Have I shown you this yet?

 

Oh I don’t know if I have or not.  I found this picture in my drafts folder, so I assume I haven’t.  Somehow I’ve managed to disorganise my blog as much as I’ve disorganised the rest of my household and who knows where I’m up to??

But in case you haven’t seen it already, or if you’re new, or if I haven’t actually posted it before, this is (obviously) another one of my Grandmother’s Choice blocks.  Up close and personal its flaws are glaringly obvious, at least to me but overall it’s not too bad.  I’m really pleased with the overall effect of these blocks together.  I was going to choose a standard scrappy look, but at the last minute I decided to stick to Red/Green/Cream.  And so far it’s coming along beautifully.

This one is block number three, Union Square.  I chose to make mine more than one colour, again sticking with the red/greens.

I’ve made a few new blocks since my grand declaration of finishing it this year.  Technology is getting up my nose at the moment and the camera card is being a right princess, so I can’t transfer any photos over.  Makes blogging v.v. hard.

I shall perservere with it, and hopefully my very minor technical skills might fix the problem.  We can but try!

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Grandmother’s Choice

So last time I posted this photo:

I had only done nine blocks, out of twenty five.  Yay me.

It is on my list of projects to be finished in 2013.  Or if not finished, at least to have a jolly good dent made in it.

So that’s what I’ve been doing.  I’ve decided it’s just too messy to keep getting the red/green/cream repros out of my repro box (es) and so I’ve dug up the whole lot, they are all sitting on my table and I’m just gonna work hard at getting it all done!.

To that end, I present:

Block no. 25, The Carrie Nation Quilt from Grandmothers Choice blog.

Loving this one sick.  Can you see how the fussy cut red squares form a little butterfly in the join?  Totally randomly done, but sweet!

I’ve made a few more this weekend, and I shall present them to you another day.  I’m trying very hard to post more than once a week, though that seems all I can manage at the moment.

All these kids wanting feeding.  There’d be so much more time for quilting if they didn’t want to eat.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

(p.s. – I can see I’ve had a mini explosion of followers lately – I’m so glad to see new faces here!  Please let me know where you’re from!)

2013 The Year’s Goals

This year I plan to finish everything I have ever started, and not start another new thing.

Yep.  I’m joking.  I wish I weren’t, I wish I could honestly say that every little thing in the cupboard would be finished by the end of the year but that just isn’t realistic.

Instead my plan is to work hard on a couple of really big projects, those long term ones that have been bothering me but sitting up there on the design wall, mocking me.

This one is so old, it’s not funny.  All it needs is for me to applique some flowers up and down.  It’s one of those ‘didn’t really work’ designs for the shop that never made it to the shelf, but I still have a half made sample that needs doing.

My Grandmother’s Choice blocks.  I’m only about twenty blocks behind.  Dear me.

The very lovely Faceted Jewels quilt.  This one, whilst looking barely done, is quite advanced.  I have lots of it cut out and half pieced.

My little basket quilt.  When I say little, I mean the baskets are little.  I have many, many of these baskets so the overall quilt will probably be huge.  I’ve made all the sashings and nine patches, just have to hand stitch down the handles.  A good night time job.

This delicious little number is high on the list to finish.  I’ve done all the blocks, now I just have to make many little girls.  I do love doing them but the preparation is what takes me the longest.  And then I can sit at night and do them.

Of course, the very lovely Dear Jane.  Whilst I’m not promising this one will be finished by the end of this year, I’m hopeful to put a jolly big dent in the work load of it.

And my Joseph’s Coat quilt.  In precisely the same spot as it was last year, when I did my goals for the coming year.  Let’s see how this year pans out.

So that’s it.  Obviously there will be other things I’m doing along the way, but if I can get most of these off my to do list, it’ll be a huge achievement.  We’ll wait and see. 

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Easy Street–finally done!

I didn’t mean to have such a long blogging break, but things get in the way.  There’s a lot happening here behind the scenes in Silly Goose country.

I did manage to finish Easy Street finally.  Out of ten, it’s not a ten for me, but it’s a seven or eight.  The colours are not my ‘go-to’ colours, and that’s a good thing, I think.  I’ve totally used up all the pink, purple and green hand dyed fabrics in my stash, so that’s a good thing to.

I don’t know if I’ll do another mystery for a while.  Famous last words, I’m sure.  Remind me of this post when I do start another one.

I hope everyone is doing fine, with the various extremes of weather.  We’ve officially run out of rain water (our tanks are dry) so rain would be very welcome here in my little part of town.  But I do sympathise very much with those forced to move because of fires, or floods.  And those of you overseas, as I swelter with forty degree days, I hope the snow is not getting you down too much.

Tomorrow, I hope to post some more pictures.  I’m going to a class.  But we’ll see.  No rash promises.

See you soon!

Suzie

Catching Up

Whew.

One kid is at kindy, one kid is at school, one husband is back at work.  The house is quiet.  After seven weeks of school holidays, and all the chaos that is the Christmas season, I’m finally getting some time to myself.

Not that it’s been filled with sewing of any note, it’s been digging through the various levels of school holiday fun that remain on the floors of every room I seem to walk in.  But I have managed to do a little of my Easy Street.

These are older photos.  I seemed to be keeping up with everyone, and then I dropped my bundle and didn’t do any for ages.

I just looked at this photo and saw the glaring error.  Thankfully this is one of the older photos, and I’d only lay it there for design purposes, no stitching was involved.  I’ve rearranged it now.  Amazing how what you can’t see face to face sticks out glaringly in a photo.

The four corner pieces.  They are at least sewn together.

Got another one of those pesky four patches turned the wrong way.  Glad I hadn’t sewn those ones.

So after a few weeks of nothing much being achieved, I dug it all out the other day and the first thing I had to do was sort out what bit belonged to what block.  I’m not rash enough to actually label things BEFORE they go in the box, why would I do that???

It didn’t take too long and I managed to get a little bit done yesterday.

Block One.

Block Two

Now, a couple together with the border blocks.

And a couple more.  I’m pleased with it, I think the green will be toned down once I get more white in it. 

It’s a very – what’s the word I’m looking for?  Time consuming is obvious, even though Bonnie said it would be easy I struggled a little.  Getting all those four patches going the right way is pretty stressful, I’m checking everything two or three times before moving on to the next step because I just know I’ll sew the silly thing together and find something out of place.

But I’m happy with it.  It’s sure not my colours, which I’m pleased about because I need to step out of my comfort zone.  It’s way greener than I would have designed myself, but again – all okay. 

We’ll see how much of it I can get done by the end of the week.  Who knows, I might get it all together and cross another quilt off the UFO list.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Adelaide

I love Adelaide.  It’s not as big and bright as Melbourne, or as rushed as Sydney.  But I love it all the same.

Hubby’s conference was at the Adelaide InterContinental Hotel, and we had to wait at the end of the final day for him to finish.  Adelaide is built on the banks of the River Torrens, so lots of the lovely architecture fronts it.

All these cranes are rebuilding our Cricket Oval.  I’ve been there once, when I was a much younger individual.  Everyone is in such a tizzy over whether or not it is a good idea to redo the cricket oval to allow the state footballer team (Australian Rules, not soccer) access.  I don’t care one way or the other, but I have learnt one thing in my married life – you don’t mess with cricketers.  They often have very strong opinions.  Just ask my husband about whether one day cricket or T20 cricket is ‘real cricket’. 

The only real cricket goes for five days, they have to wear white and it mostly ends in a draw.  That’s real cricket.  Apparently.

Look at that lovely blue sky.  The day I took this photo it was 25 degrees.  The day before that, it was 43 degrees.  Australian weather is a very complex and frustrating thing, let me tell you.

I am such a bad Adelaide-ian that I can’t tell you what this building is.  I think (forgive me if I am wrong) it is either the old Courthouse or the Railway Station.  Didn’t they make the best railway stations back in the old days?

This could be the back view of the hotel hubby’s conference was held in.  The Intercontinental used to be the Hyatt.  Lots of famous people stay here, and there were a group of giggly little teenagers camped outside this one on the day we were here.  Apparently Robert Pattinson was in town.  Meh.  He doesn’t do much for me.  I didn’t get into the whole Twilight thing, I suspect I’m a bit too old these days.  Give me Daniel Craig any day.

Now there’s a man.  But back to Adelaide.

This one is easy.  This is the Festival Theatre, which is Adelaide’s venue for plays and things.  It gets a bad write up fairly regularly as the whole complex is really in need of some refurbishment.  Our government is having quite a lovely spend up building a new hospital and updating cricket ovals, so I guess they haven’t much money left over.  I went there a while ago and the toilets – well, they weren’t pretty. 

The beautiful old mystery building again.  Wish I knew what one it was. 

There are many lovely old buildings and churches in Adelaide (in fact, Adelaide is known as the City Of Churches) but I always forget to pull out the camera and take a picture.  I need to remember to think about you guys when I’m out visiting places – I’m sure there are millions of you (snort, like I have a million readers) who haven’t visited South Australia before and I need to remember to take all these photos so I can blog about them!

Hope you enjoyed my little wander around the back of the Intercontinental Hotel.  When I’m back in town I will take more photos and share them with you.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

On holidays

The past week we were lucky enough to stay in Adelaide, right in the city.  My husband had a course he had to attend, and we decided that a trip away would do everyone the world of good.

Such a shame about the location of our holiday house though.

I mean look at our surroundings.

All those trees.  All those birds.

Anyone would think it was the country or something!

Oh okay, you got me.  It was divine.  Purely divine.  Behind every one of these bunch of trees is a major, major metropolitan highway and suburbia.  Yet this little park was filled with trees and grasslands just like this.  I sat on our deck each night with my glass of wine and absorbed it.  Really would have been happy to pack up and move there.

Every morning we awoke to the sounds of kookaburras and galahs.  And we were forced to look at this view.

And mixed in with the scent of the eucalyptus trees was a lemon scented something – I don’t know which bush it was but it smelt so lovely every evening.

Our nearest neighbours.  They had kids too.  Isn’t it wonderful at parks like this – kids just play with total strangers and everyone has a fabulous time. 

These are baby trees really.  I didn’t get to take a photo of the old, gnarly gumtrees closer to the road, but they are massive.  It’s been so hot that all the bark had fallen to the ground leaving the trunks of these beautiful trees like this:

 

Amazing, the patterns of nature. 

Every day we would walk through the streets (as we had no car) and it was very stressful making sure the little people were holding my hand, and not venturing into danger.  My kids are country kids, and big major city highways are not something they are used to.  Me either, if I’m honest.  Both the girls told me 'they liked the city, but it’s just got too many cars in it!’.  I totally agree.

It was very nice to return home to our lovely unit (which even had an ensuite, as well as a major bathroom), airconditioning and swimming pool and backyard views like the ones above.

However, nothing got stitched, crocheted or sewed.  That’s becoming a bit of a problem really.  I can feel myself getting antsy.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

New ways to keep you busy

If you’re like me, despite the never ending list of UFO’s, you are always looking out for the next thing you can make.  It’s always been a problem I have, not being able to finish what I start very well.  You guys know that, I’ve told you often enough.

Part of my problem is I surf too much, and I come across wonderful quilt alongs, mystery quilts and block of the months online.  It seems every quilting blog wants to offer something to their readers, and I’m the same (yes, I do have another mystery quilt in my head, thanks for asking! – but that will be much later in the year, I think).

I’m not planning on doing many (hopefully any, if my will power is good enough) of these, but I thought I’d share what I had found.

Mystery Quilt Links

Quilters United In Learning Together – Schenectady

Venice Area Quilts Guild Mystery 2013

BV Piecemakers

Shabby Fabrics (really cute so far, only one block posted but this might have to be one I need to do)

Patchwork Times Medallion Mystery

Once Piece At A Time (Erin’s quilts are first class, and her tutorials are just excellent)

Block of the Month or Week

Oh there are so many of these.  But here’s a few. 

Open Gate Quilts

Just Quilting with Denise Russart

Jeanne Rae Crafts

Project House 360

Sulky.com

Civil War Quilts

Persimmon Quilts

Grandmother’s Choice

 

I think you could just go on forever, surfing and blogging and surfing and never actually get any quilting done.  But have a look at some of those links, and perhaps you could share the quiltalongs/mystery quilts YOU have been interested in. 

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

House And Home

 

Another oldie from the vaults.  I could not bind for nuts back then, the binding is stretched tight so the quilt doesn’t hang right.

I hope each quilt I make is better than the last one.  Not perfect, just better.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

More show and tell

A little bit more to show you from my daughter’s bedroom.  This was a stitchery from an Australian designer’s collection, but for the life of me I can’t remember her name.  She did lots of bears and dolls and cute little things, and we sold quite a few of them in the shop. 

This is only a small thing, just enough to fill a small gap in her bedroom wall (she has a lot of things on her bedroom wall that are very precious to her – my stuff has to fight for a space in amongst her stuff).  I do love decorating a little girl’s bedroom.

Both my girls have moved into a matching pair of beds, and as luck would have it the quilts on their bed aren’t big enough.  So I suppose I’ll have to make another one each.  You know, if I HAVE to.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie