November- an eventful month

 The work has started (albeit very slowly) on the back wall of the house. He doesn't want to rush things and I am not allowed up that high. He is used to standing on a 6 inch wide plank, 13 feet above the ground wielding an axe, chopping competitively, so I suppose I have to heed his advice for once. I have started stripping the wall above the stairs. I think I will have my area finished before his though.

 

All was going well in the house until a storm came by and the lightning bolt hit this ironbark tree close to the house. We scored 14 mls of rain but despite my electricity supply precautions to various objects, we have suffered some damage. The transformer on the power pole had to be replaced, then we started finding out what else was blown up. The TV reception is now useless, despite replacing the signal booster. I think we may have to replace the cabling and the antenna.

I wish we could bark an ironbark tree for posts in a millisecond .

Needless to say, the phone, all existing cables no longer work, despite the best efforts of Telstra. They did manage to get a line in the cable working but that lasted only 2 days, so now they have decided against digging up 800m of cable and replacing it, but to go with a mobile device inside the house connected to the landline. I have heard good and bad about this so we wait and see.

 The good news for November, the plumbers came and removed the woodheater for the floor laying, then afterwards they came back an re-installed it and replaced part of the roofing iron above the kitchen sink where it leaked in a major rain event. They did this 2 days before  we received 95mls in a storm. So we were lucky for once.

This is the floor laying in progress in the lounge room. It is quite enjoyable to have this instead of the red and brown painted timber floors that were patched from the termites before we bought the place.

This is the view from our front door looking towards the dining area. I am now having a break from the house renos for awhile. Been a bit busy doing some Christmas sewing for the children and grandchildren. Will show you some of that after they receive them. Best wishes for a happy and safe festive season, and spare a few thoughts for the emergency workers caring for you all during this time.

I did Promise a Quilting story

 I have done some sewing, not much quilting though. I have been steadily working on the Judy Niemeyer pieces during my downtime from work in Bundy. I have 4 rows of 14 joined together. No photos yet as the rest is still pinned together.
We welcomed grandchild number 4 in September, a beautiful little boy. Now not so little as he is growing very well. September was baby month for some of our woodchopping friends so I have stitched up some more of these colour cubes. Great for using scraps but it does not make much of a dent in the pile.

 

 

I have been inspired by the quilts of Ann Brauer ( her use of colour is extraordinary) and decided to make a small wall hanging to go with my newly painted walls in the hallway. I used some of my batiks. I started off with the idea of a 1600 quilt but ended up with this. It is waiting to be quilted ( along with a few others)

 

I have enrolled in a workshop at Fibre Arts Australia in Ballarat in July 2016. A masterclass with Lisa Call from USA/New Zealand on working in a series for art quilts. I honestly think I will be pushed way out of my comfort zone but I am looking forward to the challenge. I also will struggle with the weather ( Ballarat VIC in the middle of winter!) I struggle with our 6-8 weeks of cooler weather here in QLD. It will be an excuse to update my sadly lacking winter clothes. A friend has enrolled in a workshop there also so we will be driving down looking at this wide land of ours. Neither of us have driven that way before so we are quite looking forward to the drive.

I hopped on a bus from Murgon and travelled to the Qld Craft and Quilt Show Saturday Oct 10th. Bought a few things, saw a few quilts, got some inspiration but was still quite tired from a block of night shifts, so probably missed a few bits, but otherwise had a good time. I bought some template rulers from Westalee Rulers to use with a ruler foot. My ruler foot for the Pfaff Grand Quilter is still coming in the mail from them, it was interesting to watch them using the rulers. The foot is similar to the hopping foot on the Nolting but does not hop, but has much better visibility than the standard foot for quilting on a DSM. I also caught up with Hans (the Nolting Man) and got some supplies.

Lisa from Quick Quilts at Tiaro came for a weekend in September and I dyed some fabric, she did some quilting and serviced my Nolting for me. Amazing what she knows about machines and is not afraid to pull them apart. My experience with laboratory analysers about pulling them apart is "it is better to leave that for someone else" I always struggle to put them back together correctly. I do however seem to manage if I REALLY HAVE to.

 

Back to the upcoming  Ballarat workshop, I need 2-3 ideas for working in a series. I am considering continuing on with my colour connector series ( I think I can call it one). I did the batik one earlier this year. I feel it doesn't work as well as my hand dyed ones. I have had these pieces pinned onto a sheet for quite a few years leftover from about 2009. So I got them out, rearranged them again, and am now waiting to find some spare time to stitch.

 So the time spent not sewing/quilting has been my research time. Thanks to the quilter who enlightened me on that score.
Quick update on the house: I have now only got 3 panels left of the dining area ceiling to strip. The goal is to do 1 a month for this year, 12 in total. Maybe next weekend I can start again, the paid job always seems to get in the way. I will show you the progress next time.

September Painting Update

In July I started work on the hallway, large lounge room section, finishing with the small lounge section. Ceilings and walls. I filled all of the tongue and groove with No More Gaps weatherboard, approx. 27 tubes of the stuff. Taubmans Cotton Sheet colour for the ceiling, Taubmans Winterhaven for the walls, Bristol Exterior White for the door/window trims, and after much discussion and trial and error, Resene Ivanhoe colour for the arch trim. I wanted a darker Resene colour Cloud Burst but had to compromise( was going to dilute it down , and at the paint shop found the Ivanhoe colour which was nearly the same formula as my diluted Cloud Burst ) so decided to use Resene Ivanhoe for the Ivanhoe House. It is hard to get a decent photo of the whole area in one, please excuse the furniture in the background but I tried to work around it. I finished it all on September 30th, the flooring is booked for November 9th. The plumber, electrician have yet to come to shift the woodheater out (temporarily) and the TV cables currently come up through the floor and we will then direct them through the only double wall in the house interior.

View looking up at arches into hallway and small lounge area before painting. In this photo the hallway ceiling and walls were painted but not the door trims. I painted the smallest area first.

Before painting, the 2 replaced boards eaten by termites in the large lounge area. The flooring was eaten by termites here.

 The corner in large lounge area for the woodheater before painting. The red floor is being replaced.
 This should give you an idea of the size of the 3 rooms.
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Unwashed walls/ceilings in small lounge area.

Unwashed front wall in small lounge area.

 

 

 

Side view of large lounge area showing new colour to the left of the doorway

 

Work in progress on arches.

 

View from kitchen doorway into lounge/hallway.

 

View from front door down hallway.

 

Finished view from kitchen area doorway. I have now rearranged the furniture in the small lounge area to hide the clutter. The quilt shelf rack is to go back on the wall yet.

View down hallway from kitchen doorway. The desk is no longer sitting out in the hallway either. I have purchased another quilt shelf rack for the hallway so I can hang a quilt there of course.
I have also managed to re home most of my quilting stuff to my downstairs quilting room.
In all of this we had great excitement when Levi Charles arrived on September 16th, our 4th grandchild. He is doing very well, and much loved by the family.
I have been sewing when I get a chance, but not as much as I would like. I will do another blog post shortly as to my sewing exploits as I set myself the painting goals for August and September. Now back to the dreaded ceiling out in the large eating area in the back section of the house. I am only 2 months behind in the stripping and sanding schedule. Have to keep setting the goals though.

No Longer a Slacker

I was given an already cut out Judy Niemeyer Quilt to finish as the person knew she would never complete it. I have started foundation piecing. Each green star has 4 sections, 168 in total finished. Each blue ring has 4 sections, 120 in total and the centers are in 2 parts, 120 in total. Only 30 more centers to sew, then they have to be pieced into the arcs. There is a foundation pieced outer border as well. It is called a Mariners Star Quilt from around 2001. I might get it completed some time in 2016.

I have continued with the lounge/hallway painting. I have finished the 1 top coat on the ceiling in the larger section of the lounge. I used Taubman's Cotton Sheets colour. The hallway is ready for the walls to be painted and about half of its ceiling is painted. Am thinking of white for all the trims to match the white screen door frames.

 This is the next section to start on. The smaller part. I have washed, and filled the tongue and groove in the area immediately behind the platform.

This section of the house has not been washed in years. We bought Ivanhoe in 2007 and I have not washed the walls in here as I knew I would be sanding and making more dust.

It is hard to see in this photo, but I have 3 test colours on the wall. The left side is Taubmans Duck Egg Blue, a middle board is Taubmans Extra Extra and the right hand side is Taubmans Winterhaven. After much umming and aahing we are going to use the Winterhaven colour and I have decided to use the Duckegg Blue in the bathroom. ( When I get to that). The winterhaven colour is not quite as dirty looking as the existing colour.
In other news, the outside trestles were brought in from the neighbours 2 days ago. I have been waiting months and months after he promised he was finishing the rest of the house exterior. He being the man of this house. Now I have been informed, he has to borrow another plank from someone else. 2 planks are safer than 1. I will see if that takes 6 months to happen. I'm sure we'll be mowing around the grass in the trestles before they are used.
The Ekka has been and gone for another year, Bryan won the Treefelling Championship. The kids all enjoyed some time together at it, while I struggled through a block of shifts at work with a bad head cold. I visited it on the second Friday, I noticed the changes that they have made in the redevelopment of the grounds as I did not attend last year.
The quilts were good to look at, I caught up with the well known Queensland Quilter who purchased my little auction quilt in 2002 for their collection of quilts. I like her attitude," that when you are not seriously finishing quilts", you are spending your time "RESEARCHING" not procrastinating. With that I'll leave you until next time.

Have I really been so slack?

No excuses really for my lack of blogging, just being blog time poor. Between continuing the house sprucing for the new floors, and meeting all of my other commitments, I'm afraid speaking here has been at the lowest of my list.

The main bedroom is ready for it's new floor. The termites ate the original floor and we decided to place a covering over the rest as there are some gaps in the remaining sections. Hopefully it will be a bit warmer in winter.

 A similar story in the second bedroom.

We are after all a cattle grazing property and this is quite often the sight I see coming down our driveway in a cloud of dust. This was a more memorable event as it was our own heifers and steers coming home from their agistment paddock. Since we reluctantly moved away from Mt Perry in 2010, we have had some cattle on agistment up there. We were able to secure a paddock closer to our new home and after waiting weeks for the paperwork to be completed, we were finally able to bring them home and end our association with Mt Perry completely. This hopefully means a smoother running grazing business.

 
I have now turned my painting attention to the hallway and living areas of the house, ready for the next section of flooring. Maybe by December it might all be done. Do you find things happen when you set some achievable goals? If I pushed myself too hard it would never happen.

 

In amongst all of this I have done a Hand Embroidery workshop at Koala Conventions 2015 in Brisbane. A three dimensional fuschia with Annie from Room for Threads, it is a long process but I loved attempting the workshop. You can see a photo of her completed project on her website at Room for Threads. I think I need new glasses ( not my graduated lenses I usually wear for work). She asks her optometrists for lenses like surgeons need. The following weekend I was back at work for 5 shifts before I attended a 3 day workshop in Sydney for Professional Development for work.

I went hiking along the Pacific Highway at St Leonards for 2 hours before the workshop commenced. The clouds rolled in from the north changing the weather from bright sunshine to pouring rain in about 30 minutes. It was certainly a lot colder all day long with the wind chill factor but at least there was no frost.  I sat next to a scientist from Armidale who was missing out on seeing the snow falling at his home. He has been there for 5 years and is still waiting to see the snow fall.

The same weekend that I was in Sydney was the Bundaberg Quilters Competitive Quilt Show. I entered 2 quilts and got 2nd prize for each. My large Sunshine Rose Garden Quilt also received Viewer's Choice .I was disappointed that I had to miss seeing the show.

 

 

 The spare bedroom after the new floor was laid.

 

Our bedroom after the new floor was laid. I still have to organise for the Joinery guys to come back and re measure and adjust the screen doors for the new floor height. We are putting the same flooring down in the rest of the house when the painting is finished. During this time I also have to meet my goals for the Dining Area ceiling. I am getting a little bit behind schedule. I might take a day or two off though for some sewing, so I can show you more sewing photos in the future.

Days too short.

We are now officially in winter, and yes right on cue June 1st saw a blast of cold weather. I took advantage of the warmer autumn months to commence painting our bedroom. We have decided to continue with the bamboo flooring to cover the remaining floors. We had originally thought carpet to cover the repaired termite eaten floorboards. I thought it would be a good idea to repaint the rooms before we put the flooring down. I had finished painting the spare bedroom and as we will do half the house at a time, it was our bedroom next for the paint brush. I washed, filled the cracks and started painting.

The fretwork came up nicely but you need 2 ladders to stop the paint runs on each side. The door has to be removed, stripped, sanded, and trimmed before the flooring can go down. It has a nice antique crackle showing its age. Not sure yet what colour to paint it.

Here are our built in cupboards undercoated. I have since painted the top cupboards the wall colour. Taubmans Tullah Belle, (same colour as downstairs) We have kept slightly to tradition using shades of pink and green that seemed so prevalent many years ago.

I have to reputty and repaint around the small glass panels. I am mulling as to whether to change the glass colours. As this does not need to be done before the flooring I will have time to ponder.

 

Life has certainly been busy, keeping up to all of our commitments, I have been working on Charlee's quilt, she is 20 weeks old next week, and could use it on the floor now. I finished the top a few weeks ago, decided to get over the fear of the long arm ( now that it is set up in its new location), I finally installed my Red Snappers, so loaded it on this morning.

A close up photo of the work in progress.

You can see I still have not finished the room set up yet.

6 hours later, not continuously quilting by the way, I have a few threads to tidy up and the binding to do. And it was not so scary after all. I had to re learn how to thread the machine properly before it would sew though. The back of the quilt is a rose print, it is Charlee Rose's quilt after all.

I have also started playing with some batiks again, and this is where I am at. Who knows what will happen next? Hope you're enjoying the busyness each day brings forth. I have made mine shorter as I am making certain that I go for a morning hike each day that I am home. My knees are thanking me for it and I feel so much better for it also. Hopefully I can show you more quilt stuff next time.

Days Go By, Faster than you think.......

Warning, picture heavy post. I didn't realise how long ago since I found a chance to take photos and blog. I may have shown you the 2 rooms downstairs pre painting already but to refresh here is the mess before painting.

 

Here is room 1, now the spare bedroom/music /library room. It has always been a dream of mine to have such a room. The colour is a pale mint green Taubmans Tullah Belle which is not really evident in this photo. A better camera is now on my shopping list for 2015. Since then the floor has been laid, the guys shifted my piano in for me that afternoon. Now I just need to find a piano tuner. It did get moved here in the back of a horse float so I can understand why Middle C sounds like D now.

 

This is room 2 which is to be my new quilting room. The wall colour is Taubmans Mauve Mist. This photo is a quick snap taken while the floor guys were starting to lay the floor.

 

We used Embelton Bamboo Nullabor from Andersens in Kingaroy for the flooring. Much better than the dirty cement which was down there.

 

 This is the Nolting moved in. I have been culling the "junk" and it is amazing what paraphernalia 3 children leave behind when they "move out". Needless to say I have managed to rehome about 75% of their stuff. My next task is to sew my Red Snappers into the leaders.

I have been busy with work, and the general everyday tasks. Waiting for the next grandchild involved moving to Yeppoon for a week between work shifts. I decided to not take the sewing machine but take along something not involving pins/scissors which aren't toddler friendly. Instead I took a crochet hook. This is the 3rd project I am now working on. I purchased a couple of Japanese Crochet Books on ebay, found I can understand them, and am improving my skills.

This is hopefully what mine will look like soon.

 

January 21st saw a new baby girl grandchild for us. She had a straightforward delivery, but ended up in SCN for 2 nights. Here she is hanging onto her cannulated arm on Day 2.



I was so pleased that we were not in Yeppoon 4 weeks later when cyclone Marcia hit. Apparently the house where we stayed did not suffer too much damage, but the massive trees around the back yard have taken a hit. Belinda had to work the night shifts, pre and immediately Post cyclone. Survival without power and trying to sleep in the heat were her biggest concerns. 8 days later she was mighty happy when the lights came back on.
I have also been checking ebay occasionally for another Pfaff sewing machine like mine, and finally I have managed to purchase one. This one has been hardly used and is in a better state than mine. I may be biased but I think they do a great job in piecing patchwork. The Pfaff Machine I bought for the applique stitches cannot piece as well as these.

 

After  rearranging the downstairs rooms and office areas, I decided to shift some furniture around and now have a sewing desk under the front window upstairs. I still have my sewing table there as well.

 

In February, we woke up during the night to discover a 5.2 earthquake had rattled the region. Only about 30kms from where we used to live, the epicentre was  near Kerwee at Eidsvold. I looked outside and this tree was decidedly leaning over. I think I might just cut a branch off it and try to straighten it that way. That was the same week that Cyclone Marcia came through and flooded parts of the North Burnett and Callide areas again. We were lucky we received 50mls of rain with some wind but no flooding as a result.

Sewing progress: 18 months ago I decided to make another Inner City quilt. This is the existing one from 1994 and I have got back to doing some work on the second one. I will show a finished photo when it is hanging on the wall.

House progress: apart from the floor coverings downstairs and in the office area, our handy man tenant, came out and helped with the doors for that and replaced the termite eaten tongue and groove board in the spare upstairs bedroom. Now I can finish painting the inside and have to touch up the outside walls. At least now you can't put your finger through the wall. I have also kept paint stripping the dining are ceiling with some progress, 5 bays nearly done. Only 7 to go.

 

 

 This is the office cupboards and floor finished. All the paperwork is now behind those doors and in drawers. It is a real pleasure to sit at the computer desk now as I no longer feel cluttered.

 

We moved the double seater, but single sofa bed out here to be a third bedroom upstairs. We also have a comfy seat for "business chats" when we are planning what we need to do next. Prior to that we only had the computer chair. Made this room so much more livable.

 

With the rain, came another problem we didn't have to worry about for ages. Grass Seeds in socks. I always make his "gaiters" "oversocks" call them what you will, but his existing pair were rags. I usually make as many as I can from 1m denim at a time. Finally finished these, as usual just waiting for the elastic. Hope he's happy with them. I am sure Bryan will want a pair now.

 

Charlee Rose, the new baby needs a quilt, so I have started one for her. Certainly not going to be  Beatrix Potter like. I have made 4 blocks using this red poppy fabric. I hope they like it. I know I do and I would rather roses but I wanted to use what I already had and rose coloured poppies are just as nice. I am using the existing zinnia quilt as a design wall. Same pattern if you had not noticed. Might even give her Mum the choice of zinnias or poppies.

So that's been January/February for us. Lots of travelling, and now the woodchop season and autumn is here. Catch you next time.