the great idea to quilt the two year old's hand prints in the border along with flowers and butterflies.

There are a lot of eye spy blocks to enjoy. They were all sewn with the english paper piecing method.

I'm missing my sewing machine but I did bring a little stitching with me so I do get to do a little applique and some Hardanger embroidery in the evenings.

The hexagon header quilt

This is the quilt that has drawn the most interest from my blog and I promised I would try and get the publishers of the magazine to fix the link for the correct templates. The magazine is no longer available, not even as a back order. It's done, so click here to get them and make sure you print them with the no scale option for your printer. It's issue 18 Candied Hexagons and there are two pages to download. The maker of the original quilt, Kerry Dear, used the Marti Michell hexagon templates. I hand pieced mine but you can machine piece if you are ok with set in seams.

Top left

top right

bottom left

bottom right

I love the spotty back with the striped binding.

I cut my inner border 1.5" and the outer one 4.25"

I thought I'd show you a few of my favourite hand quilting books. The Encyclopedia of Designs for Quilting is my absolute favourite. It has so much information on background quilting designs and how to make simple cardboard templates to mark them. I do have a couple of others but these are a few of my favourites that I go to for ideas.

Antique and vintage quilts part 3

For the lovers of 30's quilts, that includes me! The Bow Tie quilt was made as a four patch with the squares appliqued on. I do love a scrap quilt.Hand quilted Oriental Stars which were appliqued on, check out those points!
Hexagonal Stars
Grandmother's Flower Garden.

I loved the Graphic visual effect in this Double Wedding Ring.

Tulips

And the gorgeous hand quilting.

Carpenter's Wheel

Michigan's Pontiac Stars, machine pieced and hand quilted with baptist fans.

This last one is Rolling Star, it has beautiful hand quilted feathers in the borders.

P.S I nearly forgot to say that I have joined Christine's nine patch swap for Australian residents, check it out by clicking on the button on my sidebar, there are still some places.

The final quilt shop fix and my Hexagons

Believe it or not, this is a quilt shop, I know, it looks like a tin shed! It's in Henderson, Auckland.
Take a look inside though and it reminds me of the Tardis on DR Who. It's much larger than first impression and if you click on the photo, you can see all the antique sewing machines, mostly toy ones. We had a nice visit here and then to a curio shop and cafe for lunch before flying back to Australia last night. It was pretty hard leaving the Grandkids when miss 3 year old had tears streaming down her face at our goodbyes.Lurline is taking part in the Great Hexagon Quilt-along which I won't be taking part in but I did say I would show mine.

This is from Australian Quilters Companion Vol.5.2 No 18, designed by Kerry Dear and featured on the cover. I pieced it by hand and hand quilted it last year, its around 60" square which is a good lap size quilt. If anyone is going to make this, you'll need the correct templates from their website.

My other hexagon project is my oldest Ufo and is English Paper pieced. It's the Inner City pattern. I'd only have 3 or 4 rows to put on but I'm not feeling inspired to finish it. It served a great purpose during tough times so I'm not sure how I feel about it.

It's so hot here, even with the air conditioner, outside it's 39 celcius (102F) so I think it's time I disapeared into the cool sewing room. Some have asked me about the Jigsaw footstool pattern I did before Xmas so I'll get onto that in my next post

Janet