Got the blues!

The ferris wheels are finished! Well the top at least.....

 

For some reason unknown my computer has decided that all these pictures will be portrait not landscape today so my apologies for that.

My friend's cat, Bandit, helping with the finishing touches.

This is another quilt called a Twisting Twenty that I finished a while ago.

Its a very simple quilt but I think it looks very effective.

And now for the start of something new..... I really quite like blues and greens together. They look so fresh.

Again with the portrait orientation???????

This is going to be a little 'Plus Quilt'. Looks like fun. I will have to get some more fabric of course! Just to make sure I have the mix right.

 

Ferris Wheels

My ferris wheels quilt is coming along nicely. I first started this project at Quilt Camp with Chris Jurd about 2 years ago. I decided to make my version larger than the camp project and it has ended up having nine ferris wheels rather than five. I have used lots of my blue scraps but still the pile doesn't seem to go down.....

I have incorporated some lovely embroidered motifs from a set of place mats and serviettes that I found at a garage sale some years ago. They are exquisitely hand embroidered even down to the delicate stitching around the edges. I will have to find another project to use these edges as I cant bear to think of someone, probably poorly rewarded, stitching all those edges only for them to be tossed away.

I am still to decide whether to turn this into a tablecloth or a quilt and how I will do the edges due to the points and curves. Decisions, decisions......

My latest is learning how to make a stained glass window which is very different to patchwork. Using a glass cutter with a set square is similar to using a rotary cutter with a ruler but that's about where the similarity ends, however choosing the glass to use is almost as difficult as choosing fabric. I am going to keep this project under wraps until its finished, which is some way off yet!

We have a beautiful stained glass window in our house. Inspiration for the future perhaps!

Linen and a Lighthouse

I have been getting out and about lately. A trip to Bathurst with two of my sewing buddies was a great day. We visited two patchwork shops, a few op shops and had a great lunch. It was a fun day. A visit to a retro store revealed these treasures for only $5 each!

They are all new and in perfect condition. This one is my favourite.

The orange one is so cute!

 One is a souvenir from Forster, which we visited last weekend...

and the last one is just lovely... beautiful parrots.

 As mentioned above, we visited Forster. We thought it time to take a break from painting and take the caravan away to have a change of scene. We took the 'scenic' route through Singleton and Gloucester which was very pretty but it was a long long way around. The weather was pretty cold and windy at times but not too bad. We had some lovely sunny mornings.

The bridge between Forster and Tuncurry.

Its a lovely place and the coastline down to Seal Rocks was very rugged but beautiful.

 We visited the Lighthouse at Sugarloaf Point, Seal Rocks.

This shows the lighthouse keepers residence which is available for holiday stays.

The view of the beach from the top of the lighthouse. It was very windy!

One cold husband!

 And finally, we saw lots of pelicans, my favourite birds!

On the way home we stopped at Karuah which is a beautiful spot about 4km off the freeway. What a classic scene!

A Table and a Wombat

The painting is coming along and now we have only two more bedrooms to go. There are still lots of fiddly bits to do, which are down to me, but the progress so far is heartening. The house is looking warm and cosy and is so much more comfy than it was. It looks clean and fresh and even smells good!

The weather over the weekend was very cold. We visited the farmers market at Blackheath on Sunday and it was 2 degrees as we set off from home. We saw a family of kangaroos, dad, mum and baby, and a lyre bird on the way as well. The kangaroos were down towards the more populated part of our road and were heading towards the oval, probably for some breakfast.

At the Imperial Hotel on Saturday evening, when we dropped in for a beer and a warming shiraz, we met Chloe, who is a six month old baby wombat. The bar attendant has taken on her second orphaned wombat to care for. The first one she had, Rosey, has been released back into the wild. Both babies were found in their mum's pouches after they were hit by vehicles on the road.

Chloe was soooo cute. She was tucked up inside a beanie and a handbag!

Our big shed, where the traction engine sleeps, has all sorts of other stuff in it and most of it is pretty dirty and dusty. One of the things down there was an old wooden table which had had a hard life! However, I could see it had once been a very nice piece of furniture. It was covered in dirt and an oily greasy film of muck which took some serious scrubbing and de-greaser to get off. However, after a clean and a serious going over with an electric sander it came up a treat. I only wish I had taken a photo before we started. It looked terrible....

 

 
Mike painted it with some stain and then after another sand, a coat of clear lacquer, and this is how it looks in the dining nook! It has lots of marks on it which still give away its hard life but it looks great and fits perfectly. Its so nice to bring it back to life again.

Thats my Jacobean Star quilt ( a Chris Jurd design) hanging on the wall which brightens up the room too. The flowers are beautiful proteas which we bought at the farmers market in Blackheath.

It was a great weekend, catching up with old friends and family. 

Before and after

The reno's at Mt Vic are done except for the painting. We have made a start but there is a long way to go. I thought I would share some before and after photos. The before photos are a bit scary but now that they are a thing of the past I can relax!

The old bathroom before..

And after!!

The ensuite bathroom looked like this.

It had a storage/hanging space area next to it which we have changed completely, incorporating a nice vanity bench, new window and built in wardrobe. This is what it used to look like.

The new ensuite....

The laundry used to look like this!!!

and now looks like this! It still needs to be painted of course but its much lighter and brighter already.

A lot of cleaning out has happened as well so as not to contaminate the new space! Replacing the old aluminium windows with nice new white ones made a huge difference and adding the little fixed window in the ensuite area has made it lovely and light. The view of the tree tops is lovely too.

Our builder Eamonn Doran did a wonderful job and was very easy to work with. Nothing was a problem for him.

Our next door neighbours who own about 40 acres on both sides of Mt York Road have recently cleared a lot of their property along the boundaries. This is what we found when we went down behind our shed to have a look.

 A bit different to how it used to be. Nothing stays the same for ever!