I work well under pressure

Thanks to everyone for cheering me on. I finished it, yay!


It was not without dramas, and I changed my plan, as I was going to tie in the middle of each block but it looked weird like crap. then I tried doing a fancy machine embroidery stitch and it looked even "crapper", so I gave up and left the centres unquilted. I am crossing my fingers that I do not regret that decision.


The other drama I had this morning, Fatboy aka Bailey squeezed himself in behind my iMac and knocked out the power cord. Normally not a drama but I could not get the 'puter to turn on again or work at all.  I tried a couple of times to get it to work and even in desperation called in Bitchypoo to help despite knowing that I would receive copious amounts of eye rolling and muttered comments. 


After swearing at the cat and calling him a bastard, I resorted to using my lap top to send pathetic whiney emails complaining how bad my life was as now I had to use my lap top. 


So on to the good stuff.


Ta dah, here it is, my first finish for 2011.

If you look hard enough you can see Karma's feet under the stool in the background.

Including photos of Lulu because she didn't try to kill my computer.

Breaking news, I tried turning on the computer again, and it's working. Yippeeeee!

I was in such a hurry to post this I forgot to add all the info. This is a Scruffily Quilt from the tutorial at Moda Bake Shop by Rachel from PS I Quilt and I used Rural Jardin by French General. 

Lunch

I needed to get out as I was starting to suffer from cabin fever.  We had lunch along the river at Noosaville at a lovely restaurant, Sirocco. Guess where my camera was, so had to take these with my phone.

Salmon Fishcakes 

Pizza bread with labneh and mint, eggplant zaalouk (?), tomato relish and spinach pinenut and saffron dip

The pizza bread looks like it's covered in grease in this photo, it wasn't. The dips were very nice. The Salmon fishcakes were excellent too.

We haven't eaten out for ages so it was a lovely diversion from binding the quilt. 

The view to the river, sorry not the best, but look the sun was out down here even if it wasn't out at home.

Bitchypoo finished lunch with an Affogato.

Pressure

I stupidly decided about three days ago, on the evening of 26th January that I need to have a finish of something/anything by the 31st January. Nothing like putting a bit of pressure on myself. Why didn't I think of that a couple of weeks ago. So now it's head down trying to finish a quilt by Monday.

Finished the machine quilting, which took f.o.r.e.v.e.r., now on to this. 

Favourite Things Friday

FTF crept up on me today, and I've been trying to think all day about what to post as my favourite for this week, so I went and had a little lie down power thinking session in my hammock, where I had a light bulb moment.  This week and pretty much every week, my hammock is my favourite thing. I'm sort of cheating a bit here as I did include the hammock in a previous FTF post on my verandah.

I don't actually use the quilt or a pillow in summer as it's too warm. The hammock is cotton and the breeze comes right through so keeps me cool, which is great on a summer day that is warm and humid. Sorry I'm not trying to rub it in that it's lovely summer weather here while the northern hemisphere is freezing and covered in snow. In the winter when it's cooler I'll be able to lie on the hammock wrapped up in my quilts, yay!

This is how my hammock normally looks but it isn't quite as appealing for a photo as the previous one, it just looks all sad and droopy.  

Look at the sunshine in the background, yes it is sunshine Kirsten, we have had 5 days in a row with no r_ _ _, yippeeeeee!!!!!!! I'm not typing that word as I don't want to jinx the weather!

There are no photos of me in the hammock because I didn't want anybody asking themselves - "Why does Margaret have photos of a whale hanging in a fishing net on her verandah?" Instead you just get to see photos of my hammock and the view I have when I'm lying in it.

Looking east(ish)

Looking west(ish)

.

For more exciting and interesting favourite things, hop on over to the lovely Shay of Quilting In My Pyjamas who is hosting the linky party for FTF.

Tuesday trumpets, not just tidbits! (and tails)

I have to tell you that I am so very proud of my "baby" (Bitchypoo). She finished Year 12 last year and applied to a number of tertiary education providers to continue with her studies and she was accepted into her first choice. 

Woo hoo. Way to go !!!!!

Even though she was accepted, she has decided to take a gap year this year. I think it is a wise decision as it would have meant moving to Brisbane to study and I don't think she is quite ready to make the big move yet. There's also a complication with moving to Brisbane now, as due to the recent flooding, rental and share properties are in very short supply and it would have been insanely difficult to find accommodation. So she is going to be staying here for another year, working part time and doing some short courses of interest to her.

How time flies!

After my post on Saturday about finding it hard to be productive on the sewing front and spending way too much time enjoying all things bloggy, I woke up on Sunday aiming to spend the morning sewing. The weather helped, as it was cool, well cool for here anyway, (which probably means warm to very warm in the rest of the world), overcast and not too humid. A perfect sewing day.

I started off with a jelly roll of this from the Fat Quarter Shop

Some co-ordinating fabric picked up at one of my local quilting shops, Patchwork Angel.

I didn't use the fabric at the bottom as I thought it looked a bit too "dirty" once I had all the fabrics together, and found a clearer duck egg blue in my stash as an alternative. The chenille is for the back.


Add in some inspiration from here.

It quickly became this

which grew - aren't these just too cute

and grew to this

This part was the tricky bit. I have never done sashing before, or corner stones or blocks on point. 

Fortunately for me the Quilt Pro programme was very useful at this stage, even though I really didn't have a clue what I was doing. I mean that, I was flying by the seat of my pants. I made the block and designed the quilt in the programme by sheer luck, not genius, after I had already pieced and sewn a few blocks. 


I would show you the design here but I can't work out how to get it into blogger, grrrrrrrr.


Quilt Pro came in handy when I needed to find out if I had enough of the yellow It's a Hoot fabric for the sashing, and when it came to working out how to do the triangle thingy bits, (technical term), around the outside. I was originally going to do solid triangle thingy bits but as I had no idea how to use the programme I couldn't change the blocks that had already been placed in the quilt design. I also had no idea how to work out the template/size of the triangles to fit so I eventually decided to go with what I had accidentally designed and just followed the pic when making the triangles, and miraculously it worked.


So after all that, I finished it this morning and here it is

and I have to say I think it's pretty darn good for a first attempt at sashing, corner stones, and blocks on point. I was........ loving myself sick..........., this morning when I finished it. Woo hoo I'm on fire!!!!

If I was to do it again I think I would have attempted a more 3D look to it, but as I had already made a number of blocks before I worked out I could do that, and I hate unpicking unnecessarily I didn't go down that road this time.

Lulu doing what she loves, just hanging around!

Any screen door will do.

At least I'm not this bad...............yet

A friend sent me an email today with these pics, I had to laugh after my post on Saturday.

Doodle's duvet!

I've started working on something new. It's for Karma but it's turning out way better than I expected and now I'm not sure I'm going to let him have it.

Liebster Blog

First things first. The lovely Shell at Shell's Blog tagged me for this award

How nice is that!

I'm sort a bit iffy about doing tags or awards as it's a bit of a double edged sword, in that I don't mind being a very happy recipient of the award, but then trying to choose somebody to pass it on to, will they hate me for passing it on and how do I choose only a couple from all the lovely blogs I read. Oh more decisions, yikes, I'm not good with making decisions!

Anyway I don't want to sound ungrateful as I really am very pleased that Shell picked me as one of the worthy recipients.

This tag is to highlight a couple of your favourite "smaller blogs" the ones with not so many followers, and I think that's a great idea, to get people to check out blogs they may not have normally found. So in the spirit of this award and I hope nobody gets mad at me, and if you don't want to pass it on because you are likely to have an anxiety attack too, I am quite ok with that, here are my picks which were very very hard to choose:

Kirsten

Helen

Kate

If you wish to accept this award then you in turn do a post saying who tagged you, pick 3-5 of your favourite lesser known blogs (don't pick ones that have 300+ followers as the aim of this award to to highlight the lesser known ones) and let them know they've been tagged.

At the very least it's a great way to let other people know of interesting blogs that I like to read.


On another note, I am finding it really really hard to get into sewing. Every morning I get out of bed with the best of intentions to find time to sew and be productive. Take for instance this morning, unfortunately I woke up at 5am, yuck, on a Saturday, double yuck. After lying in bed until 5.30am I decided to take the bull by the horns so to speak and get stuck into sewing and try to finish something, anything! But, oh.......... I had to pass the computer on my way to my sewing machine. Hmmm I'll just check my emails and take a look at Favourite Things Friday posts.
It is now almost 8am 8.15am that's (over) two and a half hours I've been here. A very enjoyable two and a half hours I might add but that is two and a half hours that I haven't been sewing. I have looked at emails, replied to emails and comments. Looked at all the blog posts that came through on my reader, commented on only a couple as I was trying to get off here quickly, and then remembered I hadn't finished this post that has been sitting waiting for a week or so. So now after two and a half hours sitting at the computer I am going to attempt to walk to my sewing machine and sit down and sew.
I love my computer but boy does it take up a lot of my time. I've tried reducing the time I sit here, it just hasn't worked so I'm going to have to work out how to be more productive with my time when I'm not at the computer.


I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend and is a lot more disciplined than I am!

Favourite Things Friday

Woo hoo it's Favourite Things Friday again, wow this week has flown. The wonderful Shay over at         Quilting In My Pyjamas is hosting FTF so pop on over to have a look at all the favourites linked for this week.

This week my favourite is a flower, Frangipani. I'm lucky enough that in my little part of the world Frangipanis flower throughout the summer, well normally they do but as this summer has been very very very wet, my frangipanis have not been so happy and haven't flowered as profusely.
I absolutely adore the scent of frangipanis, so I have planted lots around my garden. Some have a stronger scent than others, the white and yellow ones seem to have the best perfume. They also remind me of holidays (vacations) to SE Asia and Fiji, so now I have my little bit of tropical paradise in my own garden.

The photos were all taken last year, as I don't have any of this type of frangipani, Plumeria rubra, flowering now.  I have some beautiful dark red frangipanis too, but they haven't flowered for the last two summers.

I also have a few of these, Evergreen Frangipani, Plumeria obtusa, they have started flowering in the last couple of weeks but not as prolific as usual.

Tuesday tidbits (and tails)

Another two of my orders arrived this week. The first one, I had been looking for some yardage of Pashmina for some time and thanks to Shay who was so kind in helping me spend my money by directing me to Quiltshops.com where I found these gorgeous prints. I don't have a project in mind for these but I love the designs so will add them to my stash.

I also saw and ordered these fabulous brights before the end of the year, Sugar Pop these came from Pink Chalk Fabrics along with some solids, no photo of those! So these definitely don't count as fabric purchases for 2011!

Whilst I was emptying out my bank account to keep the world's economy kicking along I also bought this, on sale, yay. Quilt-Pro 5 for Macintosh.

It came in the mail today, I've yet to load it and play with it but expect fabulous designs from me in the future. On second thoughts don't expect anything, I'd be kidding myself if I thought this was going to make me any more productive.  At least it should be fun designing things, much better than scribbling on graph paper and trying to work out mathematical stuff in my head.

I've slowly been working on the crochet, no photos yet, and I finished the top of my dad's quilt.

Sorry the photos aren't the best i was planning to take them this afternoon but we had a thunderstorm and then drizzle for the next couple of hours so I had to take them late in the day and the light wasn't the best.

I'm really happy with this one. It's not fabric I would normally choose for my father but they asked for something to match this quilt I made for my mum. So here it is, now I just have to make the backing. I HATE making the backing for quilts. Yes that is a strong word to use but I really really don't like making them.

A slightly blurry shot of the boy, he wouldn't keep still for a photo, but I love that look on his face, look at those big sad eyes.  Every photo we took of him this week was either blurry or only part of him made it into the shot.

I woke him up, he wasn't happy, not that you can tell, and he has bed head fur.


Oh, and thanks very much RAF.

Favourite Things Friday

It's Friday again and that means  it's time for FTF, hosted by the wonderful Shay of Quilting In My Pyjamas .  This week my favourite thing is going to the supermarket or local fruit and vegetable store and being able to buy the fruit and vegetables I have on my shopping list.

I didn't realise it was a favourite until today when I couldn't do it! It's something I have always taken for granted. When I do my grocery shopping I automatically assume that most things on my list will be sitting waiting for me to choose them and take them home.

Unfortunately the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables is going to be a little erratic and slow at the moment due to the floods.   Today when I went to the supermarket they had avocadoes, bananas (we live in Queensland they always have those, lol) pumpkin (squash), cucumbers, mushrooms, celery, some iceberg lettuce, oranges, lemons, a few grapes and that was about it.  No potatoes, onions, capsicum (red pepper), tomatoes, spinach, apples, or just about anything else you can think of. I was lucky they had some produce, apparently one of the larger supermarkets in the tourist area had no fruit and vegetables at all!

Fortunately we also have a couple of local fruit and vegetable shops in the area who are supplied by local producers,  and they had a much better range. A big thank you to the local fruit and vegetable growers who through a lot of hard work supply us with our produce. Oh and a thank you to the locals who didn't panic buy at the slightest rumour that we may have a shortage of supply for the next few weeks.

Hop on over to QIMP, follow the link at the beginning of the post and find out what everyone else has as a favourite this week.

Images taken from the internet. The last one from here and the third one from Helen's blog Helsie's Happenings