Cheryl's quilt

I will post a few photos of Cheryl's quilt, that was custom quilted awhile ago. She does the most amazing hand piecing, and this is only one of many that she has finished. It is a very pretty quilt on a cream background. I am not sure if I shall ever do anything like this?? 

And here we are at Friday night again. Where do the weeks go to? I had the pleasure of DD2 and family here for 2 nights, which was lovely. The time sure goes quick. I have loaded another large quilt, with some hand piecing and needleturn applique, so this one will be on for awhile too.

A few of us enjoyed a leisurely lunch today to celebrate the birthday of a friend. There was lots of conversation and laughter. Sorry I did not think about photos for once.

Our autumn weather seems to have left and winter has arrived. This area has received more rain, and the temps have dropped. My wood fire has been lit and the house is cozy warm.

That's all for tonight, Enjoy your weekend, what ever you have planned.

Blessings, From Jude

Visitors and Max

This is what's happening in this house this morning. These 2 little boys are happily playing with Lego, while their mum and sister are having a sleep in. And I have to admit that although their Grandma is out of her bed, she is still in her dressing gown. So there won't be much work happening in this house today. I have declared it a "holiday".

I did finish the candlewicked quilt last night before my visitors arrived. Each block was ditched, and a frame added around the embroidery. You can see each block was square, until I got to the bottom, and the corner blocks had been rounded on one corner.

 So that meant my pattern did not fit! And I knew it would be unlikely that I would find a pattern that was this shape, and I did not want to bring in a different design element on these 2 blocks only.

Then I remembered that the Statler has some amazing features, that I don't use all that often. So a few clicks later, I had divided out, and deleted that bottom right hand corner section, and used the nodes and rounded the corner.

And now it fit the shape perfectly!! I do love Max and what he can do.

Time for a shower and get dressed, and see what we are going to do today. I think these boys have a few ideas.

Blessings, From Jude

Quilting update

I have had a quiet day today, choosing fabrics, and playing with EQ7, and when I was happy, writing instructions and cutting fabrics to put in the bags. I am pretty happy with what I achieved.

I filled the wood box ready for when the temperatures drop in a few days. The forecast is for more rain tomorrow, but we did see the sunshine today for awhile. Bridie's mum and dad had a wedding to attend today, so they would be pleased with the weather, after the rain we have had a few days ago. 

Now it's time to catch up with posting quilt photos, as once again, I have got behind.

First up is a quilt made by Pauline, which showcases the fabrics nicely. Very simply quilted with an allover swirl pattern.

This scrappy chevron quilt was made by Lyn, and it was simply custom quilted.

This is a round robin quilt belonging to Maxine, that she is pleased to see finished. Again, another custom job with patterns to go with the oriental fabrics. I quilted fans, japanese flowers, and dragonflies and a border of clamshells around the applique. (I need to confess here that my original quilting plan included gingko, but when I looked closer, I found they were cranes, and not gingko leaves!! Tell me you can see why I made that mistake???)

This simple child's quilt was quilted with an allover pattern, and the backing is farm animals. I bet there is a boy that's happy with this.

This is Erica's quilt, called Billet-doux, after the range of fabrics used. This is one of the Pick a case Mystery quilts, that was made at a retreat here last year, and was quilted with an allover pattern called Damask Rose.

This child's quilt was made by Faye, and is pieced blocks, with one row of appliqued animals. 

This was also custom quilted.

In the background of the applique I quilted other animals, and stars and clouds to fill the empty    white space.You might be able to see a giraffe,

a rooster, a drummer, and a flute player,......

and even a duck with an umbrella. This quilt was a lot of fun, (once I had made up my mind what to quilt!!)

Hope you have enjoyed that quilt show.

I have had a few comments from readers, telling me they don't know how I fit so much into my life. This has been on my mind, and I have one thought for you. Maybe it's because I live on my own?? I don't spend  time with the "other half", and can please myself about when I have meals, and even prepare quick and easy things. I know I have weekends with others staying here, but at other times I get a lot done. My TV hardly ever gets turned on, and I spend most of my time in the studio. And there is noone else here to "mess up" the rest of the house. I am an early riser, and also early to bed.  I guess what I am saying is that, most of the time, I don't have a lot of distractions in the house. And there always seems to be a deadline of some sort that I need to work towards, which keeps me on track.

We have another "short" week coming up, with a public holiday on Tuesday for Anzac Day. Add into that a visit by family, and I am sure this week will disappear quickly. I am also waiting for the plumber to sort out a problem in my bathroom. After looking at the photo of myself that I posted yesterday, I can see I need to visit the hairdresser very soon as well.

Blessings, From Jude

My Week......

I hope you did not get too used to a blog post each day, as I did over Easter. It takes quite a while to do a post, by the time I choose photos, and export them so that it doesn't take too long to load them. And then I have to think about what I am going to say, type it all up and then go back and check to see if it makes sense.

This time last week I was on a mission to do some of my own projects, and it felt great to do that. On Tuesday the last of the stayers caught the train to return to the city. Raelene caught up with a couple of friends at the station who came to see her off. It was a very quick hello, because the train came early and it was a scramble to get the bag out of the car and up onto the train.

 After 4 days of people coming and going, it was so quiet in the house on Tuesday afternoon. It was time to get back to work, and I managed to get some edge to edge quilting jobs off the machine by the end of the week, and also had a baking session.

I did take another day out of the week and went to the Vine Patch quilters exhibition in the Barossa on Thursday. I did take a few photos, but only with my phone, and I am still not happy with how some of them came out. I might have to get it checked out I think. I quilted the raffle quilt for the Vine Patch group, so hope they raised a good total. There seemed to be a nice number of ladies viewing the quilts. There are a lot of activities in the area this week, as the grape harvest finishes and they celebrate Vintage Festival.

This quilt by Nerida Small was nice and bright.

Some of the decorations on the stage of old sewing machines looked great.

The raffle quilt.

The next 2 quilts were also quilted by me. It is nice to see them when the binding is on and they are hanging.

We were very blessed with the weather over Easter and for the last few weeks, but all good things must come to an end. On Thursday it rained, and this area has been fortunate to receive good falls of between 1 and 2 inches. This is very timely and I think it would be called an "opening rain", so the farmers will be pleased. The temperatures have not dropped too far yet though. I am prepared for the cold, as a load of wood was delivered to my shed today.

I had a visit from Miss Bridie and her mum and dad this morning, and we drew pictures on some paper. She is growing up so fast, and knows lots of words now.

I have been "stalking" my family's facebook pages, and have saved some of their photos to post on my blog.

The family of DD1.

and DD2.

And this little man's name just happens to be Ollie!!

In between the quilts, I am spending time with bundles of fabric, and EQ7, and cutting for the next Pick a Case Mystery Retreat in June.

 This morning I loaded a very large candlewicked quilt, of 49 blocks, which measures 105" square, so I might be working on this for a few days.

That's about all the newsfromjude for now, and it's time to get back to some work. I shall update you with a few more quilt photos soon.

Enjoy your weekend.

Blessings, From Jude