Aussie Retreat Report

Once again it has been another fun-filled weekend, with lots of chatter, laughter, stories told, cuppa's and plenty of work as well. We have decorated the house with flags, and eaten some Aussie food, and wore our Aussie ears. We are all very proud to be Australian, and love our country. We hung flags outside the house...................

..........................and inside on the fabric shelves................

...............and even had balloons with flags on them.

I hung a small flag on the letterbox.......................

and my 90 years old neighbour proudly put up his flag on the front fence.

This neighbour of mine migrated to Australia from the Ukraine back in the 1950's, and proudly calls himself Australian. So he was very disappointed, that when he walked around our block on Saturday afternoon, these 2 houses were the only ones he saw displaying the Australian flag. Most towns have an Australian Day breakfast somewhere in the district, and some major cities will have fireworks displays, but you could be forgiven for thinking that a lot of Australians don't appreciate or value the country they live in. (There endeth my rant for the day!) And that is one thing that we did notice when we toured the United States in April, that there are lots of flags flying all the year round, whereas in Australia there are few).

Friday afternoon was a catching up again with each other time, and then some were into it. Margaret did bring a project of her own to work on, but insisted she wanted to do something to help me. I had planned on a few things to do, and one was to use the 2" strip die that I had recently purchased for the Go Cutter. I wanted to do a log cabin quilt for one of the Pick a Case Mystery retreats, and cut the fabric to go through the cutter. Here is Margaret pressing the fabrics for me.

Here are some of the florals after being cut, before I did the background fabrics.

These are the strips in the process of being crosscut into lengths ready for the packs, with the border fabrics waiting. The pattern has been drawn up in EQ, and is now ready to bag up. I have cut enough for about 4 quilts like this, so feel good to finally start in this year's designs and cases.

This lady has had serious back problems this week, and thought about staying home, but decided that she could rest here with company. But she was on some strong medication for her pain, which said "do not operate machinery", so she thought it best not to use her sewing machine!! She did watch a lot of cricket and tennis while she was recovering though!!

 Pat came prepared with lots and lots of tubs of her scrap fabrics that needed to be organised. Our group held a scrap fabric workshop last weekend, so quite a few members are on a mission to sort scraps and use them.

Raylene did not bring any project to work on, and also hoped I might have something for her to do. I did not do the workshop, due to being at a family birthday, but did need some serious scrap sorting to be done. Years ago, I started Bonnie Hunters system of sorting scraps, and she has a wealth of information on her website if you need any guidance. But lately I have got behind in sorting, and each time I cut a quilt for the cases, there are leftovers that have been sitting around. So when Raylene said, what can I do, I had just the project!! These are the drawers that contain some of my scraps. ( I think it might be about 12 months since I did go through the scraps, so there was a buildup.)

Here is some serious sorting happening..................

 ...............and then some more...................

Now look at my drawers, they even have some labels, and are, oh so tidy! And I have no photo, but all of my shelves are so tidy, and neatly folded, and the fat quarter drawer is colour coded as well. I will be scared to look for something, in case I mess it up. But Val said, if it gets messed up, just call Raylene and she might come back and redo it!? Thankyou girls for your help, it looks amazing.

We had some Aussie food, which were also flying the flags. And can you see our Aussie tablecloth?

There was a delicious trifle, and I told them I did not want leftovers, so Val volunteered to clean out the bowl, using the serving spoon! Great photo opportunity I thought. Isn't this what we used to do as kids, to clean out the cooking bowls and lick the spoon??

Raylene found these in the supermarket, and they were very yummy biscuits, in the shape of Australia.

Jocelyn finished her quilt as you go string block that was started in last weekends scrap workshop.

Jocelyn has been doing some serious sorting and going through things at her house, and came across this dress that she crocheted many, many years ago. It would have been very fashionable once.

While going through the scraps, we unearthed quite a large pile of strings, of varying widths, that needed to be sorted, or cut to size.I decided a better thing to do, was to make a string quilt. I found some vilene, and cut 8 1/2" squares of this, and just sewed. I had decided that I wanted to sew something easy and most of my unfinished projects, are too labour intensive for a fun weekend of sewing. This was so much fun, and very quick not having to match anything. They do look a bit strange at first, and not that pretty.

But after they are cut to size..............and take away those edges, and I was very happy to bin those!....

...............don't they look different? 

I soon had a little collection, and had to choose sashing fabric. After auditioning some we decided on blue sashes, and pink cornerstones.

It was all coming together by lunch time today, and I only made the blocks yesterday.

By mid afternoon today, I had got this far. There will be another blue border, and then I intend to make string border after that, and then finish with another blue. Other duties called this afternoon, or I would have kept sewing.

When Val saw the action with the strings, she thought that might be a good thing to do also. And by then the drugs had worn off, and she said she could safely operate machinery!! Hers turned out more masculine, as she did avoid the pinks. We were all using fabrics from my string bin.

This got Raylene and Margaret on the bandwagon, and they have also made some blocks.

And the string bins hardly look like they have been touched!! 

And we felt no guilt putting this amount in the bin. Once I would have kept the smaller pieces of these, but no more. I don't think I will run out of fabric anytime soon.

Of course here is the group photo, and we are proudly wearing our Aussie ears!

Thankyou girls for a great weekend. I don't always work on projects, while I am organising food, but we did not have a full house, and it was much more relaxed. There were quite a few local ladies, calling in for cuppas and chats, and while I was sewing in the next room, it was great to hear the chatter and laughter. I did here the comment that they were not sure just what day it was, and it felt like we were living in a bubble. The world might stop and we wouldn't know while we were sewing. As I said, it was more relaxed catering, and our meal times were all over the place, late lunches if we were busy, but it didn't matter. (Because the cook was sewing too!)

I have enjoyed my weekend with the girls, and very happy to have had a sewing fix. January is almost over, and it has been very busy. I am almost caught up on the custom quilts that I needed to do, and nearly ready to start 2019 quilts. I have had 6 trips up the highway this month, and a few family occasions to celebrate. But the big project that has occupied my time will be shelved now for a little while. I am happy to have made a start on my life story, and achieve the first section that I was aiming for. So far there are 69 pages, and 16,939 words and lots of photos. Mum is editing it for me and making corrections and adding info were necessary. She says she has enjoyed doing this, and read it to Dad, and they have both been down memory lane with me. This will be a very long term project.

Better go for some food, and pack up my space, ready for a start back to the quilts tomorrow.
Blessings, From Jude

Too, too HOT!!

I probably should not complain, as I know there are areas that are having it far hotter, and for longer periods than we are here. But for this little black duck, (where did that saying come from??), it is very draining. Today is expected to be 45deg, which is 115deg F if you live in another part of this world.

I know it's summer, and I do have a very comfortable room to work in, but..........I say roll on winter, and even though I feel the cold, I much prefer it. I know I am so very blessed to have heating and cooling, and a house to live in, when there are so many living in far worse conditions. Well that's my gripe over with, and I do feel better now!

I thought it might be a good day for a quilt show, and there is only one, but lots of photos, and I shall talk about my thought process a bit.

This was made by Val, and friends, who made basket blocks for her, for a special birthday. Some of the blocks are dated, and say 1999, so that takes them back a few years. Val brought this quilt to me quite a few months ago, even though I said it would be awhile before I could do it. She was just happy to have finished it, and get it out of her house! It is a large quilt, and I hung it up on the wall and took a photo of most of it, so I could think about what to do.

The following pics are of the finished quilt, and I was quite happy with how it turned out.

Now, one of my dilemma's with this quilt, was the sashings between the blocks. If you had studied the first photo above, you might have noticed how they met at the cornerstones.  The picture below shows this closer. This was a challenge for the quilter. How could I quilt the sashes and camouflage where they met?

So I did continuous curves all the way through, and hoped that this worked??

Now that I had finished the centre blocks and sashing, I needed to do the border. I left this until last, hoping it would "talk" to me. I did think about crosshatching this, which would have tied in with the crossed sashings, but this would involve lots of stops and starts, and subsequent trimming of drag threads all the way around the border. To avoid having to trim threads, I decided to do what you can see is "doodled" on this drawing below. If I filled in the centre of the curved stems with freehand feathers, I could do the piano key border on both sides, with having to trim threads. I was very happy with this plan, and need to thank another Statler owner, for being my sounding board with this idea.

When Val came to pick up her quilt, she was very happy, and after the binding is done, will have finished an old WIP. It is a special memory for her of friends who made blocks, and some who are no longer with us.

I have been up early this morning, and watered all the garden, ready for a hot day. There was a lovely cool breeze earlier, so I had all the windows and doors open until about 9am, when it started to get hot. Now I am sitting at my desk, and will spend the day writing a few more words, so that I can put "stuff" away ready for the arrival of the Aussie day retreaters tomorrow. This story has sort of taken over my life, and I need to get my "head space" back to where it needs to be. But hopefully by the end of today I will have finished the first section of my story. So far I have done 12,860 words and 61 pages, with lots of photos. I keep remembering more and more to add, so I am glad I am not writing it all long hand, as it is easy to add, and shift things on the computer. And I feel great, that I have finally started something that I have wanted to do and thought about for a long time. Another occasion of "going with the flow", and doing something that had not been in the schedule.

Bye for now, stay cool if you are in the hot country, and maybe you need to stay warm those who are in the top part of this world.

Blessings, From Jude

Happy Birthday

Today we celebrated the 18th birthday of GD1 at a lovely luncheon in the Barossa Valley. It was a beautiful day to eat our lunch on the verandah of the venue. Not too hot, and not too cold. 

Wishing you many blessings for your future as you start the next stage of your life. It hardly seems any time at all since we were heading off to visit you as a newborn baby in the hospital! Savour each day and make the most of every opportunity, but most of all I wish you happiness.

It was the first time to gather all 9 of my grandies together.

 Tate just arrived in time, just over 2 weeks ago!

In amongst the other tasks of last week, I went through 18years of photos, and gathered some for an album for the birthday girl. It was fun remembering lots of her childhood days.

It's time for bed after a lovely weekend and seeing all of my family. Tomorrow is another day, and we are in for another HOT week, ahead of a long weekend to celebrate Australia Day.

Blessings, From Jude