French General Quilt Top Completed

I love this fabric range! The top I worked on during Connected Quilters' retreat in December is completed now that the two borders have been added. The larger red print border caused some headaches getting the repeats lined up and I just had enough fabric by cutting the strips lengthwise instead of across the fabric. How good is that?

I think I will quilt this one myself so plan to finish the KF Snowballs one as well and then have a big basting day as I know I will be quilting that one. I have been trying to get to my machine but have been sidetracked a lot.

Red Flowering Gum Tree

G's red flowering gum is about to turn one year old and also flowering ... it's amazing!

When you take a close look it's fascinating how the little caps on the flower buds pop off and the flowers start to unfold and emerge, a bit like a butterfly.The tree is covered in flower buds and has done really well. Two previous trees failed in the back yard so the front is obviously the way to go.

Pumpkin Scones

Made a batch of delicious pumpkin scones this afternoon as requested by daughter E. The boys delivered a couple to her at Bunnings when they went to pick up a "few things". She also asked that I save a bit of uncooked dough for her ...

Belated Trophy

At the Bayside Kangaroos Orienteering Club Christmas Dinner on 11 December 2010 I belatedly received my 2009 trophy for "BK Most Improved Female Orienteer". It was an honour but it was a shame I didn't know of it until now! I did have a good 2009 though with 2nd placing in my age group in the State Series, some success at the Nationals and several placings in Street O. It does spur me on for 2011!

Retreat Weekend at Sewjourn

Last weekend the ladies from Connected Quilters again journeyed to Lancefield for our annual Retreat to quilt and create. A few were sadly missing ...

One car took the long way round via the quilt shops in Ballarat and Gisborne where we made some small purchases and had a nice lunch at the Beechworth Bakery in Ballarat, appreciating the bottomless cups of tea and coffee!

I found a Prints Charming cushion panel to embroider and a piece of Reece Scannell fabric in grey for the backing, some threads, and a couple of remnants in the huge box at Gail's.

I took my French General fabrics to work on and managed to put together  the whole 70 blocks, join 64 of them and make the top. I had envisaged just binding it, but the others were adamant borders were needed. After many, many auditions the two borders were finally chosen.

C and I also drove just out of town to poke around the Cemetery to see how far back the graves dated (1860s) and look at the wrought iron fences surrounding many from the 19th century.

Most of the graves had a shamrock/four leaf clover theme in their decoration and the names were 99% Irish.

I also photographed a terrific example of an anvil cloud on the horizon.

Sewing Tidies

The other day I ran up three new sewing tidies on the machine. One was for my quilting group's Kris Kringle gift and it came out of the lucky dip for just the person who wanted one! How good is that?!
The others include one for me (finally) and one for Vickery Quilt and Craft Retreat.

Snowballs Quilt Progress

Remember the quilt for my son with the more than 1,000 1.5 inch squares to be sewn to the corners of the blocks? It is the "Gilded Snowballs" Quilt form Kaffe Fassett's book "Quilts in the Sun". With three colours used for the corner squares, each row had to be carefully laid out according to the pattern, so I took over the dining table for this purpose ... many dinners on our knees in the lounge room later and all the rows are together. It took me over two weeks to do the 19 rows on and off, each row took about an hour!  I still have to iron the rows and piece them together then piece the borders and add them so a long way to completion. But the end is in sight!

I intend to take the rows and border pieces away on the annual Connected Quilters Retreat this weekend and work on it and one other project.