Fixing up an “oopsie”

I couldn’t hang my Christmas wreath at Christmas.  Why?  Because it looked like this!  Not a pretty sight at all, I’m sure you will agree.  And the reason why it ended up in this state is because Robin was trying to find something or other in the wardrobe in the spare room where it was safely stored, (or so I thought) , and lent on it.  Then snap, it broke in two places.  I had made this fabric wreath way back in the mists of time when I was quite new to patchwork and quilting, and didn’t even take a note of when it was completed.  But I can certainly remember attending the class at my local shop, Thimbles and Threads. 

It’s broken

To fix it I needed to purchase a new polystyrene wreath.  But of course, after all these years, the wreath I bought wasn’t quite the same, and I wondered if in fact it was a bit fatter.  Yes, it certainly was, and I couldn’t slide the fabric onto the cut edge.  Luckily my design had a tuck sewn into the top of the fabric to make a small ruffle.  Maybe if I unstitch this, I’ll have enough space to slide the wreath fabric on, I reasoned.  So I sat out on the back deck yesterday with my trusty seam ripper in my hand to undo the row of stitching.

Let’s hope this works.

Success – there was just enough room for the fabric sausage to slip right over the polystyrene ring.  A fellow crafter had suggested earlier that I cut a wedge shaped piece out of the ring giving more room to manoeuvre the fabric.  Robin was in charge of finding some suitable glue in his shed to stick the wedge back in place.  That done, we left it overnight to for the glue to set.

Ring with the wedge cut out

Today it was a quick job to hand stitch the seam in place and now my Christmas wreath is repaired and will be ready to be hung up next Christmas.  And to stop the same fate befalling it yet again, it is packed away in a large “see through” plastic bag.   Hopefully that will stop him manhandling my wreath again!  

All fixed now

Marshmallows and Roses

It wasn’t too bad a day for a BBQ yesterday.  The wind was a little blustery to start with, and by mid afternoon had dropped right away and the temperatures warmed up considerably.  It was a bit of a “bon voyage” get together,  with our friends wishing us well on our upcoming “South Island Odyssey Tour”.  We supplied the sausages, bread rolls and tasty roast potatoes, and everyone else contributed with salads.  One friend brought along a lovely big plate of home made chocolate éclairs, which complemented my Boysenberry Marshmallow Dessert.  I’ll share the recipe as it is so easy to make and looks good when you need to a dessert for a pot luck meal.  Do try it and let me know what you think.

Boysenberry Marshmallow Dessert

1 dessert spoon gelatine, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 1 pkt soft marshmallows, 1/2 pint whipped cream, 3/4 cup boiling water, 1 tin boysenberries

Dissolve gelatine in boiling water, add vanilla and fruit, and leave to cool.  Add marshmallows cut in half.  Fold in whipped cream, place in bowl and refrigerate.

Boysenberry Marshmallow Dessert

Our friend Trish (of chocolate éclair fame)  brought along a big bunch of roses from her garden.  Trish loves her roses and spends a lot of time caring for them, but told us that the rose bushes were getting rather battered about with the incessant wind lately.  This mixed bunch of varieties not only look lovely, but have a most delightful scent too.

A beautiful bunch of roses from Trish

Pinestream Quilters 1st meeting of the year

It seemed a long time since our last quilt club meeting, way back in November, so that probably explains why there was such a happy bunch of quilters all chatting madly together last night.  The January meeting is always rather informal and we do not have a speaker for this month.  Instead, members have the opportunity to set up stalls to sell their extra quilting goods.  Most of us have plenty of these, don’t we,  - in fact sometimes we wonder if some of our “stuff” doesn’t get together at night and breed!  I shared a table with Jenni F and we laid out our fabric, buttons, orphan blocks and books for members to peruse and hopefully purchase.  We didn’t sell everything, but both of us went home with less than we arrived with, so that’s got to be good.  I noticed that some of the other tables had smaller pieces of fabric packed up in “grab bags”, and these sold very well. 

Then it was time for show and tell, although I must admit that after all this time between meetings there didn’t seem to be an extra lot of quilts on show.  Perhaps everyone was away on holidays and didn’t have too much time to spend sewing.  These two pretty little quilts were made to be donated to  the Neo Natal Ward at Hutt Hospital.  Our Pinestream members are very committed and make lots of little quilts for this good cause throughout the year.

Two quilts for the Neo Natal Ward

Sharon brought along her quilt which will be donated to brighten up the Palliative Care Unit of Wellington Hospital.  Those cheeky looking cats came in a panel, she told me, and then she carefully pieced all those stripes for the sashings.  She completed the quilt with a checkerboard border.  What a lovely quilt, and it will surely be most appreciated.

Sharon’s cheeky cat quilt is hospital bound

Another bright and breezy quilt was this one from Anne, full of black and white spots set off with plenty of colour.  This was a class from Thimbles and Threads, and it certainly looks like it would have been a lot of fun to make.  There’s stars in there, houses, trees and goodness knows what else!  Anne’s quilt was machine quilted by Sue B, who always does a great job.

Anne’s fun quilt

Burgundy and cream as a colour scheme always looks good, and Barbara bought along this lovely quilt.  Very simple, with log cabin blocks in the corners, and a nice restful colour scheme.

  Barbara’s burgundy and cream quilt

Katherine is well known for working with wool, and she brought along three quilts for show and tell.  I rather liked this one with the addition of blue crosses stitched behind sheeting, making it look quite ethereal.

Wool and sheeting quilt made by Katherine

So those are the highlights from our January meeting, and as usual it was a great night out.  The supper was as delicious as ever, especially the hand made chocolates – I was very restrained and only had one!  It was good to catch up with members I hadn’t seen in a while over the Christmas break. 

My Hero

I’m the first to admit that I am not the computer expert in this household, and tend to work on a “need to know” basis.  As long as I have the necessary know-how to do the tasks I want to on the computer, I’m happy.  All this behind the scenes stuff is too much for me.  But then again, I’m not a complete dummy, after all, I do know how to e-mail and write letters, documents and blogs.  However I needed Robin’s help recently, as  I’m trying hard to get my quilt documentation up to date.  There’s no trouble with the more recent projects as the digital photos are stored on the computer and I know how to do that.  But I’ve got heaps of old photos that needed scanning and uploading.  After being shown several times and failing miserably, I asked Robin to do it for me.  We worked as a team, with me running up and down the hallway to place each photo in the scanner, and with him uploading them onto the laptop.  Isn’t this new fangled wireless technology wonderful!  So Robin is certainly my hero.

Robin busy uploading my quilt photos

Writing up the story behind each quilt is quite a slow process, but I’m getting there.  It will take some time to get the whole job done, so I try and do a bit each week, writing then printing off the pages.  Luckily, along with the old photos I have kept details of the size of each quilt, and fabric samples as well.  I’d forgotten about some of the quilts I had made long ago and given away, so it is a real trip down memory lane. 

.Quilt document folder – made by my daughter

Not a single stitch

We’ve just come home from a long weekend (3 day) caravan rally at Opaki School, Masterton.  This is a lovely rural school surrounded by large mature trees, and we noticed a whole lot of scare crows surrounding the school vegetable patch. Most of them seemed to be in quite a state of disarray and were practically falling over, so I imagine they had been on scare crow duty  for quite some time.  There was fun and entertainment arranged for us campers all weekend, from a Dutch Auction, BBQ meal, and a musical evening too.  Then we had morning teas and happy hours every day, so it was certainly all go.  The weather ranged from hot and sunny with us sheltering under a shady tree then changed to wet, wild and windy.  The forecast promised us some hail as well, but that didn’t eventuate.

One of the scare crows seen at Opaki School

Sadly I didn’t have time to do a single stitch of my hand-work which I had diligently packed in the caravan.  .  But I did notice one happy camper doing some stitching in the hall, so went over to have a look at what she was working on.  She was doing cross stitch, and her pattern had been digitally produced from a family photo, some how or other.  I understand that there are computer programmes which can do this.

Am I stitching today now we have returned home?  Sadly again, the answer is no.  But I’ve done a large load of washing, and will be ironing shortly before the day is out.  We’ve unpacked the caravan and cleaned the fridge and bathroom, then vacuumed the floor.  What I really need to do is to get my light box out and trace out a couple of stitchery patterns.  We have an extra  “looooong”  caravan trip coming up soon and I must make sure that I have plenty of stitching all prepared for me to work on.  There’s sure to be some time in between the travelling and sight seeing when I’ll be able to relax over a bit of hand stitching.

Shirley’s Wild Animal Quilt

We met up with two other couples, old friends of many years, for lunch yesterday, and surprise, surprise, the other ladies are quilters too.  We weren’t always quilters, but as the years moved on, we started quilting, one by one.  Shirley had brought along the quilt top she had just completed for us other two quilters to admire.  It is a large single sized quilt, and her husband Lewis is completely hidden behind it as he holds it up for the photo shoot.

Shirley and her Wild Animal quilt

This was a “block of the month” quilt and Shirley purchased it from Grandmother’s Garden Quilt Shop in Hamilton. The fabrics supplied were lovely batiks and Shirley enjoyed stitching each block as it was sent out.  There was an awful lot of work involved in this quilt as every spot and stripe on the animals is appliquéd onto the body fabric.  This will be a gift for her little grand-daughter in Auckland, who is sure to love it for years to come.  Shirley did a wonderful job, and as she commented, she now just has to quilt it!

Aunt Dawn

I had lost touch with my Dad’s side of the family when my parents split up many years ago when I was just 8 years old.  My sister Kathleen had been researching the family tree, and after discovering a formerly unknown cousin, the pieces all fitted together and we made contact again several years ago.  My aunt wasn’t anything like I had imagined.  Everything about her was dainty, from her slight build to her tiny hands and feet.  She had grey hair, cut in a fashionable bob, and her eyes twinkled from behind her glasses as she talked.  I really wanted to know about my father, as my mother refused to talk about him while we were growing up.  “Your Dad really had to grow up early”, Dawn told me.  “He left school at 12 to work in a grocer’s shop and as he was bringing home a wage, he really was the man of the house”.  Dawn told me that she had often wondered about us two girls over the years, and crocheted us both a lovely woollen rug as a “welcome back into the family” gift. 

Crocheted blanket

We called in to see my aunt today and she proudly showed me her sewing area she had set up in the garage - as she doesn’t drive she has plenty of room for her sewing supplies.  Dawn loves to potter around on her sewing machine.  “Perhaps you’ll be taking up quilting next?” I asked her.  “Oh no”, she replied, “I’m couldn’t be a quilter like you”.  That’s all right Dawn,  I don’t know how to crotchet!

Dawn at her sewing machine