A QUILTY CATCHUP............Hoping this all works.

 Over most of this year I've been struggling with technical issues in all areas, including this PC, my laptop, our home phone and my very old mobile which I've replaced too.  Oh...... and my long-arm machine has also thrown a few hissy fits, probably because I've been so stressed and lost a lot of mojo for everything.  Along with all that my younger brother has had health issues.

Putting all that on my blog, may help me get started with this blog again.  Loading photos has been an issue, so if I've already shown some of these I apologise.  Most of these were made in 2023/4, and not all are quilted yet, so here goes.

MALTED MYSTERY.

This first photo is a QAL I was participating in with Cheryl Brickey from Meadow Mist Quilting blog & although this photo hasn't got the outer borders, it is now awaiting quilting.

TINKER TOYS.

I saw that my friend Sandra from MMM quilts had a lovely pattern in a recent magazine, so purchased the said magazine & used some lovely little sweet pea panels for the centre of the blocks.  This photo doesn't show the colours all that well & I'm still getting to grips with how the photo app works.  This is also waiting in the to-be quilted tub.  I may rename this, but this is Sandra's name for it.

MEMORIES.

One of my own designs to showcase an embroidery I did last year.  I got the beautiful embroidery from the internet, so not one I could even hope to draw myself.  I'm pleased with how it turned out so far.  To be quilted too and named properly.

ALL TOGETHER.

This was another QAL with Cheryl using her latest book Just Two Charm Pack Quilts.  I chose to use 3 different blocks from the book & work out how to fit them together.  I'm so pleased with the result & it is quilted.  We had a fun photo shoot day down on the coast overlooking Bass Strait.

CUDDLES.

Now this little baby quilt is one of my own design to use some "baby" fabric I had in my stash, ready for a little one coming & not knowing whether it was a boy or girl.  HE is here now & the quilt winged its way across the sky & ended up in beautiful Yorkshire.

MEADOW FLOWERS.

Now this is a fun photo of a very, very old quilt I made and never taken a photo or labelled it.  Out one day and seeing this great little Morris not far from home, made me think I could do a silly photo shoot.  It was hard to get a good shot with both bright sunlight & wind.  Anyway, I did the best I could.

WHITE ROSE OF YORKSHIRE QUILT.

Another not so good photo, but I may try again at some stage.  The centre of this quilt happens to be the White Rose of Yorkshire, which I did way back at the beginning of my blog in 2013/4 and last year I turned it into this and did straight line quilting on my ordinary machine.  I'm so pleased with the result.

TONKA TOYS.

Lost the plot here a bit with where I want to type, but I'll do this one differently.  

One of my own designs which reminded of the toys our sons used to play with when little boys.

I've only just done this so not quilted as yet, but did want to include it here.

HAPPPY SCRAPPY

Last, but not least and this was a fun day out for a quilt photo shoot.  Taken up at the very small rail museum at Noojee in the foothills north of us on the way to Mt. Baw Baw.  I designed this for using up some of my mountains of scraps.  It is quilted & awaiting its label.

OK enough for today & hope I can get this posted and will try and do a few posts over the coming weeks of a couple of great times away, though not a lot of good photos, due to not knowing how to download the photos from my camera to this Windows 11 setup.  Is there anyone out there with similar problems.  Just call me old-fashioned or maybe ancient.

Thanks for reading this if you come along & find me again,

Take care and hugs from Susan.

VERY LATE CRAFTY CATCHUP.

Catching up after quite a long break, due to a very hectic time of late & not feeling like I've achieved anything much.  DD is leaving to go back to Sydney for her hubby's work, which I'm finding hard to deal with, little brother's needs are always being seen to with this scheme the government brought in some years ago & seems like lots of signing of papers is never ending & lots of phone calls too. 

Garden is getting out of hand with both my back problems & weather, plus the never ending blueberry picking at this time of year.  I do enjoy giving them away though.  Oh the weather..........it's been strange.

Also, we have internet problems plus my old laptop doesn't do what it used to.  Blogger seems just a bit different too and I have  a hard time leaving comments at times.   OK.......enough of my complaining.

Le'ts play catchup..................firstly an amazing sunset one night & I've not done anything to this photo.

And this next photo is one mornings pick of blueberries.  One of these tubs went to a friend for making jam & another day I gave one of our neighbours a similar tub for her jam making too.

Now for a few bits'n'bobs of craft.............

I've been crocheting these blocks from all my leftover Attic 24 bundles I've done over the years.

They are granny squares with the idea coming from a book by Jemima Flendt called Quilt It, Crochet It.

So far it's been fun, but now the sewing together must start...........soon I hope.

A few tops I've done and possibly not shown.

1.   

This one I've call SCRAPS APLENTY  and is one of my own designs.

2.     

Another one of my designs which I have named "S" is for...............

3.                    

I made this one last year from one of Sandra's patterns from mmmquilts., but alas it is also waiting to be quilted.

4.    I have joined in with a couple of quiltalongs with Cheryl Brickey from Meadow Mist Designs.

The first one is the Malted Mystery and we have now made the centre for this medallion type quilt.

Mine so far....................

The other one I have started is from her newest book Just Two Charm Pack Quilts and we can make any one and have a sort of time line.  I'm being naughty old me and having fun with this, but not telling which one I'm doing.

The fabrics I'm using from a layer cake I've shared with a friend who is doing this challenge too.

A little peak at some HST's I've done so far.

Another thing I'm "TRYING" to do is the Chookshed Challenge which I have made the list for here.

Whoops................can't seem to download this one, so we'll leave that till I can work out how to upload the document I did.😞

Now lastly for this post, I have a fun photo of the beautiful container DH made recently sitting on my chest of drawers in the sewing room.  Isn't it just amazing!!!

All for now, but I do hope to do some more catching up with some recent places we've been which may interest a few of my blogpals.  Hopefully after this hiatus I still have a few followers.

I do read all my sidebar blogs, but can only leave comments occasionally.  

Another little problem has been my eyes and hopefully at some stage this year they will do the cataract removal, which I need when they deem necessary.

Thanks to anyone who reads this.  Take care all and hugs from Susan.

 

LINKING UP WITH TWO CHALLENGES.

 Today I've linked with 2 other quilty bloggers.

The first is with Cheryl from Meadow Mist Designs for the Favourite Finish.

Magic Triangles ( my own design).

These blocks were made many moons ago & sat waiting for inspiration to eventuate.  I finally decided on a setting, made it up, then it sat waiting in the tub of shame till last month.  I did a  very simple custom pattern on it.  

The second is with Patty from Elm Street Quilts & is a monthly goal plan to at least work on "something" you need to get done.

Deco Delight (my own design too).

I have shown this at the end of last year when I was slowly working on it after my silly fall.  Now I've decided it is time to get it quilted and bound, ready for the May Favourite Finish.😉  Wish me luck.

Other than the above, things have been quiet and strange, though we did have a nice walk on Tuesday along the Great Southern Rail Trail, so one more section done.  It was one of our only nice days for the last 3 weeks or so and has been cold, grey and raining for a good part of today.  At least this morning was dry so we could start cutting more wood for the coming winter months.  Below is the view from where we were working.

Not often I show what I've been cooking so here is what was made late last week.

Some buttery Yo Yo biscuits in both a flowery shape & ordinary round ones.
Our eldest granddaughter used to love these.

A lemon drizzle cake too.

Well that is a short post today and I really must finish off the Silo Trail this month.

My lovely friend Sandra at mmmquilts is hosting a QAL which is keeping me some what engrossed with rummaging through my scraps and...............mine is going to be a village.  More to tell as we progress on this.  Motivation has been hard lately.  The garden is looking sorry for itself too.

OK, enough from me now.

Take care all and hugs from a cool, damp down under.

Susan.

FAVOURITE FINISH for March & more.

 

Joining in once again with Cheryl from Meadow Mist Designs link up for a favourite finish, but.....deary me, I couldn't make up my mind as I'd actually got a few finally done.

Two are actually patterns from Cheryl, one as a QAL recently and a freebie she had on her blog.              The other one was from one of my UFO baskets from a few years back.  Not too sure about the photos as we've not had the best weather for photography, so yesterday being a little sunnier later in the day, I snapped away the best I could, though no "In the Wild" shots as we are still one car down & MM isn't up to long journeys at the moment.      

Board & Batten, which I did post for the final link up, but unquilted at the time.
This quilt will be given to one of our car club members who has just become a grandfather for the first time.  (a granddaughter)

This was the freebie pattern called Candy Circle, which I made from a leftover jelly roll and backgrounds from my stash.

The backing fabric purchased as a remnant from Said with Love, earlier this year.

Lastly I'd found some half cut & made blocks from a layer cake purchase that I'd started many years ago and just wasn't sure they were OK, but then thought if I finished it as a lap size, it may be gifted when I needed a more boyish type quilt.  The pattern was from a book by Pam & Nicky Lintott from The Quilt Room in the UK.

I've called this Coffee to Go, as the fabric depicted coffee cups etc., and I used a chocolate print for the borders.

A Few More Silo Trail Photos.

                                                                     SEA LAKE.

                               

                                                                         NULLAWIL.

                                                                            AVOCA.

This one actually glows at night.

OK, my lot for today and I've still got catching up to do on a few different things, including finishing up the Silo Trail holiday.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and hopefully our big car will be home this week after it's little incident and I'll be able to throw camera and quilts in back for photo shoots in the wild.

Take care all and hugs from Susan.

TAKING A TUMBLE.

 The reason I've been quiet.  I had a stupid fall on the 1st of October on the footpath in front of next door, hurting my chest/rib area and taking a chunk out of the heel of my hand.  Lucky I didn't smack my face into the path.  Turns out I had 3 cracked ribs & severe bruising too.  I'm OK now & although we still got to do a few things during late October, the weather has been utterly vile.  It's rained all day here today with quite a gusty wind.  Although we've not had the amount that has hit some parts of N.S.W., it's still nothing like a normal late Spring.  When it has warmed a little, the humidity has been extreme.  Enough of my moaning and let's see some photos I've snapped when we did manage to get outside.

The Garden.

The azaleas flowered well, but then smashed by the rain.

The wisteria and wonga vine both looked lovely but left a frightful mess on the steps.

My snowball bush was gorgeous with some of the biggest balls, but with the heavy rain, the weight of the sodden flowers nearly broke a couple of branches.  They survived intact luckily.

Dutch iris were lovely.

Walking.

We have decided to tackle The Great Southern Rail Trail & have done 2 small legs so far.  I'll just post what we did for the first part.

One of the signs with some information.
We started from Leongatha and headed towards Koonwarra, but only went as far as Gwyther Siding.

At the start of the trail, we passed a Tyre Service with the hugest pile of tyres I've ever seen.

Further along we passed this row of columns, but no information was available to say what it had been.

Farming countryside.

We didn't have to give way to any stock, though we saw plenty of cattle.

As far as we went on the first day.  We think after we turned and went back, we'd done about 8kms.

WATER.......

A small court near to ours, where a creek runs under the road and as you can see, it had other ideas one day and this is what it looked like. It's definitely been "wet" of late.

Quilting.

I have kept busy, although it's been slow going.  I managed to do a small wall hanging for  a bit of a challenge for myself & something someone mentioned I might like to join in with, though everyone else had started long before me, so I did simple, small & fun.

The challenge was a Churn Dash quilt, but I played with a block I'd seen "somewhere" & done a quick sketch and ended up with my Churn Dash Twist.
This photo was taken at the community garden in Braeside Park.

I had one on the machine when I took the tumble and finally managed to finish it a few weeks later.  I have shown it unquilted.

I've still not really named this, but had called the pattern when I designed it 
Gee Whiz.  (silly)

Lastly I popped this one below on the machine yesterday & had it off by lunch today.  The blocks were made many years ago from a Judy Martin pattern, but I just couldn't get it quite right, so only made a few, then cobbled them together and came up with this.  No binding as yet.

Empire Stars.

OK, that's enough from me today as it coming onto near teatime and I've other things I need to do.

Hope somebody may read this, as I'm wondering how many people still want to follow along after my absence.  I hope to pop back on with some more rail trail walking soon, especially if weather clears up a bit. 

Until next time, take care all and hugs to all.

Susan.