Family time

 Last week I spent time in the Barossa looking after Miss Bridie and Tate. I am very thankful that the little man was much happier than the last time I looked after him, back in February. Miss Bridie went to kindy for 2 of the 5 days, so it was just Tate and Grandma for those. 

  

 Miss Bridie loves cup cakes, so we made up a couple of batches with icing and of course, the sprinkles!.

She loves to colour in and draw, and spends a lot of time doing craft activities.

Bluey is the show of the year, and Tate loves Bluey. I am now educated in this show, although do admit that I had some trouble pressing the correct buttons to find the show. Almost need a uni degree to operate smart TV's! I am sticking with my very small, simple tele, that is certainly not smart! I must admit that compared to a lot of children's TV, this show does has some good messages.

                                             We had story time...........

                         .............and some lovely sisterly, brotherly interaction time!

The sun finally came out on the last day, so we ventured outside for some play.

While in town I visited with DD2 and family, who I had not seen since February! I did not take these photos, but "borrowed" them from facebook. GD1 is missing from these pics, but I did catch up with her too.

These photos were taken in Bordertown on Saturday when DD2 and family were in town for SIL's mothers 80th birthday party, prior to visiting me on their way home. So after a long few months, I have now seen them twice in the week! (There has not been much highway travel this year!)

On my way home on Friday afternoon, I detoured through the city to visit with DD1 and family. Again, I did not take this photo, but borrowed it from facebook. This was taken on their recent holiday, although the little man is missing from the picture.

It was an eventful week catching up with most of the family at once. The sad part has not been seeing the Melbourne ones, but thankfully we get lots of photos and video chats. Here is Miss Billie with her mask which they must wear when out of the house...........

....and DD3 with a matching mask.

And here is Mr Jett, who is now 11 months old already. He always has a cheeky smile. Sadly we won't be able to help him celebrate his first birthday, but look forward to lots of photos and a video linkup.

While we are on the subject of family I will include news of my mum. I mentioned a few posts ago that she was looking at moving into a retirement village. It seems that Mum had a phone call soon after that post from my cousin in Queensland, telling mum that she had heard of her move. Mum was very surprised to hear that Debbie knew about it, but it became clear when we realised that she reads my blog. So hello Debbie and other Queensland rellies!! Mum was very blessed that her house sold in 2 days and settlement is happening this week.

And on Saturday she moves into this unit at a retirement village in Murray Bridge. Mum's younger sister is also selling her house and moving into another unit in the same village. We are really happy for Mum and it's special that at 88 1/2 years old it will be the first house that she will have that Dad's mother and father had not lived in first! So here's to another trip up the highway this weekend for moving day.

                     

Think that will suffice for this post. I will have another post very soon of recent customer quilting, and another about plans for some different fundraising for the BCNA this year.

Raylene also wishes to thank you all for your good wishes to her after her recent fall. She said her fairy wings must have neglected to flap just when she needed them!!

Catch ya soon,

Blessings, From Jude

Cheryl's quilts

 

Time for a customer quilt post, and here are 2 of Cheryl's quilts. The first one was made using Cheryl's collection of laces and doilies that belonged to her mother and grandmother. There is an amazing array of these and I love how they have been combined in each block, and then beads have been added. The first few photos are of some of the blocks before quilting.....................

This is after quilting, and you can see that it is quite a large quilt and will be used on Cheryl's bed. It is good that she will be using this quilt with lots of memories. Cheryl is not sure what will happen to it "one day" as she has 2 sons and no daughters????

These are some of the blocks after quilting, and as each block was different, I had to put my thinking cap on as to what to do in each block.

This smaller hexaon quilt was hand pieced by Cheryl using her collection of scrap fabrics. This was quilted allover with a flower pattern called Pretty Penny.

I do have more quilt photos to show, but will save that for another post, as I have some other computer work to do, and only have until the little man wakes up. Miss Bridie is having quiet time watching a movie. We have made cup cakes this morning, and done some colouring in and played UNO. I had to scrape the ice from my windscreen this morning before clocking in, and it's still quite cool outside, with little glimpses of blue sky every so often.

Have a good day,

Blessings, From Jude

Last week's summary...............

 Here we are and another week of this year has disappeared so it must be time for an update of newsfromjude. Going back into the photo files I see that there was a bit of this and a bit of that. I do have quite a few customer quilt photos to show, but will save those for a separate post.

I have an hour or so to do this post, before the little man I am looking after will wake from his day sleep. I am away for a few days doing Grandma duty for DS and DIL. Miss Bridie is at kindergarten today and it's just Mr Tate and grandma, which so far has been pretty "cruisy".

It was a very wet and cold week, and we recorded about 40 mls rain over a few days. I was glad not to have to go anywhere, and those jobs I am working on in the garden came to a stand still.

Last Monday morning I decided it was clean up the desk area time, before I started working on another quilt with Max. I won't show you the before photo, but here is the after one, although before I managed to get some things back onto that clear desk!

It wasn't too long after the above photo was taken that I received a call from Raylene's (aka the fairy!) daughter to let me know that she had fallen and broken her wrist and was in hospital waiting for surgery! The next morning I received this pic, so that I could have a laugh, but really it doesn't look too funny to me. After being pinned and plated, and 2 nights in hospital she is now home in recovery. Unfortunately, it looks as though she won't be driving to Bordertown anytime soon. (Insert sad face).

Here is another helpful lady, (who is also a great house-sitter), sorting some more of those strips in the drawers.

We have taken out all the strips that were not a full wof, so they can be put to use, and now the full wof of strips all fit into one drawer.

I received a container of buttermilk from a friend, and that was turned into this batch of scones, ready for the freezer and impromptu morning teas.

I have had a few niggling issues with Max recently, and was waiting for the service guy from Melbourne to travel through. Unfortunately that border doesn't seem like it will be opened anytime soon. Thankfully there is a farmer friend who has helped out with Max from the time of setting up at the delivery more than 13 years ago, to more recently and has learnt a lot about the workings of the system. A few weeks ago he came and helped solve one problem, and this week another issue has been fixed! After quilting thousands of quilts and many hours of duty, I have to state that problems have been few. I love my Statler. The part that came off..............

............and caused this wear on the cover has been sorted.

Things don't work as well when you get a little bit of thread wedged where is should not be either!!

After church on Sunday, I packed the car and headed off up the highway. My trips this year have been few and far between. My fuel expenses are much lower, and the Km's on the car are not going up so fast. While there was still some cloud cover, there were also patches of blue sky, and it was a pleasant drive. My photo below doesn't look as good as the view, but those fields of yellow in amongst the green looked so pretty.

I shall try to catch up on some other posts in between my duties this week. Hope your week is a good one, and I'll catch you again soon.

Blessings, From Jude

This weekend

 

I mentioned in the last post that I was on a mission to finish a few of those gunna do jobs that are on my list. I only had to do the corner blocks for Miss Billie's quilt, and knew that I wanted to make bees for this, so yesterday I set to work. 

It wasn't long before I had 4 little bees all stitched, and sorry but I did use a pen for the eyes, mouths and feelers. 

So here we have an "almost finish", as I still have 4 mouths and 2 nostrils to stitch on the centre blocks. And don't faint with shock, but I am actually hand sewing those!! And this is a great effort from this NON HAND SEWING quilter. Give me a machine any day. And after those few stitches, this quilt will be ready to wait in the queue for the quilter!? Not too sure about a deadline for this to be finished, as the birthday won't be until March. It would be lovely to be able to personally hand this over, but we have no idea when I might be able to see my Melbourne family??

Today there was another Zoom meeting, organised by Chookyblue for bloggers. Countries represented included Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. This is always a great catch up with much conversation about so many subjects. Of course the Covid situation is a hot topic, and the effects are worldwide. Other subjects included the price of fabric, wages, families, travel, farming, as many stitched along as well. This is the best option to "travel" for most of us at the moment and is good to hear about other countries. Thanks Chooky for organising this catchup again.

I joined in early before going to church and then again after I arrived home again. My time was spent sitting and cutting quite a few containers of scraps. They have been building up and needed to be dealt with. I am happy to show the results below. I cut the smaller pieces straight into squares and from here those shorter lengths will now go back through the Go cutter and cut into more squares, and be added to the drawers.

I think that after another couple of cutting sessions the scraps might be tamed, well that is until I start cutting more kits again!! 

2 week summary

 As I seem to have a lot of photos in the files that have not been blogged about yet, perhaps this morning is a good time to catch up with some newsfromjude. While I have written some posts in the last 2 weeks, there has been a lot more happening in the background and I have not been idle.

I showed this photo of the strips I took from those very full drawers.........

                  ............and sorted them into sets to make a scrappy trips quilt.....................

..............sewed them into tubes and cut into sections..................

                           

                                       ...............and then made 12 blocks like this..........

                                   ................which were then sewn into 4 rows of 3 blocks..................

                                        ..................... and then bordered until I had this. While this was not the                                   quickest quilt to sew, it did use up a lot of those strips.

 I made mention that I had a visitor coming to spend a few days, and she was not idle either. I am very conscious of the fact that I have a VERY LARGE collection of fabric in my house. I was using a lot of this to make the Ready Set and Sew kits for retreats, but that seems to have come to a halt, for now anyway. I do have some ideas to reduce the stash, and one of them is to make quilts for others that are not in a good place and need to know that someone cares. The scrappy trips quilt above is the start of this, and while my fairy was here she worked on some more. This has made a good reduction of strips in those drawers, and it is almost possible now to fit them all into one drawer!!

When Jean heard of our plans, she brought along 25 16 patch blocks that she had made from donated fabrics. (A friend's mother had died and when the family cleaned out her house, there was a LOT of quilting supplies and as no one in the family wanted it, they took some of it to Jean's house!!) Edit - Jean has just messaged me to say she is sewing more of those blocks, so looks like there will be another quilt coming along! 

So Raylene set to work, trimming the blocks, and chose sashing and border fabrics from my collection. We only used 20 blocks and there are 5 remaining.

Those quilts have got backings made for them, and are now waiting patiently for the quilter to do her thing, and binding to be added. I have really enjoyed my recent piecing time. I think it is time to try and make a serious dent in the stash in this house, so I better start sewing fast. Tis funny that some of us spend years accumulating our collections, and then one day you suddenly realise that time is limited!!??

Another job that has been on my "to do" list for almost a year now, is to make a quilt for Mr Jett. As he is 10 1/2 months old now, I decided to get busy. I have been saving this fabric for this purpose.

I decided to keep it simple and easy...................

.........and I soon had this constructed...................

............but there were those who told me that I had a problem.......... the border elephants were upside down???? I can see that, but what do you do??...............

............You unpick and turn them up the other way.............. but then the side borders have the elephants going head down, or bottom down??........... Probably could have thought about this earlier and then cut the side borders along the length?? Dilemmas!!??

Anyhow, it's done, and in the quilting queue, which is where the delays seem to happen! The backing will be the fabric that's 3rd from the bottom.

I still have the corner blocks of Billie's quilt to do, and hope to get some progress happening on that this weekend. I am on a mission to finish quite a few of those almost done jobs!!

I received this photo from DIL last week. Apparently Miss Bridie decided that all the people on her quilt were hungry, so she is feeding them!! Oh, the imagination of children is wonderful isn't it?

I'm not too sure how the doctor is going to eat that carrot with his mask on though!!

                    

                  There was a baking session one morning and scones for morning tea.......................

Val usually calls in on a Thursday morning, ........... and before we knew it there was another, and another........... although not quite like feeding the 5,000 though!

More baking to put in the freezer

The garden has a bit of colour......... Jean sowed a lot of packets of outdated seeds, and brought some to me to plant, although I am not too sure exactly what they are??

And my daffodils are blooming too.

Today it is my parents 67th wedding anniversary. What an amazing achievement. 

Their wedding photo, August 15th, 1953................

.......and this was taken at the nursing home on Dad's birthday in June.

We haven't had an Angels sewing day for months now, with the restrictions in place. This week a couple of girls called in and decided they would sew. To practice the social distance thing, these days will have to be restricted to limited numbers. Progress was made on a string quilt................

Jean made blocks and Val added the sash and I said I would add the borders after lunch.....................

............but I went outside to get some more wood in, and got sidetracked in the garden, (as you do!!) and decided to lay some pavers that have been waiting for a few weeks...............and I think I need more pavers yet!

Note.... I don't think I will give up my day job anytime soon!! This area will have a collection of pots of hardy plants sitting here as it gets very warm in the summer.

Friday I came back to do the borders of that angels quilt...................

...............and decided it was a day to finish off other works in progress, such as this cushion cover that I have had cut out for a couple of weeks now.................this took me back to memory lane and all the embellished sewing classes I used to do, years ago, before retreats took over!! Something I would like to get back to, as I have a few works in progress waiting in the wings. These projects are not quick though, as those stitches take awhile to sew, so it could be awhile yet before I get back to them.

I think that is more than enough for one post, and thanks if you have read all the way through!! It is time to work on the corner blocks for Billie's quilt, and try to get another quilt ready for the quilter!!??

One of the positives that has come from this virus and the restrictions imposed has been the amount of "me" sewing time that I have had!! There is always a positive in a not so good situation, although we might have to look hard for it.

Be back soon,

Blessings, From Jude