I need a name! and Merry Christmas

I wonder if you can help me? I am a new addition to the family and I don't have a name yet. My Mum bought me from the Vet's in Bacchus Marsh. I was in the local paper and I was a very good buy as I came de-sexed microchipped vaccinated advocat-ed (flea worm mites protection) and with some food and a toy. The vets also had another 19 of my cousins but some had already gone to new homes so if you aren't too far away and would like a new addition maybe you can think about adopting too.

I am very very friendly and I purrrrr all the time.....and climb up onto my Mum when I want to go to sleep. My Dad tells people he doesn't like cats but when Mum isn't looking I have been climbing up and giving him a cuddle too and he lets me! He has even been nagging Mum about my food or water (as if she didn't know)!!!

Aunty Sharon suggested Claus. My Mum doesn't mind it but wants to know what you think? She thinks my markings look like a cows....how rude!!!!

I don't look like a cow do I! Some other people have suggested a Collingwood name (football team) as I am black and white. My mum thinks thats dumb cos she barracks for Essendon.

Oh I almost forgot to tell you I am a boy cat.

Haha...shhh....don't tell... I put one of me and my Mum here, she hates her photo taken cos she takes rotten photos but she let my Dad take this one because of how I was asleep on her.

Well all this typing and loading up photos has made me very tired specially on my Mum's stupid dial up connection but she did tell me I have to say to all her old friends and all her new ones she's made from blogging this year,

Have a very Happy and safe Christmas.

Two more finished.

This quilt is Country Pathways, I purchased the pattern at the scquilters retreat in Bendigo in 2007 along with a starter pack of fabrics from Threadbear. I added a lot of my old favourites and some repros to finish it off. The poor thing was on my workroom floor forever as I don't have a design wall but Sunday I took pity on it and had it finished in no time. I have since added the needleturned flower centres, these were finished Sunday night. I put one of my favourite older fabrics in this quilt, the poppy fabric.

Next finish was the revised tumbler quilt that Lissa and I swapped our repros for. I took about 5 rows from the length and added them on the sides so it's 26 tumblers across and 25 long. As you can see (on a queen size bed) it's quite large. The end tumblers have to be trimmed back to create a straight edge as I wasn't organised enough to do this during construction! At least after a lot of fiddling around it's done. I still have around 100 tumblers left over so I will make a lap quilt out of the leftovers.

Last but not least...my Dear Jane fabric range.

My name is...

Bernadette and I am an addict.....a fabric addict!

My friend Kerry and I had a lovely pre-christmas day out on Monday. First stop for the day was to Amitie. Neither of us had actually been to the shop before, we just loved their stands at the craft shows. Talk about overwhelming!!! We didn't know where to start there were just soooo many gorgeous fabrics, how could you pick a few to have a piece of?

So we decided the only thing was to find a quilt we loved, buy the pattern and some fabric for the quilt. I picked a quilt with aquas/blues and browns, a very striking masculine quilt, Saville Row by Judy Newman. Mine won't be quite as masculine as it's for me but I have always loved aqua or blue with browns and pink with browns so a pink and brown quilt will be on the agenda soon too.



I won't show you the fabrics as they are a mess now, but this is the start of my quilt.

Kerry has said that we can't go back until my quilt is finished, so I am on a mission. She didn't mention hers...vbg. Kerry chose a gorgeous quilt that was made up of Churn Dash blocks in the Denise Schmidt fleamarket range. Kerry (and I helped of course) picked out fabrics in lots of threes and I think she ended up with 9 different combination of 3 co-ordinating fabrics, can't wait to see hers together except then I know I will want to make one of those too.. and I do keep thinking about that quilt with the Liberty's.....

Next stop was Somerset Patchwork. Although very different this shop was also quite overwhelming (for two lovers of repros) as it was full of reproduction fabrics arranged by colour...where to start here??? We both ended up with last months fabric pack of 1800's which contained lots of the Vicksburg range, brown and blues. I also signed up for the mail outs which are 16x 10" squares bi-monthly as well as assorted 20cm lengths some eighths and a couple of packs of the previously mentioned poison green and cheddars.

Oh did I forget to say.........


this was the very first thing we saw in the front window.....I fell in love with this very antique looking quilt from Kaye England's Back Home Again fabric range available as a kit or BOM.
Guess what Santa might be putting under my christmas tree....

BTW if you haven't jumped over to Kerry's blog yet hop on over as she is having a Christmas giveaway...but you have to be quick it ends tomorrow.

Dear Jane rolls on....

I seem to be on a bit of a roll with DJ at the moment. Problem is when I am doing DJ I don't get anything else done! It is quite obsessive and I have limited time, usually only nights to do it.

This is E-4 Buffalo Tree Hopper. It is not black as it may look on some screens it is a dark purple.

D-3 Jason's Jacks. This fabric was a new one I bought on Monday it's one of the poison greens and cheddars ...but more about that later. This block was originally brown but is one that I have changed it was a very quick and easy block.

E-3 Paddle Wheels.

F-3 Snowball.

B-5 Hot Cross Buns. I must get the last two blocks of row b done!!!

Bernadette 55-5-1-1143

A forgotten block and Pam's baby Jane

I have been going back through my Dear Jane labelled posts and couldn't find three, only 47 blocks listed. Two were found in an unlabelled post but I finally worked out that poor little H-13 Farm Fields had been left out so here it is.

Last Saturday at our DJ sit and sew Pam was able to come so once again we were privledged to see her almost completed quilt. She has two sides of triangles left to quilt.

After looking at Pam's I have had a bit of a think about my quilt. I was doing it exactly the same in colour as the original. I have now had a play with the rest of the blocks and although most of the top two rows are completed I have still been able to have a bit of a play around and change some of the colours, especially in the bottom half. I have added a row of green and blue to the bottom rows following the pattern from the center blocks. I have also left a couple of the brown rows. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.
The ladies that have joined our DJ sit and sew have done very well. One of our older ladies Lorna in particular has gone right ahead and has completed 120 blocks since our first month...in March? I can't quite remember but she has done extremely well. I think I started off 5 of them and Julie has also gone past me, having completed 69 blocks. Kaye has also done extremely well, she started a few months after the others and has 30+ blocks completed.

I am a Golden Jane!

Yay I have finished my 5oth block. At this rate it will take me 4 years to complete my Baby Jane.



F-9 Autumn Aster. I wasn't very happy with my points on this applique as the red fabric kept fraying as I was trying to needleturn the points, very frustrating. I have had this trouble before with red fabrics....coincidence? I completed this block at our DJ first Saturday of the month sit and sew at Pentland Patchwork.



M5 Mother's Point which was the BOW for last week, I did complete it in time but I didn't email to say that I had! This was completed Sunday night. It was the first BOW I have completed for quite a while, maybe a year. I have to start doing it again as it means I will at least do one block a week. Hmmm....it looks a bit on the crooked side here but looks ok really so I will have to pull it out for another look.



D-1 Alison's guiding light. This weeks BOW, completed Tuesday night.



L-7 Town Square, completed Wednesday night.



The 50th block, also completed Wednesday night M-10 Simple Simon.

Bernadette 50-5-1-1078

Back to the Reproductions!

Here is a little reproduction show and tell. This quilt belongs to Paula. Paula admired my Broken Dishes quilt and wanted one. I had made a large one (which hangs at the LPS) and missed it so I decided to make a smaller version. (The LPS has sold a lot of fabric to people wanting to make this quilt as it's so antique looking.) Most unusual for me to make two of the same quilt unless it's pretty quick and easy. So we made up HST's and swapped around 80 I think. So this is Paula's twin of my broken dishes lap quilt although she added to hers and made it similar to the size of my larger one.

I used my favourite quilting pattern on Paula's, Field of Flowers by Keryn Emmerson. Paula says it's her favourite quilt and her sister keeps trying to get it but there's no way she is parting with it!!

This is my twin to Paula's. It is lap size with no borders and is quilted with Baptist Fans by Hermione Agee (Lorien Quilting)

This is a small part of the original quilt. My aim with this quilt was to NOT place the fabrics in an organised way so when I was putting the squares together to make the HST's I put them in a bag and pulled them out randomly, very hard not to place lights and mediums with darks all the time!!

Day bag

I have made yet another bag! This one is the Day bag and I had this Amy Butler fabric in mind when I pictured it. Yes it's another Nicole M bag, I think it's gorgeous!

The beautiful Albertine old fashioned rose. What a shame it only flowers once, with the odd spot flower in autumn.

Family Stuff!

Congratulations to my baby, Tim and his lovely new fiance Megan who became engaged recently. At least they are giving us a bit of a breather and waiting for 2-3 years before the wedding!!

Congratulations to my third child Nick on his new career.Here we are on a recent visit.

They look a bit different to Daydream Island!!

How good have I been! Usually it's up just before Christmas.

This year I am super organised and managed to buy heaps of new decorations in red and gold.

Jellyroll Class

Yesterday I spent a lovely day teaching a class at one of my local patchwork shops, Pentland Patchwork in Bacchus Marsh. The class was for my Strawberry Lemonade or Dear Baby Jane quilt using a jellyroll and charm square pack, a very quick and easy quilt. The girls worked hard and finished their quilts to the last two pieced borders except for Kaye as she was getting sore eyes and Kelly who was having trouble picking a fabric to go into the first border. I am glad to say she finally found one she liked so I will expect to see it finished on her blog very soon! We had a great day although we were all tired by the end I think! Here are some photos of the girls.

Here they are, hard at work.

Julie, working hard!

Kaye, chain piecing.

Kelly, head down and flat out!

Someone obviously said something that amused Sharon!!

Sharon's quilt in progress.

Julie's quilt which we nicknamed Random Random as rather than have two fabrics the same on each of the squares as mine did she went for totally random so each frame around each square was different.

A close up of Julie's quilt with the pretty Butterfly Fling fabrics.

Julie with Random Random. We found a pretty white fabric with butterflies on it for their 1st border, very appropriate.

Kelly's pretty Flutterby fabric. Kelly decided to go with what we called "the structured" option, all the same fabrics for the frame. I think it worked well with her fabrics.

Gorgeous Kelly!

Sharon's half and half the same as mine, top and bottom the same fabrics and sides the same fabrics.

Sharon with her quilt. Only two pieced borders left to go.

Here's my friend Sharon who went for the "structured" or "organised" version in Butterfly Fling and a darker first border.

Finally here is Kaye with her structured quilt with 2 plain borders.

Don't they all look different! Well done girls!!