Circle of Friendship

In an unheard of act of self-organisation I’ve completed my second Circles of Life BOM 3 weeks ahead of time! Woohoo!

It’s amazing what you can do when you’re having fun – and I sure am with this quilt.

My various circles of friendship are very precious to me, including my online friends around the world.

Di

Circles of Life

Take these delicious fabrics (add a few extras from your stash to spice things up a little).

Blend with these pretty threads.

Add in the delightful new online quilting and embroidery magazine, Elefantz Home, from Jenny of Elefantz, and you’ll have all the ingredients for a beautiful new Block of the Month quilt, Circles of Life.

I’ve never dome a BOM before, and I really shouldn’t start another quilt but the first time I saw Jenny’s quilt (in Issue 1 of Elefantz Home) I fell in love with its freshness and references to the significant “circles” in our lives.

You can subscribe to Elefantz Home here for just AUD4.00 a month and receive at least 3 of Jenny’s patterns every month in your inbox, or buy the BOM block patterns alone from Jenny’s Etsy shop where you can also buy back issues of the magazine.

A large part of my attraction to Circles of Life was Jenny’s fabric choice – Fresh Palette by Carrie Nelson for Henry Glass – but when I went Googling I became increasingly more desperate as shop after shop had sold out. It seems I wasn’t the only quilter to have fallen in love with Fresh Palette.

I eventually tracked down my fabrics at the appropriately named Desperate Quilters.

They couldn’t have been friendlier, especially when my credit card was initially declined. (Note to self: Don’t order fabric on the internet at 2am when you’re past typing straight *lol*).

I’ve pulled several extra fabrics from my stash, and I’m more than happy with the result so far. This summery look is brightening my winter days. Would you like to join me?

You’ll have to wait to see my second completed block, Circle of Friendship, next time

Di

Chester's a big boy now

Remember this cute little puppy?

He's always been a handsome boy.

Now Chester's two years old and his dog walker took this beautiful photo of him enjoying the great outdoors in a park by the sea last week with his mates.

He might be big - but he's still very much a puppy and makes us laugh every single day.

Happiness is …

 

 

 

Cuddles with Nanna (great-grandma).

New Life – and a new kind of camera

Until recently our garden has been distinctly lacking in colour and very wintery-looking indeed.


Up close, though, there’s plenty of fresh new growth to be seen as this week we’ve been basking in springtime sunshine and daytime temperatures creeping up into the low 20s Celsius.

There’s even been some of this –  our first spray of jasmine with its heady perfume.

At my mother’s house the magnolia is bursting into bloom.



My brother, an expert photographer, took far better photos of this magnolia but unfortunately I can’t share them with you because they’re in 3D!
I’d never heard of a 3D camera until he showed us his yesterday (and you know how I like to know about these “toys” )
Hmmm… maybe I need to do a little research.
Here it is...
Di

What a lucky duck!

Tonight this precious little man is off on a big jet plane, with his Mummy and Daddy, to enjoy a holiday in a country far away.

Though it’s summer there, it can still be a bit chilly. So Nanna (his great-grandma), Sarah (his aunty) and I (his grandma) each decided to make Jack something comforting and warm for the trip.

Nanna made him a beautiful blue woollen jumper. I know he liked it because he immediately reached out his little hand to stroke the soft texture. Ahh, there’s nothing like a hand-knitted jumper from Nanna.

Sarah decided Jack needed a light but snuggly flannelette quilt, to keep him warm.

She simply sandwiched two pieces of flannelette together – one plain red and the other featuring yellow ducklings – and quilted them with straight diagonal lines.

Then she bound it with a blue starry cotton, perfect for a little boy who needs a comforting snuggle as he travels.

I’m so proud at the way she’s mastered the art of the mitred corner …

Finally, I made Jack a pair of crocheted sneaker-style booties so his little toes won’t get cold.

 

Bye bye, Jack – what a lucky duck!

Di

Di J’s and Di B’s Big Day Out

In the pre-dawn gloom on Friday Di B and I were grinning like cheshire cats as my DH drove us to the airport for our 7am flight.

In my bright pink coat, toting my selvage bag, and accompanied by that very colourful character Di B, we might have been just a little conspicuous on the plane amid a sea of dark suits hunched silently over their iPads reading the Sydney Morning Herald on their way to conduct business in Melbourne.

We were on our way to the Melbourne Quilt and Craft Fair for the day, and in particular to see the Victorian Quilters’ Guild Fabric of Society Challenge quilts.

This challenge involved making a quilt inspired by, recreated or adapted from any quilt published in quilt historian Dr Annette Gero’s book, The Fabric of Society – Australian Quilt Heritage from the Convict Times to 1960.

Months ago I had entered a photo of my Scrappy Hexagon quilt, a version of Kerry Dear’s Candied Hexagons, and was amazed when my quilt was accepted.

Long-time followers of this blog will recall that Candied Hexagons was inspired by the Frederica Josephson quilt (shown here) in Annette Gero’s book.

I’ve never entered a quilt in an exhibition before, so it’s somewhat ironic that my first entry should be a quilt that was not made for competition and was only meant to cover my knees as I watched TV on winter evenings. It’s not show-perfect, but it does fit the criteria for this challenge, and my highest hope was simply to see it displayed with others similarly inspired by antique quilts.

Consequently as I sent my quilt off I had visions of the lovely ladies opening the box, throwing up their hands in horror at my workmanship, and putting it quietly aside. Di B was the only person I told about my entry, and she insisted on coming to Melbourne with me to share the experience.

Best of all, good friend that she is, she promised not to laugh if my quilt wasn’t hung.

To see my Scrappy Hexagons (as I now call it) hanging in the exhibition space, alongside other much more exquisitely executed quilts , was an absolute thrill for this novice.  Can you tell?

Does everyone who enters a quilt for the first time feel the same way, I wonder?

The winning quilt, and Best of Show in the Fabric of Society Challenge, was Dear Prudence by Linda White, and it was stunning!

Those are 1/4 inch hexagons, 17,977 of them, patiently stitched together with more than 500,000 stitches over 12 months. You can read about the making of this quilt on Linda’s blog here.

As I was taking this photo a lady beside me commented, “I don’t usually like machined quilts, but this one’s really good”. She was somewhat taken aback when I explained that it was in fact handmade. Congratulations, Linda!

The “icing on the cake” is that my humble Scrappy Hexagons quilt will spend next year travelling, with Linda’s magnificent Dear Prudence and the other beauties in the Fabric of Society Challenge, to the Australian Quilt Convention in Melbourne and then to the Quilt and Craft Fairs all over Australia.

Such exciting news inspired a little silliness   *

We don’t get out much (lol!). My quilt, however, will make up for that next year.

And since we were indeed at a Craft Fair, we also managed a little lot of shopping, lunching and meeting up with two dear friends that I’ve known for several years online but had never met in person – Lynda and Neroli. There were hugs all round, and so much excitement that I completely forgot to take photos before we had to leave on a jet plane to fly home again for dinner.

As you do.

Di

* Quilt Police please note – It might not look like it, but in fact no quilts were touched in the taking of these photographs!