Farewell Mum

The time has come to farewell my beloved Mum.  

She had a fall a few weeks ago and was initially doing OK, but then, while we were in Queensland, started to deteriorate quickly.  She passed away peacefully on Monday 30 June 2025 at the age of 95.

Our friends in Queensland were able arrange a flight home for me, at short notice, and I was able to spend some time with her. I was with her when she passed.

Mum was extremely confused in her mind towards the end and had no quality of life.  She is now in a much better place.

Her passing will leave a huge hole in my heart, and of all those who knew this kind, gentle lady.

A Few Minutes of Purple

It has been nice to spend a few minutes in my sewing room today.  

Knowing that purple would be the nominated colour fairly soon, I had actually cut out the block last month.  That made things very easy this month.

So, ta da!  My Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks have been added to the growing pile.  I just need six more to make the quilt in a decent size.

Stitching Goals for July

 Just a very quick post with my minimal goals for July.

RAINBOW SCRAP CHALLENGE 

The colour is purple, so my couple of split nine patch blocks will be made.

CHOOKSHED CHALLENGE

This month’s number is NINE.

For me, that is to turn the stitchery I worked on last year while on the Isle of Man into a Gail Pan bag.  Fingers crossed I can actually get this done, but it may not happen, as I have a lot going on this month.

I do have a little knitting project on the go that I started last month, but more on that later.

That’s all.  Wish me luck.

A Big Fat Fail

I will not get my June Chookshed Challenge met this month.  Insert sad face…..

My goal was to make the Sew Together Bag from pretty Tilda fabrics.  I knew it was a fiddly make, but was ready for the challenge.

To refresh, these are the fabrics I intend to use.  The pale one isn’t Tilda, but works beautifully with the other two.  It will be the inside of the three internal zipper pockets.  The large floral will be the outer and the ditzy daisy the internal section between the pockets.

Now, to select a binding….  This is where I hit a road block.  I just wasn’t feeling it.

Option Number One

The pink works well with the prints, but is a bit too pink for the overall look, in my humble opinion.

Option Number Two 

Once again, the colour co-ordinates well with the large print, but it then looks too brown.  I know, fussy aren’t I.

I kept coming back to the patchwork basket I made with fabrics from this range.  The blue binding worked so well.  

There was no blue similar to this anywhere in town, so I bit the bullet and ordered some online.  While I was at it, I also bought some more pretty fabric.

Resistance was impossible.  This is from the latest Tilda range called “Wallflower”.  When do you ever see a print named “Janice”?  It comes in four colours, blue, red, green and caramel.  The colours being the colour of the leaves.  I thought about buying them all, but that was being a bit silly, so settled on the blue.

I’m much happier with the blue binding.  Isn’t it amazing how the different coloured binding brings out the colours in the large print and gives it a totally different look.  The blue seems much calmer and you really only see the binding fabric next to the large print on the bag.  I think that “Janice” may be one of the internal section colours now, as it fits in so very well, and breaks it up a bit.

Having said all that, I am not going to make a start this month, as I have simply run out of time.  Like a couple of the other challenge projects, I do still hope to have it made by the end of the year.

You see, we are going to be travelling again.  Hopefully, we will get further this time around.

I do have some other projects to work on while away.  As always, it will be interesting to see how much, if any, I get done.

A Play Date

A good friend came over today for a play date of crafting.

Not a lot of crafting took place, but a lot of talking, oh and quite a bit of eating.  You know how it is.

What I did achieve was some garment embellishment for my friend.  She had bought some cute overalls to wear while tending her farmers market stalls, but they were too short and just looked a silly length.  Would we be able to do something?

I’m sure we could.  Let’s see what is in the stash that would be suitable.

Ta da!  The sunflower fabric was one of the first patchwork fabrics I bought, well over twenty years ago.  I had used some back then, but still had plenty and it isn’t something that I naturally gravitate towards.  It was, however, perfect for this project.  They will look rather fun when she has her stalls.

While I was playing with sunflowers, my friend did achieve a small amount of her crochet rug.

After the garment tweaking, I did a little of my slow stitching, and I had also done a little at my stitching morning on Friday.  This is where I am up to.  I said it would be slow progress, and it is. I am having a bit of fun with it.  No stress or perfectionism involved.

The overall piece.

Some details of the texture.  There will be some more stitching in the hexy, I just have to decide what it will be.  The little leaves are just tracing the fabric design.

The doiley section will be stitched down later.  As you can see, there is quite a bit more to do, but I think I am at the stage where I can pin on more fabric, as I have freed up quite a few of my appliqué pins.

By the way, Mick’s rug got its christening on the weekend while watching the footy.  The weather was absolutely freezing, so he was happy to have it.

Meanwhile, no start has been made on the Sew Together Bag for this month’s Chookshed Challenge.  I met a bit of a road block, but that has now been navigated, so a start should be made soon.

Finding a Squirrel Down a Rabbit Hole - A New Start

Once you finish a project you can start a new one.  That’s how it works, isn’t it?  That should be the Sew Together Bag shouldn’t it?

No, that is not how it works.

I seem to have been seeing lots of slow stitching coming up when scrolling and felt the urge to start something,  I even have a little tub with offcuts from doileys from previous projects that I want to play with.

The Sew Together Bag needs some light wadding, so I pulled out the tub.  There just happened to be a piece that was sort of the size to make a pouch, so I squared it up.  Next to get out my doiley offcuts and a box labelled “Small Scraps” as well as my usual scrap tubs and have a play.

Oh, what a glorious mess I made.  The plan was to have a faded look, but my scraps ended up making it somewhat pretty.  More so than I had originally thought , but it will still be nice……I hope.  I’m not a fan of raw edges, as in a lot of slow stitching, so lots of turning under.  It’s not Kawandi, or Boro, or Kantha, rather making it up as I go along.  My tiny appliqué pins, that I have had for years and never used, came into their own.  It has ended up bigger than I thought I would make, but I just worked with the size of the batting piece.  It will be about the size of an iPad pouch, so quite a large panel to work on.

Once I ran out of pins it was time to find some threads to stitch it all down.  Time to get out the box labelled “Crochet and Pearl Thread”.  Yep, there seems to be boxes of just about everything lurking in the deep dark depths around here……and…..shock horror……most have recently been labelled.  You never know when you may need something.  Thank goodness they don’t go off.

Time to start stitching.  There isn’t a lot of thread on these spools, so we will try to use them up first……more to add to the jar.

A little progress was made on Sunday, while chatting to Lou about her exciting fabric haul.  Just as well slow stitching isn’t required to be perfect, as mine is a bit how’s your uncle.  Having said that, I quite like the texture.  After the first couple of rows of stitching I used the Hera marker to keep my stitching lines somewhat straight.  It will be fun to decide how to stitch the different areas and then to do some embellishing,  There is also still quite a bit of batting to cover with fabric.  This won’t be a quick process, just something to pick up now and again.  Then, it is called “Slow Stitching”.

Ta Da! A Finish

I really wanted to get the crochet rug completed, so that Mick could actually use it while watching the footy on the tele.

Having the motorcycle races to watch really gave me the opportunity to push it along. See the previous post.  

I had kind of planned to add nine rows of half treble moss stitch in a few different greys that I had in my stash, grading from mid to light to dark to light to mid.  Well, in the end I felt that the dark grey framed it nicely and called it quits at that.

Ta da.  It’s far from perfect, but was a fun make for a utilitarian rug.  I really love the texture of the corner to corner crochet, giving a nice, thick, snuggly feel.  There may be another in the making at some stage in the future.

Cracker Night

This weekend is the King’s Birthday long weekend, which traditionally means bonfire and cracker night.  That also means the big community event down at Portland, about 50kms away.

The weather here has been cold and quite breezy, so we ummed and aaahed about going, but in the end, despite that, we rugged up and headed off for their big night.

The event is held at the old Cement Works, which always looks rather dramatic in the evening light.  We arrived just on dusk, and our first stop was coffee and a sausage sandwich.

Once fed, we made our way to the bonfire.  What a beauty it was, with humongous logs.  Look how the embers are blowing in the cold breeze.  We were glad of the warmth of the fire.

It was nice just sitting watching the flames.  We had to have a photo, wearing our Isle of Man TT beanies, as tonight is the final race of the event.  Like every race and practise for the entire fortnight, it has been delayed.  Let’s hope it goes ahead.  We are kind of glad that this was not the year that we were over there.

The main feature of the night is the fireworks display.  Howards Fireworks are one of the main companies in the country and their factory is not far from Portland, so they put on a good show.

When we were walking back from the bonfire to the building it really did look dramatic, and rather Pink Floydish.

We had a quick walk around the night markets, but no purchases were made.  We just love the old industrial building.

And, as we left, one more shot of that stunning chimney stack, this time in the dark.

I even manage to get a shot of the painted silos in the low light.  A car went past, at the right time, giving some light.

It is all very family friendly and we were home a bit after eight o’clock.  We are so pleased we decided to go down.

Making a Start

I seem to have made a good start to June.  We’ll see how long that lasts, but make the most of it while it does.

Firstly, as it is now winter, it was time to update the little shelf in the kitchen to a more wintry theme.

We had our first really good frost this morning, down to -4 degrees C.  No, I didn’t go out and take a photo.  I stayed in where it was nice and snug.  Mick had cut back the dahlias and other plants that were going to get zapped during the week, which turned out to be a good thing.  There is one plant, next to the clothes line, that stinks after it has been frosted, and it was on the nose this morning.  It will get trimmed back a bit before too long, but it is wise to leave some of the old foliage there to protect the new growth when it comes through in early spring.  That’s when everything will get a good tidy up.

The first sewing job I did was to make the two Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.  Other than some five inch squares I bought from the Sewing Basket at the Sydney Quilt Show last year, my orange scrap tub is nearly empty.  Hence, one same fabric being used in both blocks.  Never fear, I still have plenty of orange fabric, it just isn’t in small scraps.

Next it was time to tackle the fish (pardon the unintentional pun).  Everything is appliquéd down on the blocks.  I just need to embroider the eyes on the tiny tropical fish.  They are way too tiddly (oh dear, another pun) to attempt to appliqué.  We’ll see if I get around to getting the filler blocks cut and the flimsies made.  That is a job for another day, at this stage. The colours in this photo a way off, due to the poor lighting.  They don’t look pinky/orangy like they appear here.

I have made good progress on the crochet rug.  This has been taken along to my crafting groups, as well as being worked on while we watch the Isle of Man TT motorcycle races on Mick’s laptop.

The main body of the rug is now complete and I have completed the foundation round of the border.  The border will be fairly simple.  What exactly it will look like is still a mystery, as I am making it up as I go along.  The rug is nice and long, although I feel it could have been a tad wider, but it is what it is, and the border will help.  Mick is rather happy with how it is looking.  

In the end, I only used one and a bit of the extra balls of yarn that I bought when we were away, so two and a three quarters left over.  It sounds like the starting point for another rug, for donation.

I have sort of made a start on my Chookshed Challenge project.  I have watched a YouTube tutorial to refresh myself on the construction method.  I have hunted out some fabric for the pocket linings and binding and I have bought some zippers.  I still have to hunt out the interfacing and then I will be ready to start the actual construction.

Some time ago I bought an iron from a store and when I tried it out the steam setting spat water everywhere, so I returned it.  I wasn’t given a refund, rather a gift voucher to use in the store.  It has been sitting there for some time.  I have been thinking for a while that I would like an enamelled cast iron shallow lidded pan, so went shopping with the gift voucher.  In the end, with the current discount, I only had to add $10.  I was pretty happy with that.

It is a nice warming red in colour.  It is also rather large and I had to find somewhere to store it.

I thought that it would go well in our lovely old lead light dresser.

However, that wasn’t going to work…..but I thought a solution could be reached.

There is quite a bit of space above the electric frypan.  Time to sweet talk Mick…….

Pretty much straight away, that was yesterday, we went to Bunnings to buy the supplies for a new shelf on both sides.  That will work better for our plates and platters as well.  

Ta Da!  This afternoon the new shelves were installed and work a treat.  He did a great job.

Meanwhile, the pan got its first test run tonight.  It was also a new recipe, Normandy Chicken. Definitely a success.  Obviously, the meals on YouTube and Instagram dish up into a fresh pan before taking a photo, as they never have any burny marks up the side.  I’m keeping it real.  LOL

That about sums up what has been happening here in the last few days.

June Stitching Wishes

Time to think about what I would like to achieve during the month of June.  Much will be the same as usual.

RAINBOW SCRAP CHALLENGE

The colour for June has been announced to be orange. I will make my usual two split nine patch blocks.

CHOOKSHED CHALLENGE

The number selected this time is Number 5.  For me that is the Sew Together Bag.  I had to have a think to see if I will make it this month, or once again swap things round.  I think I will, as it has been on my wish list for about ten years and I have had the fabric for two years.  I have made a couple previously, as gifts, but not one for me.

Since the beginning of the year, I have found the missing fabric and Lou kindly provided me with the pattern, as I have still not located mine, which is annoying, as it has my hand written notes with it.  But, in reality, I do have everything I need to make the thing……oh, I may need to buy a few zips.  The fabrics I have chosen are the same Tilda range as the dilly bag kit that we received at Scrub Stitchin’ in 2023 and the fabric basket I made at the beginning of this year.  Anyone would think that I like it.  Also, previous Sew Together Bags that I have made have featured several diffferent fabrics.  At this stage, I have only two.  I may add more.  I did buy more of the range when we went to Scrub Stitchin’ this year.  However, they are earmarked for a By Annie bag. All very matchy, matchy.

I really want to get a wriggle on with the crochet blanket.  

Now that I am ready to start the decrease rows it should really zoom along……I hope.  Then to do a few rounds of something as a border.  It would be nice if Mick could actually use it when watching the footy.

What else?  I really don’t know.  

Maybe try to progress the projects I took to Scrub Stitchin’.  There has been no progress since I came home.

Perhaps, I will get the rest of the appliqué completed on the bright fish quilts.  All that is needed is the grey of the fish skeletons (there are two) and all their eyes.  It would be nice to get them moving along.  

And maybe the Five and Dime quilt that I started at Baradine.  

And the hexies are waiting patiently to be stitched into a panel.

Who knows?  Time will tell.