Orca Bay Mystery Quilt

I've always enjoyed making mystery quilts and Bonnie Hunter over at quiltville is running a mystery quilt again this year.  Bonnie is well known for having lots and lots of small piecing in her quilts and this one is no exception.   There have been three sets of instructions so far and this is how much progress I have made.

Bonnie's says this quilt is "only" medium size, but it's still bigger than I normally make so I'm starting with about half of the number of units that she suggests.  (I was still a bit daunted by the thought of making 175 half square triangles, but it actually went quite quickly!)  I can make more later if I need to; there's still lots more 2" strips to use up!

This time last year we were making Roll Roll Cotton Boll as a mystery quilt  This is what my (smaller) version turned out like.  I love it and so does the person I gave it to.

Thanks Bonnie, for your generosity. 

Way too busy!

Yes, I've been way too busy to post!  Our beautiful granddaughter Hannah and her friend Markus are visiting from Perth on the first leg of their journey down the east coast.

We've been having a fabulous time showing them around.

Today we're off to have a look at Eumundi, Noosa and the Northern Beaches.

Four Patch Furrows

Sometimes it's hard to remember where you got the idea for a quilt, but I'm sure I didn't think of this all by myself!  We see such a lot of pictures of quilts in magazines and on the internet that, at times, it's almost impossible to give credit where it's due.  But somewhere I've seen a quilt that looked something like the one below, and I thank the person who thought of it.

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I've been given a heap of 4" and 8" precut squares so I've used those, but I think it would look equally good (if not better!) if smaller units were to be used.  I'm probably biased about that because I do like a quilt with lots of little blocks.  This one was quite quick to make up though, and is destined for Sunshine Linus - I hope it makes a child happy!

Dave came back!

You remember Dave, don't you?  The landscaper guy!
Well, he got back here (as we knew he would) and finished what he started a couple of weeks ago.  Now I'm really happy!

He had to build this little rock border at the front.  You can see how the big shrubs jutted all over the verge and when they came down we realised we needed a bit more edging there.
(Sorry about the photo being taken through the car window, but I was in a bit of a hurry)

And here's a couple more pics that I didn't show you last time.

Note the very expensive biodegradable pot plants here!



And I really ought to get a more decorative rain gauge!

I'm looking forward to having fresh herbs from my own garden again though.  I've missed that!

A gardener I am not........

......but I might be inspired to turn into one now that the landscaper, Dave, has been in and done all the hard work.

He's magically turned this............................into this, which eventually will be a sea of agapanthus.

And this.....................into this,which already looks pretty nice because of the colour in the bromeliads.

I have this image of myself with a wide brimmed straw hat on, and pretty gloves and snips totting around cutting flowers into a basket - except that I didn't actually have him plant any flowers!

There's still some more work to be done, but Dave seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth for the time being -  I suppose he'll be back when he wants some money!

Not more scraps!

I don't want you to think that I have a log cabin fetish, but................ here's another one hot off the machine.   

Still scrappy, because I have an ENORMOUS pile of scraps to use up, but also because I love the scrappy look.  It's getting that I'm not so keen on co-ordinated anymore.  And I've never tried putting log cabin blocks on point before, and I had to concentrate very hard on getting the darks and lights in the correct place when making the half blocks.

I can't decide if it reminds me more of baskets, or some sort of water container - I like it; but I have no idea what to call it!

Brisbane Quilt Show

Last week I visited the Brisbane Craft and Quilt Fair, and had a lovely time looking at all the exciting new products and patterns that are available.  I don't buy very much these days though, because my cupboards are already pretty full.  A pack of 1/2metre cuts and some rotary cutter blades - what a spendthrift!

The Fair incorporates the Queensland Quilt Show, and the exhibits were really fabulous and very inspiring.  I probably shouldn't post the photos I took without the permission of the quiltmakers, but you can see pictures of the winning quilts on the Queensland Quilters Inc. website.  It makes me weak at the knees just thinking about how much work went into these quilts!

Spring has sprung!

We know that spring is really here when the jacaranda trees come into bloom.  You can see by the sky behind though, that it's also the start of the storm season.  On Thursday some parts of Brisbane had a very hard hailstorm that caused a lot of damage but luckily it missed us here on the Sunshine Coast.

 

I've been busy out and about socialising with friends this week.  I've had a fabulous week, but not much has happened "at home with Bev"!  But I have managed to sew these Log Cabin blocks together - all 144 of them! 

I'll show you more when the quilt is finished, but it might be a while yet.  Did you hear that, Steven?  I'm thinking that rather than quilting, perhaps I'll tie this quilt - with red in the red hearth squares.  The blocks finish at 5.5" so it should be enough.  What do you think?

Scrapology

I've become the SRU for my local Linus group. That's Scrap Repository Unit.

This is what comes to me.

I made it known to my fellow quilters that I stuff pillowcases with all my small unusable bits of fabric, sew them closed, and take them to the animal refuge centre for bedding. I made sure to tell the staff at the refuge that if the dogs rip them open, there's going to be a heck of a mess, so they mostly just use them for the cats.
While I was going through these "cat scraps" to make sure there wasn't any pins or nasties mixed in with them (and sometimes there is!) I found that there's also some rather lovely usable bits and pieces: long strips trimmed from backings; reject blocks; ends of strip pieced units; and odd shapes left from cutting applique pieces. So I saved them up and made quilts out of them!

Some of the girls think I'm quite mad (and some days I agree with them), but look here at the gold that I salvaged out of them. The white bucket is full of strings, and there's metres of 2 1/2" strips and 2" strips and lovely 5" squares. I think I've gone to scrap heaven!
I have a sneaking suspicion that they pepper their scraps with good bits just to see if I'm paying attention. But I don't think I miss much.

 Below are the results of some of my scrap saving.

Waiting for a new family

I've been knitting these bears for about 10 years. No, not these particular bears, but ones like them. My Mum and I started making them and we had 51 of them ready when a friend was visiting an orphanage for blind children in Vietnam. It was just dumb luck that there happened to be 51 little kids in that facility. We kept on knitting them and gave them to Red Cross, and the police and the ambo's. They keep them in their cars to help comfort little kids who are caught up in traumatic events: fires, traffic accidents, domestic violence issues and such. We've sent out a couple of hundred of them.

Mum's moved on to a better place now, but I keep on knitting these little guys. They've become kind of like family members, and a little bit of me goes with each one. This litter is off to the Emergency Accommodation Centre, and they'll be adopted out there. I have to say though, that I'm not sure about that short fat guy in the middle. I'm wondering what the heck his mother got up to; and with whom!

Trying again

I'm having another go at creating a link to another site. I'd like to be able to send you to Sunshine Linus so that you can see what Lorraine has written about us over there, although she actually hasn't written anything for a while

Sunshine Linus

Yesterday I attended our Sunshine Linus gathering. We meet once a month (sometimes more) in a local church and sew up a storm of quilts, then distribute them around the local community for foster children and sick and/or special needs people. We make other items, too - like knitted slipper socks, and zippered bags for toiletries, and tote bags for Xrays, and little mats for small children to sit on the floor at school. Everyone seems to have their own niche and has gravitated to making the things that they like doing best. That seems reasonable, doesn't it? Everyone's happy - especially the recipients, we hope!!
Here's one of our ladies, Barb, with a quilt that she made out of some very narrow strips that were donated to us. We're going to use this beautiful quilt as a raffle prize to raise some funds.

I don't think Barb is as bored as she looks in this pic, I actually think she's listening to someone over her shoulder. Funny that, she's usually the one who doing the talking. LOL.
We always have a fabulous time when we get together.
Let's see if I can do a link!
mm...apparently not!!

Let's see how clever I am - or not!

I'm just going to use this blog as a bit of a practice thing to find out if I could manage a blog for one of my interest groups. What I'd have to do is to upload information and photos for the other participants of the group. So here I'll try a photo of a quilt that I've finished recently. Well the photo went into the wrong spot, but at least I've been able to move it. I might have to work at this some more tomorrow.