My Quilting story so far

I started quilting when I took long service leave from my job in 2008. I was lucky enough to find a great teacher, who gave me the skills and confidence to start quilting and to keep going.

Today I gathered together all the pictures of quilts I have made since then.

I am on a journey which has given me a lot of joy, and it certainly keeps me off the streets! LOL.

I have given a few of these away, and it was great to be reminded of them as I put this together.

I hope you enjoy it!

Author! Author!

My daughter convinced me to have a go at writing a novel during National Novel Writing Month in November. This is an international challenge for all budding writers, to write 50,000 words in one month.

As a teenager, I thought I would always write a book one day. Now I can say I have! Yes, I have written 50,000 words in a novel with characters and plot and chapters and scenes! It even has an ending!

This is my "winner's certificate"! YAY!

In other news, my quick and easy Christmas quilt is nearing completion- I just have to put the binding on.


I have also got my blue-and-green quilt back from the Long Arm Quilters and I am in love with the chain of hearts quilting pattern on the solids!

AND the bathroom demolition has started. Hopefully by Christmas we will have a shiny new bathroom in this space. Meantime it is looking decisively ugly!

Time to say goodbye

Eighteen months ago we said goodbye to DH's mother, today we say goodbye to his father.

You can read the lovely words my DH will read today at

http://thewildflowerarcade.blogspot.com/2011/11/interlude-tribute-to-fine-man.html

New project ideas

I have been planning some new quilting projects, now that my blue-and-green quilt is at the Long Arm quilters. It all started with this collection of music fabrics. A young quilting friend had seen a quilt made with this panel and knew of our family's link to music so she directed me to the place where I could order it.

You can see I have quite a good collection of music prints now - even a little bit of a choir dressed for Church singing!

I am thinking of this with some words -Sing to the Lord, or perhaps "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs"

Anyway, it seemed silly to buy $6 worth of fabric and have it posted all the way from the US to Perth Western Australia, so I also bought these panels below.
This one makes me think of all the happy days my DH and I have spent in the Swan Valley, or around the Porongorups, visiting wineries.
I can see this one -quite a large panel-surrounded with cream and blue windmill blocks for a singe bed sized quilt.
This one is just asking to be made into something for Christmas.
But this set of naive images of Christmas scenes I like even more! I am thinking of adding some words to this too, to make a banner.
This one is very pretty, but I am thinking of just using the centre blue and white panel with some pretty blue and white fabrics, and saving the green squares for another quilt.

So, with all these things to get started on, what do you think I am doing?

Taking part in National Novel Writing Month of course! Not much quilting is going to happen, I fear, until November is over!

Quilt top finished!

It has been a long time in the making. I think I probably took almost six months on this, but today I completed the borders.

It started as a challenge to use both blue and green in a quilt. I think the black and white helps to tie the colours together, and then I went for a lime green sort of colour for the border, to bring that colour out a bit more.

I am so glad it has got to this stage. I am going to take it to a Long Arm Quilter, as it is too big for my domestic machine.

Now I intend to play with some quick, simple and fun projects!

New water tank

This monster is our first water tank. It holds 3000 litres of water. The white plastic pipe is a clever diverter which allows the first flush of water from the roof to be diverted away from the tank, so that cleaner water goes in.

Yesterday we had a welcome amount of rain, and I witnessed for the first time the lovely sound of water going into the empty tank.

Why install a water tank?

I have written before about the 40% reduction in rainfall that Perth has experienced over the last 40 or so years. Our state government has installed two desalination plants to make us 'climate free' from our reliance on rain water for drinking.

We are a drying city in a dry continent.

I want to grow our own fruit and vegetables, and the water tank is a small part of that. As Perth has a Mediterranean style climate with a dry hot summer and a short wet winter, we could not rely on just 3000 litres of water to get us through the summer. It is however a small contribution to the overall sustainability of our home and garden. Maybe we will eventually install more water tanks.

The tank has another role -this western wall gets extremely hot in summer and so does the room behind it, which is where we have our television. The tank will, at the very least, shade the wall.
It will, when full of water (usually in winter) also provide a thermal mass which should also provide some passive heating to the wall and perhaps to the room.

Anyway, it is nice to hear the sound of the rain hitting the bottom of the tank. Maybe we will have one or two more showers this week, and they too will go into the tank instead of running away. I think I am one of only a few people in Perth who wants it to rain at this time of the year! Nearly everyone else is glad of spring sunshine.

Gratitude-for things that cheer.

I have had a crook shoulder and neck for a few weeks -not enough to seriously debilitate, but I haven't been doing all the usual stuff. The weed onslaught has had to stop and there has been no spreading of mulch.

The garden flowers on, in beautiful profusion.

I can still drop in to the occasional op shop, you understand, in search of a little prettiness. I found this candle holder and candle and I really like it. At Christmas time, with a red or gold candle, it will look great with the rest of my angel collection. I have a collection of angels who play musical instruments -and these each have one.


And I found some chincherinchees in the local shop and I actually bought them for myself and put them in this lovely old depression glass vase. With the morning sun coming in the dining room window, I think they look very pretty.

The "sea lavender" is in flower.

Apart from that, I have been doing some cooking- trying to break out from a self imposed rut and make some new dishes for a new season. I hadn't made lasagne for ages so I made a big dish this week, and I tried out a new pizza stone with my bread-maker pizza dough.

I have been helping out with my little community choir -we are having a concert soon and I am helping with ticket sales. If you are in Perth and you would like to go, just drop me a line...we have two concerts in November -on the 5th and 13th in the afternoons -and one is north of the river and one is south. We will be singing some lovely music -there are quite a few John Rutter pieces.

And there has been some reading -because other things seem to aggravate the shoulder. I am gradually improving, and hope normal service will be resumed shortly!