Happy Birthday

 Whoopsie...... I woke up this morning and realised that I had not published this birthday post yesterday. I carefully selected all the pics on Friday, and saved it in the files and then forgot to post. Thankfully I did manage a phonecall to GS1 before my day went a bit downhill. 

Happy Birthday to my first grandson, who turned 13 yesterday!! Into your teenage years now. How did that happen so fast. From this tiny little baby..............

                 ......and now this tall young man, who loves his sport, especially basketball.

Hope your day was a good one, and you enjoyed the cake and celebration.    Luv from Granny xx

Blessings, From Jude

A Newsfromjude catchup post.............

 It seems that we are already 19 days into the month of November, and while there have been 3 posts so far this month, one was for a birthday, one of garden photos and the other an event from October. Previous posts were quilting and exhibition reports and it seems not much "newsfromjude" since my "hitting the wall" post. My one week off seemed to have turned into almost 6 weeks now.

 Now, where to start and what to write is the question??

I did manage to get the bookwork up to date, and have finished the last financial year tax return with the accountant. I did finally turn Max on and get a "few" allover customer quilts finished and returned to their owners. Photos will come in a separate post.

HELPERS

My fairy has been here for a week now, and has been sorting, stacking and sewing in between our other activities.

Another donation quilt in progress, making rail fence blocks and using up jelly roll strips from the drawers.

I was very blessed last week to have a visit from DS, who climbed onto my roof to clean the gutters. It was almost to the stage of having to get the mower up there to cut the grass growing in them!!

ANGEL'S DAYS

There have been a couple of angel sewing days recently, and for a change, I actually sat and sewed with the girls. I will admit there is sometimes more socializing than sewing, but that is good too.

One angel had sewn the four patch blocks with the cream on 2 sides and I stitched these together into blocks of 4........

................another angel came along and stitched all the blocks together, and now it waits until next time for the borders that are already cut, to be added.

There were many string pieced blocks already sewn, and this angel arranged them as below and added a border. Now it waits "patiently" for the quilter to do her bit!

TIME OUT TO READ

A fair amount of time has been spent in the reclining position reading. ...... I like how Mrs Goodneedle from the blog "From the Strawberry patch" calls her reading time D.E.A.R time. Which means Drop everything and read! I admit to having dropped a lot of things lately to read.

SORTING AND ORGANISING

I did attempt to sort some of the excess clothing in my wardrobe one day. (This is only a small portion of what is in 2 wardrobes!!) I know it will take a long time to complete this task as I don't like trying on clothes much at all. Some of this went back into the shelves, but there is another pile to throw, and another to donate. 

On the shelves in my workroom there is much fabric, and in amongst it all there are collections of fabrics that go together and are intended for Ready, Set, Go kits. I have been wanting to separate these fabrics out of the shelves so that they stay in their lots, so have recently purchased a few sets of these drawer units to store them in. This way they will be safe until I have time to cut the kit and the fabric won't find it's way into somewhere else! This is another project that is in progress and will take some time.

A BLAST FROM THE PAST!!

To make room for the drawer units to go under the cutting table, I had to move a cardboard box. This box contained my collection of ufo's and 'waiting to be quilted' items. It was an interesting job going through and resorting the UFO's into other containers. 

I found many things, and most of those will be blogged about sometime, but one I did find was this Mini Wallhanging kit..................

This was inside the plastic bag, all creased and unfinished!............

I even surprised myself  when I looked at the back of what I had done, because it was hand pieced!!!! The needle and thread was still in the fabric waiting for me to finish............It's obviously an amateur and not very neat as you can see.

And Ta Daa!! It is now finished and hanging up on the shelf. I can't believe that I actually hand pieced, but will tell you that the last 2 log cabin pieces I have just added were machine sewn!! Why did I not do this from the start? Let me tell you that it is only 5" square and started in 1996!! It only took me 25 years to finish! (I am not looking too hard at how crooked all those check fabrics are, so you better not either!)

I found many other long ago UFO's from many workshops that I have done over the last 25 years, although none of them are quick to finish projects, except the one above. 

WEATHER

 The weather has been very unseasonal for spring, with a lot of cold days and welcome rain. The frosts and hail that damaged crops were not so welcome.

 It is very unusual for me to have the wood fire going in mid November, although it has been nice to spend time in front of it with a book or chat to friends.

HEALTH

SLOW LEARNERS .........I mentioned in my Hitting the wall post dated October 12th that I had fallen and bruised my knee, (and probably my ego!) Now I have to admit that 4 weeks later I did the same thing, and fell again! Same place, same trip! Perhaps I didn't do it properly the first time?? This time the damage is much worse and recovery slower. And yes, I hope that this time I have learned! 

After my report of heading up the highway, to attend Country Forum, I had planned to do another trip the following week to catch up with family after a long absence, but there was no way I was able to drive for that long, so had to cancel the trip. 

That Hitting the wall post also mentioned other health issues that I was sorting out and this week I have had more appointments concerning these. Thankfully my fairy has been driving me around as long distance is still not good as my injured knee is the right one.

One of my appointments has been with the Eye specialist and I now have a diagnosis of Glaucoma. Another language to learn and read about! There are different treatment options for what he says is complex, but progress is supposed to be slow. Another thing to learn to live with and to add to my other medical issues! This getting old, older is not a lot of fun sometimes! But getting it all into perspective, I know there are lots of people in worse situations, so I won't moan for very long! ☺☺

For now I am having to put 1 drop into each eye at night, and did wonder how I was going to manage to get it into the right spot on my own. When I got my script filled yesterday they gave me this gadget!! Raylene and I are very impressed at how easy it makes the whole process. Thankfully there are some clever, creative people in this world.

I think you have listened to me long enough for now, and it's time for me to head to the chair and put my leg up. I have another quilt loaded ready for a quick get away in the morning. I might have to get a bit more motivated in the next couple of weeks as we prepare for my Mum's 90th birthday, and an early Christmas celebration as hopefully  the Melbourne family will be over soon as the border is supposed to open next Tuesday!! 

Blessings, From Jude

Up the highway once again..........

 I have just noticed that I had not published this post earlier. It has been sitting in the saved files, and I guess it's better late than never!!

The biennial SA Quilters Guild Country Forum day was held at the end of October and 4 from our group attended this day. It had been many months since I had driven to the city although I had done a couple of trips to Murray Bridge.

This was a day that Pat and I usually attended in the company of Marie, so I was almost tempted not to go this time. As it turned out Pat was unable to attend due to being a cross border member and unable to go outside the 70km bubble, so I was joined by 3 other Gum Tree Quilters members who had not been before. 

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It turned out to be a great day out, with interesting speakers, goody bags, shops to tempt us and many demonstrations as well as great catering.  There were lucky prizes for us all which were eagerly picked out from the front.

SAQG President, Heather Ford opened the day and welcomed about 160 country quilters. The theme for the day was "Unmasking the Future".

We were introduced to different social media platforms and how to use these to benefit our quilting........ Cindy spoke on facebook............

Pip talked about Instagram............

Christine spoke about online platforms for meetings or classes to learn a new technique. These new ways of keeping in touch have been very beneficial in recent times when restrictions have kept us from meeting in person. Even quilt shows are now often held online!

                      Jill spoke about Pinterest and how to use this for our inspiration and saving ideas............

Suzanne Gummow, who is an Art quilter, was Guest Speaker and after outlining the origins and history of patchwork and quilting, to the here and now, talked about where we are going into the future?? She gave us a video clip of an amazing fashion parade where patchwork was the feature!! (Google "The Dolce and Gabbana Women's Spring Summer 2021")

It's a bit hard to see in the above photo that I took of the screen of the video, but I did find this image from the website, which is much clearer and you can see how they have used patchwork, not just in the clothing, but also the steps, catwalk and the backdrop!

            Here is an idea for your next jelly roll project!?? Our abundant stashes of fabric may come in useful to the younger generations after all???

It was a lovely day to catch up with quilters that we had not seen for some time and was so good to get out of our "bubbles" for just little while. Thankyou to the city girls who put this day on for us.

On the way out to the car after an inspiring day we noticed a glorious tree in full flower. It was not one we had seen before so I took a photo of the flowers.  Apparently it was a Bauhinia tree, which Mr Google tells me is also known as Hong Kong orchid. 

I am pleased that I did make the effort to go, even though it was bittersweet to be there without Marie. On the drive home we played some of Marie's favourite music in the car. The volume was turned right up and we sang along loudly!! 

*********

Looking at the time and I see it is almost 5pm, so perhaps it's time to leave this room, and find the book I am reading. I have managed to read a few in recent weeks. I'll be back soon with a newsfromjude update which will include the arrival of my fairy again. 😊😊😊

Blessings, From Jude

Spring in the garden........

As there is not a lot of quilting happening here, I will do a post of pics taken in the garden. Even though I have spent little time outside in recent months, we can usually rely on a good show in the spring. The bottlebrush trees are coming into their own, and the hum of the busy bees can be heard.

This is the best time to see my few rose bushes, as the hot winds of summer will spoil them, along with the reflected heat from the brown brick walls.

 That honeysuckle hedge is just coming into flower, and it smells so glorious walking out the laundry door...................

Last year's zinnia plants have self seeded so should be putting on a show of their own in January.

I have a few more roses down the side of the house, and once again they look lovely at the start of spring, until they cook between the brown wall of the house and the iron fence. 

While outside "smelling the roses, and honeysuckle" I noticed the many buds on this and can't wait to see what colour they are.

This jasmine was in flower a month ago and also smelled so good.

I am not sure what the name of this rose is, but the perfume on this is so strong, I had to pick some to come inside. This bush was a gift from special friends for my 60th birthday.

It is easy to show pictures that make the garden look great, but you will notice that they are taken close up, and you can't see the weeds in between!! I have been pulling a few weeds out but still have a long way to go.

That's all for now, will be back again soon with another update of newsfromjude. I can't believe just how fast time is going and I know that it is 6 weeks until Christmas, because my first baby was born 6 weeks before and her birthday was yesterday!!

(Apologies for once again being behind in reading and replying to blogs. I will catch up!

Blessings, From Jude