A very big thankyou

What wonderful people you all are.

So many messages to encourage me and wish me well for my new Etsy shop, I am rather overwhelmed...... wow, so much love and good will out there, it is very heartwarming.

Thank you all so much !!

Melissa received over three hundred comments on her birthday post and all in all it has been rather an exciting time for the two of us in blogland !

This morning I was in my studio thinking about little things that I could make and I had a happy time creating these.

A needlecase made from a woollen blanket and some wool felt and flannel lining.

A little scissor keeper made with the same fabrics and some pink ribbon.

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More rain is forecasted for tomorrow and we have two little grandchildren staying the rest of the weekend. It could be a day for snakes and ladders and chocolate chip cookies I am thinking.

Have a great weekend everyone!

A little spotty and dotty

Just a quick peek before it goes to a new home.

This quilt that I started quite a few years ago is finally finished.

I will show you a proper photo in a couple of weeks time, when it is unfolded and given to a special person, but until then......sshh....not a word .
That special person could see and then the surprise would be spoilt !


Patchwork is starting to take on a bit of a resurgance in my life lately, not that it ever really disappeared, and I do love hand piecing.


This is part of a star that forms a large hexagon.
I have made the stars before using the English Paper Piecing method, but this time I thought I would hand piece using Sarah's example


from Material Obsession 2.

I love her bright quilt with the spots and stripes she has used and it has been fun collecting all the spots and and dots I can lay my hands on !

Patchwork and Picnics

Spring has now officially arrived, and I am thinking about picnics and spending time lounging about outside. I have been invited to share another stall very soon and decided to make some patchwork picnic blankets.

This was the first one . I backed it with a cotton fabric and then realised that it wasn't thick enough for a picnic blanket, so decided it would be much nicer as a summer tablecloth.

I sewed a soft fleecy backing on the next one.

Then rolled it up into a little bundle and added some elastic and a button, and now it has become something that is easy to throw onto the back seat of a car, or in the basket of a push bike...

voila...picnic time !

I think I might use one to lie under this tree, and gaze at the sky studded with a mass of blossom that reminds me of confetti .

Fibre Arts

This is a little notice for all who live in Nelson and Motueka/Marlborough (maybe even Wellington) and read my blog.
On Sunday some friends and myself are having a market selling fabrics, yarns, books and crafty items from our stashes. Fabrics and wool will be coming out of their secret hiding places from under the beds, wardrobes and drawers in spare bedrooms, cupboards and (in my case) from under window seats. It is going to be a fun day and I am wondering if I shall be taking home more than I arrived with !!!
I shall try to be good, and stay focused on all the knitting and quilting that I have yet to finish this year.The fruit salad quilts for the granddaughters have come to an impasse, and I have several more weeks of quilting to do on Tristan and Sylvia's quilt, and Melissa's. I daren't confess to all the knitting projects that I have on the go at the moment, but that just seems to be how I work the best. Are any of you the same ?

Heddles

I have prepared a new warp under the tuition of my wonderful friend.
It is very fine crochet cotton and K spent the morning with me showing how to put the warp on the loom without getting into a tangled mess. It was marvellously straightforward and now I just have to finish threading these heddles.

At this stage I am feeling very excited !! A new woven "something" will be emerging very soon.

The last couple of weeks I have been ironing fabrics and tidying them into neat stacks on the shelves.

They used to look in a mess like this:

I used to have a patchwork and quilting shop and so I have a LOT of fabric, enough for several housefuls of quilts and a couple more decades of sewing ........I hope.

Following the flower trail

I had such fun this morning with my anniversary draw. I wrote all your names on tiny pink post it notes, and put them into my favorite Port Meirion cup. I gave it a little shake up as I danced around my kitchen, closed my eyes and drew out Kimberlee's name.

Because here in New Zealand we are coming into Spring, I thought I would cut some floral fabrics.

I am mad about flowers all year round actually. I never become tired of their colours and shapes and their wonderful fragrances and I love to work with them in my quilts. I am constantly trying to reproduce them in drawings and pictures.

This was a little black sketchbook that I took with me on our trip overseas. It wasn't taken out of my bag very often, instead I used my camera and now that I am home again I have a little more time to play with my pencils.
Sweetpeas are my favorite, as I think I might have already mentioned on a previous post

and roses have to come a close second, oh, but then what about bluebells, hyacinths, freesias, tulips, larkspur, candytuft, pansies, zinnias, hollyhocks and lily of the valley ??

Maybe I don't have favorites after all. As usual my greedy nature takes over once again and I have decided that I adore them all equally.

Thank you for all your wonderful comments and for participating, it has been a lot of fun.

One year

Today I awoke to bright sunshine, and a tui perched on this frangipani tree right outside my bedroom window.

I looked a little further and this is what I sawThe sea is the same colour as the sky and it looks as if the ship is floating above the paddocks.

Every day the spring flowers are growing more lovely and it is such a treat to bring them into the home.

This week is also the first anniversary of this blog. 103 posts altogether and I wrote the first post at the end of August last year.
I thought that I would celebrate by sending some fabrics from my stash, a very untidy stash I am ashamed to say.

but I would love to send some fat quarters to someone who makes a comment in the next three days. I will put your names in a draw. Please remember that I can only respond to comments if you provide your email address or make your blogger profile available, or you can email me directly. Good luck!

Threads

Playing around with fabrics and threads is always a good stress buster, and I have been rushing through the last couple of weeks, feeling a little like Alice, running after The White Rabbit.

Today I stole some time ( when I should, no could, have been working on a hundred other work related things) to play with this:

some KF scraps left over from A Summer Sea and a few embroidery threads.

After this little piece is completed I am going to be on the lookout for some paisley fabrics. It might be fun to embellish the paisley prints in the same way.

To make it easier to work on I stabilised the fabric with some fine "iron on lawn interfacing". As you can see I didn't have very long to work on it, but it was fun to play for a while and to stop rushing about.

I plied my two full bobbins of the green romney fibre and it made a skein big enough to knit a couple of pairs of fingerless mitts, or maybe a hat for the winter like this one .

I started on the other sleeve for Melissa's Arisaig at the weekend.

I am so tired of this particular project, and when it is finally finished then I shall expect her to wear it every day for at least three months , yep, that should be enough I think. After that she can do what she likes with it. No, a better idea would be to keep it for Keira as an heirloom!!! Only kidding Melissa...don't worry. I just hope it will fit and that you will like it.

Splashing about

I had my first swim of the year today and it was very refreshing and just what I needed to do on a hot windy afternoon.

My eldest son manages a big dairy farm about an hour and a half from where we live, and he and his little family live in a beautiful farmhouse with a verandah all the way around and climbing roses on every post....plus they have a swimming pool!

Splashing about in the pool with the little ones shrieking with glee , smelling the farm smells and listening to the bird calls in the trees surrounding the property was bliss, and to think that I very nearly didn't go because I wanted to work on this:

I started this late on New Year's Day. I was thinking about Melissa and her family and wanted to do something that didn't require me to engage my head, just my hands. So I mindlessly cut lots of squares from fabric I have had in my stash for a while, and kept cutting and sorting and cutting and sorting until I had covered the spare bed ( so recently vacated ) in squares of aqua, blue and green.

I am still not wholly satisfied that the squares are in their rightful places, I might need to play some more.

A cherry on top

Yesterday we spent the day in Marlborough with some friends. We bought some cherries from a local orchard and had lunch in a nearby cafe.The sun was shining, and we parked the car under the shade of the cherry trees next to a quilt shop...how lucky was that!!!



I kept my fingers busy, popping cherries in my mouth and stroking the fabrics and doing a few rows on the Rowan afghan. Blissful day!

Fit to ride a bike?

I am on a mission to become fitter this summer, and after purchasing a new bike helmet I rescued my bike from it's home in the garage, sadly discarded for many a year.

With my two little helpers busy with thier brushes and sponges, it was given some TLC and air in the tyres.

Today I thought I would ride down the road and see how far I got before my legs wanted to stop.

It is a little hazardous riding a bike on the road out of our gate. Our farm is right alongside the main highway out of (or into, whichever way you are driving) our little town.The traffic belts along at 100km or more and when a truck drives past, you could be sucked into the down draft and fall off! Fortunately this didn't happen to me today, but it was quite windy and with hay paddocks on both sides of the road, it wasn't long before my eyes were streaming and I was barely taking a breath in between sneezes. My ride cut short by hayfever, oh dear, never mind, better get home for a Telfast pill and a refreshing cup of tea.

Huh, I certainly didn't get very far today but I am not giving up, oh no! It was quite funny really because as I was on my way home, thinking my little thoughts to myself and biking very fast ( or so I thought) , a "proper" cylist shot past me all togged up in special racing bike gear, and I felt quite foolish when I noticed how far he had got ahead in just a couple of seconds.

I played in my workroom this afternoon, cutting aqua coloured fabrics and putting squares together and

I made this little patchwork bib with the bits left over.

A Profusion of Pink

In the pink!!

My eldest granddaughter and I were having a conversation last week about colours,

"What's your favorite colour SallyNan?" she asked, and I replied

" Uumm, I think I would have to say green, and what is your favorite colour Esmae?"

Her answer...emphasized with a hop on each foot

"PINK, PINK,PINK!!

Especially pink ponies!

A pink place for the bees to buzz out of

and a plate of pink sweets .

Pink is in....definitely!

Catching Fish

One of my daughters told me at the weekend that she is not able to leave a comment on my blog...her comment is never published and she is wondering why , and maybe there is something wrong with the format etc on my setting up page.

So I have come up with a plan. Maybe there are lots of crafty knitters, quilters, spinners and even weavers out there who are having similar difficulties leaving a comment. Now because blogs are supposed to be interactive, I thought I would throw out a line (challenge) and see if I could catch some fish (comments).

You all know how much I love sweet peas, well I have half a metre of sweet pea fabric and half a metre of NZ fabric (paua shells) to give away .

If you post a comment (if you are not able to post a comment then send me an email...email address is on my profile) on this post, then after one week I shall put all the names in a hat and draw the winner. Simple as that, and good luck!

Here are the fabrics.... enough to make bags, purses, patchwork or anything at all.