One day after another............

It seems like too many days have gone by since the last blog post, so I should probably update you with newsfromjude. There are no trips up the highway to report on, no retreats at Number eight to tell you about, there are no visitors coming in, no coffee dates, no family celebrations and no meals out.That makes it a struggle deciding what to write about. Each day seems to come around like clockwork, and the diary pages are mostly blank. The camera doesn't come out very often so this post might be fairly boring and ordinary, but that is the "normal" at the moment. (I do have a lot of thoughts going around in the head about that subject, but that can wait for another day.)

CUSTOMER QUILTS

I am fortunate in that I can work from home, and I still have quilts to finish, and some coming in the door to add to the queue. I have managed to spend some time with Max and finish some quilts. A few have been large, custom jobs, that are show entries, so they are on the machine for awhile and I can't show you yet. State exhibitions have been postponed for a few months, so that could be end of the year before you see those photos.

 I do admit that I am spending less time with Max as a few other jobs are taking my time, in this "new normal" life.

The first 2 quilts were made by Marree, and showcase some great fabrics. This one was quilted allover with a pattern called Whatever.

This curved pieced quilt, was quilted allover with a circle pattern.

This is only Yazmin's second quilt, that she has made for her Grandma. It was one of the recent Mystery quilts and Yazmin added borders to make it the size needed for Grandma's bed. This was quilted allover with Butterfly Swirl.

This small quilt was made by Erica, using the leftover blocks from a larger quilt, and quilted allover with clouds.

Frances made this very large Civil War quilt, and I quilted the centre part with an allover Clamshell pattern with stars.

This quilt had a "friendly" pieced border, so this was treated separately and quilted with a P2P triangle pattern, so that I could keep the excess where I wanted it to be.

Maxine made this quilt, called Catalina, at the last Pick a Box Mystery retreat, and it was quilted allover with a Butterfly pattern. I love how this turned out, and have enough fabric for one more quilt like this, and then will use the same pattern with a different range of fabric.

I can't show you the whole quilt, but this is just a small tease. This block is only 3" square, so it gives you an idea of the amount of tiny pieces in the quilt, which measured 92" square!!

And this is the quilt that is loaded onto Max at the moment. I have done all the SID in seams and block frames, and quilted the border. Tomorrow it will be a job, sitting on my stool, and doing lots of SID around the applique and the background fills. Stay tuned.

THREAD BUILDUP

I did a bit of a check over Max this week, and am "patiently" waiting for the borders to open up so I can get some maintenance done, but meanwhile I checked a few things, and this is what I found in a "very hard to get at" place!! Lucky that Max moved at all.

MY TIME

 I have lots of UFO's that I have been waiting for some "time" to get finished, and now that I have some of that time, I started something new!! I spent time doing that Mystery quilt that I recently posted about and did mention the applique that I was doing. This is the Paper Doll quilt that is a free pattern being released over the next few months by the Red Boot Quilt Company. I saw this on someone's blog page and went to check it out. I decided it was time to make quilts for the little people in my life, before they get too big to think they are cute. Well, that is my justification for starting a new project. I don't know how long this isolation will go on for, so trying to make the most of my time. I am doing one shift (shorter) with Max each day, and then spending time with my machine for the rest of the day, and watching DVD's or listening to music while I sew.

I did pull out this container of scraps that have patiently waited for a sorting fairy for many years, and thought I would use them for the applique pieces. But after pulling some out, I decided that most were too small, and I couldn't make up my mind what colours to use. I put these back in the dark corner again, and chose the range of fabrics below, that all looked lovely together. This container has now been gifted to a friend who was very keen to go through and sort the many pieces, and later phoned me to say what a treasure trove it was. So a win, win all around, it's out of my house, and is loved by the new owner.

I have appliqued the first 8 blocks above, and now waiting for some more pattern releases to make more blocks. This quilt will be for Miss Bridie.

Also on the Red Boot Quilt Company page I found another free pattern for the Little Pig quilt. This quilt will be for Miss Billie, and I have another design chosen for Mr Tate and Mr Jett, but will show that another day. I have spent a lot of time in "kindergarten" lately, doing all the tracing of the patterns, and fusing and cutting the shapes to the backgrounds. This quilt has 9 blocks and I have almost finished the stitching of these, and hope to have the block borders stitched on by the end of the weekend. Did I just say weekend? Really, every day is almost the same at the moment. But weekends are the time I mostly have to myself now that the retreats are not happening, and there are no family visits up the highway.

 BAKING TIME

I have spent quite a bit of time in the kitchen lately. I had good supplies of goods in my pantry and freezer, all ready for a few retreats this year, and all of a sudden that stopped. It would take me a year to get through this all by myself, and do enjoy time in the kitchen. I have been cooking, and sharing it around, and the freezer still seems to be rather full. My thoughts are that if you are cooking for one, you may as well make a larger quantity while you are at it. This was some yummy apricot shortcake.

WINTER IS HERE

The season has been rather mild for the last few weeks, and I know a lot of people have enjoyed time in their gardens while the sun was out. But winter has come this week, and with it good rains. The temperature has dropped dramatically and the fire has been lit. Now I will be fighting the temptation to spend time in the lounge with a good book, instead of at the sewing machine!!

Well that seems to be enough for this post. I do have quite a few family photos to share, but will save that for next time. One of the positives about this isolation is the availability of social media to keep in touch with family and friends. It is lovely to "talk" to the little ones and see how much they are growing, and that the colour of their hair is changing. Videos of Mr Jett trying to get up on his knees and attempt to crawl are priceless. (And perhaps while things are closed, they might also see that Grandma's hair has suddenly changed colour too??)

Good night,
Blessings, From Jude

Happy Birthday

Today my second baby turned 43 years old. Where have all the years gone? I still remember clearly the morning that she decided that she was coming, after waiting for 15 looong days past my due date. 

But she was worth waiting for, and now she is a mum herself, of 3 children, and of course I had to go back into the photo files to see what I could find. First photo was taken at a wedding, and left to right is DD3, yours truly, 

 DD2, and DD1. 

                                       DD2 tickling Miss Bridie at another family celebration.

                                         I love this photo that was taken more recently.

Happy Birthday to you, lovely to chat this morning, and do hope you had a great day, in spite of social isolation. This will certainly be a year to remember.  Love Mum. xx

Blessings, From Jude

It was a Mystery........

I have mentioned previously that I had joined the QGSA facebook page to do the Casa Felix Mystery quilt that was designed by the Guild President, Chris O'Brien, and named after the place in Spain that she had recently stayed in. There were over 500 members in this group, and included members of our state, as well as those from other Australian states, and many from Canada and the USA. It has been a lot of fun, posting photos of fabric choices, sharing recipes, sharing pics of our "happy places", (that is our quilting spaces), and lots of general banter from members. It has certainly brightened up our social isolation and perhaps I-Sew-Lation is an appropriate spelling.

 We had been given instructions over the last few weeks, and here are all my units all ready for the final reveal this last weekend. And then one block stitched together! You might note that my dark fabric is not as dark as it could have been, or more likely that my light is too busy, so the dark pattern is not as obvious. But, I wanted to make use of this fabric, and did not want to take the time to search through the dark depths, (and the not so dark,) to use the scraps, so this was it.

I had to remove the papers from all those lovely little paper pieced geese units, and as I added paper to the bin, I noticed something to the side! How did they get there, and I am surely pleased that I noticed and found them, before I had to send out the search party for my geese that had flown off course!!

First row together. I decided that I needed to sash each block, so that I did not have a great expanse of yellow all together.

I had made 5 blocks by last evening, and had thought to make all 9 before stopping for the night. The mind was willing, but the body was not, and when I stitched the wrong bits to the wrong place, I knew I needed to stop.

After "attending" 3 church services this morning, it was time to get to work.

And finally I had the centre 9 blocks together. And then had decisions to make. And I thought it really needed another sash border, so those blue squares went right out and finished instead of being left in mid air!?

Hmmm, more decisions, and perhaps it needs a dark blue border before the final feature fabric went on. Auditions..... and yes, I am happy with this.

It was then I thought I would be clever, and cut the dark and the feature and sew them together, and stitch them on as one border!! Good idea, and a 6" blue corner square and it would be too easy. Will finish this soon!! But, I forgot to take into account the corner measurement of the first blue border and only cut 6 1/2" for the corners. So back to the drawing board, and I needed to add a bit, so brought in the yellow to frame the blue, and added a blue square to finish the corner. ( Most times I have it all worked out in EQ8 and know exactly what I am doing, and don't have to work it out on the run!) Perhaps we will call that a design opportunity and luckily I had plenty of fabric!

So it was about 7pm when I finished pressing, and looked for somewhere to hang it up for a photo. Because I added block sashings, and then 3 borders, my quilt has ended up being 91" square so is rather large. But I am very happy with how it turned out, and really enjoyed my I-Sew-Lation!

A new Mystery is starting this week, and I have signed up, although not sure if I will do it, or just lurk. It is supposed to be much smaller, so we will see. I do want to get to those applique blocks for the little girls, and have some customer quilts to get done.

It must be a sign of the times when your 45 year old daughter puts a message on the family facebook page, about her excitement when she went to the supermarket, and scored the last pack of this!! 2 months ago, no one would have believed you if we said that one would be excited to purchase toilet papter!! She did offer to share with the rest of the family, but they all said they had enough for now. My, how the things we value are changing!!

Also a sign of the times, was my "drive through" flue injection last week. We just drove in our cars to the local oval, where we sat in our car, and was jabbed through the open window!! And as I said earlier,  I had "attended" 3 church services this morning. They were all great messages, from 3 different sources. There is certainly quite a few positives coming out of this isolation, and while the rest of the world is not in a good place, so far Australia is not bad.

 That "balance" that I have been striving for, and talking about in the last few years, has happened, just like that, without me doing a thing.

That's enough newsfromjude for tonight, I think I will sleep well after a most productive day.

Blessings, From Jude

Time for a catch up, a bit of this and that.......

I was up before 5am this morning, and after devotions and brekkie, I turned Max on ready to work on the large quilt that is on at the moment. I spent most of yesterday trying to work out a plan, and did make some decisions so was ready to get onto it.

Then I realised it would have been our normal patchwork group sewing day tomorrow, and as the Publicity Officer, I had planned to send out a newsletter for those days. So I sat at the computer instead. The members of our group have been sending me photos of projects that they are working on, and also sending messages, news updates and even recipes and pictures of favourite gadgets they use. A few phone calls, emails, and many hours later, the newsletter was sent to members. There was only one problem, in that I forgot to attach the document! Take 2, and all was well. And now there is only 2 and a bit weeks before I do it all again. While I was at the computer, I sent out the Bible Study group emails as well, and now have decided I may as well do a blog post while I am at it!!

There has been some quilting happening, although I do admit to not as much. I am managing to fill up the days easily, but not a lot of it is photo worthy. I have finally spent time in my bedroom, sorting clothes, and CLEANING! My car was in desperate need of a clean, but I didn't want to negotiate the car wash down the street, so a quick hose off of the dust on the front lawn did make it look better. I have spent time in the kitchen cooking for elderly friends.

After talking to a friend today, I remembered that it was 2 years ago that the bags were packed ready for us to leave on the "trip of a lifetime" to the USA. We are so pleased that we did this 2 years ago, and had not planned for this year. This photo is of the 3 "Bordertown girls" on the trolley bus in Paducah.

A couple of days before Easter, I received some deliveries from family, which was lovely. 

Although it was not possible to attend church services in person this Easter, it was special to be able to "attend" services online, and I managed to watch quite a few. And with messages going back and forth between us, we still managed fellowship with each other. Most Easter time's I have a house full of quilters, and I did miss it this year. But in the absence of people, there was a silence and a feeling of being more aware of the real meaning of Easter. 

I will admit that for a few days, I fell into a "slump", for want of a better name to call it?? I guess there are lots of changes to process. I did give myself permission to take "time out", and spent all of one day sitting in the recliner and reading a book. When I start a book, I usually have to read it until it's finished, and this took me until about 7pm. This is an Australian author and the book is set in Queensland and was an OK read.

I found this on facebook, somewhere and seemed to fit my mood.

After a couple of days of "wallowing", I came good and picked up a project.

Step 4 of the QGSA Casa Felix Mystery project was released and I have finished that, and now await the last step and the reveal this weekend. There will be another Mystery after this, designed by Lessa Siegele, so I am looking forward to joining that one as well.

I did spend some time in the garden, and my dahlias are still blooming and the first of the Chrysanthemums were out in flower.

The weather has been lovely and outside in the sunshine listening to the birds sing, it is hard to believe the turmoil of our world. I have a shed full of wood, the flue has been cleaned out, and I am ready for when the temperatures drop as we approach the winter season.

A few weeks ago I saw the pattern for a quilt online "somewhere" and thought I would check it out. It is the Paper Doll Quilt Sew-Along by the Red Boot Quilt Co. It is a free BOM and being released periodically over the next few months. I decided it would be cute for one of my grandies, as there are a few little ones that their grandma has not yet made a special quilt for!! Now it seems like I might be able to find the time for this as there are no retreats happening for some time to come yet. I was planning on searching in the scrap stash for fabrics, until I saw this range that just happened to arrive at my house not long ago. I found a few extra matching pieces, and the vliesofix, printed the first 4 installments and started tracing.

Here are the first 8 blocks, that are now ready for stitching, which will be done by machine.

While I was browsing the Red Boot website, I found another cute pattern, and have printed this out as well. The last few days I have also traced all these patterns onto the paper. All this tracing and cutting, is like going back to kindy?? Just a few decisions re the background fabrics and to choose some pig  fabrics, and when they are all fused on, I shall spend time sewing them. This should save a lot of thread colour changes I hope.

I still plan on working on the Mystery quilts, and these 2 also. I  have many (not counting) UFO's around somewhere, but I am giving priority to these for the grandies, and hope to get them done before they grow to be too old to think they are cute quilts. I don't know just how much social isolation time I have ahead, so better make good use of what I do get.

I think that's about enough newsfromjude for now. I have some quilt photos to show, but will save them for another day.

Blessings, From Jude