The 2022 year summary...................

I had a plan to post a summary of 2022, so I went back in time and reread many of my blog posts!! And even though it is now the 2nd day of the New Year, it's better late than never. 

I went back to one of my January  posts and read the following post.............

Some of my plans for 2022 are, (and I am whispering these, not saying them out loud) - The Windy Hill farm quilt, but it has been put away for now and I will get back to it, sometime...... Cutting and planning for a selling table at a group quilt show, just over the border. I have been told this morning that this has been deferred until later in the year, so I now have breathing space......Learning Power Point programme so that I can go on the roster at the church......... sewing scrappy donation quilts.......finishing all the UFO's that I have in progress and not saying how many....... cleaning out old files in the filing cabinet. I've been thinking about a new laptop.......About 3 years ago I started writing my life story book and had worked my way through my first 18 years. This has remained dormant since then, but in the back of my mind, I knew I wanted to get back to this and hopefully this is one of my goals for this year. 

February it will be 20 years since Cornerstone Creations Machine Quilting commenced!! It has been an amazing journey and I have been very blessed. There were plans for a great celebration and a party of some sort, but as I said before plans change easily in current conditions. In the hope that 'things' will ease in time, I have now thought about celebrations in April, from Easter until the end of the month. There will be more details in due course about how and what will happen. 

My plan now is to write a book of my Cornerstone Creations journey. I have many photos on hard drives to add to this story and I can see much time being spent at the computer......... 

In answer to the above...........I did finish the WIndy Hill farm quilt, although had enough blocks for 2 quilts and the second is not done yet....   

 There was a lot of cutting and planning for sale items for market days......,

 I did learn PowerPoint and am now on a roster to do this.......

there have been many donation quilts made and delivered, I am endeavouring to record these and keep a tally.....

I have not finished the UFO's that I have in progress, except for one Windy Hill quilt.....and still not counting how many UFO's there are.....

I did start clearing out the files in the filing cabinet, but note I said start, not finished!!

I am still thinking about a new laptop, am still working with Windows 7.....

I had made no more progress on my life story until last week, and have now written the next chapter, so I guess that counts for something??

The 20 year party for CCMQ did not happen at all, and I have come up with Plan B, so will have more news on that very soon.

And after I put all the CCMQ info into a plastic tub ready to write the story of my journey, I have to confess to there being no more progress. 😞

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It seems like some things never change..... 

I always seem to be behind in reading blogs, also replying to comments..... I apologise and I do appreciate hearing from you......will try to do better in 2023??

Gardening is always in catch up mode as well, I get enthused and spend time catching up, then life takes over and I have to start all over again.....

It's the same with my bookwork, another task I am always playing catch up with.....

......I see that the year started with many restrictions still in place, such as limits on the numbers of people that could gather in one home, and days in isolation for those who had covid and those who were close contacts. This prevented many from having family celebrations in the first part of the year, but for the last few months there are no restrictions and many more covid cases!! Go figure??

I have still been quilting for customers, but doing a lot less. So what do I do with all that spare time?? Good question!

I am still working on my SABLE (Stash accumulated beyond life expectancy) and there has been much cutting and packing and kitting of fabric. There were 2 market days to sell "stuff", and this will be ongoing process.

                

After an absence of more than 2 years, the second part of 2022 it was finally time for retreats and gatherings to recommence .......

QFO days commenced on the first wednesday of each month. I shall do a separate post on the quilts that have been made...........

There were catchups with visiting friends, including a reunion of 4 Aussie Quilters who went to the USA in 2018..................

After missing 2 of my granddaughter's 21st birthday celebrations early in the year, family catch ups started to happen again.............

.....and I had the first trip to Melbourne for 3 years.............

                                     .........and my 11th grandchild was born in November...............

........and in December our family gathered to celebrate Christmas, with all in attendance.

More zoom sewing days were organised by Chooky with friends from all over the world joining in to chat whenever they could. This is a positive result of the isolation and shutdowns from Covid. 

It was a very wet year, with flooding in many areas of the north and east of our country. This has resulted in huge losses for many people with crops flooded and houses inundated. All this water has flowed south and is currently coming down the Murray River into South Australia with much more loss of crops, business' and houses. The river is still to peak in these areas yet. - These photos were taken by my sister last week.........

                     

That is just a small sample of how the year 2022 panned out. Of course there were other happenings, including the farewells and funerals of friends and a few trips up the highway to appointments. There were even some touristy trips to Robe, Serviceton, Murray Bridge and Mannum. 

I might finish this post here, and then think about another one that includes plans for 2023, so will be back with that in due course.

Blessings, From Jude

Customer quilts update......

 

                              Here are the last few customer quilts that I have finished recently.

This pretty child's quilt was made by Maree, and has been quilted edge to edge with Dancing Hearts.

Sue made this orange circle quilt and it was quilted allover with Circle Meander.

Cheryl made this pretty House quilt, all in Pinks. It was custom quilted.

Val finished the next 2 quilts about 20 years ago, and had intended to quilt them herself. Fast forward 20 years and she decided that she could no longer manage it herself so they arrived at my place. Both quilts are quilted  with a pattern called Merrily.

This pretty quilt was made by Sherrel using all floral fabrics and was quilted edge to edge with a pattern called Florale.

Another quilt made by Sue, called Arlington Square and was quilted with Spilt Paint.

Lois made this as a SA Quilters Mystery quilt, and was quilted with Bubble Play.

Anne brought this pretty pink quilt to be quilted and I used the pattern Popcorn.

The pile of QFO quilts has been getting higher, and is my task for this week. We will see just how far I get, and Chooky, take note of the quilt on the bottom!! Not sure how far down the list I will manage!?

That's all folks.

Blessings, From Jude

Wrapping up December

Just a quick post to finish off December, even though it is already January. Nothing has changed and I am running behind as usual. My apologies also that I am behind in reading your blogs. I will catch up, sometime soon!?

 In my last newsfromjude post, I reported on the time with Mum and going back in time.... The time with Mum went very quickly. We had a great time reminiscing and looking through the photo albums. 

Christmas day was fairly quiet. We went to church in the morning and enjoyed morning tea after the service.We enjoyed roast turkey for lunch and were joined by a friend whose family gathering was cancelled due to illness. Some food preparation for our Boxing Day gathering took up some of the afternoon, and Mum spent time packing her case to go home.

Boxing day temperature was much higher and we set off early for Murray Bridge so that Mum could unpack at home before we went to my sister's house for our extended family annual gathering. It is rather fortunate that they have a swimming pool, which entertained many of the younger members of the family. Our numbers were down this year, due to some family with the dreaded C, and a niece holidaying in the Antarctic.

On the way home from Murray Bridge I collected another passenger, and Raylene came came home with me. The days leading up to the end of the year also went quickly. After going through all the history with mum, I decided I needed to get back into my life story which I had started years ago. I spent the next few days sorting the information and photos and getting the next chapter written. In the mornings I quilted some customer allover quilts with Max and afternoons were taken up on the computer. Family history is like going down another rabbit hole, and I can see that I might be down there for a looooong time to come. (It is packed up again, for now as I have other duties!)

Raylene put a couple of QFO tops together, ready for the quilter to come out of the rabbit hole sometime!

We did spend some time in the reclining position, with our feet up, reading books.

And Val came in to spend some time with us and is staying for a few days too.

The year finished off with a few friends here for the evening to celebrate the New Year and also to celebrate a birthday for the fairy who happens to have been a New Year's Eve special delivery for her mother..... not saying how many years though!

I have another post of recent customer quilts to finish off 2022 news so will be back with that soon. And then another post to summarize the year that was 2022. Stay tuned.

Blessings, From Jude

 

Tis Christmas time......

 Wishing you all a Blessed Christmas day as we celebrate the birth of Jesus. 

Blessings, from Jude

Looking back in time..............

It must be time once again for the latest newsfromjude. My last post was written while staying at Mum's after our family Christmas in Adelaide. I spent 5 days staying with Mum and managed to fill in the days easily. 

I spent a day in the Barossa doing Grandma duty with Mr Tate and Miss Bridie while DS and DIL went to appointments in the city. A fair bit of the time was spent trying to pass the "driving test" for remote control cars. Needless to say, Tate always raced me. It took awhile for this Grandma to learn the coordination needed to control where the car goes. (Shares in the battery companies might be a good investment I think!!)

When Miss Bridie came home from school, we played a game of Bingo.

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One afternoon I took Mum for a drive and we toured around the river areas to see how things looked. At Sturt Reserve, which is the main river front area of the town, they have built a levee surrounding the Rowing Club building.

It will be interesting to see if this works, depending how far the river rises yet.

I then drove along to the wharf area and here is the railway bridge with the 1956 flood marker on it. There is still a way for the level to get to this mark, but the peak is still to come down and no one really knows?? There is a lot of water to come down from NSW and the snow fields yet.

As I was coming back to the car, Mum pointed to the train about to cross the bridge, so my timing was good for a pic.  

The rail bridge is in the foreground and the road bridge in the background. Repairs are being done to the road bridge, so there are traffic restrictions for traffic to going one way only at present. Last week there was an accident on Swanport Bridge which takes all the highway traffic. For a few hours all that traffic was detoured through Murray Bridge and it was banked up for miles!!

From the wharf area we drove further up and could see how fast the river was flowing and coming in at various places.

It's the first time I have ever seen a rubbish bin closed due to flooding!!

I shall be back in Murray Bridge in a few days, so will be curious to see how much more water has come down. Apparently there have been a few levee breaks along the river in places. 

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I mentioned that Mum's sister died recently and we farewelled her last Thursday. This photo was taken a few years ago when Aunty Coral (left) won the WAB Genoa cake competition. (Mum on the right). She was an amazing cook and won many ribbons at shows. The Eulogy told of her many other achievements in her 94 1/2 years.

Following the service, lunch was served at the Brinkley Hall, which was the centre of many district functions when we were all growing up.

Here is a photo of 17 of the 45 cousins in our family!!

Out of the 10 members of the family, there are now 4 remaining, with the oldest at 96 being my uncle in Queensland, who was unable to attend. Here is Mum and her younger brother and sister. 

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After the funeral Mum and I packed our 'stuff' and Mum has come to Bordertown with me until Boxing Day. It looks like we might be packed for a month??

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Home again, and I picked the first of the zucchini.............

..............and more strawberries.

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Our family is well known for being avid readers, and here you see us both lined up with lunch and a book!! Mum has read 2 books this week......

.....and my read has been this book, The Dry, by Jane Harper. I enjoyed this and now look forward to seeing the movie.

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As well as being avid readers, some of the family write a diary. Aunty Coral did this for many years, and her daughter has typed them up and printed them out. We brought them home with us to read while Mum was here, and our week has taken us back in time reading these. These diaries are a very comprehensive record of family events, which include not just Aunty's immediate family but our whole extended family. She also had a book of newspaper clippings which was collected over many years of births, deaths and marriages as well as events. There may not been a lot of work happening in this house this week, but there has been a lot of memories and history. 

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Reading all this has made me want to get back to the story of my life that I started writing a few years ago. Out came all my photo albums for Mum to look at.

I decided that there were a lot of photos in my albums of people that my children would not know, so we spent time dismantling a few of my books and putting some photos into envelopes to give to those people or their families. 

In some of those old albums, (back in the 70's) the photos were stuck in with plastic sleeves over the pages. Some of the pictures came out easily, but some were stuck well, so out came the hair dryer, which helped to melt the glue!

I had information and photos in many places, and I think now that it is a bit more organised and I hope to spend some January time making further progress? (I think that my January list is getting a bit long?)

I also came across all these letters. Early in my married life, after moving away from home, I used to write letters to Mum and Dad. Mum kept a lot of these and some time ago she gave them back to me. I read them all tonight and had some chuckles. I sent a pic of a note to DS for him to read, when he was just a baby. He laughed too, and asked why did I write and not phone instead?? Tis a whole different era isn't it? Back then (40 years ago) a long distance phone call was quite expensive, so letters were the main communication. Now phone calls on a mobile with a plan are fairly cheap, and sometimes unlimited, and distance is not considered.

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I did say there has not been much work happening, but I did catch Mum cleaning out the cutlery drawer which was getting rather untidy..................

...............and this morning she decided to attack the plastics drawers and match up lids and bottoms!! There are a few items that have hit the bin, and the drawers are tidy, well until I decide to rummage around in them again! How do containers lose their lids?? Or how do the containers disappear!!

After the plastics drawers were tidy, I decided that some time in the pantry would be well spent, and now that is tidier and I can see what's in there again!

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Yesterday we had a morning tea while Mum was here, and enjoyed scones, cake, a cuppa and much conversation, solving the world's problems.

Tomorrow will be another day sorting out photos and information for my life story. I will cook some meat for our lunch for Christmas day. I have been spending the first hour of each day in my garden, watering and still attacking the weeds. 

Be back soon,

Blessings, From Jude