Amazing Girl

I really worried about Mo going to High School this year,  I knew Maestro was more than ready for high school when he went into year 8, but she really didn't want to leave primary school.

But she has flourished and has had straight A's all year.  I came home to a letter from the School today to say that she would be receiving an Award for Excellence at this terms award ceremony which would be above and beyond the subject awards she would be receiving which we were told of last week.

School doesn't come easy for her, she puts in the hard work and studies for every test and puts in effort for every assignment.  She works hard for what she has achieved in her first year at high school and we are immensely proud of her.

Maestro had surgery last week on his elbow, there is a small divit in the joint but the surgeon says that it should scar over and be almost as good as new.   They cleaned out soft tissue damage and he is on the mend and he can move his wrist without pain now.  The surgeon was impressed with the amount of movement he had back in the arm just 8 days out from surgery (it was probably the playstation as that is the only exercise he has been doing for a week).   Keeping him from doing to much for 6 weeks may be an issue but he has been clear to resume riding and light exercise.  No karate till he is given the all clear in January but things are looking up finally.

Block 4 of the Celtic Tree of Life is nearly finished, just critters to add, and maybe I will get a couple of months ahead.  See below the progress.

Block 4 Sneak

Thought I'd give you a bit of a glimpse at block 4 as I will start to pull fabric today.

Of course colours are no indication of what will be in the finished block I just pull random colours together when I am drafting that I like the look of on screen.  This will be available on 15th November.  

Dancing Dragonflies

Dragonflies are probably my favourite creepy crawly.  We have quite a few visit our yard in the summer months around the pool so that had to feature somewhere in this quilt, actually I'm surprised they didn't turn up last year in Flowers for Alison.

Well here the block.  If you want to see the progress of the block at all check out my instagram because I took lots of shots while I was working on the central spirals and I will do so again while working on Block 4.

If you've checked out the page recently you will note that the next block I have drafted is down on the bottom row.  The corner blocks are pretty much set in stone though I haven't drafted the right bottom corner I'm still thinking about that one.  Once the top and bottom row are done I can give serious consideration to how the centre blocks will come together.

So head on over to the Celtic Tree of Life Page to download the next instalment and I hope you enjoy.  Remember to email me if you have any questions.

School Holidays

The day job has been a bit of a nightmare.  Our network was down for a whole week because our router failed and we weren't a high priority to get it fixed on the very week that is our busiest for the year.  I had to work from home which is normally ok but it has been school holidays and also with the rain our internet was a little bit patchy so it was all fun and games.  There was a point last Tuesday that I quietly (maybe not so quietly) had a bit of a meltdown from the stress of it all.  Luckily I was home and the kids went out for a few hours and let me just melt down without an audience.

I think I'm nearly caught up though I still have a monster pile of emails to file and paperwork to scan.

Liberty Love continues, I think I am probably half way through piecing the blocks, I'll do another pile on the weekend and I might be able to start working out how big the quilt will be.

Block 3 of the Celtic Tree of Life is finished, and I have drafted block 4 which is ready to stitch.    I will write the pattern over the next couple of days and have it up on the page to download on the weekend.

Maestro is having surgery on his elbow on Monday.  The prognosis isn't good, the Specialist thinks that there may be little they can do to fix the joint.  There is a slim change that there is debris in the joint that they can clean out and smooth the joint but he didn't sound too optimistic that there hasn't been permanent damage to the elbow and he will always have problems.  So our fingers and toes are crossed.

Liberty Love

I'm determined to make more quilts while designing and making the BOM.  This is the first one that I am tackling simultaneously.  I collected the fabrics last years using the Strawberry Thief's Liberty Club to collect fabrics as well as additional purchases of fabric that I really loved.  I haven't counted how many fabrics will be in the finished quilt but there are probably close to 50.

I have toyed with the idea of joining 4 of the 6" blocks together and putting those on point but I think just joining the blocks in single on point rows will be more effective and having small set in triangles of one of my favourite fabrics will do the trick.

The reason these blocks got put away a few months ago is that I was having trouble joining piecing the blocks my machine was eating the fabric.  The dove grey Frou Frou fabric is a similar weight to the Liberty Tana Lawn and is going mean a lovely soft quilt but piecing was proving to be problematic.

My friend Helen who is my machine guru suggested maybe change of needle or a single hole plate.  I purchased the single hole plate and it is amazing.  I think I will probably continue to use it for all chain piecing in future.

I always chain piece 9 patch blocks in vertical rows, keeping the threads attached and then stitching the horizontal rows.  This way you don't need pins to keep the blocks in place and it becomes incredibly quick to stitch a block.

I think I'll just continue to do a pile each day until all the blocks are done.  I have about 150 blocks trimmed ready to stitch.

I'm Late, I'm Late for a Very Important Date

Yesterday I had this little voice saying in my head I had forgotten something.  It wasn't until I hopped in the shower this morning that I worked out what that something was.  Sorry guys completely forgot to upload the latest pattern for Bee Inspired.

All fixed now, though.

Head on over to the Bee Inspired Page and its all there for you to download.

If you are from Australia you probably know that little old Adelaide and in fact the whole of the state has been hit by some wild weather this week.  Luckily we are far enough away from waterways so we were affected apart from the complete blackout of the state on Wednesday night.  I was driving my son to work when it hit, so I dropped him off and headed home not realising how much was affected.  Got almost home and had to turn back and pick him up.  In all I spent 1 ½ hours on the road in some pretty scary rain, and flooded out roads along the sea front.  Finally got home and just battened down as much as we could and had an early night.  

Today is a beautiful day but apparently there is more water heading our way in the coming week.