Finished! Another quilt brought to an end, but it was a struggle all the way

It took months longer than I expected, but this scrappy quilt-as-you-go project is finally done.

I used a lot of orphan  blocks and scrappy leftovers from other quilts in order to practice a new-to-me technique of quilt as you go, which does not require extra joining strips. With a bit of tweaking, it turned out to be a technique I can see myself doing a lot more of. I used a lot of smaller pieces of batting as well, which is always a bonus with QAYG. 

One of the big issues for me was that I started the quilt on my Singer 401, but honestly, that machine and I were just not compatible. The bobbin winder was unreliable, even after I took it to a sewing machine mechanic. I was constantly troubleshooting. I bought a stand-alone bobbin winder, and new bobbins, but it was always slowing me down. The project only went ahead after I swapped back to Nina the 306 Singer. 

I have let the 401 go. I had spent money on it, but it was just not the machine for me. 

Here is a picture of the quilt on my bed, taken from above. It is a single bed sized quilt and I will take it along to the WAQA community quilters soon, so that it can go to a shelter or other welfare service to keep someone warm this winter. 

The centre medallion has a lot of quilting in tightly spaced rows, but I spread the quilting a bit further towards the edge as I wanted it to drape on a single bed. 

The binding strips were made from a doona cover I found in an op shop, which had all the right colours to bring this rather chaotic quilt together. I love a binding which has stripes, spots and flowers. 

Now that the quilt is done, I am taking the opportunity to tidy and dust the sewing room ready for the next project. I have some ideas in mind, and I hope it will go smoothly! 

 

A couple of quilt finishes

I have completed a couple of scrappy baby quilts recently. They are both finished at 45 inches square and will be given to the guild's Community Quilt programme which gives quilts to hospitals, nursing homes, hostels and shelters. I hope that the babies who get to snuggle in these find them bright and happy.

Both of them were completed on my Singer 306 machine, a workhorse which is the same age as myself! The top quilt was started on my 401 but the bobbin winding mechanism stopped working after a while so I swapped it over to the older machine. I hope I can get the 401 to work again because it is a lovely machine too.

 Now that I am done with these, I am thinking of 'using the good fabric" for a sampler quilt which I will do as a 'quilt as you go" quilt. Right now I am falling down internet rabbit holes, finding inspiration and ideas about how to make a sampler quilt, which I have never actually done before. 

Is that rain? and other adventures

Apparently Western Australia was in a 'heat bubble" with unseasonably warm temperatures in late April and early May. We had had lovely warm days of about 25C with cooler nights, but worryingly, very little rain at all. Finally about a week ago, the rain started to fall!

I was harvesting limes, grapefruit, tangelos and limes, and still hand watering the snow peas and garlic I planted expecting winter rains. I still have so much citrus at this time of the year, and often I offer it to neighbours for their use. 

DH made a lime chutney but was disappointed in it -he thought the skins should have been softer after cooking. We left it in the jar for several months, and have discovered that now it is exceptionally yummy! 

Our 3 year old passionfruit vine has finally started fruiting. I grew it up over the dead lemon in the front garden, bordering our neighbours' driveway, so we are all getting excited to see the large round fruit appear. I check it every day to see the fruits change from green to yellow, when they will be ripe. It has been too many years since we had our own fresh passionfruit. 

This beautiful view of King George Sound's entrance is from nearly a week we had away in Kinjarling Albany -our favourite place for a holiday, 5 hours south of Perth. We had a really really good time. Due to the late winter, it was warm and sunny most days and while it is a worry for farmers, I have to admit it was a lovely time for us. 

I found this original watercolour of a beach shack on Wadjemup Rottnest island, in the op shop. I really love it!  We are gradually filling up the wall space over the sofa bed with a gallery of original paintings.

The autumn weather has brought seasonal flowers in our native vegetation: banksia and eucalypts in particular. 

I have been pleased with the roses in my garden which have enjoyed the autumn weather and put on a nice show of blooms, too. I am trying to put more perennials in my front garden so that there is a more full, abundant look out there. 

So glad to have a warm and comfortable home for the winter season, so grateful to have some rain at last! This is Dora who loves to sit on quilts, and will seek them out if they are available anywhere in the house. 

Thanks for visiting! 

This was a struggle, but it is done

This was a struggle, but it is done

As a quilt, it is not complicated in its design.  It is built around a panel I had in my stash, and fabrics I already had and it is simple. I thought 'someone will be happy to have this to keep them warm and make their bed look nice, so I will give it to the Community Quilt group at my guild".

Why did it take ssooooooo long?

I got the top done quickly enough, and started to piece together a back from leftovers in my stash- panels and blocks made and rejected from other projects. This was harder, much harder.

But the real problem was that it needed to be precisely centred against the front, and my technology of registering the quilt and pinning it was just not precise enough. I pinned it together twice before I gave up, bought a large piece of neutral fabric and pinned it for the third time!

I quilted it on my vintage Singer 306 in straight-ish lines across the blocks and put the binding on by machine too, as my hands are not happy with hand sewing these days. 
 

Today I am going to tidy up the sewing room and process the leftovers of this quilt before moving on to a new project. The 306 needs a clean and some oil too. 

This will be delivered to the community quilt group this month. They give away over a thousand quilts per year to shelters, rehab centres and hospitals. 

It is hot out here-January 2025. The tough get quilting and tidying

Hello again, from a hot Perth Western Australia in the first month of 2025. We are in full summer mode -but even the beach might be too hot for a walk in the morning these days. If it is too hot for the beach, it is probably too hot to work in the garden too. I keep up the watering, and wait for better days. 

We had a week of cyclone-induced humidity and low cloud last week which was weird. When you are used to very hot but very low humidity days with lots of sunshine, and a sea breeze every afternoon, a week without those things is a shock. 

This was my first attempt at foccacia, using the King Arthur Bread company recipe. It was yummy, and I now have a new cast iron pan to cook it in -thanks to Father Christmas, but the oven has been playing up and won't be fixed until later this week so I haven't tried to do it again. 

I heartily recommend this large book about Robodebt by Rick Morton, called Mean Streak. It goes into detail about who knew what and when about the government disaster which claimed debts based on faulty mathematics from unsuspecting welfare recipients. It is a sad story, but there are heroes who kept their moral compass pointed to courage and compassion and truth, no matter how powerful were the voices telling us that it was otherwise. 

I have spent most of January tidying up my sewing room, with the help of the wonderful Karen Brown of Just Get It Done Quilts and her yearly "Declutter Challenge". It is now clear that my bad habit of taking out fabric to test them in a new quilt scheme, then stuffing them back into a drawer, was a really, really bad idea. I couldn't tell what fabrics I had, and they were crumpled and a mess. Quilting is easier in a organised work place. I have promised myself that I won't do that again! 

Fabrics have been sorted -scraps even thrown out.

In the spirit of 'using it up' I finally unpacked a panel which had been in a bag for far too long, and determined that it was either going to be in a quilt soon, or I would throw it out. This is the result. Some scrappy 9 patches, squares of shell fabric and a top is made. I am now, in my now tidy sewing room, working on a pieced back. This thing needs to be a quilt, not just a top, and off to the WAQA Community Quilts group for donation. 

This is the pieced back of the quilt. More scraps in here, but it would have been a lot quicker to use a whole cloth back! 

Do you ever pick things up from the side of the road? I noticed this shelf one day, and immediately drove back home to get the DH. He also thought it was something with potential, so he cleaned it up and painted it and installed it in my sewing room. I love it! It has cleaned up a lot of equipment that I like to be handy but don't want cluttering up my workspaces. 

Tidying up also has arrived at my computer desk, where I have found that this desk tidy which I made out of a shoe box, has transformed the clutter and takes up very little space. The deep box of the shoe box was cut in half on an angle and a small triangle shape removed, then the two ends were inserted into the lid. I saw the idea on pinterest I think. 

I hope I will be back at my blog more often in 2025. It has been a way I document my life, and its simple joys. Wishing you the same joys for 2025. 

 

A quilt finish, a new machine and more fixing things

When I wrote my last post about fixing things, DH had a plan on how to fix the pot plant stand which was buckling. I am happy to report that this circle of wood which he cut and fixed to the base is exactly the reinforcement it needed. 

I can now turn the ficus benjamina around towards the morning sun, to help it grow more branches and become less uneven in its growth habit. 

This week I dropped some things off at the op shop, and as usual went inside for a quick look. This original watercolour  (below) was in a broken frame and stuffed in a crate. I  saw it, loved it, and so bought it for $7 and another empty frame for $5. DH helped me trim the matt to size and installed some piano wire to the frame to hang it up.

We are both delighted with it. It would appear to have been painted in 1983. 

Some time back I decided that we would try to feature original art, or buy prints directly from the artist, but each art work had to cost less than $50. Since that time we have added some very lovely works to our home. 

My friend's elderly mother received this 1960 Elna from her sister. As she doesn't sew, my friend offered to find it a home, and thought of me! It works well but I need to get the wall plug rewired. I have downloaded the manual and so know where to give  it some oil. Stay tuned for how the project goes. 

Finally here is the 'forest floor' quilt I have just finished, using batik jelly roll fabric I was given by a friend. It got a bit sidelined over Christmas, but I am happy it is now complete. As my tshirt says "done is better than perfect". 

 

So that is all for this week. I hope you have some joy in fixing and finishing things too. 

New Design Wall- with how to do it yourself

 

Twelve years is a long time for a temporary design wall to work. This  design wall (above) is a piece of batting, sewn to abacking, and hung from curtain rods in my sewing room, just behind the door.

It worked pretty well, but it was small and flimsy. I often had to use pins to keep heavy pieces on to it.

My dream was to one day have one of those design walls I saw on quilter's blogs- made with some kind of insulation foam blocks covered with batting.  The love of my life (apart from my garden and quilts) Mr DH, heard my call, and started to work out how to do it. The design brief included the idea that the boards should be relatively easy to dismantle -ie no sticking the boards to the wall with glue.

He did the research. He made the plan. Five boards. Four stuck together horizontally with gorilla glue and tape. One cut down the middle and stuck vertically. 

He created a solid shelf for the bottom of the design wall to sit into. He created metal brackets for the top, to hold it in place.

We had a bit of a blip when we realised that the piece of batting which I had saved for the project was about 20 cm or 10 inches too short! Quick trip to a shop, and we were here stapling the batting to the back of the boards, and using tape to secure the corners.

Here it is in all its glory! Solid, smooth, not wobbly or flimsy.

I love it

Thank you Mr DH! 💗💗

Winter -lots of sun, and then lots of rain?

Our Garden

It has been an off again and on again sort of winter so far.  We had a couple of good downfalls, -enough to fill the water tanks- then about a week or more of sunny dry weather. The garden thinks it is spring -and so I am finding tomato seedlings everywhere, and it is hard to prune roses when they are growing madly. 

As a result of climate weirding, our rain bands are sliding away down south of us, so that the northern suburbs of Perth are often in sunshine when the south is getting a drenching. This is the way it has been going for decades now. Given that we are in a mediterranean style climate, where we get a long summer drought and a short wet winter, the effect is that we are now relying on desalination plants for our water to such an extent that the state government is going to build a third desal plant, and our water costs are now getting much more expensive. 

We live in the northern suburbs, and so I am glad that we have already planted a number of trees which can provide some shade for the garden. Our city council has a program of planting street trees. I have been lucky enough to get them to deliver and plant a Jacaranda tree. It is going to have lovely blue flowers, and as it is deciduous will let winter sun into the garden. 

As a result of the winter sun, I have been able to do a lot of gardening. I have planted a dwarf mulberry in a pot -which I will need to keep under control rather like a large bonsai, but which I hope to get some big fruits. I have a mulberry tree in the garden, but the fruit is small. As my dietician and I have worked out that I am super sensitive to sorbitol, found in many stone fruit, I am looking to berries more. Fortunately citrus is OK in my diet because we have lots of citrus. The pink grapefruit have been abundant this year -I keep pressing them on people when they come to my house, and the basket at the letterbox has been filled several times. 

I bought another crown of rhubarb -this is another 'fruit' on my safe list. 

I planted a wicking bed of mint varieties -grapefruit mint, lime mint, chocolate mint and variagated pineapple mint. 

I am very happy with the way the verge garden is growing. This was brick paved 18 months ago. DH and I got a load of free mulch from the council recently, so it is looking fine at the moment. The mulch cools the soil, keeps it moist, and rots down to feed the microbes in the ground. There is a 'river" of everlastings which I planted, which should look pretty good once spring arrives. 

Recommendations

I ordered some actual hard copy books, during the Black Inc end of financial year sale. I usually just read ebooks or get library copies, but these were cheap and quite good reads. Lisa Wells book "Believers" making a life at the end of the world" was particularly good. 

We have also been re-reading Pope Francis's encyclical "Laudato Si" which is very good. 

You might also like this article: 

War with the trees by Rebecca Solnit 

Or you would watch on YouTube- Shade as a dryland strategy -with Geoff Lawton 

And here is someting interesting -Free pdf -Biophilic design 

Quilting 

I delivered my Kunyani quilt (above) to the long armers, and have started on a fun improv quilt below. This is still very much a work in progress. It could be very different when it is finished. It is too dark at the top and bottom in this photo, so I am creating something different. 

Covid 

We have been celebrating our grandson's 8th birthday despite the fact that his party had to be delayed due to Covid hitting the parents -again. We went to a favourite park on what should have been his birthday party day, and had a good time.

Covid is rampant through our community and yet people are still not taking obvious precautionary measures. As it is winter, and there is also a flu epidemic, I find this recklessness to be concerning. DH and I are trying to stay safe without becoming hermits! We wear masks indoors, we limit our exposure to risky settings like shopping centres and restaurants and bars. Nevertheless we have had some friends at our place for lunch and for dinner -with appropriate ventilation. 

Podcast fun- and a tidy up too

I have enjoyed listening to A Slob Comes Clean- a podcast about getting control of the house -by someone who is (probably) neurodiverse. The author identifies as a creative person who is easily distracted and who finds it hard to do anything consistently. She says her brain is different than other people's and that is why household tasks are always a struggle for her. 

I guess most people coming to our home would not have seen  it when it was a disaster area - DH and I clearly remember having a couple of police officers come to see about a burglary some years ago, and telling them "no, the place hasn't been ransacked-it always looks like this". It was about this time that I started searching for any ideas about how to get on top of things. I  found "Sidetracked Home Executives" at the library and that was the beginning of a system which made all the difference. 

Later on I did "Flylady" routines for about a year or so.

One thing I know, the less stuff I have at home, the easier it is to keep it under control. This is hard for all of us who live here -we are natural collectors! I found the podcast mentioned above a bit of a boost or refresher to keep on ridding the place of stuff we don't use and don't need. It is an on-going task. Right now I am working on throwing out socks that have holes. Yes, I know that I could darn them -I even know how- but unless they are my really good wool ones, that is not going to happen. The sock drawer works best when everything in it is actually wearable, and it feels a bit like a luxury to know you can pull anything out of the drawer and find it useful. 

Volunteering

Later this week I will be working on the playcentre garden again. They got a grant for some garden improvements, and so I am going to refresh some very tired hanging baskets with new liners and will plant strawberries. We also have a small ficus, a hoya and some mint to plant in the entrance area which is now very bare. 

I hope you are having a good safe time whereever you are -and if it is winter where you are, that you are finding good things to do to keep active. Stay safe and thanks for reading this far. 

When you do stuff, stuff gets done

On the Easter weekend I was out in the garden and thought it was time to harvest the quinces and pomegranates and the one single pumpkin which survived the summer. When I put them in the basket, I realised just how pretty they all looked and so I took a picture of it. Sometimes you just have to celebrate the abundance of what you have and how wonderful it is that some things survive and grow and multiply. 

We are also harvesting limes and basil, and the first of the pink grapefruit. 

We have a new chorister in the choir at the moment, a mature person who is taking a sabbatical from her academic work in England  by working here at our university. She commented that she couldn't get used to the idea that our autumn is not about things dying back, but everything springing to life. These banksia flowers are a sign that autumn is here -or Djeran, the Noongar season name. 

I have completed the quilt top for my queen size quilt.Finally! I will be taking this one to the long armer to quilt up, because it is way too big for me on my domestic sewing machine. I bought a large piece of fabric for the back, and some wadding, but now I have to make the binding. The long armer puts the binding on one side before she is finished with the quilt, which is a lovely service! 

The garlic is planted, and I have seeds of coriander and dill in the ground. 

I have today planted two new  plants on the verge: 

Carissa Desert Star and Chrysocephalum apiculatum (yellow buttons). Our local tip shop has a bit of a plant section and they often have quite good bargains. I am hoping both will be as hardy as described, because it is tough out therre on the verge. We have a few days of rain forecast, and I hope they will be bedded in nicely by the rain. 

Here are some good things to read or listen to: 

 Perth is drying up 

Ideas for transitionng to a permaculture garden 

How to establish a small space intensice food garden 

Jack Munro on the Food Program (Listen) 

Simple days, getting simple things done

Our days have been going on in the usual way, with simple things taking up our lives. We are most grateful for our happy, quiet home.

 In the last few weeks a number of important milestones have been passed -DH and DS both had birthdays, and DH is through his hand and back surgery and well on the mend. We have both had our flu injections for this year -DH got one for pneumonia last year so probably doesn't need it to be done again this year. We are not yet on the list for the COVID vaccine but I will be lining up as soon as I am called. 

The tumbler quilt top I started some time ago has become a flimsy over the last couple of weeks. I will always remember this one for the way my 3 year old grandson enjoyed turning the handle on my Accuquilt Go as I cut the tumblers, and them put them up on the design wall. I am planning to use a collection of orphan blocks on the back. I am trying to think of a name for the quilt, but given the helper I had I am thinking of it as 'tumble tots'. 

It  has been school holidays and we have been having a 'sleepover' with the older grandchildren as a special treat. I took both Miss 8 and Mr 6 to the local pool and they had a wonderful time. The pool is geothermally heated at a constant 32C and it is quite wonderful. When DH is a bit more recovered we both will be using the pool again for our 'walking in water' exercise regime -it is good work but kind to arthritic joints. 

Miss 8 continues to progress in her scrunchy making skills with my sewing machine. I think we have made 3 so far, and each one requires less of my attention.

I took advantage of an early in the season rainfall to start putting plants in the verge garden. After the hot dry summer the earth was absolutely rock hard out there, so I bought an auger attachment for DH's drill to help me dig the holes. I had a couple of indigenous plants ready to go in, and have some more to plant this week. Once the rains fell the earth softened a bit and I hope that gradually we can turn this semi-desert into living soil again. In a couple of weeks I hope DH will be able to help me get a trailer load of mulch to protect the bed and feed the soil a bit. 

 We are eating the butternut pumpkins I grew under the citrus out the back, and just this weekend started harvesting the limes. The myer lemons are colouring up, and will be abundant very soon. I managed to get abut 7 good pomegranates from the tree this year -a smallish crop, but I have frozen some kernels for salads later in the year. I have some rocket now growing -it needs cooler weather -and some seedling celtuce coming up from one I let go to seed. I have prepared some of the raised garden beds in preparation for winter crops. 

The nasturtiums are returning to the front garden, and the autumn flowering daisies and salvias are in bloom again.  

Finally, here are a few good articles I found about simple living and growing things 

Simple living vs Minimalism

Why we should embrace regenerative gardening 

The self-sufficiency myth

https://www.treehugger.com/embrace-regenerative-gardening-5176159