Wherefore art thou?

Helloo!

I've been in absentia for a while...I bet you didn't even miss me!

Here are some photos to catch you up on our goings on.

Quilting:

 Baby Allegra's Quilt is finished and delivered in all it's pink pinky pink glory!

 One of the blocks for Quilt Around The World II, a flower for Beth that I did on Big Bernie by threading the bobbin with Perle 8 thread!! Isn't that marvelous! I That machine is the bestest thing ever! The girls from Tauranga Bernina with their wonderous classes are the only reason I know that it could do it though as the manual is only to be read when something goes wrong, obviously.

House Progress:

 Poles ready to go in for next retaining wall

 Father in Law inspects the drilling thingamy.

Poles are in

 And so came the great storm, 

that filled in all the holes with topsoil 

and so it was, that we have to dig 

the bloody holes all over again!

Great Grandma got a new puppy. Huge hit with the lads!

 I was slightly put off after seeing it eat it's own poo! (eww!) 

But apparently this is quite normal! (double eww!)

That is all.

Nina Love

For those of you that are in Australia, you will know that I could be referring to two possible things when I say "Nina"....the beautiful cat who I believe may be the daughter I never had or the slightly kooky woman from Offspring, a TV series.

From the first time I saw it, I admired her bed linen. I knew where the fabric came from, oh yes! Ink and Spindle are the Melbourne based goddesses of hand printed fabric.

But could I really be bothered working our how much I need, purchasing said amount and making a duvet cover? No I could not! Besides, with the amount of fabric which I already have stashed ready for future projects, I think my husband may have filed for divorce.

I found out who made the beautiful bed linen from off the telly though. It is the divine Ms. Olivia from Moochie Lou. 

So I ordered a little something to appease myself and it arrived a couple of weeks ago...

wrapped so beautifully....

with a little card to tell me how to wash it, which I will faithfully do for the first time, then forget...

...and now I have two of these absolutely gorgeous pillowcases to reign supreme on my bed, along with Nina the cat! (No dirty paw prints please!)

Olivia was so lovely. She covered the extra postage to New Zealand instead of charging me, she emailed to enquire whether it had arrived safely and said nice things about my blog. I like Olivia! 

Buy her stuff, peeps. 

It's fab, you'll be styley, 

win win!

Tanya X

I Love Big Books and I Cannot Lie.... oh, and Chairs too...

...These two beauties arrived in the post this morn via the lovely amazon.com. 

Modern Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman

and

The Shape Workshop for Quilters by the Fat Quarterly Team.

Cant wait to delve in to them and will never get there if I keep faffing about on this bloody machine!

And you may have been admiring the fabric in the background?! 

Here are the chairs I thrifted off the side of the road during our last summer in Australia, which were a cat-damaged, floral abomination! Thanks to my wonderfully creative friend, lovely Lisa at Vintage Influence who organized her upholsterer, her dad Al who touched up the wooden bits, and the extremely talented gals at Ink and Spindle who custom printed the fabric for me, I think they turned out fabulicious!

And here is the another one, that Lisa picked up off the side of the road and re-gifted to me! It now lives in Charlie's room, covered with red Echino cars and is a lovely comfy reading chair. Thanks once again to both Lisa and Al for all their help!!!

When I went over to Lisa's to pick up the chairs, I fell truly, madly, deeply in love with this old Singer sewing table that Al and Lisa had restored with a beautiful Blackwood top. Had to be mine! Here its is with my 'Girls' by in pride of place.

I have even more gorgeous things to blog about tomorrow...watch this space!

T x

Slow and Sew

Finally I have a cold enough day to light the fire. 

A fire at night is lovely, but there's nothing like that smell of your dinner slowly cooking on top of the fireplace all day!

 Lamb and Lentil soup / stew 

The latest quilting bee is another Quilt Around the World. 

We each make a starter block and send it on to the next person, who adds to it and send it on to the next etc, etc. 

There are 24 recipients so I should end up with 24 blocks of a similar theme.

Here is my Lone Star starter block. 

Biartch of a thing to put together but what a great result!

t X

Au Naturalle

I've got a cleaning frenzy happening but thought I'd take a break and blog about this quilt I made recently for a 21st on commission.

The mum sent me 21 photos and I printed them onto printable fabric.

She wanted natural colours and I had quite a few in my stash so only had to purchase the backing, really. Spotlight's new Cotton Lawn (cheap version of Liberty) is really lovely but a Bucking Fitch to sew as it's slippery as forty b**tards!

There's a nice mix of textures with linens and cottons of various thickness. I even used a tea towel from Ikea! (new, not used and manky)

I free motion quilted it in swirls and flowers.

She has Returned!

Hellloooo there! 

(This photo shamelessly stolen from my cousin, Stephen!)

Thought it was about time I started with the bloggy love again seeing it's been nearly three months since we made the big move back from Melbourne to NZ!

Can I just tell you that life is great?!

The kids are settled in school and I L.O.V.E that it's a little country school where life is a bit simpler and a love of community is instilled in them in all facets of school life, from the areas of study to the whole school activities. A big shout out to Oropi School! We love you!

They've also embraced the all-emcompassing love that most New Zealanders have for the game of Rugby. I am struggling to love the early morning games on Saturday in the cold and damp, but better get used to it!

I am doing a course and have a student ID!

 Jas is travelling a bit to and from Aus but hopefully that will settle down soon.

Soon this will be our view every morning (minus the orange digger!) What's not to like?! The beast of all retaining walls has gone up and hopefully we should be ready to build the actual house by the end of the year!

That's all for this installment. Sniff and I have just started another Around the World Quilting Bee so will get the sewing mojo back in full force soon

Tanya X

Project update (and moan)

You may think I've been idling the days away preparing for the packers to sweep all our worldly goods into boxes while I wave around looking ethereal without a care in the world.

Let me tell you;
a) sorting out kids toys is a right royal pain in my a*se. Trying to hide the culled ones is an even bigger pain!

b) We still have 10 days of living in this house to go. A myriad of decisions as to whether to throw away the packet food now or wait just in case I need it to make some dish???

c) This office sewing area is still a nightmare that needs urgent attention. Of course, I am in denial and hope it will all miraculously be organized by the 15th (without me having to do it, of course).

I've been getting some practice in on Big Bernie (the Bernina).

 Taggie

Cushion Cover

Play quilt

Quite industrious if I say so myself! Bernie and I are slowly getting the hang of each other, as you can see.