I have been so bad.....

I was very bad on the weekend. I went to Daylesford to the makers market. There were so many nice things to buy I couldn't decide what to buy. Plus I must admit I do suffer a bit with the "I could make that myself" syndrome. So I went for a walk to the little patchwork shop and I found some fabric. Some chocolate and aqua to go with my Saville Row quilt started quite a while ago (note to self do some work on it!) Also some nice brights I thought would go on Isabella's Rainbows and Lollipops quilt I also need to work on.

Then I spotted the Material Obsession 2 book with some of my favourite quilts, I had been meaning to buy no 1 but after looking at no 2 I could not resist it so again 1 will have to wait! Then I wandered over to the newsagent and could not resist the latest DUQ.

As if that wasn't enough I was reading some blogs when I got home and discovered Emma at Ballarat Patchwork had a 20% off sale. So I got this book I have had my eye on before it was released, a great time to buy with the sale. Now I had better be really really good for a while and work on some UFO's!!!

Double Delight, Bonnie Hunter (quiltville.com) mystery quilt from New Years early this year! I pulled it out and started working on it when I saw there was a new Christmas mystery quilt. I don't have a christmas quilt so I am very tempted by Carolina Christmas, a christmas quilt in repro fabrics, sounds like me.

Jane Austen quilt which has been the bane of my existence for the past three years! I am sick of trying to get all those white borders matched!!! Then I realised I didn't have all the white borders around the centre panel...gggrrrrrrrr!!!!! So it has gone into hybernation once again until I have the patience to start unpicking AGAIN.

Here I am...at last!

Well I have survived my first semester at uni.....almost! Just a little 2 hour psychology exam tomorrow. I figure if I don't know it by now I am not going to know it so I am rewarding myself with a night off. So much has happened in the past few months. I opened bloglines this week and started trying to catch up on everyone's blogs, however with over 10,000 posts I don't think it is going to happen especially with this rotten dial up. It has started me thinking about doing some crafty things though after months of nothing but study and research. I had to drop off a quilt which was long overdue at the patchwork shop yesterday and couldn't resist buying a little something for the first time in months....

Last Sunday was spent making Miss Isabella's dancing costume, I thought those days were gone!! Her concert is next Saturday so I am looking forward to watching her on stage. (it did fit a bit better when it was finished)

In the meantime she turned 4!

On the 29th of October Romi Emerald came into the world, a little sister for Coco Daisy!

Isn't she beautiful, not that I am biased at all! Here she is with Mum (my daughter Holly) like a little koala.

Nine days old....

Bellas little brother Kalani Thomas is 8 months old and still has the bluest eyes! Here he is with my daughter Bec.

Coco's hair is curlier than ever!

What a monster!!

And spring is here.

My Grevillea has finally flowered after 3 or 4 years!

Hopefully over the summer break I will get back to catching up with all my favourite blogs and have some crafty show and tell!!

I am off to Uni!

Yes that's right, I am heading off to Ballarat University. I received my offer in the mail on Friday of a place in the Bachelor of Arts Rural Social Welfare and I intend doing the psychology major. I am feeling a bit nervous but also excited. I will have to have a rethink on some things and probably my custom quilting will be one of the things that will go as I just won't have the time. I am working 22 hours a week at the moment in my non quilting job although it's more like full time but that will cut back to 12 hours after the 10th August for two weeks then after that I will be back to my normal 6 hours per week so hopefully I can still fit in some edge to edge quilting in between uni and work.

Now back to some crafty things. Here is my selvedge passport cover I made before we went to New Zealand. I got the tutorial from this blog.

Here is the inside with my Aussie passport and his British one.

I have done a few blocks on the Lucy Boston quilt, I did a lot of the hexagons when we were in NZ as well as quite a lot of the 1" hexagons for another hexagon "one day" quilt.

I did get the Noro wool and I did finish the fan scarf!

Here are the swaps I received from Chaletgirl's vintage sheet swap.

I got some more reproduction fabrics for Christine's nine patch block swap

and I couldn't resist this gorgeous Aunt Grace Tie one on fabric, I don't know what I will do with it but I just had to have it!

In the meantime Kalani Thomas turned 3 months....

and his cousin Coco Daisy turned 2!

The blogmeet...

What a lovely day we had, it was fabulous meeting so many crazy/lovely bloggers but there were so many there I feel I didn't really get to speak to everyone a lot. Maybe next time.....There are lots of photos around on the various blogs and once again I forgot my camera but you can find other reports and photos here....

Trashy, Four Wise Monkeys, Rousabout, Sonya, Our Shabby Cottage, Annie's Flower Garden, Silly Gilly Kids, Scrapbag, Ric Rac, Thornberry, Two Cheese Please, Little Red Hen, Janey's Relaxation, Nicole M Design and Don't Look Now.

A special thank you to Sonya who told us where to find a berry farm with the most delicious berries, loganberries, youngberries, boysenberries red currants raspberries but I added the strawberries.....guess what I had for tea with yoghurt.......yummo!

And of course to Jodie for organising the whole thing and for the new bits to add to the stash.....

Of course I couldn't walk out of Ballarat Patchwork without some fabric.....

These are for Magoo who is half made.

Sew unique...

So much to post about, why do I leave it until there are two or three posts worth? I guess it's because I am rotten dial up so it takes me forever. So here goes.....
First up, if you are into reproductions at all don't miss this website,
Sewuniquecreations.com they are having a sale with a lot of their repros at $4-$5 yd and they give the best service! I bought 3yds of pink civil war dressing gown as well as some shirtings on 31st December which was a Wednesday and it was here delivered by the following Tuesday! I couldn't believe it that is the first time I have ever had a package arrive in under a week from the States, in fact half the time the Aus mail takes that long to reach my little rural town.
Thanks Kathie!

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.

Southern Cross Quilters repro swap

Here are my 1800's repro's that I am swapping in the Scquilters swap.




I have included fat eighths from these ranges- Dargate Violet and Chocolate, Colonies Purple 2, Colonies Pink and Blue 2 and 3, Charleston III and IV, Lancaster County II, York County, Old Sturbridge Village Blues 2
I still have one or two sets of five fat eighths (metric size 10"x 22") if anyone is interested in swapping?

Friday

I have finished another quilt to replace Coco's quilt. This time I used Strawberry Lemonade jelly roll and charm squares. It is a very easy simple quilt and it's for a beginners class I am doing at Bacchus Marsh in August. I won't have time to quilt it as I have too much work on but I am counting it as another one off my challenge as my challenge was to try to finish 5 whether it was totally or just tops. I HAVE to get some of these WIPS and quilts sitting there waiting to be started with fabric allocated out of the way. So that's two down and three to go.

Here it is on my friend Sharon's spare bed it's turned out quite a good size a bit bigger than Coco's quilt as Sweet Baby Jane from memory only had 32 charms so I made it 5x6 blocks this one had 39 so I made it 5x7 blocks.

I was home late last night after a lovely day at Sharon's sewing with Sharon and Kelly- being Kelly AND Sharon's quilt fairy- thanks for the name Kel. I spotted something hanging halfway out of the letterbox (I have a roadside mail box not at the house being in a rural area) and guess what it was.......

Jodie's lovely orphan blocks. I can just see something for Miss Coco and Miss Isabella in these cute blocks, maybe a dolly quilt each.

And what's that up the back.......

One of Jodies bird in a gocco cage how spoilt!!! Isn't he just so cute? He came with his stitched wing french knot eye and satin stitched beak. Thanks again Jodie!

Here are Lissa's tumblers all cut out and ready to send.

Here are mine....all ready to sew.....I have made a start! (see Julie's gorgeous Bronwyn Hayes stitchery quilt on the machine)

And this is what I have been doing in my spare time (???) knitting a cable beanie!