The Flowers…..

Thought I’d give you a break in quilting photos to show you the current display at my house.

When we built our house, part of our budget included landscaping costs for the front.  We have a very nice, albeit tailored front yard, with few flowers.

When moving my Nan to my aunties house in her later years, she dug up this ‘Red Hot Poker’ (haven’t a clue the correct name) and gave it to us.  The man of the house divided it in two and planted it, crossed his fingers, hoped for the best but expected the worst.  We don’t do fancy flowers, we are strictly an easy peasy garden.  Anything complicated seems to live a short life.

But these things are AMAZING.  They took off, and each year we get more flowers than the year before.  I’m trying to talk my husband into splitting them again and putting them elsewhere, so we’d have four plants rather than just the two, but he’s not keen.  He’s not sure we can get it right a second time!

So for now, I get to admire these two divine bushes.  Each time I drive up my driveway I see a brilliant flash of colour, and I’m constantly amazed that we managed to grow them!

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Quilt Show–Part Two

Here’s a few more photos from our quilt show.  We had a lot of items put in, so there may be a few more posts yet.  But I figured I never get tired of looking at quilt show posts, so I hope you feel the same way.

Love the last one to bits.  When I was taking the photos, it was at the end of the setting up day, and I was in a hurry to go home, so I rushed around, clicked the photos, didn’t give myself time to look at the quilts properly.  Then when I was on the door on Sunday, I didn’t have time.  I didn’t look closely at them, and at the quilting in particular.  I’m such a traditional quilt maker, this one shouldn’t appeal to me, because it’s not something I would find myself doing.  But I really, really like it.  And I really, really love the way it’s been quilted.  I think it looks amazing.

Well, back to real life.  Housework beckons.  Hopefully, I’ll post some more tomorrow!

Suzie

Quilt Show Part One

I have to divide these photos into a few posts – otherwise you may just complain about too many photos!

Our quilt show is over with – there were lots of lovely quilts.  As with all things, I think we learned a few lessons for the next show in two years’ time.  Positive feedback, rather than negative criticism as my husband is fond to say.  We were under a disadvantage with our venue, I think.  But we are working on that for next time.

We have a large community of quilters, with many varied tastes as these quilts show.  I doubt you could pick a theme – that is one thing we may work on in future years.  Perhaps having a corner of the display set aside for ‘bears’ or ‘log cabins’ or ‘scrap quilts’.  Things like that.  We weren’t able to have a shop due to the regulations of the place we were holding the show at, and quilters love a shop.  Maybe next time.

So tomorrow, if I have time, I will try and posts some more photos for you.  I’m probably the youngest quilter in our group, and the eldest is probably near her nineties, and the quilting styles are as varied as the quilters in the group.

Till tomorrow

Suzie

Four Generations

As some of you may be aware, we lost our dear Nan in June.  She was in her nineties and we miss her very much.

Nan did a lot of handwork over her life, many pieces I am lucky enough to own.  She was prolific in her craft, and did the most divine, intricate embroidery over her earlier years.  At about 85 or so she had an operation on her wrist for her carpal tunnel, and that sadly left her unable to hold a needle as well as she would like to.  Not to let little issues like that get in her way, she took up crocheting for the last few years of her life.  One cannot have idle hands.  I could barely keep up with new patterns for her.

She had many grand daughters, and decided to make each one an embroidered cushion, because whilst the very delicate work now escaped her, she was able to make candle-wicked things.  I would draw her up a candlewick design, most of which I found in Hoop Love, a Flickr group online.  I’d draw them onto a twelve inch piece of calico, she’d stitch them to her heart’s content and make the cushions out of the panels.  After she had made all of her grand daughters and great grand daughters a cushion, she was running out of people to gift things to.  I suggested she keep making the panels, as long as she was enjoying it what did it matter how many she made?  The result was another fifty blocks.

What to do with these blocks?  None of them really went together as a group, because she just stitched the ones that took her fancy.  I decided to throw them all together into two truly heirloom quilts – and when they were complete, I would give them to my girls.

So that’s what I did.  I stitched the blocks into a quilt, trimmed it with lovely crochet lace, and my mother free-armed the quilting on her long-arm machine.

So – the quilt was made by one generation, stitched together by a second generation, quilted by a third generation and loved by a fourth.

 

It’s really hard to get a good picture of this quilt – cream doesn’t really work well for photographs.

I photographed each block for you to see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of the back here…I think Mum did a beautiful job.

 

 

 

So that’s that.  A lovely, lovely heirloom for my girls.  This is obviously just one of the quilts we have made, the other is still at Mum’s waiting to be quilting.  But as Mum’s quilting business takes off, the non-paying customers (me) have to wait a little longer.

Hope you enjoyed that.  I’ve so many wonderful bits of work that my Nan has made – she is everywhere in my house.  I’ll show you some more another day.

Thanks for your company,

Suzie