Will I have enough?

We are busy packing up the caravan for our fast approaching “South Island Odyssey” caravan trip, and plan to be away for three months.  As I’m known to be a keen P&Qer, friends have asked me if I’m packing my sewing machine too.  No, I’m not, as I expect we will be kept busy exploring all those wonderful out-of-the-way places down south.  But I have traced off several stitcheries – just hope I’ve have enough.  So think of me sitting beside a lake somewhere, or looking out over the coastline, or maybe gazing in awe at one of those fabulous mountains with my stitching in hand!

Also tucked away in my stitching bag is a stack of “rail fence” blocks, made in a variety of New Zealand fabrics and a pale green, together with my trusty Pigma pen.  The plan is to write the name of the places we stay on the pale green fabric, and eventually make the blocks up into a memory quilt of our travels.

My travelling rail fence blocks

The tale of the Star Quilt

Way back in the August 2000 I went to visit my Aunt Win and presented her with a quilt I had just finished.  My Aunt had recently sold her home and had moved in to a rest home.  Her room decor was rather bland but was carpeted in a pretty shade of blue.  Checking my stash, I found a length of Indian striped cotton in blues and burgundy.  That would be just right, I thought to myself.  As I love stars, it was an easy choice of pattern, and I added a pieced border of half square triangles to finish the quilt off.  Aunt Win’s quilt was backed with a soft pale blue floral winceyette (flannel) for extra warmth, and I machine quilted it with simple straight line quilting. 

Star quilt for Aunt Win

My Aunt was rather excited to get such a large parcel and eagerly ripped open the paper to see what was inside.  “Oh”, she said, “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever made me”.  I laid the quilt over her bed and it really made a difference to the look of her bedroom.

Aunt Win with her quilt

Fast forward to late 2011 and I received a telephone call from my cousin.  She told me that our Aunt  had to change rest homes as she needed more care and couldn’t take the quilt with her.  Would I come and collect it please?   The quilt was handed over to me and I remarked that it didn’t seem to have been used much.  It appeared that the quilt spent most of it’s life folded up and placed in a drawer.  Oh dear, now what was I going to do with it?  We were travelling north on the way to see my sister and her family and I took the quilt inside with me and related what had happened.  My great niece, 12 year old Kate, saw the folded quilt.  “Is that for me?’, she asked, “I just love it!”   It looked very much like the quilt has found a new home.

Kate and her new quilt

Kate and I did a deal.  I took the quilt back home with me for laundering – after all that time hidden away in a drawer the quilt could do with a bit of freshening up.  I also added a new quilt label on the back, leaving the original label in place to show the family history.  The new label reads: “This quilt is gifted to Kate from her Great Aunt Jenny and her Great-great Aunt Win”.    Then I carefully wrapped the quilt and posted it back up to Kate.  I’m so pleased that the quilt not only has a new appreciative owner, but also stays in the family.  What a great outcome.

Cute teddy stitcheries

I always pack a bag of hand stitching when we have a caravan weekend away.  So far I’ve managed to do a little bit of work on my teddy bear stitcheries.  I have a couple more to complete  and then these little cuties will be made into gifts later on. 

Our time away in the caravan is usually very “full on” so it is nice to take a bit of time to do something more restful. 

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