Quilting Owl

It has been a busy week with lots to distract me from starting a new project although I have been tempted several times to do this.  I kept picking up a notebook and jotting down ideas and playing with odd pieces of beautiful fabric and then I remembered that word "focus" and went back to my machine quilting.  Well I finally finished the "Tried and True" quilt and now just have to stitch down the binding and this will be another project off the work table. When machine quilting some of my favourite tools are these - a marking pencil with ceramic leads which disappears with the aid of the eraser and I wouldn't be without my Hera marker and unpicker. I have tried lots of different gloves and only use them in the Tropical Summer when I am in cool airconditioning but my current favourites are the Machingers which I use with the Walking Foot and the Ansell HyFlex Multi Purpose Gloves for free motioning quilting.  The HyFlex gloves come from the Supermarket and I h...

I finished stitching the binding on this wall quilt today which was machine pieced and quilted and uses the Winding Ways block.  The original intention was to make a single bed sized quilt but I realised that was not going to happen so instead decided to try something a bit special with the border.  Adding a piping with a curved border was a lot fiddlier than I would have liked but it is finished now and all that is left to do is for me to decide on a name and cross this project off the UFO list. To select the winner for the fabric giveaway, I wrote down and numbered all the names of people who left comments and sent me emails and then fired up the Random Number Generator which selected the lucky number 4 which belongs to Linda who has a lovely blog called billabongs2bling .  Thank you to everyone who entered this draw and for your support throughout my first year and a bit of blogging. Till next time Frances

While I was checking out a few blogs last night (or I should say very early this morning) I noticed that Barbara Chainey  is having a Blog Anniversary Giveaway and the prize is a Tentmaker's applique piece.  This made me remember a quilt I have in my "Interesting Small Quilt" collection which I purchased at AQC (Australasian Quilt Convention) in Melbourne some years ago.  Jenny Bowker (who was living in Cairo at the time) brought to Australia a couple of the Tentmakers of Cairo with a collection of their quilts.  It was a wonderful exhibition but the really amazing part was being able to watch one of the Tentmakers stitching his applique which he did all day throughout the Convention. Tentmakers of Cairo Quilt I can't remember how many times I was lured back to watch with fascination this Tentmaker stitching his applique with a needle that looked like a small crowbar and amazingly large scissors (sitting at his side near the water bottle) working at very hi...

With all the distraction of the cyclone last week I didn't get the opportunity to celebrate my blog passing the milestone of  "100 Posts" and to organise a giveaway.  This journey into the world of blogging has been an amazing experience for me and I really appreciate all the new friends I have made both near and far.  Thank you for all the comments and emails that have resulted from these posts and I will look forward to receiving lots more. I have been pondering the question of what to offer as the giveaway and the answer came to me when I was making the latest block "Richmond" in Barbara Brackman's Civil War Quilt project.  I am having way too much fun making these blocks and look forward to Sunday when the new block appears on my computer. "Richmond" - Block 6 CWQ For the "giveaway" I have decided to offer a selection of fat quarters from the Reproduction fabrics that I am working with in this quilt project.  T...

The Sunday Stitchers got together this morning at Cairns Craft Centre for a post cyclone recovery party and as usual there was "Show and Tell" for us all to enjoy while Peter served up Raspberry Muffins. Thora has just finished the top of a Kaleidoscope block quilt which she began in the Colourscope Design Workshop Peter and I conducted some time back.  I just love the rich colours and Thora's design really makes a statement and I am looking forward to seeing the finished project after quilting. Some of the girls have caught the Civil War Quilt bug and Jenny had her completed blocks 1 to 5 to share with us. Kathy, our high achiever, is doing two of each block and I really enjoyed seeing the blocks in all the different colourways.  I think she has something special in mind for the second Seven Sisters block. I had a small mug mat which I made to give my machine a workout after I took it from storage.  I love these small projects for using up small fabric a...

Thank you so much to everyone who has sent us their thoughts and wishes over this difficult week - this has meant so much to us.  Minutes after I last posted we lost our power which has only just been restored to us over two days later so we have had no internet and much of the time no phone communication. While the cyclone blew its way through our home area I sat up in bed with earphones listening to the coverage on our local radio and believe it or not I was actually doing some hand piecing.  Things crashed on the roof and I could hear branches breaking but outside it was completely black so there was nothing to be seen.  Peter, as usual, slept through the whole wild night mainly because he was absolutely exhausted from all the preparation beforehand.  I don't know how many times he got up on the roof doing things like tying down whirlybirds, taking down the big sail over the courtyard and checking guttering. In the morning we surveyed the g...

It has been a long day!  The gale force winds and rain didn't eventuate during daylight hours so we had a lot more time to prepare things outside and around the grounds.  It was more difficult inside because we didn't know whether to move things away from windows in case they are blown in and if to put things up high because the roof may go and then there is always the storm surge and flooding to worry about after the cyclone.  By lunchtime we just gave up and as we still had power we turned on the airconditioning and the TV and watched the International one day cricket between England and Australia. The weather outside at the moment is wild and woolly and the last Cyclone Advice forecasted that Yasi would cross the coast near Innisfail just south of Cairns around midnight. Cairns has been battened down all day and it was strange to see no cars driving around.  Our power has just starting going off and on so that means we are about to go black and I don't kn...

At 2.00 pm on Tuesday afternoon when I took this photo of the garden outside the studio it was hard to believe that a severe tropical cyclone called "Yasi" is off our shores and heading straight for the Cairns area.  The latest bulletin has upgraded the severe cyclone to a category 4 and they have forecast that it will cross the coast just to the south of Cairns about 10.00 pm Wednesday so I don't think I will be doing a lot of sleeping in the next day or so. We have been given a lot of instructions and there are standard procedures to follow which we are all well informed about and we were all told to secure the outside of homes before dark on Tuesday because Wednesday will bring ever increasing wind and rain.  Peter spent the afternoon clearing our courtyard and dismantling the sail over the top of it (the first time it has come down since it was put up nearly 4 years ago).  I spent my time doing lots of things that needed power because there is no doubt that we will ...