Early morning visitors….

This is the view just outside the window of the sewing room, and while I was standing at the ironing board this morning, I heard a lot of “bird noise” commotion.

This bottlebrush tree was full of activity, and I saw parrots, honeyeaters, blackbirds all flying in and out of the tree. My camera is fairly ordinary, but I zoomed in and got the following photos. The parrots certainly had an acrobatic “work out”, but the honeyeaters were too small and too quick for me to snap.




And you can’t see the action in this photo, but there were bees everywhere.

and more quilts……
Lyn made this quilt for her son’s partner, and used old doileys, and tatting that had been made by family members, and a touch of blue.



This garden trellis quilt was made by Mary, and quilted with an allover pattern.

This quilt is called Lollipop Windmills, and was made by Val, and was a Paper Bag Mystery quilt at a retreat at The Sanctuary.

The next 2 quilts were both made by Jayne, and quilted with allover patterns.


It is a month now since the move from The Sanctuary, and I still have a lot of sorting to do. My priority has been to get things planted into the garden here, before the real heat of summer gets here. I have made reasonable progress in this area this week, and have covered some of the garden beds with straw. I have also made good progress with some long overdue paper work that needed completing, and quilted a few quilts. The car has been serviced, and I have had a hair cut. All tasks that had been put off. The next few weeks will be busy too, with Adelaide Quilt Show next week, and then a “hen’s” weekend and then the wedding early in December. So there is lots to look forward to before the end of the year.
and a competition…..
I need to spend some time updating the information on this blog, as the Scheduled Retreat page is no longer relevant. In due course I will change the photos that are on there. In the meantime I am trying to come up with a new name for this house. It is the home of my quilting business, called Cornerstone Creations Machine Quilting, and that is big mouthful and too long, so I sometimes shorten it to CCMQ. I want a name to market future retreats that I will have here. The house is number 8, and I have considered Number Eight as a name. The house is on a corner, so maybe I could go with that somehow??? I am putting out a competition for my readers to help me come up with a name for the retreats. It is not a sanctuary here as it was across the road, as that was a very protected back yard, and you felt like you could have been in another world while there. But I am trying to close this in more by putting up a fence at the side, so it is more private. I still want this to be a place for people to come for “timeout”, and a place to create. Hope this info will give you some ideas for me.
And this is a photo of my house at number 8, which is a work in progress!

You have until November 7th to enter this, and I shall have a nice prize for someone. Please leave me a comment, if you can, or send me a text, or email message, or you can phone if you like. And thankyou to all those who read my blog. I love to hear from you.
Time to load another quilt on Max, and then I need to go through my wardrobe and find some summer clothes.
Blessings, From Jude

My week

 

It must be time for more newsfromjude. This week’s news is not nearly as exciting as last week though. I have to confess to coming to a halt during the week, and had a bit of trouble getting motivated again to get quilting. There has been a few small easy cot quilts done before I did a custom, and this week I really need to get busy.

I had a quick day trip to the city on Friday. I had a long list of things I needed to buy, and have not been for a shop up for quite a few months, because I was busy with The Sanctuary and the quilt show. I needed new shoes, some office supplies, some new shirts, curtains for the bedrooms and a few things from the plant shop. Called into see family while I was up that way and arrived home about 10pm that evening.

This is my plant purchases which mostly have been planted today.

The following 2 photos are what the view has been from my work room, since the move in September. Now that the quilt show is over, it was time to get to work in the garden this weekend. I have to say that the garden on this side of the road has been sadly neglected in the last 5 years. It did look lovely when we first moved in, until I had 2 houses to look after. I brought quite a few things in pots from The Sanctuary, so had a bit of work waiting.

This first photo will look a bit different soon as there will be a fence going up around these trees. It will give some privacy to the pergola area, and a nice shady area for these plants. And I will not be able to see cars driving up the street!

I trimmed the bigger plants, and staked one that was falling over, and removed the remaining small plants and added some new soil and fertilizer.

The following 2 photos are what I have left to plant in the new area after the fence goes up soon.

I love to listen to the birds that sing in the morning, and am very happy for them to live in the trees around here. But I am not so happy that a bird is so cheeky, it comes into the pergola and sits on the chairs, and leaves it’s calling card. Please tell me how I can deter them from the chairs?? I put up a couple of owls hoping that would deter them, and have a concrete cat sitting by the cat food, which is what the birds come in for!

Some months ago I mentioned the daffodil bulbs that were shooting in the packet, and how I quickly planted them. This was the area that I planted into, which was a bare corner of the garden. The daffodils are not flowering now, but the other things I planted are doing well. A few years ago, this corner by the wood shed had a diosma and a few other thriving plants.

This week I have dug up a new garden bed along the fence by the wood shed. And today I have planted a few things in this area and added an edge to the garden. Had to put an edge in the garden above also, as the same birds that sit on my chairs, also pulled all the straw out onto the paved path!! Hope I have stopped them now.

Well you can see that I have a work in progress. The more I look around, the more I see things that need doing. All I can say, is I must have had the blinkers on and not had a good look for a long time. I can see some painting in my future also, and some renovating inside the house also.

It is time for bed, the body has had quite a physical work out today. That was my day of rest. Well, it was a day of rest from quilting anyway. But I am enjoying concentrating on the one house and not going across the road! But I will miss the access to the water from the bore, as the water I use here will be metered and charged for.

Be back with some more quilt photos later in the week.

Blessings, From Jude

Quilts and people….

I spent hours last night posting lots of little reports of the quilt show, and then it still did not post in the order I intended, but you can work it out! The Special Visitors title should have come after the Quilt Show Report heading!!
For some reason it is taking a LONG time to post these days, so I shall set this going this morning and it can load while I get on with some work.
These are some of the 150 quilts that were on display. I have mainly picked out those of my customers, so that I do not have to go and ask permission of anyone else. I may have posted these on the blog previously, but they all look different hanging with there binding on and not flat on my bed! And they are in no particular order, and with people photos in between. (You can click on the photos for a closeup look.)
Marie’s disappearing pinwheel quilt, set out in a different way. She made it for her daughter who likes cats and pink. It was quilted all over with cats walking across the quilt.


This is Pat's border quilt, which won second in the Viewers Choice award.

Lyn’s heirloom quilt, made for her son’s partner, with her Grandma’s doilies and tatting. This quilt won 3rd, Viewers Choice.

This is the quilt I made for my son and his partner, which came back for the exhibition. Carly got a sneak peak on Thursday as she was here in town, and said how large it looked hanging up. It was her choice for brown, and now she says she likes my pink and green!






Nana’s Memories by Mignon, which won Viewers Choice. All hand pieced and started in 2008. Each diamond is a different fabric. This was the quilt that I blogged about a couple of months ago, that members of the group helped to finish, so we were all very pleased when it won the award.



Jeannette checking out Jean’s purchase of some preprinted fabric for sashiko stitching.

Marie also purchased some of this fabric, in a different colour, and here she is wasting no time to start it. Marie was selling her hand dyed fabric at the members table.

This is Michelle’s Fractured Circles quilt that I was hoping to get a better photo of when it was hanging. The light still wasn’t that great, but I think you can see if you click on it.

I hope you can notice that I changed the coloured thread to black for the border stitching.

The Embroidery Group had a lovely display as well. This is just a tad out of my comfort zone!

I may as well post this photo, which Michele took. I was being silly, and pretending to do some of Michele’s hand sewing when she walked away, but she snapped me.

Pat’s candlewicked quilt, called Fleur De Lys, made for her daughter Fleur. This quilt won a special award for Viewers Choice.


















This is a disappearing Hourglass quilt, made by Pauline in one of my Mystery retreats.






This is quilt Marie made in my Embellished quilts classes. She wasn’t making a quilt, just cushions!


And here  are a few closeup photos of my quilt, that I will block soon so that it hangs better.

I shall click Publish and see if it goes. Hope you have enjoyed just some of the quilts at our show.
Blessings, From Jude