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

Happy Birthday....

Happy Birthday to my 6th grandchild, and the 3rd grandson. It hardly seems like 11 years ago that you were born..... from this tiny little bundle.........

and growing into this cheeky little guy, with the cute smile............

.........whoopsie, perhaps the smile was missing in this pic??

............and to this photo I 'borrowed' from facebook this morning.

 It was good to have a chat this morning, and hope you day is special.  Luv Granny

Blessings, From Jude

March has gone............

 April has arrived, so I better update newsfromjude to the end of March. So what have I been up to? 

The fairy came for a week and wore her fingers out sewing bindings on donation quilts. She brought 3 back from their city holiday all finished, and promptly started on the next 3 that had been quilted. During the week I quilted another 5 and binding was made for those as well. In about 4 days she had made the binding, machine sewn to the quilts, and hand stitched a total of 8 quilts, which I have worked out to be about 1700" of binding!! I have to believe her when she tells me she enjoys hand sewing, but I know it's not my favourite thing to do, so I am very very thankful for my fairy.  

These are the 11 we have done, and another 2 were donated by a group member, and there are 3 more made and waiting to be quilted and bound, to make up the total of 16 quilts that I have promised for a June delivery. We are almost there! (I will post photos of them all when they are done.)

Once the bindings were done, it was time to look around for another job. This lady doesn't like to be idle...... and just loves to get busy with the Go Cutter...........

........and there are always more scraps to be sorted. We used to have a system where each drawer contained a specified size, but there is a change now. We have drawers sorted with colours instead, so hopefully this system will work?

A friend knew how disappointed I was in my tomato harvest, so brought me a bucket of her surplus, which have been stewed and are now in the freezer for future use.

True confessions!  This is a story about how NOT to burn down your house! One morning I decided to boil some eggs, and put cold water in the saucepan. Hmm, while it boils and before I put the eggs in, I'll just go and check something on the computer!!! And one thing led to another and I forgot about the saucepan,....... until much, much later.......... and rushed back into the kitchen...... water was definitely boiled, in fact it was boiled dry..... and the saucepan was so hot, I believe it wouldn't have been long before the knob on the lid melted?? So I grabbed the saucepan and was going to put it in the sink and put water on it, but..... I had been slack that morning and filled the sink with the dishes and hot water and not come back to wash them...... so couldn't put the saucepan in there could I? Quickly thinking, (but prob not good thinking!!) and I grabbed a tea towel to put the saucepan on the bench so I didn't burn the bench!! Wrong! You can see what happened to my tea towel, and I am so glad I didn't go out of the kitchen this time, because it wasn't long before the smoke was coming from the tea towel. A fire would have been the next step, but I grabbed it and headed out to the lawn and the hose. Lesson learned! Don't leave anything on the stove and leave the room! One thing to be thankful for, I hadn't put the eggs in the water! Imagine the smell of burnt eggs??

Max has been fortunate this week and had the royal treatment that we have been waiting years for. My dealer from Sydney has retired and there are not many specialized people to service and fix these machines. It was great to hear recently that the tech from Brisbane was doing to rounds of our state and he came on Tuesday! A few things were adjusted and replaced, but apparently Max is in good condition for his age and the thousands of quilts he has done! Thankyou Moreno. 

He did find a nest of thread in a place that I couldn't get at.

River City Quilts in Brisbane are collecting quilts for the flood victims of Qld and NSW, and it was a great opportunity to get quilts freighted back to Brisbane in the van with Moreno. Our local group have donated 22 quilts to this cause and here they are all packed ready to go with him. (The only problem was these were all stacked neatly by my front door, and he was parked by my workroom sliding door and he was about to leave when I remembered the quilts were all still by the front door!! I almost had to chase him over the border!)

Here are the pictures of the quilts that were donated by various members of the Gum Tree Quilters.

I have spent a bit of time in the garden planting some winter veges, but need to be out there more than I am. My 'get up and go' has 'got up and left', so I am trying to resolve this fatigue issue and hopefully I will feel more motivated. 

I have enjoyed my stitching time and trying to use up the scraps that seem to be lying around everywhere here. It was lovely to spend some time yesterday sewing with a friend who was in town for a few days.

My 20 year celebration plans have been put on hold again. The covid situation has not got better, in fact numbers are increasing, so I am not venturing too far. I hope things are good in your world, and you are staying safe. 

Time to finish this post and head to the kitchen and find something to eat. Be back 'sometime'.

Blessings, From Jude