Starts and Finishes...........

Last week I finished my 'Sample Squares' quilt. I bought the Fat Quarter Shop boxes of 2.5" sample squares last year and this is the first thing that I've completed with them............

I like the different designs and patterns in separate blocks..........

.....but, I have to say that this is my absolute favourite range..........

....Martinique by 3 Sisters for Moda. I love the colours, the paisley, the linen look and the softness of the greys, blues and reds in the range, and I love the big stitch quilting with #8 Perle cotton. It gives such a lovely definition, not to mention being quick to quilt, gotta love that!!

For the backing, I used some fabrics that I had had for a while and that I couldn't see as starring roles! But look how amazing the back looks, well I think it does anyway ;o)

I like the idea of using up left over fabric and blocks as well as different colours and designs. I like the interest that it gives, it's almost another quilt!!! Do you know what the best part of this quilt is??? It's for ME! Just for me, I'm excited about that.......

The March block of the Sue Spargo BoM arrived yesterday and I haven't finished Febs yet, very nearly though! I would have finished it last night except I was so tired I fell asleep in front of the telly at nine, took myself off to bed and didn't stir until six this morning......Yay!! It was wonderful having a full nights sleep.

I joined Chookyblue's 'Stitch Along' for 'A Gardeners Journal'. I know, I know, but I've had the book for ages and have been wanting to start it. So, I'm going to 'stitch along' with a lot of other lovely women. Thanks Chookyblue for organising the group and blog.

Anything else I need to tell you???

Oh, of course, most important...........I'm going to 'Sew it Together' in Melbourne...........WooHoo!!! I had my name on Sheridan's waiting list and last week someone (thanks whoever you are) pulled out and I was next on the list!!! I'm really looking forward to that. How hard is it going to be, spending the whole day with other bloggers, stitching, talking, eating, talking, stitching!!!!

I've been wanting to tell you all this news for the last few days but I was slightly busy being overwhelmed by your good wishes for my amazingly wonderful weekend! Once again thanks everyone, I'm going to leave you today with this gorgeous photo of some of my Japanese Windflowers against a magical blue autumn sky. I'll show you the rest of my flower shots later in the week.

ps. I finished three things this month, how cool is that??

Prizes and some more quilt photo's..........

OK, so I'm back with some more photo's of fabulous quilts but first of all I must show you what my prize was............



4 beautiful metre pieces of fabric from Saffron Craig in her 'Fantastic Fairies' range! I'll have to give some thought to how I'll use this I think, only having 5 granddaughters I've no idea what to do with it (insert VERY big grin)! Go here to have a look at what this talented Australian fabric designer has on her website and blog.

Two gorgeous bag patterns, Miss Milly's Bag from Cinderberry Stitches and a Patchwork Passion bag from Blue Willow Designs. A Swag Ruler by Matilda's Own, a 20% discount card from Erica's and last but by no means least a subscription to
Homespun Magazine, how exciting is all that?

Can you tell I'm a bit over excited???


Thank you to everyone for the comments you have left this morning with congratulations for me (I'm feeling like a movie star!!), I really, really appreciate your friendship and words, thanks......

On with the show..................


















Karen and Gail doing an excellent job of meeting and greeting in front of the fabulous signs (all made by Karen's very talented other half) for the circus...............



...........and a full shot of our gorgeous mascot for the weekend!! The kids were enthralled and awed in the case of toddlers, he did an awesome job...............

Thanks to all the blogging friends that made the trip up for the day and supported us by attending and spending and go visit Lorraine over a Bizarre Quilter she won a first prize for her miniature quilt, I'm sorry Lorraine, I didn't get a photo of it. Trust me though when I tell you it was fabulous.
More photo's later in the week and I've got some other things for show and tell too..................

Remember this..................

Just a quick post because I couldn't wait to tell you...........


Remember this quilt? Of course you do, I prattled on enough about it didn't I?





Well it got me this....................





...........I was incredibly excited when the awards went up (I didn't let it show though - much!!!)
There were some wonderful prizes that went with the bit of paper too, I'll be back to show you those later today with some more photo's of the show. Another blogger friend won a first prize as well and I'll tell you about that soon too.....

Be back later to brag some more.......

Just a peek.......

......of our local quilt show this weekend....



.....the Hawthorn is beautiful in it's autumn colour, it's fruiting in abundance this year.........



..........this inspires me to work with colour.........



.....colour in the flower arrangements too.....



......and this big boy is waiting to say hello..............



......he's very handsome isn't he....

Got to go get ready for the last day of the show, then pack up and clean up tonight, busy, busy!! I'll be back in a day or so with lots of photo's to show you, the talent in this little town is amazing..........

Ballan Quilt & Craft Show this weekend......

This is where I'll be for the weekend, don't forget to come and say hi if you can make it here.

The Autumn Festival is on Saturday in Ballan so for a great day out with the family, make it Saturday. If you want to sneak off on your own to look at the quilts and visit the trading tables come on Sunday, either way, see you there...............

It seems I'm wanted...................

.....................by the German Government no less AND the FBI wants to compensate me!!!

So the latest scam email to do the rounds it seems, purports to be from the FBI, oopps sorry 'THE (FBI)'!!!!

Honestly, how gullibly do these people think we are??

Anyway, I thought I'd give you all a laugh on this bright and sunny autumn day.................
Enjoy...

From: Mr. Harry Hill
Date: 03/22/10 23:38:02
To: undisclosed-recipients:,
Subject: THIS IS THE (F.B.I)


THIS IS THE (F.B.I)
http://www.fbi.gov

FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue,
NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI)

Attn: Dear Funds Beneficiary,

This the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) We are writing in response to our track light monitoring device which we received today in our office about the illegal transactions that you have been involve in for a long time now.

We understand from our general investigations that some con men from Nigeria has been ripping you off your hard earned money with the pretense of dealing with ATM CARD Company that will deliver a Card to you and the proposed amount which was to be transferred to you is the sum of $5,000,000 Usd as stated in our record here.

We also got a complain from our German counterpart stating that your identity/information's was used to dupe a German business man to the tune of $400 Billion Usd by some Nigerian Fraudsters which you have been in contact with for some time now.

The German Government has ordered for your urgent arrest regarding the crimes that was committed with your name,after all the series of investigations conducted here in our office we tracked your record and we found out that you have never been jailed or had any fraudulent case that may jeopardize your image and personality.

All this information's are on record and we are going to use it against you in the world court when this case will be brought before it and we called the Nigerian High Commission for an urgent compensation for the bad deed that has been committed with your name.

The Nigerian Government has made available the sum of $9 Million Usd for your compensation and then we would like to inform you to stop any further communications with the con men so that you will not be brought before the law..

We also discovered that you have made some payments to them earlier for this same funds that was to be sent to you.

Don't forget that all your properties will be confiscated as soon as you are jailed because it will be believed that you got them from fraudulent and dubious business transactions like the one that you are in right now.

We have forwarded a copy of this information's to all the states crime agencies including,

National Crime Information Center (NCI
CrimTrac Agency, Canberra,

Crime and Corruption Commission

Crime and Misconduct Commission

Home Land Security Service.

Economic And Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)

Nigerian Local Metropolitan Police (NLMP)

So all you need to do right now in other to clear your name from the scammer list which has already been forwarded to our office is to secure the CLEAN BILL CERTIFICATE immediately.

This Certificate will then clear your name from the scammers list and also after the Certificate has been issued to you, you will then forward it to the payment officer for the urgent transfer of your compensation funds of $9 Million Usd.

You are required to forward to us your private contact number for oral communications and don't forget that you will be given only 72hours to secure the CLEAN BILL CERTIFICATE or you will face the law and its consequences.

Your e-mail address is now under our e-mail track monitor, so you should make sure that you don't respond to any e-mail that is being sent to you from anybody or organization that claims to be working for the Nigeria Government.

Never you forward any part of our contact with you to the con men and seize all further communication with any ATM CARD Company acting for the release of the funds to you.

Forward the details of the payment you made to them earlier, and also all the information's/documents that was forwarded to you by those criminals that you have been in contact with for a long time now.

Get back to us as soon as you receive this e-mail so that we can guild you on how to secure the Certificate within 72hours.

THANKS FOR YOUR CO-OPERATION.

Thanks as I wait for your response

Respectively
Mr Harry HILL
FBI AGENT




......I might ask if I can be guilded? in silver this time..............

:o)

Thank You............

This man...............



.........would like me to say thank you to everybody that has left wonderful and supportive comments on my last post.

His bruises are nice and ripe today, but they're only bruises (and a couple of broken teeth)! It could have been so much more, quite a few drivers have suffered more, stabbing and broken bones to name a couple. So he is fine, back at work listening to the good natured and supportive banter from his work mates, I think 'Rocky' might be his nickname for a week or two?? LOL.

It's nice to know that most of us are decent, hard working people who have taught and are teaching our children the values that will make them 'good' adults!!

Thanks..................


Oh, the photo.........three years ago, his 60th and yes I made the cake!! He's always been a locomotive addict........

What is happening in our world..................

............when the simple act of going to work can put you in danger of violence.

The photo below is a not very flattering photo of He Who Works............

........yesterday, he took himself off to work as usual. Now this man of mine isn't a copper, or a firefighter, nor is he a bouncer in a dark and dingy nightclub. He's not a soldier going off to protect our shores, he's not a rigger climbing up scaffolding!! He doesn't do anything that would make an insurance company reject his policy - he's a train driver!!

He ferries around the general public on our train system here in Melbourne, Australia. He's been doing this for over 30 years. Up to a few years ago, I would have said that the biggest worry I had when he left each day was someone driving or walking in front of his train, it's happened a few times, and each time the grief and sorrow for lost lives has emotionally crippled him for months.

Yesterday he went to work as usual but around five in the afternoon he made a huge mistake!! He asked a couple of youths (20ish) to stop holding the door open so that he could get going. One of them didn't say anything, the other in no uncertain terms told him what he could do with himself, calmly walked up to him (he was in the door of the cab when he spoke to them) and hit him!! Now this man of mine takes some bruising, not like me who only has to look at the corner of a table and my thigh is blue!!

He's gone in to work today with explicit instructions to not even look at any young, male passengers. I told him that if they want to hold the door open and risk falling out, fine, let them fall!! He's not a big man, he always says that if there is a second life, he's coming back as a very spoilt cocker spaniel with very long legs!!! :o)

Not only is he not tall or well built, he's 63 today, we joke all the time about age being a date on the calendar, not the age that's in your head and heart. But he happens to be my old man and I do happen to like his face the shape it is!! He has no intention of 'retiring', while he's healthy he just wants to play with his trains. So why do people, be they youth or not, think they have the right to speak with their fists? I know that here in Melbourne, we have an epidemic of violence, youth terrorising youth at night. What has happened to our world? Why is our world a violent place?

Why isn't the world as friendly, warm, tolerant,good and accepting as our blogging world?????????????

Mary Poppins eat your heart out............

............this ones mine!!



I love this bag, I finished the embellishment yesterday..........



....isn't it gorgeous?

It was easy to make and everything was in the kit, right down to the batting. The amount of fabric, wool etc was very generous and I've probably got enough left to make another small bag which I plan on doing soon. I thought I might experiment with my own design! Should be interesting! I'll keep you informed!

I really do love working with the wool, the upholstery fabric is gorgeous but harder to work with than cotton. Not too bad though, I only broke two needles!!

My goodness, that's two things I've finished this month - WOW! That's really good for me. Tonight I'm back to quilting my sample square quilt, it's still warm and humid so I'll have to put the air conditioner on to quilt, then this weekend I'm hoping to do my February Sue Spargo block (I'd like to do it before March arrives probably next week!).

Autumn's Glory..........

The weather over the last few days has been wonderful. Autumn magic, marvelous March, call it what you will, but I love this time of the year with it's warm, gentle days and cool crisp nights.



This is our reward for living in the Central Highlands............



......glorious autumn colour.........



.....to ease us gently and slowly into the cold, windy and hopefully wet (and snowy?)winter.


Oh yes. Happy St. Patricks day everyone, hope 'tis a good one.......

Running away to join the circus........

The colour is a bit out on this photo, I took it outside this morning and the sun is a bit too bright but it's still dull in the house.....



......it's more accurate in the rest of them.










So that's it, finished!

Stitched, quilted, bound, embellished, label and sleeve on!

I'm happy............

But I do know why they call them 'challenge' quilts!

Now to make this..................



......it arrived yesterday, yum!!!

See you later.

This and That...........

I said last week that I had received my second block of my Sue Spargo BoM, well this is it, gorgeous colours.....



....so rich and glowing. This time I bought the threads to match the fabric and wool, I thought that I had ordered them for the Jan block, but mustn't have. I'm glad I did this time though, the colours are all hand dyed to match and look beautiful. I haven't started it yet, I just have to get on with this first.......



..........I've nearly finished my circus challenge quilt for the local show. All the quilting is finished and I just have to do a few bits of embellishment now.



I think I'll put the binding on first, then do the other bits I want to do. The flowers I plan on putting on are 3D so I would rather have finished it first. That way I'm not twisting and turning with the binding and perhaps knocking the 3D bits around!! My gosh, I just had a look at the preview of the photo's in the large size, no hiding mistakes with those is there?? Perhaps I should tell those of you with good eyesight to squint??? LOL!



Look how sad my sunflowers are looking after the weekend of storms, I guess that's the price I pay for planting them late in the season. I want to try and start in September this year and plant them every month through to December, we'll see whether I manage it or not???



One of my all time favourite Autumn flowers, Japanese Windflowers. I only have the pale pink ones but I do like the white ones too.
Thank goodness that the weather is warming up a little this week, I was starting to get a little worried that the winter was going to be very long if the cold weather stayed around.

That's me done for today, I have to go do some sewing, only two weeks to go before the Ballan Quilt Show. Is anybody able to make it up for the Autumn Festival? It's always a good day on the Saturday with a market, rides, a parade, an art and photographic show at the council offices and of course the craft and quilt show. There are quite a lot of trading tables this year I think, that's always a good thing, isn't it??
Anyway, I've decided that I will use Julie's idea and wear a yo-yo pin on the day. So if anybody is a blogger, come say hi. I'll remind you all again just before......

New Look Me..............

If you're a regular visitor to my blog, you will see that I've had a wee bit of a clean up!! Understatement hey??

I decided that I wanted clean lines, lots of clear space and bigger pics, I also needed to clean up some of the clutter that was ....well, cluttering up the place!!

Don't worry, I'm not going to assault your eyeballs with giant pictures all the time, but sometimes I just wanted to be able to have a clearer picture of something without clicking on the photo (which doesn't always work for me anyway!) and having to click back again to keep reading!! I learnt how to put up larger photo's over here, so decided to have a go and guess what?? It works!!!!

So as a sort of debut of BIG PICS here's a different view of something that fell into my shopping bag while I was at the quilt show in Ballarat on Sunday, honest it did ;0)..................



Gorgeous colours aren't they? You can see the whole roll on my new blog header (which will probably change again soon)!

These are the roses that are sat on my desk at the moment, when I brought them in the other day they were still drying out from the storms and I couldn't resist this little rain drop.

The gorgeous man (big grin) that I share my life with, otherwise known as He Who Works, worked hard last week on his days off from driving trains in the metropolis building new shelves in my sewing room.



We got rid of the trestle table that I was using as a desk and he built a long shelf right in front of my favourite window, we put ikea baskets underneath and three big, deep shelves next to the window.

Don't they look fabulous and ............full............already, honestly it took me ages to sort it out!!

The green pillow thingie that you can see just next to the basket shelves is for Miss Martha, it saves my feet which she insists on sitting on while I'm at the desk.

Do you see my little green and cream mini drawers under the window, He Who Works made those years ago during our business years, I think we've got three others in the shed still, anyway, he just painted them for me and now they contain all my pens, pencils, marking pens and bits and bobs!! Lovely..


Hmmmm, my little hand sewing corner. I put my 30's quilt on the wall, stacked some favourite things on top of my sewing box that Mum gave me - did I tell you about that? It was the first piece of furniture that Mum and Dad bought as a married couple back in 1950, the year I was born, it has a little drawer in the front and the top lifts up to store your sewing/embroidery in and it's one of my most treasured possessions now (damn the Alzheimer's).

Mum made me the pink velvet embroidered pin cushion, Dad turned the base on his lathe for her, so another treasure. The tiny quilts on the little rack I think I made way back in the early '80s, so cute.

Now when you look at this last photo, don't dwell on the grotty Billabong thong, they are my favourite summer footwear, just take notice of what's sticking through it.....................


.............scary isn't it and when I tell you that it went right BETWEEN my toes!!! How lucky was I? How lucky were my puppies that I found it and not them? How lucky that the gorgeous man didn't find it in the bottom of his foot? I would never hear the last of that one would I? AND (I know, shouldn't start a sentence with and, but it's the only thing that fits!) it's a no. 12 quilting needle!!! Tiny, tiny...phew, lucky...............

Will you let me know what you think of the large photo's? Do they take ages to load? I don't think they should really! I'm liking the clean lines, no froth, just important stuff ;0).