An informal girlfriends’ dinner party for eight at Di B’s last Saturday was the perfect occasion for us to finally hand over the quilt.
The temperature reached a dramatic 42 degrees Celsius that day, after a week of gruelling heatwave conditions - but that didn’t deter Liccy from wrapping herself in her new quilt to pose for our photo.
Then we all retreated to the cool of Di’s balcony overlooking beautiful Sydney Harbour to toast our dear friend. 
After Linda Billet, of Artisan Quilting, had worked her magic with an all-over pattern of swirls and curls in a variegated aqua thread, we took a last close look at some of our favourite fabrics.
Our friend Alicia is celebrating her 60th birthday, and we wanted this quilt to speak of her rich, happy life (so far!) and friends who love her.
She’s a breast cancer survivor, so we included several pieces of pink ribbon fabric.
Most weekends you’ll find her enjoying a swim, and with a little imagination I think these blue squiggles could pass for waves.
Alicia loves the sunshine too.
And we do love to celebrate birthdays and other occasions with parties and lots of laughter, and (ahem…) the odd glass of vino.
This pretty green fabric was from Alicia’s late mother’s quilting fabric stash which Liccy kindly gave me a few years ago. Di B and I had also included some in Ian’s Bowtie Quilt.
Alicia was the friend who asked us to make the Bowtie Quilt for Ian, (the Love of her Life), so Di B and I wanted this quilt to be distinctively Liccy’s, and yet co-ordinate with his.
To achieve this we included many of the same fabrics we’d used in his, and added bright pinks, lime greens, yellows and aquas to hers. She’s a colourful kinda gal!
Of all the fabrics in the Hourglass Quilt this little piece says the most.
It took some time, and a whole morning on our knees, to place the 300 x 5 inch hourglass blocks** so that no two feature fabrics or white-on-white triangles touched each other. You just wouldn’t believe how many times we checked, and still found wrong ‘uns we’d missed!
Then there was the distribution of colours to be considered. And someone thought it would be fun to put the wine bottles near the grapes, and the lemons near the gin and tonic glasses!
We stacked the blocks in rows, labelled the top block in each pile with its row number and an arrow indicating which way the rows ran, then bagged them in separate freezer bags and took half each to work on at home.
Rather than sewing each row separately I used a tip from Linda’s Stitchin’ Mission class and sewed up to 4 rows simultaneously, creating a “web”. It’s a bit like multiple chain piecing and saves time because you aren’t continually stopping and starting.
In the photo below you can see where I’ve sewn the 1st and 2nd blocks of rows 3 to 6. I went on to sew the 3rd blocks in each of those rows … and so on.
This created a “web” of thread holding each completed row together.
You can see my rows held together by the “web” in these photos.
Finally, I sewed the long rows to each other, and in another sewing session we joined our quilt halves together.
We were very happy with progress so far!
**We’d actually made the whopping total of 390 hourglass blocks! Why so many?
Well, that’s another story… You could ask Di B :-))
You might have noticed that posts about my own quilty output have been a bit thin on the ground lately. Non existent, in fact, over the past month.
That’s because there’s been quite a bit of secret squirrel stitching going on here as Di B and I put the finishing touches to another collaborative quilt. It was a surprise gift for a friend’s very special birthday, so we had to keep it under wraps, not an easy job for either of us!
We started with these.
To make these – Hourglass blocks!
What came next? I’ll tell you next time.
I enjoy being sneaky :-))
So this week saw the commencement of Paddington Patchworkers, with plenty of ‘show and tell’ after a productive and creative holiday break.
Aviva’s Dresden Plate flowers are looking spectacular and just waiting for a final applique border.
Diane’s applique baby quilt is finished at last, and I think that giraffe is just as cute as a button.
And now for something completely different, as Diane begins a gorgeous Cathedral Window quilt. This one’s all about the journey and she’s in no particular hurry to finish
Another sweet quilt top by Sue, almost complete. A little bird tells me this one’s a girly gift, all pretty in pink.
Finally, Hannah popped in to show us her finished quilt, a special birthday gift for a friend across the sea. She’s flown out by now to deliver it in person, lucky girl.
The colours – lots of lime and aqua, not best shown up by my inept photography - are so fresh and crisp, and confirm Hannah’s reputation for clever colour choices.
We’re in for an inspiring year at Paddington Patchworkers :-))
I took my ‘DiPad’ to bed and followed Cyclone Yasi’s progress, like so many fellow Australians, on ABCNews 24 until I nodded off in the early hours of the morning. I woke to the news that there had been massive destruction to North Queensland overnight.
Banana and sugar cane crops have been razed to the ground, houses have been unroofed and walls blown away, boats have been lifted out of the sea and left high and dry in the middle of the street, and trees have been shredded as if by a giant blender.
However not one life was lost in Cyclone Yasi’s fury – and one precious new life joined us in the early hours of the morning when a little baby girl was delivered safely in an evacuation centre.
Thank you, God, for this small mercy.
I’m grateful, too, for friends around the world who care, and praying especially for those living in the Midwest of the USA experiencing huge snowstorms and freezing temperatures. For days my computer’s weather widget has been telling me Linda in Des Moines, Iowa has been shivering with a maximum of minus 20 degrees and more!! Yet she has shown concern for her blog friends here in Oz. Please stay warm and safe, Linda.
It seemed so appropriate, then, that I found Pinky’s blog post this morning. She’s resolved to write about one thing for which she feels grateful each week, and I’m delighted to join her starting with today’s post.
Will you join her too?
Jenny of Elefantz lives in Charters Towers, close to Ayr, in the path of Yasi, and along with all her blog friends I’m anxiously waiting to hear that she is safe. The wrote eloquently of her feelings facing the unknown in this blog post yesterday.
Jenny has designed a beautiful Block of the Month project with a difference, called “Give Thanks” and I’ve put it on my definite To Do list for this year.
Finally, I’m grateful to Bec for winning my little auction (Stella the sock monkey) for the Queensland Flood Appeal. Have you seen how much the blogging crafters’ community raised altogether - $99.089!!!
Stella can’t stop telling me how much she loves life at Bec’s house.
Stella always was a bit of a chatterbox, but it looks as if little Miss A has found a way to shut her up for a while!
Thank you :-))
Tonight will be a very long, terrifying night for the people of North Queensland as they shelter in homes or evacuation centres as best they can and wait for the might of Cyclone Yasi to hit.
When the maelstrom is at its fiercest many will huddle in complete darkness with no power and no means of communication.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh again finds herself in the role of reassuring the people of her state with her regular appearances on TV and, all politics aside, she does it superbly. I can confidently say she won’t be getting much sleep tonight.
I was born in the town of Ayr, south of Townsville. My family left there when I was 7 years old and I still have childhood memories of palm trees bent horizontal by cyclonic winds. But those storms of my childhood, we’re being told by the authorities, are nothing compared to Category 5 Cyclone Yasi.
It’s huge. You’ll get some idea when you see this satellite image of Yasi superimposed on a map of the USA.
[Photo from here.]
At its height the Bureau of Meteorology predicts wind gusts of almost 300kph, and huge tide surges. A wave height of 9.5 metres (yikes!) has already been recorded off Townsville. Yasi is the largest and most menacing cyclone to hit Australia in living memory.
The Age newspaper has a live blog here where you can see frequent updates on the situation, along with Twitter feeds and links to webcams.
And on this page people in Cairns are sending frequent live updates from the area while they can.
Three weeks ago Australians went to bed praying for the people of Brisbane as they anticipated the rising flood waters that were to do so much damage to that city. The water had already cut a path of devastation through rural Queensland destroying lives and property, and we were fearful of what lay ahead.
Tonight it’s for North Queensland that Australians everywhere are praying. I simply can’t comprehend the horror of the roaring wind and relentlessly beating rain which have started already.
Please join me in praying for God’s protection for these folk tonight. In the midst of the terrifying storm may they hear the still, small voice of our loving God comforting them.
