May contain nuts!

Quilters like to sew, and we like to cook too, don’t we?  I’d just popped over to read Linda’s blog at:

www.razzledazzlequilter.blogspot.co.nz

who shared an interesting sounding recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies.  Before I knew what I was doing, I had all the ingredients out as was mixing a batch of those cookies together.  Mmmm, they certainly are rather tasty, and made heaps.  I’ll be taking them away on our caravan trip this weekend.  Thanks Linda, for sharing your recipe with quilter blog land.  Of course, anyone who is allergic to peanuts should stay well clear of these cookies!

Now, back to my stitching once again.

Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

A Bunch of Cheeky Kiwis

One step forward, and another step to go – that’s what it is like with any project, isn’t it?  I’ve finally stitched all my Rail Fence blocks together, trying very hard not to have two fabrics the same together.  But….now and again it did happen, but I decided I would just have to live with it.  No more unpicking for me. 

Kiwi fabric for borders and backing

Borders were next, and I’m using some fabric covered with a bunch of cheeky kiwis.  This was given to me by my friend Eileen (who is not a quilter) who had purchased it some time ago with the idea of making clothes for the grandchildren.  As this didn’t happen, she passed it on to me, and there is enough of the fabric to use as the backing as well.  It goes quite nicely with my New Zealand themed Rail Fence blocks.

Selvedges in the Mail

I love surprises, and I love getting parcels.  The mail man delivered at lovely surprise parcel addressed to me from fellow quilter Roz.  And it was stuffed full of selvedges – how great is that!  Thanks Roz, I really appreciate it, and you can be sure they will be put to good use. 

Bag of selvedges in the mail

My rail fence blocks are coming along slowly.  I took them on our South Island caravan trip and used them as a diary, writing down places we had stayed, and attractions we had seen.  After going “great guns” earlier in the week and stitching them all into sets of two, I then had to unpick half of them because I really didn’t think things through properly.  Of course, with this pattern, I had forgotten that two of the blocks go one way, and the other two go the other way.  More haste, less speed!

That’s enough stitching for today, I’ll sit quietly in front of the telly tonight and pin up the rows of blocks I’ve stitched today, all ready for another stint at the sewing machine tomorrow.  Then I’ll know for sure that I’ve got them the right way around.

Rail Fence blocks

Button Lady at Pinestream Quilters Club Night

It was good to be back at my patchwork club’s monthly meeting, after travelling around the South Island for the last three months.  The hall was abuzz, as it usually is, with groups of members chatting, catching up with friends, checking out the club library, while waiting for the meeting to get underway. 

Our speaker for the evening was Ruth Meier, known as “The Button Lady”, who calls herself a passionate collector of buttons.  So passionate, in fact, that she admitted to buying a collection of 700kg of buttons while she was living in Zurich some years ago.  She related how she and her husband hired a truck and drove through a snow storm to load up the tea chests chock full of all those glorious buttons.  Ruth told of the history of buttons and had many interesting historical treasures to show, from portraits painted on ivory buttons, to the home industry of Dorset buttons made by winding thread around rings, to examples of shell, metal and glass buttons.  Victorian black glass mourning buttons were popular after the death of Prince Albert, and she showed us a selection of these.  There were both loose buttons and mixed bags for sale, and these seemed very popular with the ladies.

Buttons galore

Show and Tell is always a special part of the meeting, and as usual, there was a good variety of quilts on show.  Gael had previously attended a Nancy Crow workshop and ended up with left over strip sets.  She had enough left to make this large colourful quilt. 

Gael’s “Nancy Crow” quilt

Sandy is very prolific and can be relied on to bring a finished quilt (or sometimes two) along to most meetings.  She related how she received a bag of donated hexagons, and completed this quilt which will be donated to the City Mission.

Hexagon quilt made by Sandy

This is a very special birthday quilt made by Faye in the Turning Twenty pattern for her husband’s birthday.  Her hubby is skilled at making violins, and Faye sourced many violin and musical fabrics for this quilt.

Musical themed birthday quilt

Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get the maker’s name for this quilt, but it was made for a friend coping with a health issue, we were told.

 A special quilt for a friend 

It wasn’t all quilts on show, and I was rather taken with the little knitted dolly that Maria brought along to show us.  I’ve heard several others say they want to make one too.

Cute knitted dolly

After the formal part of the evening, we had supper, (loved that apricot slice) and the opportunity to get a close look at the quilts on display.  It was a very enjoyable evening, and nice to catch up with others after so long away.  

Hello Friends at Stitching Monday

It was great to return home (after three months away travelling around the South Island) to find that I was just in time to attend the May Stitching Monday.  With us on our travels, this is the first monthly meeting of 2012 I could attend, so it was lovely to catch up with everyone again. Shall I take my sewing machine, I pondered, or just work on hand stitching?  The sewing machine won, but I must admit I didn’t do too well at all.  The plan was to stitch up my Rail Fence blocks which I had made, recording places we had stayed, and attractions we had seen.  So I duly pinned them in twos and away I stitched.  So far so good.  But…..I forgot that two of then go one way, and then two more go the other way, to make the pattern appear.  Silly me, now I have to unpick half of them, and restitch with the blocks the other way.  Guess I should have laid all the blocks out first to get the correct orientation!

Stitching my Rail Fence blocks

I’m sure the other’s were thinking straighter than me and working much better.  Jeannette showed her Disappearing Nine Patch which she is making for friends to use in their house bus.  The colours all work so well together but there is a little secret in this quilt.  Jeannette has used some recycled fabric, from denim, to jacquard, to stretch, and has stabilised where needed.  Just goes to show that anything goes, it treated with care.

Jeannette’s Disappearing Nine Patch

Heather is on a mission to use up all those recycled shirts she has been buying from Op Shops, I think she is up to Shirt-tail quilt number eleven now.  But she is fighting a losing battle as she keeps buying more, and some of her other quilty friends have started their own Op Shop Shirt Challenge too.  Here are two she has recently completed,  both beautifully machine quilted in Heather’s indomitable style.

Two more quilts made from recycled shirts

Black, white and yellow was chosen for this stunning quilt that Joyce is making for her grand-daughters 21st birthday.  It’s almost done, as Joyce was busy stitching the binding down.  She’s very shy, so she says, and is only allowing her fingers to be photographed!

  21st Birthday quilt

Maureen was busy most of the day preparing hexagons for stitching, and Margaret had a whole lots of squares ready to make up into four patches to use in another scrap quilt.  Margaret’s aim is to reduce her stash, but as every quilter knows, making scrap quilts hardly makes a dent in in it.

Blocks in  Margaret’s latest stash busting quilt

Another scrappy quilt under construction was Petronella’s Pot Luck flip and sew blocks.  These are being stitched over pages from a telephone book, and is a long term project, I imagine.

  Pot Luck blocks

And for something completely different, we watched Gaye as she was working another her current assignment for her City and Guilds course.  Her triptych represents a scene from the West Coast of the South Island.

West Coast triptych

It was a very enjoyable day, thank you ladies for your company.  Guess I had better get busy with my quick-unpick and start fixing those blocks up.

Quilting the Light Fantastic – Capital Quilters Exhibition

How wonderful – I’d just returned home the previous day from our three month South Island holiday, and came home to find a quilt show.  Capital Quilters presented their 2012 exhibition “Quilting the Light Fantastic” at the Horticulture Hall in Lower Hutt.  Incidentally, I attended many dances as a teenager in the dim dark ages many years ago in this same hall dressed in my full skirted dresses over a stiff petticoat, all ready to rock’n’roll the night away.  My non quilting friends Kathryn and Dot accompanied me and we were delighted to find the entry cost a very modest $2 for us qualifying seniors.

Overview of the quilt show

The raffles were set out in the foyer, together with a raffle quilt, so here’s hoping!  One of the prizes is a whole lot of fat quarters – wouldn’t I just love to win that!  The hall was wonderfully decked out with colourful quilts on stands, congratulations to the organizing committee for a job so well done.   Okay, let’s start looking at the quilts.  Here are some that took my fancy.  Just in the door was this New York Beauty variation, a wedding quilt made by Jeanie O’Sullivan.

“Blessings of the Ancestors”, by Jeanie O’Sullivan

Small can be beautiful too, a selection of wall-hangings on show.

I’m very partial to quilts made from wool, they always look so homely and cosy, both of these are made by Irene Anderton.  “Balmoral Park” was made from recycled wool fabric, and Irene’s daughters joined her in making “D I S Displayed”.

Two very different woollen quilts by Irene Anderton

Stitcheries and quilts go together so well, I always think.  Christine Paxton wanted to make a blue quilt to hang on her bedroom wall, and “My Garden Patch” is the end result.

“My Garden Patch” by Christine Paxton

Another wonderful quilt full of glorious stitchery and nicely finished with a border of stars is “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”.  Clare Grant stitched this delightful quilt while living in snowy Wisconsin for a number of years.

“Living in a Winter Wonderland”, by Clare Grant

With a combination of appliqué and piecing,  “Springtime”, by Doreen Parker fresh and pretty and won two awards.    It would certainly look wonderful draped over a bed.

“Springtime”, by Doreen Parker

Members who entered the club challenge worked around the theme of “light”.  As usual, all entries were quite different, as quilters interpreted the theme in their own individual way.  Entries ranged from a sunshine, a space theme, starburst, and a light bulb.

Challenge quilts with the theme of Light

After all this walking, admiring, pondering, and trying to decide on our own individual “Viewer’s Choice”, we sat down at the cafe for lunch.  There was plenty of choice from a range of delicious home baked goodies, and we sat and rested our weary feet for a while.  Some of the club members were sitting and stitching, which drew quite an interested audience.  The ladies were only too happy to explain what they were doing and answer any questions.  Debra was busy stitching up little blocks using selvedges, which she then makes into children’s quilts.  I have lots of selvedges too, so I am always happy to discover new ways too use them. 

Debra explaining how she makes her selvedge blocks

Janet proudly showed us her lovely pastel quilt, which is a combination of pieced blocks and a large amount of sticheries.  Just look at that wonderful embroidered border, it is just a work of art.

Janet’s beautiful work of art

Congratulations to Capital Quilters on their 2012 exhibition.  I really enjoyed my visit, as did my two friends, and judging by the amount of excited chatter around the hall, everyone else had a great time too. 

From sunshine to winter

I’m quite sure it wasn’t winter in Picton yesterday, the last day of our South Island holiday.  The sun was out and the temperatures were quite warm really, as we waited on the wharf to board the Inter Island Ferry.  But once we crossed over Cook Strait to arrive in Wellington  the temperatures have dropped indeed.  Here we are, all rugged up in track pants, woolly jerseys, and our toes all nice and cosy in warm socks and slippers.  The gas heater in the lounge has been blasting out the heat, and my electric blanket is switched on before bedtime. 

I didn’t set out to do a “Shop Hop” during our South Island holiday, and only managed to get to a few patchwork and quilting shops while I was away.  Special thanks to the lovely Miche’le of By Hoki Quilts who welcomed me (and Robin too) to her shop with hot scones and coffee during our visit to Hokitika.  We spent a very enjoyable couple of hours talking about all sorts of things, quilts included, and I had a good poke around this lovely little shop.  Miche’le is a fellow blogger, and it was lovely to meet her in person. 

Miche’le of By Hoki Quilts

Sadly, the last shop I visited on our trip (no names) was not a good experience at all.  After having a look around the shop, and standing by the counter for five minutes, the owner was still talking on the phone, so I turned away and walked back out the door.  Not good customer service at all.

One of the textile highlights of our trip would have to be my visit to Lillia’s Lace Museum in Geraldine.  Jean Hall named the museum after her grand mother Lillia who was a lace maker, and there is an amazing collection of (mostly) hand made lace on display. 

Lace maker Lillia

And then there was an invitation to come and see a collection of quilts while we were staying at a motor camp in Manapouri.  It all started when I noticed a wall hanging on the office wall and mentioned I was a quilter too.  The camp owner proudly showed me her vast collection of quilts and wall hangings.  Out they came from one bedroom after another, on beds and out of drawers, the linen cupboard, and her sewing room.  Needless to say, I had a lovely afternoon!

Here’s a clue, she must be a quilter!

Marie of Ashburton contacted me and invited us around to her home for an evening meal, such a lovely gesture to make to a couple of strangers, and after Marie had done a full day’s work too.    We had a lovely meal, a very pleasant evening, discussed all sorts of topics, and I had a private quilt showing too.  Thanks so much, Marie and Murray.

Marie of Ashburton

I love old textiles and saw quite a selection at various museums.  There’s something about those lovely hand made, pin tucked, lace embellished undergarments and babies clothes from earlier years, they are just beautiful.  And a real bonus was finding a quilt show in Dunedin – how lucky was that.  Talking of quilt shows, I’m off to view one tomorrow, so I’ll be getting another “quilt fix” then.  You can be sure I’ll report back.