83 years young today

 

It is my mum’s birthday today, and she has turned 83 years! I won’t say old, because she looks great for her age. A few years ago she (and us), had quite a scare with serious health issues, but she recently passed the 5 year milestone.

Mum and Dad are presently holidaying at Normanville Caravan Park, so it was not an option to visit her at home today. And Normanville is a few hours drive from my place, but I felt led to make the trip to visit. Normanville is also a place with lots of memories for our family, with many holidays in my childhood, and for mum and dad from when they were teenagers. The town has certainly changed, and gone “modern” as with many older towns. It is many years since I have been back, and I am so glad I made the trip. It would have been so easy to keep quilting to get through the pre Christmas jobs. And the housework can wait a bit longer still!

Soon after our surprise arrival, it was time to head for the beach. The weather was quite overcast and cool in the morning, but did warm up slightly in the afternoon. We strolled along the beach, collected some shells, and had fish and chips for lunch. I don’t think you can go to Normanville without eating fish and chips!

Writing Happy Birthday Ma, in the sand.

I won’t go in very far Mum!

Mum, I got my shorts wet!

Looking for shells with Pa. My dad, with my youngest grandchild, almost 80 years difference in ages.

The sailboats setting up for the afternoon races that are held each Sunday.

They have spent of quite a bit of their lives under this jetty while holidaying, although Dad said that the jetty is much shorter than it used to be years ago. I must go and look at the photo albums, as I think there is one taken of me in this spot about 40 years ago. Now I am feeling ancient!

Can you see the family resemblance?

2 little boys were rather tired after their day at the beach.

Well after my big day out, I think it’s time for bed, and be ready to finish a quilt tomorrow morning. Still working on a batch of Christmas Cards which need to be posted soon.

Blessings, From Jude

Another week has gone

 

I can’t believe that is is only just over a week since I came back from Melbourne. I have had my head down catching up with quilting, and ignoring house work. I think that perhaps next week I might need to look deeper at the rest of the house. I have another couple of weeks quilting to get done, before I can even think about Christmas.

I have updated the last week into a series of little posts. We also had our local Patchwork group Christmas Dinner, and I took the camera, but hardly used it.

Below is a bedspread made by Pat from curtain fabric for her guest room, to match the curtains. It is quilted edge to edge with Leaflet, a Keryn Emerson pattern.

Also made by Pat, is her Bedford quilt, with edge to edge quilting in a swirling pattern.

This is Karen’s quilt, very pretty fabrics, and quilted all over with Funky Flowers.

And let there be light

As  you can see in the first photo, which has already been background filled around the applique, it is very hard to see. And I had a difficult time seeing where I was quilting.

This was my solution. I placed a portable light right on the quilt just close to where I was quilting, and now I could see where I was going.

I shall post more photos of this quilt in a few days. This is just a little teaser of what I have been working on for the last week. But finally, it is done, and waiting for delivery to it’s owner tomorrow. Hope she will be pleased. I have done a few of these quilts and most of them had black or cream backgrounds, and this is the first blue one. I tried to come up with a different quilting design to the ones I had done before.

The trees came down this week

Right along the fence line between The Sanctuary and the neighbour were some magnificent big gum trees. They were lovely shade and people loved to park their cars under them. A couple of years ago, the one in the corner kept dropping very large branches, just inside the neighbours yard, and on the fence as well. I have a good friend who loves to use his chainsaw, and he decided it was safer to lop the tree and cut it back as in the first photo. This is what it looks like now that it has a year or so of regrowth. It was a big job to cut this down, and wait for the branches to dry out and then burn them.

And these are the other 2 trees, which are taller, and you can see how they are leaning over the next door house. Every time we had strong winds, I was anxious in case a branch fell on their house and did some damage. Although most of the time, it was on a hot day that the branches fell.

And a few weeks ago, this was the scene that met me as I walked over the road to The Sanctuary. Thankfully, the branch missed the car, and there was no damage. But it was time to do something about the other 2 trees, and so I called the “tree man” to come and quote me for the job.

This week was the time for it to happen, and you can see the action below. They removed about 5 truck loads of branches, and cut the remaining timber to put in my wood shed to use in the slow combustion heater. That was a lot of tree now gone. I am thankful that now the wind can blow, and I can rest easy. And the cars of ladies who come for retreats are now safe!


This is how they look now, but hopefully it won’t be long before the leaves shoot out and they don’t look so bare.

A near miss

After I had completed the first row of an edge to edge pattern this week, I noticed a bulge as in the photo below. I was thinking that the wadding had a crease in it, and put my hand out to smooth it, and oops, it felt a bit hard for wadding! There is always something to be thankful for, even when “stuff” happens, and I was thankful that I had only done one row, and thankful that it was close to the top of the quilt, and very, very thankful that the machine missed hitting the object.

Now you can see what was under the quilt top, and I could have badly damaged Max if he had tried to sew over this. But only a little unpicking and out it came, and just a few stitches to fix things, so that you would never know it had been there! Note to self, check carefully before you start next time!

Hope you have had a great week, be back soon.

Blessings, From Jude

The first Sunday of Advent

 This is the first of four Sundays before Christmas and this morning a candle was lit in our church. Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas and today's candle is a symbol for our hope in Christ.

(Photo is borrowed from the internet). I am reminded of what Jesus has done for me. John 14 tells us that Jesus said "Do not let your hearts be troubled......." Words of hope as we face daily life. The singing was awesome this morning, with many voices raised in full volume.

One of the chorus' was Something Beautiful, and has special meaning for me. It was a song that I learnt many years ago at a time when I was going through a difficult time. And again today it had that same meaning. The words are.....

Something beautiful, something good,

all my confusion, he understood,

All I had to offer him, was broken-ness and strife.

But he made something beautiful of my life. 

As we head into the lead up to Christmas Day, I wish for you to know the hope, peace, joy and love of Christ in amongst the working, shopping, cooking and whatever else you do to "get ready" for Christmas Day. Remember the real reason for the season.

Blessings, From Jude

A quilt update

I can see that it is 3 weeks since the last quilt photo blog, so maybe I better catch up. Although I can’t say that there’s been lots of quilting happening, with all the other activities that have been going on. But, The Sanctuary is in recess now until end of January, so there will be some serious quilting going on until then.

First up is a quilt made by Bernie. It is an Anni Downes pattern, and Bernie tells me she is very new to quilting. I am amazed at the needleturn applique she has done for someone new to quilting. There are such tiny little pieces and she has such nice round edges. You can see in the 4th photo how small the snails and mushrooms are. This was a fun quilt to do, and there was lots of SID!

This was made by Lyn, for a new baby boy. I am not sure if you can see the border below, where I have quilted a teddy in a train pattern.

This is the Kali Star quilt, made by Betty with Westalee Rulers. Very striking pattern, and quilted all over with a rose pattern.

This is Lyn’s quilt, which was made in the Paper Bag Mystery Retreat last April. I quilted it with simple custom, and even used orange thread on the white, which takes me out of my comfort zone. But I must admit, it took away the starkness of the white areas.

A Christmas quilt, made by Lyn’s sister, and quilted all over with Christmas Stars.

This was made by Marie, and is a disappearing PinWheel block.  It is for someone who loves cats, so it has been quilted with cats walking across the quilt in rows.

Well, that’s it for today, I am stuck on an intense custom applique quilt for a few days. I think I have done enough for today, so might make a start on some Christmas Cards, while I am waiting for some special visitors to arrive for the weekend. I have a few activities planned.

The weather is warming up again, so will need to keep the watering happening.

Bye for now, hope you will enjoy your weekend. And to those in the US, enjoy your Thanksgiving celebrations.

Blessings, From Jude