Citrus strings is a top................

 Back in mid October I reported about my sewing efforts with the drawer of citrus coloured strings. I had used these colours in one of the mystery quilts and kept the left over pieces to use for a string quilt.

This was the drawer after I had made 16 blocks, so not much of a dent had been made.

This is the progress I had made by the end of that week, and still needed to put another 4 blocks to make up 6 rows, and then borders.

While I was in Murray Bridge at the end of October, Val was housesitting for me, and made another 4 blocks, and added them and the first border. I had decided that as there were lots more strings left that I would do a string border to try and use them up.

After trimming the string blocks there are always lots of little pieces left, especially triangles, and I thought that to use them up I would make some crumb blocks!!?? 

Well I have decided that it really didn't use up hardly any of those pieces, and it is a VERY time consuming thing to do. I only needed 4 x 5" blocks and it took ages. While they look rather effective, and sits in the corner blocks quite nicely, I don't think I will be heading down that rabbit hole anytime soon. Now strings I can do, they are fast, and as my stitching time is limited these days, and there is really NO shortage of fabric in this residence the crumbs are on hold, and perhaps they might find a new home?

I did manage to make a slight dent in the drawer of strings, and perhaps a few more blocks might eventuate, or shall I add these to the multi coloured drawer of strings??

I still wanted to add a border to this and finally this is done too. The only holdup now is with the quilter! (The queue of my quilts to be done is growing fast, but at least I am getting more sewing days this year than for a long time, and I say it's all part of the therapy.)

Blessings, From Jude

90 years!!

 Today it's the 90th birthday of a special lady who has been coming to Bordertown for retreats for a few years now. I had to go back to the guest book to see the date of her first visit, and it was in July 2014! Raylene (aka The fairy) brought her to Christmas in July when I had the house at The Sanctuary. 

Margaret (and Raylene too!) preferred the retreats that were more casual, and definitely not the Mystery weekends where the girls always stitched away for long hours to finish their quilts. As you can see from these 2 comments that she wrote in the Guest book that not a lot of work was done. And of course the social aspect is important too as it was a retreat after all.

When I had a date to go by, I went back to the photo files to find some pictures of Marg for this post. This was not the easiest job, as Marg is one of those people who doesn't seem to smile for photos, although she tells me that she is smiling on the inside!!

               Further on in the files I found Marg's smiling face when she was with Santa!

Back in 2015, we were all surprised when the oldest girl in the room set the bar for everyone to dress in a quilt for a photo!! Now we see evidence of smiling on the outside and inside.

And she certainly was laughing about it all here, (mid front).

 (Picture adjusted to give some anonymity to the others).

Her comment in the book that year was.............

There must be something special about sitting with Santa

July, 2017

Yesterday the fairy surprised Margaret at her morning sewing day with a few gifts and a cake to help her celebrate the special occasion. (Of course she sent me a photo, just for the blog).

Hope your day is fantastic Margaret, and we look forward to sometime when the world turns back again, and we can meet up again. The girls at Bordertown miss you.

It has been a real trip down memory lane today searching through the files for photos, and also reading the girls comments in the Guest Book. It has left me rather melancholy about how things are so very different. We sure had a lot of fun times at retreats and I am looking forward catching up with friends from far and near again sometime.

Blessings, From Jude

A 2 week update.....................

Apart from the birthday boy post on Friday, it seems that 2 weeks have elapsed since the last update of newsfromjude. I have been told that "someone" is checking, so it must be time. I have been right out of my 'normal' routine for more than a month now, so I have to put my thinking cap on to work out a post.

I do have some quilt photos in the files to show, but will leave those for a separate post another day. And I will tell you that this week Max has been turned on and a couple of custom quilts have departed the building.

NOT MUCH WORKING

Looking back at my last report I see that I finished off with this paragraph.............

Perhaps it's time to head to the shops and restock the fridge as I now have another visitor for a couple of weeks and I probably need to cater for my fairy? Hopefully my mind will soon feel the urge to turn on Max, or I could get used to all this socialising and relaxing?

SOCIALISING

Now I have read that I can definitely say that not a lot changed for that 2 week period, with a lot more socialising, relaxing, reading of books, some stitching time, some gardening and not much of Max.

It had been too long since I caught up with Barb (right) so out for coffee we went. Conveniently it was at the local garden centre (more details below), so I have to say that more than a few plants came home with me. A few years ago Barb and I had a day out at the local beach, (Kingston) which is an hour's drive away. Since then, and not too sure how long ago it was, we keep saying we should do it again, but always something would happen and the busyness of life kept us from going.

This time we decided to go a couple days after our afternoon out and take Raylene to the beach for a lovely lunch of fish and chips by the sea!

Fast forward to Saturday and once again we had to cancel due to a problem with Barb's back. (Insert sad face here!)

Then it was decision time as to whether Raylene and I would go on our own, and I couldn't make up my mind, because some of those plants needed to be planted, and I was torn 2 ways.

Have I ever told you that my fairy comes up with "scathingly brilliant ideas?" Some of them are really good and some, well I will leave you to decide on this one!

Her idea was to put the blue cloth on the pergola table and buy fish and chips from the local shop and pretend we were eating it at the beach!! LOL! While she drove to collect our phone order, I even found a pelican and a fish in the garden to put on the table for more effect?  Now you decide about her scathingly good idea?....... I guess we sort of managed to do both ideas, as we spent the morning before lunch working in the garden.

Edit - Curious minds needed to know so I went back into my blog posts to work out when Barb and I had been to the beach last, and it was April, 2015!! Found a couple of photos for you, and all I can say, is I am glad we did NOT have the seagulls at our lunch this time!!

GARDENING

In the last few weeks there has been much activity outside where months of neglect had taken it's toll.

The heap of prunings in the back yard is growing..............

.....this garden bed was prepared for plantings of dahlias, which are now poking there little leaves through the ground................(hopefully for a lovely summer display)...............

................and another area with new plantings................

This week I have been working in the vegie garden, and have planted cherry tomato, zuchinni, butternut and Jap pumpkins and cucumbers. Now I need to keep them watered and weeded. (You might get the idea that I haven't got time to work if I am to keep up with the garden??)

While we are on the subject of gardens I will post a few pics from Mum's place. First up can you see the pots on the other side of the table, which are the ones that were painted when Mum was here recently. She didn't take long in setting them out on display.

                                    I also have a  few photos taken in her back pergola area...........

these are the plants I potted from the large ones in my pergola, so I expect they will end up quite tall....

This is a pot plant stand I bought for Mum and she has quite a display in her pergola now.

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND!

Our local patchwork group held it's Annual Christmas lunch while Raylene was here. Well, she actually came down for this as she is now one of our members. One of her "scathingly brilliant ideas" was this poem she read out with a prize for one of the members. (Poetry is one her many skills!)

Here she is reading the poem.................

                                               ...........and here is Mandy with her prize!

Backgound information to what is coming next.............

Backtrack to September, 2016...................

"Someone" ?? organised a "pass the parcel" game for the weekend, and each person received a pink chocolate as they unwrapped the paper! But the "lucky lady??" who opened the last round received this???? Really??Thankfully you can't see much of my face! 

............then to May, 2017...........

Our group went on a retreat, and the lovely Faye Packham joined us for the weekend.

As we expected Faye to come bearing a "gift", Pat, who was President at the time had organised one back for her!! Here she is trying them for size.

.....................then to September, 2017..............

Faye had donated a box of goodies for the Pink Retreat fundraiser, and Michelle put in a large bid for the box, but she found a "bonus" in her box! Do you get the picture? 

Now to November, 2020!...............

..............They say that good things come to those who wait, don't they?? It just so happens that our President, who is Michelle now, had a President's Prize?? for the member who had travelled the furtherest to attend the lunch! And of course Raylene lived 4 hours from Bordertown, so qualified well for this "prize"! Wondering what was in the beautifully ribboned box...............

.....and lo and behold, what is this?? What goes around, seems to come back to where it started! 

We are all unsure if, or when these might come around again, but I think they better stay away for awhile, don't you?

SEWING TIME and USING IT ALL UP

When Raylene was here back in July, she managed to put this quilt together from blocks that Jean had donated. 

There were 5 of the 16 patch blocks left after making this quilt. Jean said she had more blocks, and brought some more around and they sat here until Raylene came back this time. But the next blocks were a different size to the other 5, so we had to think up a solution, and this is it.............

She used 4 of the remaining blocks for the corners and added a small border to the smaller blocks to bring them to the same size. At the end there was one block left, and this was unpicked to make 4 corner blocks for the outer border. This will join the queue of Angels quilts waiting for the quilter!

I also managed some machine time and have finished my Citrus strings quilt, but will save that for a separate post.

SHUT DOWN AND ISOLATION

Last week the virus managed to make it's presence felt in our state, after quite a long while of zero community transmission. The leaders promptly put us all into a fast shutdown of all except essential services from midnight that night. This meant that from that time you needed to stay where you were until the end of that shutdown. Of course Raylene was here and not home with her family so a quick decision was made for her to head home immediately, her car was packed and in less than an hour she was off.  The shutdown was supposed to be for 6 days, with further restrictions for another 8. 

(I took that as a sign to get back to work and bond with Max again.)

Thankfully the restrictions were only for 3 days, and were due to someone telling a lie, so things opened up again, although with caution. Since then there has been so much discussion about whether the authorities over reacted or not, and some reporters even asked if the govt should apologise!! While I realise it affected a lot of people economically in a big way, I am stunned at some of the comments I read. Better to be safe than sorry and you only have to look at what's happening in other countries of the world to be thankful for our leaders and the actions that have taken to keep us safe.  That's my rant over for today.

MORE SOCIALISING

With the easing of restrictions this meant that we could head out for coffee with friends again, and as Marie had a birthday last weekend, I decided that Monday was the day. We have been to Bushes and Beans for coffee and plant buying a few times now, and is a new business in our town. This time I took a few pics for the blog. There was a garden centre in this spot a few years ago, and I hope the new owners do well, as they have certainly done it up nicely.

     This fellow certainly creates a lot interest from the customers and makes for an interesting display!

It was a beautiful sunny day and these chairs looked like a great spot to sit and enjoy the company, the coffee and the weather.

If you have read this far, I thank you, and hope you find this just a little funny! 

Well, I think that is a marathon post, and the back definitely needs to get up and walk around. I have been sitting at the desk all day today, doing lots of admin stuff, putting in orders and answering emails, writing thankyou notes and sorting photos. I feel a bit jetlagged, and laughingly told someone it's because I went shopping in Sydney, then Melbourne, and then to Adelaide!! It was all online, of course, but sounded like a good story. Of course, I managed to do a fair bit of damage to the bank balance as well. The ordering was all things I have been meaning to do for ages, especially the threads in the colours I use often. Good to be able to tick that from my "to do" list. And now the blog is done for now, so hopefully I won't get a message that "someone" is checking!

Blessings, From Jude

Happy Birthday

It is 12 years today since the birth of my first grandson, and 4th grandchild. I remember heading to the Barossa from Adelaide to be there to look after his older sister when he was born. I will always be able to work out how old he is because he was born at the end of the week that I finished my course of radiotherapy, and that's a year I am not likely to forget.

                                    Look at this cute little baby boy.....................

........and here is another photo in the arms of his proud sister, and with his 2 cousins at that time.

A few years later, .......................

                 ................and here we are now, 12 years old with a photo his mum posted today). 

                                                  Very much into basketball, footy and food!

 

Hope your birthday was a great one, and you enjoyed your day home from school in this lockdown. 

Lots of love from Grandma. xxx

Blessings, From Jude