Quilting, and more quilting and other sewing related stuff

This week I have done lots of sewing.

I hand sewed the binding to the "fly away home" quilt. Normally I don't hand sew anything, because it makes my hands hurt, but I was afraid of losing the points on the flying geese.

Memo to self: always put a border on a flying geese block near the edge of a quilt! 

I took it to the park for a 'beauty shot' hanging from one of the trees, when it was done. 

This one is going to the WAQA community quilts program- we give them away to shelters, rehab centres and other worthy causes. 

The Community Quilting group had a sewing day to make some progress on our Unfinished Objects. 

Someone had donated a stack of blocks and we played tessellations with them for a while.  

That brown fabric with blue flowers looks like a 1990s fabric to me...and I wonder what the original pattern was supposed to be? 

Nothing seemed to go with anything much, and there were not enough blocks for a whole quilt if we did some of the layouts -like the one below. 

I decided to sew some together in rows and see what I could do. 

Then I brought it home and this is the result, after I undid some setting triangles in order to add them to others so we could get a whole block. 

I am going to add some beige sashing strips to make it big enough -we usually have a minimum size of 50 by 70 inches for a single bed/comforter. 

For a while now I have been interested in adding an Elna sewing machine, if I could get one at the right price. I love well made sewing machines of a vintage era, but it has to actually work to join my herd. This one does work, and I got it for a tiny price this weekend.

I will be happy to get the power cord repaired and have this as a very portable sewing bee machine: there is a bit of broken insulation on the cord, and the plug has pulled away from the wire, exposing the wiring.

It needs a little clean and some oil  too. Yes, she is a bit scuffed on the sewing arm, but you would expect that in a well used machine. 

I think I learned to sew on a machine like this in high school! It is possibly an early 1970s machine, so it is probably more than 40 years old and still going strong. Lovely stitch, reverse, zig zag -all the mod cons. Drop In bobbin too. The metal case turns into quite a sizeable extension table, so it will be ideal for the sewing bees. I like the pinky beige lid! 

I feel like I have rescued this old girl from the tip...we must not throw out stuff we can keep using, if this planet is to have any future. 

Bye bye cafe blinds -and other developments

We have a south west facing patio. It gets a lot of sun and a lot of rain.

For years we had those plastic cafe blinds on four sides -but they quickly went cloudy, then dirty, then they stretched and buckled and the zips failed.  Time to get some new blinds! The first two were installed this week -they are mesh and have stronger framing and more user-friendly maintenance.

Can't wait for the others to be made so we can enjoy this patio for more weeks of the year. 

We took the chance to get rid of the last remaining vertical blinds in the house.  Hello insulated concertina blinds. These windows face north so we want to be able to keep the heat out on very hot days, but we also want to be able to see out and let winter sun in.

I will be purchasing filmy white drapes for this bedroom to go with the blinds. 

The quilting is finished on my latest quilt, which I am calling 'fly away home'. Need to get on to the binding, but I have been busy with a few events outside the home this week. 

One of the events was our community quilting sewing bee. I won these pretty fabrics in the door prize! I know I don't need any more fabrics but it is always nice to get new fabric. It often inspires new combinations with older fabric from the stash. I came home with some donated blocks which I want to wrangle into a community quilt. Someone donated them -perhaps they cut them the wrong size..it was a bit of a puzzle but I have an idea to use them and make a nice quilt with them. 

It is pomegranate season -we have to process and use these soon. 

We also have olives to process. 

And the citrus is ripening fast too! We are soon going to need to process grapefruit, tangelos and meyer lemons, but I am hoping these mandarins will be edible without processing. 

I had better stop going out! There is work to do here at home! 

Spiders in the kitchen! Scary ones!

I warned you it was scary! Just look at those teeth!
Every time the grandchildren come over from interstate, they like to decorate my kitchen with scary spiders which are here to scare Pa. He is scared, but DGS took his hand to make him brave when they went inside to make a cuppa.

We have had lots of fun riding the bikes to the park nearby. These bikes were bought at the tip store - DH did a good job of cleaning them up and they were worth every cent of the $10 we paid for both of them

We went on nature walks and collected things in a basket

DGS helped to make the best bread ever!

We had two birthdays whilst they were here: DS and DH both had birthdays. I made these chocolate muffins for DH and they went down a treat.

We played lots of games.

It was so lovely to have them here.

In a few months we are going to visit them where they live!