I’m a member of a Kathleen Tracy’s Small Quilt Group. She has a super blog all about small quilts, A Sentimental Quilter and a great group on Facebook. Earlier this year, I joined their 2015 small quilt swap, where we each get a partner from somewhere in the world and we make a small quilt and send it to each other. I’ve never done this before and was nervous of making a quilt for a quilter!

My swap partner is Didi from Los Angeles and she’s clearly a fantastic quilter. Here is the quilt she sent to me, I just love it.

Its so beautifully hand appliqued and quilted with a perfect meander: I love applique quilts so it is just right for me.

Here is the quilt I made for Didi – I hope that she likes it!

I did a paper pieced quilt with a Christmas theme, I know Christmas is a long way off but I really wanted to use the red and green fabrics.  Here are the two quilts together.

Didi’s quilt is 36″ square and mine is 24″ square.

I really enjoyed doing this swap and hope Didi likes the quilt I made for her as much as I love the quilt she made for me!

Hooray!  After all this time, my Handi Quilter Fusion 24 longarm quilting machine and frame is up and running!  I’m so excited to have it back again.

If you remember, last year a lot of the frame parts went missing while it was being shipped.

The main parts that were missing were two of the frame tables. I contacted Handi Quilter in the USA, who do not do spare parts for the frames.  They told me that it would be best to get a complere new frame, but the cost was very high but that was that and they offered nothing else.  I felt very exhausted drained with the whole business by then and, finally, we decided that we would have to sort out the mess myself.

I hunted around for a metal worker who could make the missing parts for ages, without much success, and I’d almost given up on it as everyone said it was too complicated to make.  In April I went to some amazing art quilting classes in Grenaa run by Maria Vetter Christiansen (check her out at http://www.tekstil-kunst.dk).  She’s a very talented artist and quilter.  Quite by chance, I mentioned our frame problem to her: imagine my surprise when she said that her husband makes specialist parts for various industires and has a workshop who could easily make the missing parts.  Next day, I delivered the one part that arrived (two were missing) and a few weeks later, Maria’s husband delivered the two missing sections to us – perfectly flat, perfectly square, with all the holes drilled in the exact places and with all the correct threads welded in they went together perfectly. And after hunting down replacement screws etc, I now have my HQ Fusion 24 working again.  I’m so very pleased: at one point I thought that it would never work again and I was on the point of giving up altogether and selling  it.

I made a giant king size quilt and used it to practice loading and quilting, happily I remembered all I had learned last year.

I choose a nice swirly pantograph from www.urbanelementz.com and set to it, it was a bit scary quilting such a big quilt  after a years break from quilting on my longarm but I just took it slowly, it took me 2 full days!

Here’s the finished quilt.

I designed and made this quilt top last year but was never sure how to quilt it.

I used lots of bright Kaffe Fasset fabrics for the “flowers” and the borders.

Toots thinks this is another quilt for her!

I wanted the quilting to show up on the background and kind of disappear on the coloured fabric so I used a bright pink thread and a simple flower design for the pantograph.

I used some of my shell fabric that I love for the back. I am very happy with this quilt its very soft, I used a 80/20 blend batting and even managed to find enough of the small border fabric to use for the binding.

I finished a simple quilt and did some practice pantograph quilting with it. It’s made of 8.5″ squares and is a twin size.

I lost count how many of these squares I cut.

I used the left over fabric from a queen size quilt top I made using a bundle of fabric my sister gave my at Easter, I thought I would practice on this small one before I quilted the big one.

I used an www.urbanelementz.com rose pantograph, its 6.5″ wide.

I was a bit worried that the pantograph was a bit busy but it turned out OK in the end.

I used up some leftover backing fabric I had bought for an other quilt and pieced it together for the back and binding.

Sadly, our big white cat, Sid, disappeared six months ago – he stayed out one night and we never saw him again.  We have no idea what happened to him, and it was (and still is) very distressing to lose him.  Naturally, we’ve been keeping a good eye on the other six cats, but they’ve all been as good as gold, staying around the farm all day, and they come home regular as clockwork each evening (although Isis and Toots usually stay out later than the others, but they’re always back well before dark, note that here in the summertime it gets darkish just before midnight!)

Over the weekend our neighbours up the lane dropped by and showed us a photograph of a lovely little calico kitten that turned up and stayed for a day or so with them.  No one knows where she came from and she doesn’t seem to belong to anyone in the village.  Our neighbours were about to go on holiday and needed a home for her – people in the village said that we were likely candidates.  So, off Peter went with one of our cat carriers, some cat food and one of my small quilts – he came back with the most adorable little calico, about 8 to 10 weeks old.

She was very weak and quiet, so catching her was easy.  Peter cleaned her up, checked her over and fed and watered her.  The only problems were that she was dirty, very hungry, dehydrated, had a watery eye and some sheep/deer ticks (a real problem here in the country).  After a bit of a clean up, some food and attention (and removal of the ticks), she settled down quietly in a basket in our bedroom, with the door locked to keep the other (very curious) kitties out.

Peter spent most of the weekend quietly with her and now she is lively, playful, eating well, using her litter tray and seems very happy.  We took her to the vet to get a check up, her pet passport and her first shots and tablets, so now we have another little mouth to feed and we’re back to the “Magnificent Seven”.

Her name?  Well, we both thought about it and came up with some suggestions, but none seemed quite right and we couldn’t agree on a name that we both liked.  At the last moment, just before going to the vet, I said “you know, she looks like Zorro with that black mask”.  Peter liked the name, so, that was it – Zorro it is.

The next challenge will be to introduce her to our other cats – they don’t seem bothered at being shut out of the bedroom and they seem to know that a new cat is in there, so, fingers crossed, it will go well next week.  I’ll keep you all posted on progress.

It’s been a lovely month in the garden. Peter has taken over the digging in the kitchen garden, so I’ve been working on the flower border and the lawn. I had to put off cutting the grass for a couple of weeks as the loveliest white flowers came up all over it.

Bobs and Fluff got in on the act when I was taking photos of the flowers!

The new flower border is beginning to really fill out, it really is looking a picture.

The lupins I grew last year from seed overwintered very well and have been flowering for ages, along with some chives that I found last year in the garden, which I split to make more plants.

An odd double headed shasta daisy appeared, too.

Pink daisy and more daisies with a curry plant.

I don’t know what this plant is: I think it was some bulbs Peter brought back from one of his trips.

The new herb bed is doing very well too. I was worried that, as it is in front of my studio which is in the shade most of the time, the plants would not do well but they have thrived. More chives with rosemary, tarragon, oregano and marigolds. The variegated plant is a Milk Thistle or Blessed Mary Thistle – it has a lot more growing to do and it’s already over a foot tall and a foot wide.  It’s a favourite plant of mine and I’ve have planted it all over the garden.

Toots the littlest kitten is growing up and looking wonderful, she is still very playful and adventurous.

Although she spends most afternoons with me in my studio, sleeping.

Bobs is still grumpy but getting very cuddly, he sleeps all day if its raining only emerging for his chicken.

Horus and Fluff always come for a walk everyday all round the woods.

Oh, sunny days!

This quilt is for a customer in London, England. She asked for bright, bold quilt using blue as the main colour.

I decided that a big bright star would be fun with a border of half square triangles all around it. I was only going to add two more borders finishing with the bold blue border with the red corner stones but found it lacked something so added another border of the teal blue polka dot fabric.

Its going to university with a student so I made it a manageable size so it can be used on her bed, for picnic’s and festival’s etc, I made a matching bag to go with it for easy travelling. I hope she likes it.

As usual I was unable to take any photos with out a visit from one or two of the kitties, they think every quit is theirs, although the each have a quilt or two of their very own!

Spring has definitely arrived and we have lots of birds on the farm.  We kept the bird feeders full of mixed seeds over the winter in the hope that this would keep the resident bird population going during the cold weather.  Anyway, it was fun for us to see all the birds flocking to the feeders.  The small birds dropped a lot of seeds on the gound, so we had a lovely pheasant family turn up regularly, plus jays, magpies and pigeons, feeding from the seeds on the ground.  We even had a red squirrel for a time feeding on the lost peanuts.

We were amazed that with six cats, we had no problems with them catching birds – maybe our cats are too well fed and too lazy?  Horus caught two, Buttons caught one and we found one Bullfinch dead in the yard.  Not bad, seeing that we kept a large flock of tits, finches, sparrows and other BLBJ going over the winter.  Our cats seem to be more interested in catching mice, shrews and moles, and we have many more birds that last year, so I think that all the PC propoganda we get against cats for killing masses of birds is nonsense!!

Now that spring has arrived, we’ve stopped the bird feeding, so they will have to fend for themselves.  They seem to be doing very well finding their natural food on their own, and natural food is better for their chicks than our expensive “wild bird food seed”.

We had one blackbird nest in the potting shed (4 healthy chicks which have just fledged), but it was a really stupid place to build it and they had their second brood somewhere else.  I understand that blackbirds are even more stupid even than Pheasants, and I can believe that, as their first nest was low down and in full view, so we built a screen against the cats.  Blackbird chicks come down to the ground from the nest when they fledge and can’t fly straight away – not a clever survival strategy?  We have at least two Swallow nests being built, a blue tit with chicks in the nesting box high up in one of our trees and a sparrow nest through a hole that Peter missed filling this winter in our milking barn.  I hear the woodpecker again, too, so I guess that they are building in the old apple tree in the wood, as they did last year. I’m sure that there are lots more nests around, but I haven’t seen them yet.  I heard my first Cuckoo of the year a few weeks ago, so that’s a sure sign of summer on the way.

As I mentioned, we’ve had a lovely family of Pheasants with us during the winter and spring – a group of one really showy adult male, two females and one young male.  In addition to checking out the seeds under the feeders, they came every day to graze on the lawn.  They also had a go at my young Hosta plants, so I had to cover them all with chicken wire or there would have been none left!!  Plus, there’s been another lovely solitary male pheasant trying his luck with the females, but he always gets chased away by the big male!

The swallows are back.  Not as many as last year.  One came into our blue spare room.  It flew calmly around the room, flew around the house and then flew out of the front door.  The next day it came back to the same room!  We also had a Redstart in my studio, which I managed to catch and take it outside, where it flew happily away.

The Whooper Swans seem to have left now (we didn’t seem to get so many as last year), but now we have have some magnificent Red Kites to take their place.  They circle low over our farm regularly and they look stunning.  We have the usual collection of common birds (over 35 species so far) and it’s great getting up early in the morning and seeing them foraging.  “The early bird catches the worm” is really true!!

Well, hailstones to be precise, but it looks like snow on the ground.  It wasn’t what I was expecting at all, as it started out as a nice clear day.  I had quite forgotten winter, but I suppose spring can also be a bad season! The hailstones damaged only my young sedum plants, but they will recover.  Everything else in the garden was OK, luckily.

Peter spent the weekend up in our wood, clearing up some dead branches and cutting the paths we made last year for the kitties and me to walk in.  Plus, he made some new “short cuts” to add variety.

Horus and Toots approved of the wonderful new paths which make it easy to wander through the woods without getting tangled up in the undergrowth.  All the same, Toots likes to hide in the long grass to spy on everyone else.

The trees are putting on lots more growth and are looking magnificent – it really is a lovely time of year.

View from the wood to the lilac.

The garden is looking lovely, a Laburnum tree has just come into flower and is a real picture.

My favourite sitting bench is surrounded in sweet scented lilac.

And some flowers are beginning to bloom in the new border and the tulips are still in flower.

I found a lovely clump of bluebells in the kitchen garden, too.

We needed a tablecloth for the big garden table Peter made for us last year.

I thought that I would have a lot of fun making it, so I tipped out my jars of scrap squares. I started by sewing together 6.5″ squares into 4 patches to make 12″ finished blocks.  I put them all onto the design wall and arranged them in a random pattern. Next, I sewed 3.5″ squares into 6″ finished blocks and then 2.5″ squares into 9 patches, cutting them down to 6″ finished blocks. I spent a couple of hours arranging and rearranging the blocks into a design I thought was pretty.

After stitching the blocks together I checked it for size on the table but it was too small, so I made a bundle more 6″ blocks out of the 3.5″ squares and attached them to either end of the table cloth.

I chose a thin ploy/cotton batting and some soft Indian cotton for the backing and quilted it in random rows, infilling them with feathers, bubbles, swirls, loops etc., just to give a lot of variety (and practice for me with my machine quilting).

I’m pleased with the result – it was great fun to make and will get lots of use when we sit out in the sun.  And, if it gets cold out there in the garden I can always wrap up in it!

I just adore these little hens: their feathers look like fur and they’re so cute and lively. They belong to a friend of mine,  just 15 minutes drive away.  Maybe I’ll get some later in the year.   I’ve always had hens (before moving to Saudi Arabia), but never any as gorgeous as these!  I wonder what sort of eggs they lay?  Peter can build me a run to protect them from the foxes, I’m sure, and we already have an outbuilding the previous owners used to raise chicks.

Suddenly everything is growing and the garden is a real picture.

We haven’t had a frost for a while and everything seems to be taking off – not just on our farm, but in all the fields around, plants are shooting up.  Our herb border at the entrance to the barn is lush and green.  The sage has recovered nicely after the harsh winter and the lupins are beginning to flower, plus the chives, agapanthus, clematis, cotoneaster and lots more.

Peter’s black water pump (brought over from the UK) looks great with the herbs around it.  The mint is taking over a bit, but it’s so lovely that I’ll leave it to roam so that it gives us some green cover in the gravel.  I use the mint daily: I pop a sprig into a bottle of tap water to make it taste nice and to save buying bottled water.  I like to think that this helps the planet a bit, with a little less plastic floating about the ocean, but the system in Denmark is so great that I’m sure that no plastic bottles get dumped from here: it’s like the old days in the UK, when you get cash back when you return the bottle.  It’s all automated here – just put your bottle in the machine to get your money.  Great for the kids to get some extra pocket money and we also use the cash for a special treat for ourselves from time to time!

We planted up a tub (one we got with the free monkey puzzle tree we were given a year ago) with lots of bright flowers.  This brightens up Peter’s other water pump – a red one that was here when we bought the farm in Demark and that Peter lovingly restored. The tulips that Peter brought back with him from Holland last autumn are in full show now; they really do add a flash of amazing colour to the front borders around the yard.

I’m hoping that Peter is going to have more business trips there, so he can bring back more of these lovely tulips, and a bunch of the other bulbs that they seem to produce so well in Holland.

The fruit and veg garden is beginning to come together.  We planted another blackberry bush and a pear tree last week. Peter also dug some more vegetable plots in one of our grassy areas and planted more potatoes in them, so it will be spuds with everything when they crop!

The perennial borders are filling up really well.  I made some very rustic plant supports for the sweet peas, using poles from a big willow coppice we have, plus some old vines from a huge hop plant that grows alongside my new potting shed. The seedlings are calendula – I’m so pleased that they germinated: I wasn’t sure they would grow as I threw them straight into the soil and just hoped for the best.

Peter cut the grass in our “posh” garden area using the push along mower. I think the grassy area is finally beginning to look like a lawn.  The next job is to mow the scrappy grass in the other areas with the ride on mower.  Unfortunately, it came back from the repairers and only worked for 5 minutes before seizing up.  This was a 4 day weekend, so everything was closed and there was nothing for it but to wait until Monday when the repairers are open……I hope it’s an easy fix, but Peter couldn’t get it going, so maybe it’s not!

I spent all day yesterday cleaning out the greenhouse and planting up some tomatoes, cucumbers and pumpkins. I still have a few tomatoes to plant and this year we got a lot of different kinds – yellow, cherry and some giants, so these will add variety to our summer salads.

I put a bench outside my studio so I can have a cup of tea there when I’m having a break from sewing. Peter mended the glass of my potting shed window so now there’s less draughts and we’re using one window for the potato chitting.  Just a few more rows of tatties to plant in the veg garden, then that should be the end all the hard digging of the grass for this year.

The lilac is blooming all round the garden.  We spent a weekend some time ago removing all the dead branches and thinning it out on the garden side.  The hedge is a real joy to look at and the scent floating on the breeze is lovely.

The large workbench in my studio was a large sheet of plywood, supported on two flimsy tressle legs as a temporary measure.   It had a nice timber frame, so it was lovely and flat and very level.  It was big (8 foot by 4 foot) and super to work on for pinning and laying out quilt tops, but it wasn’t strong enough to do much else on it, because it wobbled about and had minimal storage beneath. Mostly, it was used to house a bed for Toots to sleep in while I was quilting and I had to use just one end of it!

I mentioned to Peter that it could do with a facelift and this is what he did last weekend. He got some lovely pink units from IKEA (pronounced EEE-KEA, not EYE-KEA, by the way).  Peter modified two of the units by taking out one partition from each and joining the two units together, so that they now take my Go! Studio cutter and my spare sewing machines.  It has storage both sides (6 units) and is now so strong and steady that I can now use it as a proper cutting table and my spare cutting mats fit perfectly underneath.  As you can see, I’m now more organised, with less clutter, and with great storage for some of my quilts and equipment.  And, its pretty in pink too!  The problem now, of course, is – where will I put Toots’ bed? She’s very upset at losing her sleeping area!!!

Also pretty in pink (well, dark pink anyway) is the jelly I’ve been making from the fruit we had stored in the deep freezer over the winter.  I made a couple of batches of Bramble and Apple and Elderberry jelly, and this worked well – they will be great to go with our meals for the rest of the year!

Finally, also pretty in pink, is the second large apple tree in our garden.  It’s just come out into blossom and the bumble bees are out and about, so hopefully we’ll get a good crop from it this year.  Our first apple tree to blossom was pure white, but this second one has lovely pink buds and flowers.  Our third tree, up in the wood, is just about to break into blossom, so we should have a glut of apples again this year. Maybe Peter will make his cider again from the excess apples?

I’ve been looking forward to some wet weather for ages.  Now, it has arrived and I’m really enjoying looking out at it from the studio as I quilt. In between the showers, the sun shines and everything looks green and clean.  We even had a super thunderstorm this week, lots of thunder and lightning, and heavy, heavy, rain.  At least all our watering tanks are full for when the dry weather comes back.

Yesterday, we had a great rainbow over our house – it ended in our wood, so, I’m off to see if I can find the “Pot of Gold” that is said to be at the end of every rainbow!  No such luck, I guess!!!!

The blossom on one of the apple trees is beautiful, the other tree hasn’t flowered yet, but is just about to come out.

Peter brought back a bag of bulbs from Holland last autumn and we got some lovely tulips, daffodils and hyacinths, super colours for the spring.

The seedlings are doing fine in the greenhouse, cold frame and potting shed, no thanks to an army of slugs and snails who have emerged along with the rain, planning to eat them all, I think.

Fluff and Toots enjoying a break from the rain.

I planted up a new herb bed outside my studio and the mint from last year is shooting up all over the place.

The rhubarb is through and the newly planted rhododendrons have started to bloom.

Horus and Isis enjoying a moment in the sun.

I bought a bag of plums on offer, they were as hard as turnips! I made them into jam – it looks like rubies in a bottle and tastes good too. I used the sugar with pectin in it and was able to reduce the amount of sugar in it, so it’s guilt free eating too!

Finally, weeds everywhere, mostly dandelions but they do look beautiful!  I can’t wait until our ride on mower gets back from the service and I can tidy all the grass up.

Fields of them!

Hope you are having a super spring too, see you next time.

Another Bubble Cuddle Quilt is finished and is ready to ship to its new owner. I like to keep a photographic record of quilts I make – this one is off to England this week and I hope that the owner likes it!.

The quilt is made up of 5″ squares, in lots of different purples, with a big white star added to give it impact. I quilted it in a large “loopy loop” design to make it bubble.  The batting is Hobbs Heritage blend and the backing is an ultra soft fleece, making the quilt so very soft and cuddly, it drapes and hugs.

While taking the photos, I noticed the tip of a tail sticking out, and when I looked there was Toots making herself quite at home.

I did not have the heart to move the quilt and Toots snuggled down and slept there for a couple of hours.  Finally, though, I had to take the quilt indoors before the rain came in!

I took the photos on our new chair in the vegetable garden.  I said to Peter how nice it would be to have a chair with a very straight back, looking over our new fruit and vegetable area.  He made a super bench from scrap timber, and after a spell of digging it’s very comfortable to sit out in the sun, with enough room for a cup of tea, a good book and a kittie or two.

I just had to show you this sewing box that Julia (an incredibly talented friend) has renovated, it gorgeous.

Before

After!

I want one!

I’ve been going full tilt with the gardening, since the weather has been dry, warm and bright. The ride-on mower is out of action (gone for its annual service) so I took on the task of mowing all the grass around the farm using the small push along mower.  The good thing was that it picked up the grass too, so it’s been good for mulch and compost. Actually, it’s not been as difficult as it might seem, because with the non-stop daily sunshine, I was able to do just a little every day.

Peter and I planted a row of raspberries, two Victoria plum trees, a cherry tree, a blackberry bush and a tayberry bush.  Plus the potatoes, onions and seedlings that need to be attended to. Thankfully Peter is helping me with the daily round of watering and the garden is beginning to look really good.

The flower border is slowly beginning to fill up: I have a lot of seedlings in the cold frame which will soon be able to be planted. I’m going to fill up the rest with annuals and continue to sow perennial seeds for next year. There are some lovely patches of buttercups that I have left in the lawn as they are far too beautiful to mow.

I’ve been spring cleaning the house and with the lovely weather, I’ve been able to wash all the kitty quilts and one that I have been using as a curtain.  It was lovely to see them drying on the washing line – I think there is nothing nicer than a basket full of line dried washing.

Finally, with the sun, came the blossom.  We have lots of flowering trees right now and it feels like it’s snowing petals.  Our trees just ooze with white flowers, especially the big one that we cut the dead wood out of recently, a smaller one around by the old barn and one at the far end of my studio block.

Will and Alan thought it was still too cold here and they both wanted a scarf. Alan’s was black and gold (no photos I’m afraid), Will’s was black, charcoal and grey he looked great wearing it when he left to go back to college.

The seeds are finally beginning to come through: I now know not to sow anything before April!.