Teddy Bear Quilt

We are not sure how she does it, but Debbie from our quilting group, now known as 'Sweet Peas' has been producing an amazing amount of quilts.

Not only that, but she has discovered that she can do her own machine quilting and so she is able to bring them to a lovely finish.

She shared this lovely Teddy Bear quilt with us this week. Kaiser gave it his tick of approval by giving the quilt a 'cat scan'.

Napkin Ring

My sister and I can't resist buying old linen and giving it a new life.

We enjoy using embroidered tablecloths and cloth napkins in our everyday life at meal times.

I decided I would like to make my own napkin ring but it has been a long time in the making. Today I used it for the first time.











I took a piece of pale pink 100% cotton, backed it with pellon and quilters muslin and then did some free motion embroidery along the length of fabric.

I did 2 x stem stitch irregular lines, then I added silk ribbon leaf stitch using 4mm green silk ribbon.

Finally I added french knot flowers using variegated rayon thread.
When embellishing was done I made a
tube by adding another piece of quilters muslin and stitching down both sides of the block and then turning the item out to hide the raw edges.

I cut a piece of timtex slightly smaller than the block and slid this in behind the embroidered block.

The timtex was to give the napkin ring some firmness.

I turned under the edges at one end and then bent the whole piece around, slipped the raw edges of the other end inside the folded end and slip stitched the ends together to make the ring.

Spring one day, winter the next

Yesterday, at our place was picture perfect. Clear skies and mountains on view. Temperatures were summer like.

Today, clouds, cold and rain - what a contrast.

Still, the garden gives us joy, proving, in spite of the contrasts in the weather, that spring is truly with us.

We have pansies and violas planted in the garden near our front door. They have rewarded us over the past few weeks with their abundance of blooms and happy faces.

The shrubs have been flowering as well and the waratah's bloom is quite majestic and a pleasure to observe. Their season will soon be over so we are enjoying while we can.

Adopted Great Great Grandmother?

Our friend, Debbie, has just recently become a grandmother for the first time and yesterday she brought her three week old grandson to visit with us.

Long time since any of us had seen a three week old baby and with this picture of our 91 year old Mum holding him, I thought she could almost be his 'adopted' great-great grandmother.

More Food - Yum!

One of the lovely things that has been established in our vegetable garden is rhubarb.

Linda has been making a lovely rhubarb pie for years from the Alison Holst Kitchen Diary Volume 2.

It is a real treat - orange juice is part of the secret of the delicious taste in the filling.

The latticing of the pie crust is all part of the taste treat and once again we were not disappointed.

Served with custard, we could not have asked for better.

Alison Holst is a household name in New Zealand. You can find out more about her on her website and one of her best all time recipes for lazy lasagne can be found there:-

http://www.holst.co.nz/Recipes

Our Quilting Group

Yesterday our quilting group met again and it was a very pleasant time.

Again there was show and tell so we have some images to share from the creativity of the ladies in our group:-



Debbie had another lovely nursery quilt to show us.

Not only that, she had also progressed to free motion quilting and had done a great job of this.












Linda showed the group a scrappy quilt she had made so that she could experiment with a new machine quilting technique.

After she completed it she realised it was quite 'conversational' with all the different prints that were included and so it is destined to become an 'I Spy' quilt for some nephews of ours.




















Andreena loves all things Christmassy and brought some completed Christmas projects - a Santa Bag and a Christmas Tree Skirt:-

A Little Bit of Real Gardening

Today was more about real gardening and not the fabric creations of yesterday.

With spring in the air, beans, peas, tomatoes and lettuces have been planted.

Linda and I noticed some pretty pink flowers in the garden and on closer inspection we discovered it was clematis.

It was trailing along the ground, so with a little bit of attention it has now been tied to retaining wall and as it has lots of buds we expect to see a lovely display in the coming weeks.

The soft pink petals and fine yellow stamens are almost enough to inspire one to a little bit of silk ribbon embroidery, but not yet.

Where we live we are having the most beautiful burst of spring weather.

After a month or so of wet, wet and more wet it is so nice to have the warmth of the sun and evidence of spring in all that is growing in our garden.

There was a time when the only gardening I did was on fabric and one of the advantages of that is that no weeds grow there.

Nothing quite like real flowers though, but I did enjoy browsing through some of my crazy quilting items today and this image is one of my favourite fabric gardens.

Nothing Quite Like Homemade

Linda and I do a fortnightly menu planner to coincide with our supermarket shopping and every second fortnight pizza is on the menu.

Today was the day - it was excellent - and there was not a crumb left by the time the three of us had finished.

A glass or two of red wine finished it off nicely.

Already looking forward to the next one.

Cat Scans

Our cats, Kaiser and Koko are well known for their habit of turning up on the scene when a new quilt has been finished and laid out on the floor.

They cannot help themselves they just have to come and lie right on top - these days we call it 'cat scanning'.

Linda recently made a scrappy quilt so that she could try out a quilting design called Baptist Fan.

She had no sooner laid out the quilt when CiCi appeared and promptly sat on the quilt to give it a 'cat scan'.

We were so surprised. Where did she learn about this? Has she been to 'cat scan' school?

The quilt proved to be a good sample for Baptist Fan design as well as an I Spy quilt with the wide variety of items of interest included amongst the scraps.

New From Old

A couple of weeks ago my sisters were out and about visiting a few opportunity/goodwill stores.

As they were leaving one of the stores, Linda, saw a table where everything was free. There was a basket nearby and in it a very sad looking old single bed spread.

It had a gathered fringe for the sides of the bed but the centrepiece was a long strip of hand pieced hexagons.

Linda brought the quilt home, washed it, stripped the gathered frill and cut enough strips from it for binding.

She pieced together left over pieces of wool batting and put the block of hexagon pieces on to the quilting frame and not too much later a new quilt emerged.

I just loved the colours and so I now have a new quilt for my arm chair.

Plum Blossom

Last year, when we bought our property we were delighted to find two established plum trees in our garden.

We patiently waited for them to ripen and we did so enjoy the fruit. We ate them fresh, stewed, and made into jam and plum sauce. We even froze some of the stewed plums but they have long since been consumed. We hope the plum sauce and jam last us until the next lot of fruit is ready for the same treatment.

The plum blossoms are out so we look forward to further developments:-











We found a really easy recipe for plum sauce in the New Zealand Garden magazine -

Digby Law's Plum Sauce

3 kg plums
2 onions
3 cloves garlic
1.5 kg sugar
6 cups malt vinegar
2 tablespoons salt
1 tspn cayenne papper
2 tspns each ground clovers, ground ginger and black pepper

Place all ingredients in a large pot and simmer slowly, uncovered, until onions are soft.

Strain out plum stones and discard.

Blend sauce in a food processor until smooth.

Return to the pot, bring back to the boil, pour into clean glass bottles/jars and seal.

Mature for at least a month to allow flavours to fully develop.

Very, very nice.

Quilting Group

With both of us spending more time closer to home my sister and I thought it would be nice if we started a quilting group of local friends with a common interest.

Today we met for the first time just to set up some general guidelines for the group and some of the ladies brought some show and tell:-

Rewa brought a quilt top she is working on for one of her grandchildren.












Debbie has been working on two nursery style quilts.

This one has been finished except for the binding.

Very cleverly executed in lovely, bright colours.








Maxie was working on an Irish Chain quilt top.













Andreena is in the middle of making a Christmas table runner.












Joanne brought a sampler quilt which she has finished up to the binding stage.

Lovely combination of quilted blocks and applique.









We are looking forward to many more happy gatherings before the year is over.

Golden Wedding Celebration

Fifty years ago a shy young eleven year old was asked to give her sister a horse shoe on her wedding day.









Fifty years later what could I do to make the celebration of my sister's golden wedding anniversary.

I took a copy of one the wedding day photos, changed it to sepia colour and printed it on to silk.

I found some cream vintage silk dupioni from a wedding gown for the background and cut a horse shoe shape from gold silk fabric.

I used fusible webbing to attach the photo and the horse shoe to the cream background.






I then embellished the lower part of the horseshoe with cream motifs, grub roses, gold beading, pearl beaded trim and silk ribbon embroidery.
















I then took the project to the framers and was very pleased with the box frame they did for me.

















Fifty years on and they can look back and reminisce the many years shared together.

Family Gatherings

As a family we have been very fortunate, in recent years, to have more and more family gatherings.

Sister Linda celebrated her birthday recently and all of our siblings were able to be there for her.

In this photo our Mum is sitting in centre, suitably surrounded by all of her children.

We had the event catered for at home with a sit down meal, leg of ham, roasted and boiled vegetables and salad followed by sticky date pudding and/or pavlova. Very nice.

Today's view from my bedroom window

Today has been wet and miserable but when I looked out my bedroom window this morning, the kayakers out for their adventure for the day.

Adventure tourism is one of the highlights to bring tourists to New Zealand, so I guess if you come this far, you make the most of the kayaking regardless of the weather.

The image is blurry because of the rain and the fact that it was taken through the glass of my bedroom window but I thought that capturing the moment was worth it.:-





Rather them than me.

Never get tired of that view

I think my sons think their Mother is a bit crazy the way she keeps on raving about the view from our home in Taupo.

Yesterday and today we have had crisp, frosty mornings followed by clear skies and the most fantastic views of 'our' mountains with fresh coatings of snow.

Just never get tired of that view:-

Three Sisters, Two Generations

Yesterday we went to visit to with our Aunt Grace who, today, will reach the milestone age of 101:-





The occasion meant she could be reunited with two of her sisters for the day:-





Aunt Grace is 101, Aunty Bettie (in the middle) is 83 and Lydia, our Mother, is 91.

The used to be two more sisters, Dorothea and Marjorie, so it is nice to think the remaining three can still get together from time to time.

In addition there were three sisters from our generation as well:-





Yours truly on the left with sister, Barbara, in the middle and sister, Linda, on the right.





We got to have a cake cutting ceremony although we understand this was to be repeated with other family and friends today.

Where is my five star treatment?

The cats at our home live pretty well, in fact, I think they get five star treatment so how come Koko was found licking the condensation off the window on a cold and wintery morning:-





Koko gets fresh, lukewarm water every day so why did she think the service was not good enough or was she trying to give us lessons in the window cleaning department?

Considering the windows are ceiling to floor the window cleaning could take quite some time.

The things that cats do........

Cici's coat has become quite glossy and more 'orange' since coming to live with us. Linda wanted to capture a picture but was totally ignored by CiCi - you have never truly been ignored until you have been ignored by a cat:-







Have you ever had a 'cat scan'?

If Linda puts out a new quilt on the floor to get a better look at it you can be absolutely sure that either Kaiser or Koko will appear so that they can have first turn at lying on the quilt.

We know that all quilts that come to this home have to be 'cat scanned' before use. In this case Linda was showing me a quilt that had been given to her by her quilting friends for her 60th birthday and Kaiser appeared on the scene:-