End of March Already!

The year is certainly zooming by with lots happening as usual. The weather certainly took a turn for the worse going from drought to floods,in a few days over the Australia day long weekend in January 2013. This is a photo of our friend's driveway at Boolboonda after 32 inches of rain.

 

 The deluge continued south after drenching areas to the north of us. We were on our way to spend the weekend at Monto to watch Danielle receive The Young Citizen of the Year Award for  Monto at the Australia Day Awards there, but she advised us to turn around and head for home. Just as well, we did as we were cut off for 5 days at home. We were not too badly affected at Ivanhoe with damage like this in places. Mundubbera had severe flooding which impacted greatly on my sister and brother in law. Citrus trees washed away, my brother in law spent hours rescuing the neighbours washed away pigs that managed to survive along with dairy cows from upstream.

 The Stuart River and Boyne Rivers cut our access on The Proston Boondooma Road. Here is a photo of the Stuart River not quite at its peak of over 12 metres high. In 2011, it reached about 8m. All of this water flows into the Burnett, so no wonder all of the places along the Burnett had massive flooding. Danielle's friend, Lucy spent hours clinging to a paulownia tree before being rescued by her neighbour.  The remaining half of the umbrella tree in our yard, just could not take the moisture any further and toppled over with Craig cutting the last bit down. I have planted a Chinese Elm tree in its place. Hopefully it manages to grow.

 

I was trapped in Bundaberg when another deluge came through a few weeks later. Aunty Margaret Wagner passed away after a short illness and we dodged floodwaters to get to her funeral service.

 

I finally managed to get my blog printed into a book. Handed it to Mum and Dad to read as they do not read it here. Dad has requested that I mention where my quilting frame came from. He engineered it and had it constructed by a boat builder in Maryborough.

My sister does not read my blog either but liberally took it along to her patchwork day in Mundubbera as some of them were mentioned in it.They liked looking at the quilts, not the house renovations.

Speaking of quilts, my constant companion when I am overnighting in Bundaberg has finally got the applique finished. Just some thread tidying up to do. I was that impatient to see how much colour would come out of the applique onto the white background, I washed it in the washing machine for the 15 min cycle. None ran, so now I must tidy up the remaining threads, now in a huge mess cause I washed it. I was really that IMPATIENT.

 

The big news for us this year is the arrival of the first grandchild. I had the privilege of attending an ultrasound scan at 29 weeks with Danielle and was amazed at it swallowing and practising breathing happening while we watched. Dont know why Danielle was suggesting I not wear my glasses so I could not work out whether it is a boy or a girl as I could only recognise ribs and spine.

 I have been working on my baby quilt. Belinda thinks it is not "Beatrix Potter" enough but this is designed to be a floor rug quilt. Today I managed to get it basted as I think my domestic quilting is better than my long arming at this stage.

 

 

Am off to work for 2 nights later today, is Good Friday so I hope the roads are safe.

Bryan has had some success at the Sydney Easter Show in coming second in the Treefelling Championship. Craig won a handicap event last week so he is happy also. A real family affair down there this year with Amanda horseriding as well. Next week we are off to Sunshine Coast University to watch  Belinda graduate as an Advance Care Paramedic, she is enjoying her new career at Rockhampton, but I think she wishes she was a bit closer to here at times. Looks like we'll be busy for a lot longer.

 

Renewing my aquaintance with Blogger

I am still working on my paint stripping and sanding, here are my 2 workhorses at present. The paint has all been removed and now the sanding needs to be finshed. There is  not much quilting happening either. I have nearly finished the borders on my large quilt from the previous post.
This is mainly a post to reacquaint myself with the blogger platform.
Big year happening again for us, with the first grandchild on the way, so blogging might again take a back seat or maybe it will push me back to it. Time will tell as usual.

Sunshine and Roses

After 3 days of cold, dreary weather, I needed a bit of cheering and warming up. Here's the progress on my latest mammoth project. The Sunshine and Roses quilt by Kathy Nakajima. Am now waiting on a delivery

of Superior Silk Threads to arrive before continuing with the applique.

This is the centre compass, with 6 of the applique sections surrounding it finished.

This is actually the second of the 8 sashing pieces finished. I am still tidying up the threads on the back. I thought self threading needles would work well. 100wt silk thread and self threading needles do not like each other in my hands. Only 6 more sashing sections, then a huge outer border to add. I have quickly dismissed any thoughts of having this finished for the Bundaberg Quilters Exhibition in August this year.

This is a geranium growing under our front steps. Hopefully Patty is going to show me how to transfer this image to fabric at patchwork this Friday. I have 3 photos like this to practise my free motion quilting on. This is a very sentimental bush as it came from my grandmother, and she passed away 24 yrs ago on June 6th.

Flowers in the City

Flowers in the City Quilt from 1994. It is from the Inner City pattern but worked using strip piecing and colourwash. This is going to be the QCWA Piecemakers workshop at Yeppoon in Jan 2012. I need a long lead in time these days.


I have decided to rework it in a collection of batik and hand dyed fabrics. I ordered these from Erica's Craft and Sewing in USA on 8 May and happy to report they arrived in my dusty roadside letterbox within 10 days.

I also have about 10 other pieces I have collected over the last few weeks. Now I must organise a dyeing day soon, before it gets too cold. The list of things to do is starting to grow. I have bought some second hand pattern boards and pop up stylus from a long armer and these need to be fitted, Patty loaded us up with small projects for the Mt Perry Art Exhibition, quilts to be made for the Bundaberg Quilters Exhibition and our own Mt Perry Quilt Exhibition in the art gallery in September. Patty and I are also off to the Australian Machine Quilting Festival at end of September. When am I going to keep renovating the paintwork here?????? We just may also have found a builder who is willing to tackle our termite eaten floors, I was also told that we might just shift my quilting machine into the larger room downstairs. I don't really think HE knows exactly what that involves yet!

Reasons for my Absence.

Well, I really did not realise that 6 months have passed since I last posted to this blog.

I have been focusing my spare time to trying to finish the house renovations.

Unfortunately that is happening slower than I would really like but I still feel a slight sense of achievement.



 Here are 2 views of the longest veranda basically finished, just requiring a light finer grit sanding.I have even finished the roof beams.

Here is the second major reason, as to why the poor blog has been a bit neglected. Our eldest daughter was married in late March amid the rainy days. It rained and flooded in some areas until Friday, Saturday dawned with bright sunshine, a change of venue due to a causeway preventing access to the original venue, and a beautiful ceremony and reception followed. My undyed rolls of fabric ended up being used as the swags in the ceiling of the reception place as the Council misplaced theirs. So when I finally dye it and make some quilts, I can honestly say they attended the wedding also.

Now the wedding is out of the way, they are concentrating on a building project of their own. This took about 3 days to appear from a few pegs in the ground. Wonder if some of their builders would be handy at paint removal?

We are currently waiting for our reno expert builder to come for a drive and measure our floorboards that need replacing.
On a sewing note, I went to Yeppoon in Jan 2012 and had a busy weekend teaching strips n triangles and free motion quilt/embroidery.
I also visited a long arm quilter only 2 hrs drive away, who had just had her Intelliquilter driven A1
machine installed. She has upgraded from a Nolting like mine to this new machine and is now back on a steep learning curve. She has kindly offered to help me on my way with my machine.
I am also going to attend the AMQF in Adelaide. The accommodation and travel is booked so one day soon , I hope to be able to quilt.

Dye Painting Workshop at Proston

After a few weeks of preparation, anticipation , the day finally arrived. The above image is the work of the most far away student. She travelled 800 kilometres just to attend. The date was selected so she could. I think she was very happy to come, paint and then travel all the way home again. Maybe I might go and visit , to help her quilt the embellishments.

A landscape is in progress here. Old calendars are good for inspiration.

This became a "kakadu frog". Margaret was the only one in the group who had "picture painting" experience. Sometimes not the best students for dye painting. She attacked the background like a pastel painter but reports it has washed up well. She is wondering about the next stage already.

This is the whole group, hard at work. Thank you Narelle for the pics. Hop on over to Narelle's blog to see her finished work.http://pinsandwhiskers.blogspot.com

I had a most enjoyable time, and hope to do some more paintings soon.

Dye Painting and Quilting

It has been a while since I last found time to blog. Not that I have been standing still until this last week. A viral illness has forced me to slow down for a few days.
A visit to the Ekka in Brisbane was not the most enjoyable due to some kind of virus. Left me a bit drowsy and with very little energy to fight the crowds etc.
Once home though I had some time off from work which enabled me to do " my things".

This is my very first dye painting effort. Considering I have hardly ever painted pictures before, I thought my effort was not too bad. I have moved onto the quilting phase. It certainly adds texture to the picture.

I have also prepared a sample chart of dye colours, found an Australian Supplier of Print Paste
and generally am prepared for my teaching workshop of dye painting in September at Proston. Now I must get the house in order. Got my new ladders to reach up to the top of the veranda and have slowly started on the paint stripping again. That is until this last week. Maybe in a couple of weeks I can get back to a day of that every now and then.