What has been happening?

 Here we are half way through another month, and so it must be time for newsfromjude again. The family birthdays have quietened down and the photo files don't tell me a lot. So much of life seems to happen lately without me searching for the camera. Life is certainly different without the retreats and no trips up the highway to report on. 

There has been more sorting and going through 'stuff'. I had to move the accumulation of 'stuff' that had found a home under Max over the years before the mechanic arrived. This was all thrown into one of the bedrooms "out of sight!". 

This bedroom is needed this weekend for a small Easter retreat here at Number 8, so it was time to clear the room. I will admit that some of it has gone back under Max for now, but I have found a few things and sorted some more.

So what did I find?? 

This was a little quilt made when I first started my business and was to be quilted and hung at shows. It seems that I did get the quilting done, but there was no binding. My binding fairy has now put binding on and it will be donated.

This was another of the same design and I started the quilting, but not finished. This also now has binding and is in the donation pile as well.

And here is another UFO, and no attempt at quilting, although it did have the wadding and backing with it. I have decided to finish this with quilting, and make it into a cushion cover for a gift. Hopefully this will be done over the weekend sometime.

Here is another UFO, which was made by one of my granddaughters, many years ago. It was basted and she had started quilting it. I have now quilted in the ditch and the fairy has added binding and it is done. I will be donating this back to GD2. (Photo to come later).

I had lunch with GD1 when she was in town last week, which was a lovely catchup after not seeing her since Christmas.

I "attended" a wedding in India via Zoom of the daughter of friends. The wonders of modern technology is amazing. 

This post was on the 2022 Call for Quilts - Australian Floods facebook page. That's an amazing tally of quilts so far and I know there are other collection points doing a great job too. 

The last 3 quilts for WCH have been quilted and I am pleased to report that my binding fairy has returned to complete the job.

 (A friend send me a message this week, stating that it must be nice to have my own personal binding fairy, and I have to agree with her!) I will do a separate post of all the WCH quilts in due course.

STITCHING TIME

I had a lovely sewing day recently when a friend was in town. We both enjoyed our chatter and stitching time and we achieved a  lot. Lot of red strips were sewn into sets and more half square triangles are ready for another project. 

I crosscut the strip sets while I was watching the zoom wedding. I had the laptop turned away from me, hoping I wasn't visible as I did have my dressing gown on!

After that I made 9 patches and picked out sashing and border fabrics........ 

.........and needed another row, but was running out of red squares. There were lots of smaller bits from the end of the strip sets, and I decided it was patchwork and so joined the pieces..........

...and after pressing the seams are hardly noticeable are they?

Ta daa...... a finish. Another donation quilt.

There is no rest for the binding fairy!!

A few days later a friend called in a talked me into trying this ruler. I had some fabrics left over from one of the Ready Set & Sew kits so decided to have a play.

This was the first attempt and I had thought to put 4 blocks together to make a star in the centre........

.............or this design............

..................but after making quite a few blocks I changed my mind........ as it might work if all the fabrics were the same tone, but with all those solid, darker fabrics.... and quoting a friend.... who said "It's a bit everywhere!" She was more polite in her thinking than I was! 

My "assistants" got busy and rearranged the blocks to spread out the solid colours a bit more.

Plan B then came out and I decided to sash the blocks which I was very happy with!

And Ta Daaa, borders added and another donation quilt is done.

One lovely sunny afternoon we had time in the pergola and the binding was finished.

After all this stitching, I knew that I should give the machine a good clean out and defluff! I said to Raylene to remind me to clean it out..... and this lady is the queen of making notes... and later I walked past the machine and look what I found! So of course I had to clean it and found lots of fluff.

I have enjoyed my stitching time and hope to get some more this weekend while we are chatting away. It will be 'almost' like old times. 

A few more customer quilts have been done with Max, and a little time has been spent in the garden. The local surgery did Flue injections 'drive thru' style this week while I sat in my car, which was great. 

I'll be back with a report of our weekend. Hope you are enjoying whatever you are doing this weekend. The weather is lovely this week, so we will make the most of it before the cold arrives.

Blessings, From Jude