I love Wednesdays

What's not to love.........on sunny days.....not today......you can meet your friends, sit on the grass or under an umbrella, or sprawl in the Chai Harem and enjoy live music, coffee, tea or a cooling lemon myrtle and ginger drink, maybe an organic handmade filled bagel or a spicy samosa.  If your taste buds prefer something sweet, you can have a scone, split and filled with fresh strawberries and cream, or perhaps you'd prefer a baked cheesecake or a profitorole....it's all here.  And when you're done socialising you can go buy fresh produce, organic seedlings to plant in your garden, or pasture raised meat, add a crusty loaf of sour dough bread, some olives and home made organic goat's cheese and head home for a delicious lunch.

All lovingly grown, raised, baked or prepared right here in our abundant valley.

I LOVE Wednesdays!

The daily view today is a little cloudy.....more storms rumbling through, but the rain is very welcome.

till next time......

A.Whole. Day, an F2F finish and no chocolate

.........A whole day to make two blocks!! yikes!....although in my defence, I did spend a lot of that time looking for just the right blocks to make. But I don't know if I'm particularly slow, or that's about normal....I suppose the main thing is they get done and done well, and I had nothing else I needed to do, so  in the sewing room was a good place to be. The blocks are for Miss October Lynn in the F2F block swap that I've mentioned here  and here, and I was playing with a pretty colour palette similar to this, but with a darker grey for the background.  Lynn wanted just pops of coral, so I wanted to find blocks where just a small amount could be added.

I finally managed to find two more and they're done and will be in the mail today, Lynn.  A relief for once not to be posting on the last day of the month.  I can't show you the blocks yet, but if you go to the F2F gallery, you'll be able to see all the wonderfully creative blocks sent so far.

Sue, who was Miss September, has let me know she's received hers, so I can show you what I sent her.  Sue requested black and white with a hot colour.  Her choices reminded me of Jan Mullen's  Stargazey quilts of the 90s.......crooked wonky blocks in crazy bold mixed up colours, and so I made these blocks in a similar way.  When I told Sue where I got my inspiration from, she said she loved Jan's quilting style and even had one of her books! All of Sue's blocks can be seen here, scroll right to the end of the Gallery.

l to r ....wonky churn dash; quartered log cabin and a scrappy star

And that 'no chocolate in the post title?  Not the eating sort, but the scrappy RSC sort.  I haven't made any blocks this week, but I did find a purple wonky star when I was doing some sorting and packing. I felt sure I'd made one, but as it wasn't where it should've been and I had another ready to sew in different shades, I thought my memory was playing tricks, but no, there it was tossed in with other fabrics. So I only have indigo and green to make now to catch up with my stars, I'll try to do them this week so I'm ready for the colour change this weekend.

***

My daily view has looked like this for the past week or so, dark clouds hanging low on the mountain, and lots of storms rumbling around.  This is the view across the river with the "legal graffiti" on the levee wall, painted by unemployed youth doing Work for the Dole.(unemployment benefit)...... a great idea to let them do what they love, while brightening up the riverbank.....not everyone's cup of tea though, there's lots of grumbles about the horrible eyesore, but I quite like it.

That's all , my house was listed to sell over the weekend, so time to tidy up and have it looking respectable in case a call comes to say someone is interested in looking......I hope so!

so till next time..............

Catching up-going backwards and an update

It's spring and daylight savings has just started.......it was winter when I last posted, the seasons and days just skip by.......


Rainbow Scrap Challenge ....

Mentally I've still been taking part in this challenge, but in reality, not at all.  So I've spent some time this week getting back into it.  It's been made easier by having the contents of my sewing room all back in the same space, instead of spread out all over the house, while walls were painted and carpets cleaned.  I pulled everything out of my sewing room twice, after the carpet cleaner's bucket leaked dirty water all over the carpet and left a huge nasty stain, which he couldn't remove.  He refunded my money plus extra, and I had the carpet pulled up and the floor painted. I like it, wish I'd done it sooner, so much easier to clean up all the threads, fabric scraps and dropped pins.

So those RSC blocks.... I decided instead of working from where I left off, way back in March, I'd catch up with October, which is brown, although chocolate sounds better.... and work my way backwards.   I don't have a lot of scrappy pieces, but enough bigger pieces to cut 4" blocks for a wonky star. Brown isn't my favourite colour but Angela encouraged us to give it a try, now that it's made, I really love it.

 September orange is done too.  

Here's all my stars so far, missing a few months there....pinned up under a rainbow bunting I made for a pop-up shop we had in a recent Art Trail Exhibition here in town

And I had pieces cut ready for April and May star blocks, just didn't get to sewing them...I'll need to check Angela's blog and see what June, July and August were.

Check out Angela's blog soscrappy to see what others have done with their chocolate fabrics.

***

.......and an update on the Foot2Freestyle block swap, organised by Kate and Sue.  Susan from Desert Sky Quilts was the Queen for August, and she requested red and white, blue and white or a mix of all 3 colours.  She's received mine now so I can show what I sent..... a couple of wonky stars and Squares within Squares from Quilter's Cache.

Sue was the recipient for September, but as she's not received hers yet, I can't show you what I made, but she chose a wonderfully vibrant mix of black and white with a pop of whatever hot colour we wanted to use.  Go here to the F2F gallery to see all the awesome, amazing blocks that have been made. There's even a couple there already for Lynn, who is Miss October.  I have her fabrics sitting out, waiting patiently to be transformed.

That's it for now, I have a couple of XXXL fluoro orange sweatshirts to make for a friend for her big son, so better get to it.

'till next time ........