Chookshed Challenge, Wheels on the Bus

The Wheels on the Bus, my Chookshed Challenge for January, is done.  Number 6 was chosen for January, and it was tucked away in this plastic crate, numbered and ready to go.  My number 6 was a rescued duvet cover featuring transportation and I thought it would make a great donation quilt for a boy.

Challenges for the year, all numbered and waiting their turn

The cover needed a red border, I decided.  Once that was done it was all ready for pinning the layers together.  This was achieved one sunny afternoon sitting at the patio table outside in the fresh air.

Time for pinning

I decided to quilt this in a grid, using my favourite Serpentine stitch, using a variegated red, blue and white thread.  Gemma decided this was a great place to curl up and have a snooze when I had finished for the afternoon.

"I'm so comfy".

Our weather has been wonderful, just a little too hot some days, so I decided to sit outside and stitch  down the quilt binding.  It was much too hot on the patio so I took a chair to the back of the house and sat in the shade to do my stitching.  Gemma came too, and her way of beating the heat was to hunker down in the rhubarb patch.  

Binding time

Gemma in the rhubarb patch

I'm happy with how this quilt turned out.  I know I've mentioned before that I like to make sure I stitch boys donation quilts too, as I feel they sometimes miss out with all the pretty floral fabrics around.  The duvet was quite an inexpensive buy from a local Op Shop and I've already used the duvet back for the backing on an earlier donation quilt.  The last of the duvet back produced enough striped fabric to bind this quilt.

Ready for a young boy

A little more Pink

Call me crazy but I've decided on another  RSC project - it's not as if I don't have enough from previous years waiting to be completed.   I had found a small bag of selvedges sitting and looking rather lonely.  "Don't forget about us", they cried.   I used to collect these but over the years had used quite a few up.  So why didn't I just discard the last remaining handful?  Probably because I thought it would be a good idea to stitch up a few double handed oven mitts to make use of them. My daughter and granddaughters are keen cooks so they will make useful gifts. And I'm sure I'll need another new one sooner or later.   There's certainly not all the colours of the rainbow in the bag, and I found a few in pink for January.  

First I stitched the hand pockets and that used up my pink selvedges.  I construct these oven mitts with hessian (sacking) on the back, then a layer of Insulbrite, a layer of toweling, then the top fabric, in this case a very bright pink.   There is quite a bit of heavy stitching through all the layers so of course I use my walking foot.  Here it is with the binding stitched on the front, and folded over to the back, ready to hand stitch down.   I love those little binding clips, just right for this job.

Ready to complete the binding

Our summer weather has been very hot lately so I sat outside at the back of the house in the shade to get the stitching done.  With my needle, cotton, clips and scissors I was all set, plus a glass of lemon water too.  It was much too hot to sit on the patio with the sun streaming down overhead.  

Stitching time outside

All finished, and the pink selvedges are finally used up

The other selvedge colours I've found is a handful of green, yellow, brown, red, blue, and blacks, all sorted and clipped together.  Wonder what group I'll get to work with next?

Changing Quilts, and a Movie

It's taken me a while, but at long last, I've taken the Christmas quilts down.  With such gorgeous weather, what better to display than "My New Zealand Bird Quilt", made back in I'm very proud of this one, especially as it is hand appliqued and hand quilted, and was designed by NZ designer Mary Fletcher.  I'll let you into a little secret.  The design had a creepy crawly weta together with the iconic tuatara (lizard) block, but there was no way I was going to have one of those on my quilt!  

New Zealand Birds

Of course, the quilt ladder needed changing too.  On the top is the Tee Shirt quilt I made for Robin's 60th birthday.  He passed away in late November and this quilt was on display during his memorial service, and I decided I will leave it out on permanent display on top of the ladder.  On rung two and four is my own work, and hanging on rung three is a row by row quilt made for me some years ago for a big birthday.  It's good to ring the changes and get to see some quilts which have been hidden away for a while.

Quilt ladder, made by Robin

So what else have I been up to?  I went and filled my car up, not such a big deal for most of you, but Robin used to do this for me.  A couple of weeks ago my friend Dot came along to the petrol station at the supermarket with me, to run through all the steps I needed to take.  The first one was to pull up at the pump on the side where the filling cap was!  Then she showed me what I needed to do, read the instructions which guided the customer through, and how to enter the discount code from the supermarket into the machine.  And most important to remember, my little car takes diesel, not petrol.  So now I can be trusted to do this job for myself!

I took myself to the movies today, to see "A Complete Unknown", which tells the story of 19 year old Bob Dylan arriving in New York with his guitar.  I'm not really a Bob Dylan fan, but this film was very interesting and I found out such a lot about his early song writing life, and some of his really early songs are still so well known today.  The film touched on the Kennedy, Cuba, Khrushchev, and the Cuba blockade.  Even down here in far away New Zealand, we feared for a nuclear war, and held our collective breaths, as did the rest of the world.  I was 17 at the time, working for an insurance company in Wellington, the capitol city of New Zealand, and remember attending a lunch time church service held to pray for world peace.  Scary times indeed. 

 Another part of the film that I particularly remember was when "Dylan went Electric".  In 1965 he teamed up with different band members and started recording and performing with electric instruments.  The folk music community and audiences were appalled, accused him of turning his back on the genre, booed on stage and pelted him and his band mates with bottles and cans!  My favourite Bob Dylan song was not written till 1975 so didn't appear in this film.  It is "Shelter from the Storm" full of dark lyrics of love and loss.  I hear it occasionly on the radio station.

Another part of the film which 

Mid Month Chookshed Challenge

Here we are half way through the month - let's see how I'm doing on my Chookshed Challenge for January.  The number chosen was 6, Wheels on the Bus whole cloth quilt, a boy's donation quilt .  I'm making this from a rescued duvet cover I found in an Op Shop (thrift store).

Duvet Cover

The first thing I did was to stitch a red border around the edges, that was easily done.  Then find some backing and batting.  The backing I had planned to use was much too small, so I decided to use a single sized sheet I had tucked away in the linen cupboard.  It was a nice colourful yellow, so toned in with the front of the quilt.

Then it was pinned up.  I usually start this inside on the floor, then carefully carry the quilt outside to the patio table and finish up the job there.

Pinning up the quilt

I've made a start on the machine quilting, and of course Gemma likes helping too.  Her idea of helping is cuddling up  on top of the quilt when I'm finished for the day.  That's fine by me, it's always a nice soft spot for her to rest and relax.

 

Of course she is helping

The quilting is coming along quite well, so hopefully I will have it all finished and bound by the end of the month.

 

Bollywood on Horseback

 Both my granddaughters and their dad are keen horse riders.  There was a competition taking place during the weekend, not too far away, and the family invited me to come and see them.  It was a lovely warm sunny day, so I did.  "Don't bring food" I was told, "there will be plenty to share".  So I packed my folding camping seat, a sun hat, a cardigan in case it turned cold, and set off to Foxton.

My daughter Nicky met me at the gate, showed me where to go and I parked up  by Robert's horse truck.  I wouldn't have found it by myself, they all look the same to me.   And here is is.  He always says he is the favourite son in law.

Robert and one of his horses

The two granddaughters were part of a four person team and were taking part in a quadrille.  The teams dress up in a theme, work out a routine, put together some suitable music, and practise, practise with their mounts for months on end.  This year they chose Bollywood.  The girls had sourced saris through OP Shops and online, and altered them to suit their needs, and of the horses too.  They were certainly very colourful indeed, and even had henna transfers on their hands.

Don't they both look great

Finally it was their turn, the music started and off they went.  The horses behaved well, twisting and turning to the music, walking and cantering, it all looked very professional to me.  But then, I'm only an interested bystander.  The girls did very well, and came second in this event.

Bollywood on horseback

We had lunch beside the horse truck, and I'm pleased I took my own seat as all the horse club members were there.  As advised there was plenty of food to share, so no one went hungry.  Then it was Robert's turn in the quadrille, he was the only man with three ladies.  Their costumes were rather fancy looking highwaymen, dressed in black outfits with lace ruffles, they certainly looked very smart indeed.  A couple of the ladies had done a lot of work getting these costumes ready.

Stand and deliver!  Even the horse has a mask on.

I had a quick guided tour of Robert's "new to him" horse truck.  Big and blue with room for three horses in the back.  I had donated our caravan kitchen stuff to Robert when we cleared out the caravan, pots and pans, crockery, cutlery, toaster and a electric jug, even some towels for him.  I'm pleased everything found a good home.

Robert's new horse truck

It certainly was a fun day out at Foxton, and I enjoyed seeing the girls perform their routine, and catching up with Nicky and Robert and all their horse club friends.  

Just a little Pink for RSC

 A new year, and some more stitching for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I've been taking part in this for several years, and the idea is to use your scraps "one colour at a time".  As I have more RSC UFOs than I care to admit to, which have built up over the years, I've decided to limit my block sets severely this year.  That way, I hope I can also get some of those previous block sets finished - that's the plan anyway.  Pink is the chosen colour for January.

So what have I stitched so far this month?  You may remember that in 2024 I started making hollow nines in an effort to use up some of my 2.5in squares I had accumulated.  I probably have enough for a small cot quilt now, but there are still plenty of those  squares left in the bag to be used up.  And...... they are not my favourite thing to work with.  So what I'm making this year are some framed four patches, in a final effort to deal with those pesky squares.  Nice and simple.

Framed four patches

I also have a bunch of framed four patches I stitched up last year, but these used slightly larger 3inch blocks, and are yet to be made into a quilt top.  So you can appreciate my problem, RSC blocks may well be quick and simple to stitch, but they do seem to hang around for a while!

I've got an idea for another simple RSC block as well, this one for a boy.  I do like to ensure that I do stitch boys donation quilts too.  After all, there always seems to be plenty of floral blocks suitable for girls on the go, and it hardly seems fair that the boys should miss out.  Hopefully this will get stitched shortly.

What's on the Table

 This tablecloth dates back to 2012 when we traveled to the South Island with three other caravans for a three month trip.  I took along some pre sewn  rail fence blocks made up of strips of New Zealand inspired fabrics alternating with pale grey and my Micron ink pen. 

Table cloth documenting our mammoth South Island trip

 Our old cat Muffy was 16 years old back then and we had always placed her in a cattery when we traveled.  But I worried that at her age she might die while we were away, so we took her on  her very first caravan trip, and what a long one it was.  Although she was very unsettled during the ferry trip, she settled down surprising well.  Within a week of being on the road she was reasonably comfortable with the big change in her life.

And here we all were, full of excitement,  traveling down on the Inter Islander Ferry with our friends. Sadly, Robin and Geoff C are no longer with us.

Robin, Jenny, Dot, Pauline, Eileen, Geoff T, Derek, Geoff C, way back in 2012

And what a time we had,  Each  night I would get my Micro pen out and write down, where we stayed, the places we explored, and special sights we had seen.  The writing has faded now over all these years, but the memories are still there.

Writing on the blocks each night

We drove down the east coast,  stopping at all sorts of interesting places and reached Invercargill.  This was quite memorable for our old cat Muffy, as she found some cat nip growing where we were parking up overnight and rolled on the warm concrete in ecstasy!

I think Muffy overdosed on cat nip

We traveled back through Central Otago, and over to the West Coast, back over to Picton, and finally taking the ferry back to Wellington. The scenery of the South Island of New Zealand can only be described in superlatives, such as majestic, stunning, and sensational. With vistas of mountains, rugged peaks, glaciers, rain forests, fiords, rivers, lakes, hot mineral springs, wild coastlines, streams and estuaries, and rolling farmland, each day brought us more wonderful views to marvel over. Each of these wonderful places was faithfully recorded on the rail fence blocks, and the memories will live on each time I use my  table cloth, completed in June 2012.  Eileen had donated me the colourful kiwi fabric which I used for the backing, border and binding.  I think her original intention was to use this fabric to make something for her grandchildren, which never happened.

Completed in June 2012

Our Toyota Land Cruiser towed the caravan 3973km around the South Island, and then we drove a staggering 3413km without the caravan on the back,  tiki touring around.  A grand total of 7386kms for the trip, and we used 1417 litres of diesel.  And all this travelling cost us $2292.17 and our fuel consumption averaged out at approx 18 litres per 100 kilometres.  Goodness knows what the cost of the fuel would be these days, 14 years later.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

 The year 2024 wasn't a bad year, plenty of stitching, quilting and knitting took place.  Social events, club meetings, lunches out, Sew Wot fortnightly get togethers, caravan rally weekends away, and a trip to the South Island to help my son Michael celebrate turning 60.  All this changed of course in late November when my beloved husband Robin passed away unexpectedly.  Such a shock, and I'm still reeling from it.

While clearing out the caravan to prepare it for sale I came across quite a few sets of place mats which I had made over the years.  The latest being these ones, showing a Kiwi enjoying the camping life.

As I had plenty of place mats sets which I use in our home, I decided to send the various caravan sets to the Christmas Rally with my friend Dot.  She then offered them to the lady members, to choose a set to keep.  Luckily there were enough to go around.  That took them off my hands, and they found new homes amongst the caravan club members.  The caravan has not been sold yet, but is currently on a yard, open to offers, to be sold "on behalf".

So what does looking forward look like, I wonder?  On the quilting scene I have my lovely friendly Sew Wot group, and the local quilt guild.  I will be taking part in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge again - only doing a couple of simple block sets this year.  That's because I have so many UFOs from previous RSC years that it driving me to distraction.  After all these weeks of not wanting to, I have finally sat at the sewing machine for a short time, so that must be good.

And I've put my hand up to join in  the Chook Shed Challenge for 2025.  It's always a bit of a worry to me that I can list ten projects so easily, and there are plenty more waiting in  the wings.  Guess I just have too many UFOs.  

Ten projects in the crate ready for the Chook Shed Challenge

And not forgetting the 60th birthday quilt I'm working on for my daughter Nicky.  Plus the quilt I'm planning to make for my great nephew using his grand dad's shirts, I've hardly made a start on this one yet.  

So that's my sewing life taken care of, but I do wonder what is in store for me in other areas.  The family have been extra attentive, and I met my daughter Nicky for lunch on Saturday. We both drove half way to meet in the middle, she drove down, and I drove up.   And several friends have  been very kind, making frequent phone calls to check up to see how I am.

I was very moved to received several letters of condolence, one from an elderly gentleman from the caravanning world who we had known for many, many, years.  His wife passed away four years ago, and he confided that he still sheds tears when thinking of her, and reminded me not to be afraid to let the emotions flow.  

I often glance over at Robin's empty recliner chair, where he used to sit watching sport on TV and also his favourite UTube chanels.  And I light a candle every evening in his honour, and pat his pillow at night before I go to sleep.  

Lighting a candle each evening

Thank you so much to my blogging friends who continue to send me such comforting comments, it really does mean such a lot.  I know so many of you have gone through the same thing, and it is only now that I can appreciate the pain of your loss, together with mine.

Chook Shed Challenge

 It's the first day of the New Year 2025 and the call is out to organise our projects for the Chook Shed Challenge.  It's always a bit of a worry to me that I can list ten projects so easily, and there are plenty more waiting in  the wings.  Guess I just have too many UFOs.

So my list is as follows.  I have to admit that the first five were on my list for 2024.

1.  Elephants on Parade.  This top was completed last year, and I would now like to get it machine quilted.

2.  Pink/Grey Cot Quilt.  I made this bonus top last year to use up the final strips from the elephant quilt.  Needs machine quilting.

3.  Houses.  Another top I assembled last year, to utilise the many house blocks I had stitched up years ago.  This needs machine quilting too.

4.  House Cot Quilt.  I had enough leftover house blocks to put together a bonus cot quilt top, same story, needs machine quilting.

5.  Christmas Stitchery.  This was on my list for last year but never got touched during it's month as we were traveling.  The stitcheries are done and need to be assembled.

6.  Wheels of the Bus Panel.  A transportation panel (from a rescued duvet) that I plan to make into a whole cloth quilt for a boy.

7.  Butterflies.  Inside my bag of butterfly blocks, stitched during a previous Rainbow Scrap Challenge a couple of years ago are blocks for several butterfly quilts.  I'll be happy to finish one of them off, or maybe two?

8.  Burgundy Log Cabin.  Quite an old project and I brought it up to Levin with me when we shifted house about 12 years ago.  It's been sitting patiently in the bag, I think the blocks are done and I'm up to piecing the border.  Any work to take it a bit further will be helpful.

9.  Jungle Panel.  Another panel to work on, this one was received from my former neighbour, which will make a cute cot quilt.

10.  Pencil Pouches.  I want to make several more of these to donate to Foster Hope and Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.  

Ten projects in the bin

Number 6 has been chosen for January.  So it's the Wheels on the Bus panel.  Maybe I can get started tomorrow.

Panel to work on this month

Many thanks to the organisors behind this challenge, I'm looking forward to whittling these UFOs down.