Early morning

in my sewing room

C'mon, It might be dark out still, but where's my breakfast

I spend a lot of time in my sewing room, so I thought you might like a peek into it. This room was once part of the back verandah ,but some time in the past, it was enclosed to make a room.  I know it used to be the previous owner's sewing room too, and after she died, her husband slept out here......sometimes I still smell cigarette smoke in here.There are windows facing  north and west, which provide lovely light to work by, but now that summer's here i gets quite hot in here by mid morning, even with a fan on.  So I've started coming in here to work on the birthday quilt as soon as I get up, usually around 5, work for an hour, take Mirrhi out for a walk, then back in here until around 10. 

It's a long but narrow room, about 1.5 metres wide ( 6ft) and not sure how long, so I had to plan carefully where everything went.  Last year when I had a friend staying, we painted it, the colour is Weekend Escape and is a lovely yellowy-green, which captures the colours outside.  There're french doors leading out of  the spare room, where I stood to take the photo below.

Looking into the room from the spare room, which is my overflow storage and ironing room until visitors come.

Standing at my sewing table, looking back into the room, there's a door to an outside landing and stairs on the right, and on the left hidden by the cupboard, is the doorway to the hall and the rest of the house.

From the other end looking towards my sewing table.....my constant companion is always in here with me, I'm forever stepping over her, or dragging her away from behind me as she sleeps, she doesn't care, sighs a bit and goes right back to sleep.  It looks long, but is only about 8 steps from sewing table to design wall, so a largish dog sprawled in the middle can be a little inconvenient at times.

Quilt in progress 

I have a lovely view of the river and the levee bank from this window, facing west and once the sun's up, there's a variety of wildlife to see.......water dragons cavorting and fighting over territory and females, the odd snake, and plenty of bird life.

 And looking north, across the park, with the clothes line perched on it's own little platform.

Up to date pictures of the quilt.  Top photo I just put the blocks up randomly to see how they looked, and decided I quite liked the colours scattered about, rather than putting them in colour blocks "somehow", which was my original plan.  The bottom picture I set them out in a kind of round the world pattern, which I quite like.  If I put it together like this, I need to make 2 more blocks, a red and an orange. Some of the blocks still need a couple of rounds to bring them up to 10 inches, so I might've changed my mind about how to set them all out once I've done that. 

So that's it for today, back to work now, until next time.

Last scrappy orange day

Yesterday was the last day of orange month, and although I thought I'd make a couple more orange churn dashes, it didn't happen.  I did manage to put this quilt top together with the scrappy log cabins I was working on in my last post....two and a half weeks ago!  My computer lost it's way, thanks to a Windows 10 upgrade, and after waiting nearly two weeks for  it to be repaired, I then had trouble connecting to my service provider.  After having 3 techs all go through the same troubleshooting with me, and disagreeing with me that it was the modem, a week later a 4th decided yes, it was and arranged for me to get a new one!   Bah!

This orange number still needs to be quilted, but when it's finished, it's off to Maya's Rest, a respite centre for seriously ill children in country NSW.  Donations of quilts and rugs For Maya's Rest has been organised by Knit4Charities and is one of their April charities of the month.  It needs to be finished and in the mail by next Friday, and since today is grey and wet, once Mirrhi has had her walk, I'll be staying indoors to work on this, as well as my son's quilt, which is progressing nicely.

To see more delicious orange projects,  hop on over to the RSC link up.

I'll be back tomorrow with a long over-due F2F catch-up.  I'm Miss April, so there's plenty of blocky goodness to show as squishy parcels have been arriving in my mailbox.

'till then....have a good day.

Extreme Sports Quilt and needle holes in my fingers

...... a finish

It's been a lovely week, bright early mornings with golden pink sunrises, followed by warm sunny days that quickly burn off the frosts, then crisp, cold nights.  It's been a week of stitching and friends and then back to the stitching......so much so, I have needle holes in my finger tips. I had to finish the Extreme Sports quilt by today, it had to be ready to go to Adelaide with the granny of the 4 yr old birthday boy. And I did it...a few late nights and oh yes, those needle holes from stitching down the binding .....yes, I know about thimbles but find them awkward to use.

There's a back story to the Extreme Sports fabric.  I bought it to make my grandson a quilt, back when I'd never made a quilt before.  Probably why it never got made, I really had no idea what to do with all those different coloured squares. That grandson is now a 21 year old and a dad to his own little one....a wee girl, and when offered, he politely refused an Extreme Sport quilt for his little princess, and thought he was too grown up now for a kid's quilt...fair enough.

So when I came across that 20 year old fabric in a tidy-up, I knew it was time, and had just the recipient....a friend's grandson with a birthday coming up, and as she was travelling south for it, no postage required. And I had more of an idea what to do with those odd squares now, or more confident anyway about "trying something/anything".

As red and blue were most predominant in each square, I used both these colours to frame and sash - first a small border in solid blue, then the rows sashed in a subtle red check, with cornerstones for interest.  The finished quilt measured 46 x 66, is backed with a lovely soft thrifted cotton sheet in blue checks, and I chose a  black and white check to bind it, echoing the iconic chequered flag of motor racing. With it's bamboo/ cotton mix batting, and  minimal grid quilting, it's a soft and cuddly, snuggle -in -to - watch - tv, kid friendly quilt.  I think Lucas will like it, yes definitely.

Now that Extreme Sports is done and gone, next on my to-do list is to catch up with the rainbow scrap challenge at superscrappy.blogspot.com.au/.  I remember organising my green scraps for June I think, and that was as far as I got.  So scrappy blocks and  finishing my August  F2F blocks for Susan desertskyquilts.wordpress.com/ is on the agenda for tomorrow, along with some time in the garden.

so till next time....

Stitching

............a quilt for a friend, her boy is due any day.

.... a challenge from the textile group I go to.  We were given an organza gift bag and had to make something from it.  We were also given a project to make a frog, so I used the organza bag....I unpicked it, cut it into strips, and wove it into a piece of cloth, with a contrasting shade of organza and a piece of the ribbon as well. No pics of that bit. Lots of tiny hand stitches later and he was ready to be cut out, stitched together and embellished.  Inspiration for cloth weaving and stitching from  Jude Hill .   He's about 12cm (5inches) long, and waiting for his eyes.

and lastly, a sneak peek at some Christmas ornies I made for a swap I joined at the Down to Earth Community Forum .   My partner, Rhonda lives in Sydney.....hello Rhonda, if you visit, I hope these little glimpses don't give too much away.  They'll be posted today.

Off to make this wonderful fellow building my new chook pen a cuppa!