Roses at Last

 
Thanks to some recent rain, our roses have decided to bless us again with a glorious show.  We have been bereft of roses since spring and it looked for a while there that they may not show up again til next spring!  We thought it was just our brown thumbs, but our neighbour has also had a 'no show'.
The particularly dry weather has had a devastating effect on the garden this year.  
This red one smells delicious.  

 

This dark pink one has lots of buds and is promising some good things to come.  It is right beside the clothesline so it gives me something pleasant to look out while I hang out the washing.

This one looks better in the flesh.  Too much sunlight in the photo.  There are lots more buds on it.

 Roses are my favourite flower and they are making me hap hap happy!!

Seeing Red

 For my birthday yesterday my wonderful Thursday quilting friends gave me all these delicious red fabrics.

We are asked what type of fabric we want for our birthday and I chose red. I am seeing a red quilt sometime in my future.  Perhaps a Baltimore type one, but then again, who knows.  I would like to design something different.

Here is Carmel (on the left) with Joan checking out Carmel's quilt of many colours.  She has put all these scraps together in a log cabin style to create this fabulous ecclectic quilt.

Love, Love, Love it.

Calming down

I needed some calming down after last week.  Everything was getting a bit on top of me, so this past weekend we took off to a camp site to meet some neighbourhood friends from 20 years ago when we lived in Brisbane.
We are not campers (especially not me) and they set up their tent for us and they did all the arrangements.  All we had to take was our linen and a bit of food and drink.  It was great fun to catch up.

Here are some 'calming' photos.

















Our humble abode for one night.


This evening we have has some beautiful rain and our rain-water tank is full to overflowing at last.  While some parts of our country have been in flood we have been crying out for rain.  Hope it keeps up for a few more days.
Don't care that I have two loads of washing on the line!! I figure it will eventually dry and it is getting an extra rinse.


As far as crafting goes - nada- but as hubby is going away fishing for 4 days on Friday, I feel some serious sewing and crafting coming on......

Hand Quilting with a difference

Finally I got my act together and started hand quilting my Kaffe Fasset Quilt.  This quilt will be referred to as KFC (Kaffe Fassett collection)  so I don't have to keep saying the whole title.
The weather has cooled down a bit and it is now quite comfortable to quilt for an hour or so each night.

The quilt stand was made by my friend's husband.  It is absolutely fabulous.  You can adjust it up and down to get a comfortable position to quilt, and it also rotates 360 deg, so you simply turn it when you want to head in another direction.  Sometimes though I end up in a big twist, especially with this quilt being so huge.  No problem really, as it is quickly untwisted.  It makes me get up off my butt and do a few stretches.  Too much hand quilting in one sitting is not good for my headaches, so I have to discipline myself to take regular breaks.  I have a small kitchen timer to help me do this about every 20 minutes.

The thread I started quilting with was a sashiko thread and it was a little too thick and tended to shred a bit, so I changed over to a DMC Perle No 8 in a very similar colour.  It is going like a dream now, very fast, as I am using a No 7 crewel needle to quilt with.  It's a bit different look, but I am loving it.

A Trip to the Country

On Sunday I took off for a trip to the country to catch up with an old (I mean long time) crafty friend, Shirley.  We have known each other for some 18 years now and we love to get together and bounce ideas off each other.  She looked after me well.  
This is how Shirley's studio looked when I arrived

 and this is how it was after about half an hour. 

We did have some fun.  Shirley was showing me how to do some silk ribbon embroidery.  I love it - and look forward to doing a lot more of it on my crazy blocks.  This is the on-going project of the CQ which I have been working on for about 5 years.  I am determined to get it finished this year.  Check out some of the blocks here.  I will post some more finished ones, and explanations soon - I promise.

Here is a little sampler of silk ribbon stitches Shirley gave me to look at while I experimented.  Love doing the roses.





 Go over and check out Shirleys new blog.  She does the most exquisite embroidery.  Her underwater scenes have to be seen to be believed.