THE LATEST NEWSFROMJUDE............................

 This post has been mulling in my mind for the last 3 weeks, so perhaps it's time to write it?? We drove to Murray Bridge one afternoon to pick up my mum and bring her to Bordertown for a few days........ 

We had a very special reason for her visit, which was very hush hush as not many people knew............

There is only one way to say it.........Barry and I were married on the 9th of August, in a quiet ceremony in our local church. We did not want a fuss .......and it was just perfect for us and very meaningful. My 92 year old mum gave me away.....we had 2 good friends as witnesses, our local minister officiated, his wife took photos and another friend did the sound, playing pan flute music in the background during the ceremony.

 Here are a few photos..................

It just so happened that it was Barry's birthday that week, and we had planned a gathering to celebrate that..................and we managed to surprise a few friends there with our news........ the birthday cake turned into a wedding cake!!

We never know just where life will take us, and this is not where I expected to be in my 70's!!! 

As happy as we are, we are saddened to hear of good friends that are dealing with illnesses at present and our hearts go out to them.

Blessings,

From Jude

Customer quilting.................

 It is time for an update of customer quilting, and first up is one I did earlier in the year for Sherrel. She brought me her quilt, called Stair Bender as in the photo below...........

............this made me think a lot, as she wanted to enter it into the Victorian Quilters Showcase Exhibition in Melbourne in July.....which meant it was to be custom quilted...........

I eventually came up with a plan for quilting, as in the following photos........

Sherrel picked up her quilt just before we headed off on a trip, back in April. Then we went away again in June and July. I received a text from Sherrel just after we arrived home, that she had received a call that her quilt had won something in Melbourne!! It was  few days later that I received this photo from Sherrel with a photo of her and the quilt with a Highly Commended ribbon!! (Note that Sherrel is colour coordinated with her quilt!!)  Congratulations Sherrel, the piecing accuracy in this quilt was amazing.

Now onto some more quilts........................

Earlier in the year, Jill sent me 4 large quilts, all with amazing needleturn applique. After consultation she decided that 2 of them would be quilted allover and 2 would be custom.......... 

This one, an Octogan quilt, made using William Morris fabrics, was quilted with Leaves and Loops..........

.........and this Starry quilt was quilted allover with Meander...........

Helen has made 2 quilts recently, the first being a pretty floral quilt for her daughters' friend, and this was quilted allover with a floral pattern............

.....and this king size quilt for her granddaughter, was quilted, again with Meander.

Cheryl makes a lot of handpieced hexagon quilts and this was another of those, and is simply quilted with a pattern called Rhapsody...........

Jenny has been busy finishing off a lot of quilts, in readiness for her groups upcoming quilt show, in October. This is a Ricky Tims design, Convergence and is quilted allover with a Modern Maze pattern.

This churn dash quilt was also made by Jenny, and is quilted edge to edge with Baroque Swirls.

Also getting some quilts finished for the quilt show is Sherrel and this top was made with Dragonflies and water lillies fabric. It was quilted allover with a dragonflies pattern.

And another quilt made by Sherrel is this flying geese top, called Flying High, and  made with fabrics she purchased on a recent holiday to Singapore. It was quilted allover with a pattern called Augusta.

This is another quilt made by Jenny, using Tim Holtz fabric range Electic Elements. I custom quilted this one as you can see in the following photos using a lot of geometric patterns as I wanted the texture to show as the fabrics were all rather busy.................

I will finish this post here for now. There are other quilts to show as I have been rather busy in the last few weeks. They can wait for another post, one day.

I still have another post to write soon, with the latest newsfromjude, so will be back soon.

Have a good day. It is the first day of September, so that means the first day of spring. I see the trees are blossoming, the wattles are starting to flower, and yesterday on our drive to the farm, we noticed the canola crops mostly in flower. We do urgently need some rain, as it has been very dry so far this season.

Be back soon

Blessings, From Jude

I am still here!!!

 I can see my last post was titled "From Glendambo to home"........ and we have been home now for 4 weeks! How did all that time go by?? Looking back at the last 4 weeks I can see a lot has happened.......

Max has been busy working through the queue of customer quilts waiting to be done.......My last post made mention of getting ready for a birthday party.....and there is other news to share too, but I will have a separate post for that.

I have a post of recent customer quilts to show you, but it is not finished yet......

I am still a loooong way behind in reading other blogs, although some I have read but not commented on. My apologies to you all. Thanks to those who still check up on me even though posts are few and far between. I have managed to check in on a couple of Chooky's zoom meetings though.

Today I am trying to finish a custom quilt, so will get back to doing that before I post again.....

There was another trip to Naracoorte yesterday.

 Pat and I attended Appraisal day in Adelaide earlier in the month.........

I had an issue with the car during the trip.....it told me that there was a problem with the tyre pressures and gave me an orange warning light........Pat went to the drivers manual and looked up the problem......and after a phone call to someone who should know.......we decided that it was safe to keep driving. 

I had the family photo that was taken at my birthday party enlarged, framed and hung on the lounge wall. It has all of my family and grandies in, and I will treasure this, as they don't all get together in the one place very often.

We received a visit from my cousin and his wife on their way home from a holiday over the border.

We have had visits from other friends, enjoyed meals out with friends and been rather busy sorting more 'stuff' from 2 houses. Not a lot of photos to share though.

That's all for this post, as I need to get back to Max. Be back sometime soon with my other exciting news.

Blessings, From Jude

Glendambo to home...............................

It is cold outside, and I am sitting in the lounge by the fire, so I will try to get the blog up to date with the rest of our trip........

After a very cold night at Glendambo, we were heading south towards Port Augusta, although not sure just how far we would get that day......

This is Lake Hart, which would be a lovely place to camp with the view of the lake. The railway line travels right at the edge of the lake.

The road kept going south, very flat, with little vegetation, and no trees...........

...............then we saw some hills in the distance...................

.............as we got closer to Port Augusta, there were more trees..............

...........and then the Ranges View Rest area where we stopped for a look. There were many vans pulled into this area.............

..............and the countryside here was very bare as you can see.................

........further south we could see the Flinders Ranges to the left and the pipeline that takes water to areas north of here................... 

..............and just south of Port Augusta there are many wind turbines............

Instead of travelling south along the Princes Highway, we decided to take the inland road to the left of the ranges.................to Wilmington and turn south towards Clare from then. We had decided to head for the Barossa and catchup with family for a few days............

.....................the view of the flinders ranges on the left.............

....and then heading through the ranges through Horrocks Pass..........which was a rather windy, steep road through the ranges.........

...............until we reached Wilmington and then headed south again......

....the weather was getting stormy, and we saw a rainbow.......

.the countryside is very different to what we had been through and featured large gum trees and green grass...........

...and then we found the rain, the first we had seen during our whole trip........welcome back to South Australia and goodbye to blue sky and sunshine!! At least the car and caravan had some of the red dust washed off.

We decided to call a halt for the day at Laura, which is a pretty little town in the Mid North of the state.

The caravan park is a community park................

.and Barry was very happy to receive a complimentary plate of scones, jam and cream as he booked in for a night.........

It is a well kept park, with a few quirky decorations in the park........

From Laura we were heading further south.....................through green crops...........

..............and through Clare............

and through Kapunda, which was famous for copper mining and here is a statue of a miner...............we did not stop and do the tourist thing................

and here is our site at Nuriootpa Caravan park where we were booked in for the next 5 nights. We had been having a few hot water issues in the shower, and the water was not as hot as it should be.....so after some investigating...............

...............Barry found the culprit was this part, a tempering mixing valve had a blocked filter, and it was soon fixed and the water was HOT again. 

I did more domestic duties and found the laundry as I had not done any since Alice Springs. We went to the supermarket for supplies and found this when we returned to the car...........

Fortunately Barry is still flexible enough to get in the passenger side, clamber over the fridge in the centre of the seats and get into the drivers' seat and move the car. We may have been waiting awhile for the owner of the green car to return???

We enjoyed an evening meal with DS and family, and gave the kids some glow sticks ...........

.........................and watched Miss Olivia doing her somersaults...........

                         We enjoyed lunch at the Chocolate Factory at Tanunda with DD2 and family...................

I loved these domes at the venue, although we did not use them, they were all fully booked.

While out walking one day, I found the Barossa Bush Chapel, which was a very peaceful place............

We attended the Hope Valley Church with friends on Sunday, and enjoyed lunch following this. We visited some of Barry's friends that afternoon. DD1 and family cooked the evening meal for us, before we returned to the caravan again.

One night the winds were very strong and we wondered what damage would be done to trees and housing....thankfully we were safe......and the next day the rain set in again, so we stayed put for the day and I spent time on the computer getting my bookwork up to date for the accountant, who I had an appointment with soon after getting home.

On the Monday I had an appointment in Adelaide for my 16 year check, which thankfully was all good. Come back in 2 years I was told. We were early for the appointment, so went for  drive up to the hills at Skye, and I took this photo of the view of Adelaide......

..............and then we drove to Waterfall Gully, and you can just see the waterfall in the pic below. We did not have time to walk into the falls, so maybe this is a tourist thing we can do another day??

After the appointment we went back to the van at Nuriootpa for the last night of our trip...... Next morning we headed south again, with a stop at Murray Bridge to see Mum.

Here we are 113km away from Bordertown...............

................and before we went home, we visited the car wash for Barry to get all the northern bugs off the van, and it did take quite a few coins to do this.................

We arrived home about 5pm, after 39 days on the road......................an amazing experience that I enjoyed very much................9,690km!!

We were back to reality, and loads of washing and the unpacking and cleanup to get things ready for the next journey. There are plans in place, but not sure when. We need to do a few things around home for a little while and maybe Max needs to get some quilt done??

Since we arrived home, we have had 2 trips to Naracoorte, moved more furniture around, and are preparing for a birthday party this weekend. Cooking and cleaning is on the agenda. Like I said, reality!!!

Be back soon, with more newsfromjude.

Blessings, From Jude