McLeod Ganj - Rob shave

McLeod Ganj - Rob shave, originally uploaded by tassyrob.

#2 Son Rob is travelling in India. He's been in Leh and is now in McLeod Ganj, Dharamsla which is the Indian home of the Dali Lama.

Here he is having a shave

Oh dear!! But then I have been to India, which helps me picture it - a bit!

Smithton Wallhanging for Emerton Park

Last weekend I went to Smithton, a rural community on the far north west coast of Tasmania for the quilting exhibition.

The start attraction was the 3 piece wall hanging the group had made for the local aged care facility - wonderful!!!

I have also posted more photos on Flickr of the show.

Scatterdays - Food

I knew I'd be able to find at least one image for this month while I was away the last few days. Whenever I go to Smithton I get at least one beautiful, sumptuous cream sponge made for me by Genavene Thorpe, country quilter and cook extra-ordinaire!

You don't see these much now - the butterfly cream filled sponge with jelly and cream on top, do you?

It tasted wonderful too - I had 3 pieces. This was Sunday's ... I won't mention Thursday night or Friday's left-overs I had to clear up, will I?

My Designs

Because I have just received a query about whether I wholesale or not, it made me realise that there are many quilts that have not been recorded on this site.

Amish Clothes Line - quilts are 5"

Michale's Menagerie - a simple design to use that special fabric.

The Picanniny Quilt - single bed 8" blocks.

There is also a wall-hanging pattern with 6" blocks and patched border

Heavenly Hoffmans - a very large quilt using the wonderful florals that Hoffmans "used" to do.

There is also a pattern using same design and "I Spy" fabrics with bright tone-on-tones for stars.

Appropriately called Heavenly I Spy

Bright Medallion designed as a round robin for a Quilt Shop Hop

I Spy Stars - easy pieced stars, plain points with I Spy centres.

Love Bugz - lovely chubby hearts with I Spy fabrics, solid fabrics for backgrounds

This is all you need!

Now I know why I love giving quilts to my loved ones!

Here is the Divine Miss M. closely checking out the quilting on "The Corn Is As High As An Elephant's Eye". This one is for when she gets into a cot! (3 months old)




Banjo is getting to the age when he is recognising "identities" like Bob the Builder who is on a small patch in his quilt. Gathering up lots and lots of I Spy fabrics for this quilt is all worthwhile!
Here he is ready for his night time story with Nana's radio, a wonderful toy, especially at 6.30 in the morning. (2 years old)

Olympic Challenge ...continued

A lovely sunny day here in the Great Southlands and perfect for taking snaps of quilts.

Here are the rest of the 5 quilts I have finished during the Olympics. The pink thing is a sample from a few years back, the Magic 9 Patch is because I had to make one as well as everyone else and the "house" quilt has been in my glory box waiting for a little girl to come along. Well finally she did so is will be delivered to Miss Maggie in a few days time for when she gets into her cot.

I have called it "The Corn is as High as an Elephant's Eye" because the vines that I quilted ended up looking like corn stalks instead of ivy, so I also quilted corn cobs into it!

I'm quite proud of the quilting on this- I don't do a lot of machine (or hand) quilting myself as my hands are succumbing to over 25 years of handwork - sigghhhh!!!!!

This is the size of a cot quilt, easily fitted under the machine so I decided to have a go myself.

Olympic Marathon

I've been sewing up my own Olympic Marathon while watching the real ones.

Five quilts bound and as you can see from the two shown, they aren't small!

This is my own design, one using fabrics from Moda's Fresh Air range and the other using a small part of my black and white stash, with a few small pieces of lovely brights.

Banjo and Miss Maggie

How many pairs of hands are there holding her down??


Poor Banjo is forcing a smile as he'd been sick with an Inner Ear infection, poor little mite. But how can you not smile when you're on Grandad's lap?



I'm on a roll, so while I'm at it here are a few shots of my gorgeous grandchildren taken 2 weeks ago in Brisbane.

We went up to their christenings. A lovely family affair with only Rob missing as he was in Thailand and now should be in India.

Quilts

One finished quilt and 3 tops. It's like one step forward and 3 back isn't it?

The black and white one I have shown before, I still need to write the pattern for it for a few people. I'm not good at naming quilts, this is the second one in this design so it's currently called Fresh Air in Black and Whites (at least I know which one is which)

The Geishas were a sample for our (Launceston Patchworkers & Quilters) LPQ's retreat held a few weekends ago.

The Lanterns were also an optional retreat project - nothing is ever compulsory, but many members try them :-)

The pastel one is one I began working on and finished this week at home - one Jelly Roll and 2 more strips. Certainly not my choice of colours but sometimes one needs to make samples!

I have also had another 3 quilts returned to me from the machine quilter, so I will be right for hand sewing during some of the Olympics viewing. The binding is done on one already and I'm hand sewing it down, I have cut the binding for the next and I need to find binding for the last.

I have a plastic container that I try to put aside fabrics for bindings, in theory it should work but many a time I have not done it. Sadly it's full and that means there are still lots of quilts lurking around in a "summer quilt" state.

Scatterdays -Wet (and Reflection)

A lovely shiny new red car gathers raindrops- they never seemed to do that on the old blue one, might be something to do with absence of wax?

Anyhow, this is also a belated entry for "reflections" for last month.

I've had a crappy few weeks suffering from my 3rd cold.

No energy to post pictures of Banjo and Miss Maggie's christenings , LPQ's annual retreat or the quilt tops I have made.

Cough, cough!!!!

Sekrit Wimmin's Bizness

Launceston Patchworkers & Quilters have an annual retreat and somehow I manage to come up with a small (or buy more fabric and make it bigger) project each year.

But if it's to be a mystery the participants still like to know what sort and how much fabric to bring!

I have given them their requirement list and the quilt top will be at The Quilt Patch from tomorrow for them to look at. None of this is compulsory and not everyone does it at the time. Some later, some never!

The quilt is made using a 60 degree ruler which many would not have used before, thus making it a learning experience.

Anyhow, my job is done - the sample's made, the notes photocopied and the goody bags are packed.

Graeme and I head off to Brisbane Wednesday for 5 sleeps as the grandchildren are being christened on Sunday.

It will be lovely to see them again as it;s been a month and Miss Maggie seems to have grown so much in 4 weeks. We missed a lot with Banjo as they were living in Amsterdam and then Stockholm, but we did get a couple of lovely overseas holidays to visit them.

This is another Oriental quilt I have been working on while in the mood. It needs borders now.

Scatterdays - Reflections

Yes, I need to get a life and find another view, but when you have one as good as mine it's hard!

This is an early winter's morning (7.30 AM) view from the balcony over the Tamar River and Launceston centre.

Because we're in a river valley there is often river mist from the North Esk over in the distance and woodsmoke. The big plume of smoke you see is from steam which dissipates quickly and is non-polluting (they say!)

Scatterdays -Framed

Framed Mosaic, originally uploaded by FranW.

It's the end of the month and here's my offering.
The blue frame is in the main street of Lilydale, Tas where I grew up. Through it you can see a beautiful view of Mt. Arthur.
The firebug framed. He can't help himself and "they" are making it so hard for a man to burn off a few Autumn leaves! Here we have a small fire beside the street with leaves from the Liquid Amber at the front gate at Bridport.
Last but not least is Miss Maggie in her play-gym.

No Black Amish

The Tasmanian Quilting Guild's exhibition was held this weekend in conjunction with the craft and Quilt Fair. I entered 3 Amish cot quilts. The tops were made many, many years ago and languished in the cupboard. I realised that I didn't have an entry for our show and if not, it would be the first time that I hadn't entered since we started over 20 years ago!

They were machine quilted by Jane Monk of Purrfectly Quilted and she did a wonderful job of customising them with traditional Amish designs.

Fran W 2, originally uploaded by FranW.