Here’s a quilt I made to support our local church in Ashwater Devon: they held a spring fair to help raise money for the church building (it’s a great old church, sadly in need of repairs).  I made it Queen sized, with Easter Basket blocks and Spring Flowers appliqué to suit the occasion.  They raffled the quilt at the Easter Draw and it raised £600 towards the church restoration fund, so it obviously attracted attention at the fair.  I know that it’s gone to a good home, too.

What a change in the weather!! Gone is the searing heat of the past 6 weeks, now we have changeable weather with showers in between the sunshine, and wind from time to time from different directions.  It’s really lovely as there’s enough sun and dry weather to get things done and enough showers to save me from having to lug the watering cans about.

Apples, Tomatoes, Pumpkins, Cucumbers and Courgettes.

Suddenly the apples are ripening and daily there is a basket or two to be dealt with.  I’ve peeled, chopped and frozen them on trays then packed them in strong bags; I’m constantly making chutney from them and jars of jellies and pie fillings, so our small pantry is getting full of all our produce.  I have to remind myself that when winter sets in and its cold and wet, I will be thankful for a lovely apple pie.  Now I will have to get out my Mary Berry cook book and try my hand at making puff pastry the way I was taught at school (so many years ago I don’t care to remember!!).

We’re still getting loads of tomatoes in the greenouse, and we seem to have a new crop of cucumbers coming, just when I thought they’d finished.  Our pumpkin is growing like a trifid – it must be over 20 feet long, trailing around the outside of the greenhouse and cold frame.  Our pot of courgettes still gives us fruit.  Failures this year were the melons (which died, probably too much water) and the aubergines, which we only got two fruits on, probably poor pollination.

Pillows.

I thought you might like to see some pillows I made for a client.  They are about 24” square and done with raw edge appliqué technique.  I used blanket stitch and straight stitch and quilted them on my domestic machine.   I love making these pillows – they are a lot of fun to do and I get a chance to use all my favorite quilting techniques.

Esk’s Quilt.

This is a quilt I made for my friend Esk for his 50th birthday.  I’ve known Esk since I was a kid and he’s more like a brother to me.  He lives just around the corner from my Mum in Scotland and is always helping her with logs for the burner and pretty much anything she needs, so it’s been a really special quilt for me to make.

I must get back to the bottling of the next batch of apples and tomatoes, more news from our country haven soon!

It’s well worth getting up early to see a sunrise like this.

This week it rained at last.  We haven’t had rain for over a month and garden was looking very dry.  I had to water everything with a watering can from the kitchen tap – time consuming and hard work.  The rain came down steadily for a few hours, just enough to fill up our water butts quickly.  One of them wasn’t connected to a downpipe (it’s intended for the tumbledown outbuilding we have), so Peter and I filled it with buckets from the other tanks.  Boy, did we get wet!.  But, even if it doesn’t rain for another month, watering the garden will be a lot easier.

.

Peter finished renovating his water pumps – one from Denmark, one from the UK, plus the antique firemans bucket pump we bought some months ago.  Unfortunately, our well (where the red pump is) appears to be full of sand, so neither of the pumps draw water.  Still, with all the herbs I planted, the front of the milking shed looks lovely now.

The kitties had the right idea when it started to rain, they all came in, some wetter than others, and fell asleep after a light lunch.  I even had to light the log burning stove to dry them off and keep them warm.

Two days ago, they ploughed the fields around us.  That was fine, but then they carted loads of cow dung to envigorate the soil, and that was fine, too, just a bit smelly for a while.  Then the flies came…..in droves!  I had to shut up the house, made sure that the kitties were in the studio and gave the house a good spray with fly spray.  Peter bought an Ultra Violet light trap, but that doesn’t seem to do any good (it just traps moths), but the number of flies seems to have reduced today, so hopefully we can get back to normal.  Aaaah, the joys of country living, but I wouldn’t miss it for anything.

NASA astronaut Karn Nyberg, who hand stitched a star block on the International Space Station, invited quilters from around the world to create their own star quilt block to help celebrate her mission and passion for quilt making. The blocks will be combined to create a quilt to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the International Quilt Festival in Houston this year.

Here is the star block I sent in – the rules said we had to write our name, location and sign it in indelible pen on the front.

I’ve just returned from 4 days in Copenhagen with my pal Julia who flew all the way from Saudi Arabia to meet up with me!  How cool is that!  And the first thing she says “lets go on a hands on sailing trip!”  Here she is looking great and full of energy after very few hours sleep.  We had to do a lot of the hard work ourselves – hoisting sails and so forth and it was great fun.  In truth, it was more of a “drift” than a “sail” as there was so little wind, we had to use the engine to get around!  Definitely well worth doing.

We spent all afternoon and evening at Tivoli, having a great time looking at the gardens and enjoying some lovely food, especially the fabulous Danish open sandwiches and ice cream.

As you might expect, the rest of the time we were chatting about quilting, sewing and going back over old times when we were together in Dhahran.  And, of course, we were out in town shopping for fabric.  I bought some super patterns and a bit of fabric, and a few odds and ends for the house and studio.  I managed to get something for Peter, who looked after the house full of cats, the garden, the housework and all his DIY all on his own, so he didn’t feel too neglected.  It was a really neat cucumber slicer (it cuts the cucumber into a long spiral, great for salads.

Now, sadly, Julie has had to go back to Saudi, but I’m making plans for our next get together, when more of the quilting group from Dhahran can get together for a reunion. I made Julia a quilt to take home with her and she gave me a terrific bag that she’d made, so I have that to remember a smashing break in the sun.

Last week I spent two days working on my Dear Jane quilt borders.

I felt that, as I was getting closer to finishing the inner blocks, I would try and complete the border blocks so that it was not so overwhelming when it came to completing the quilt.  I’ve managed to complete the top row, the right side row and four of the bottom row.  I’m very pleased with my progress but I can’t say it was easy: some of those blocks make no sense at all and I have had to have a few goes at some of them!  I’m using a Dear Jane PC program and sometimes it has no block pattern for you to follow.  One of them was only half a block and I had to figure out the rest of it for myself.  It’s not so hard, but it is time consuming, having to check around for ideas as to how to complete the block.

Next week I’m going to have another go at finishing all the border blocks.  Luckily I’m going to Copenhagen, fabric shopping with my pal this week-end, as I’m running out of suitable fabric.  This quilt is for my husband, Peter, and he would like each block made from different fabric in 19th Century style fabric, just like the original (which only had two blocks made with the same fabric).  I’m making another Dear Jane for myself in 1930’s fabrics, but this has taken a back seat to Peter’s quilt, so look out for it next year!

It’s well into July, and the summer holidays here in Denmark.  This gives us time to do some well needed maintenance on the farm and get on with the renovations.  Combining has already started around us for the barley and oilseed rape: the kitties seem to be interested in this and don’t seem phased by the tractors and trailers going up and down the lane.  Oats and wheat to follow in the other fields!

Peter has fixed the leaking gutters on the milking parlour and he fitted some large water collection tanks so we can collect water for the garden later in the year.  The only problem was that he collected the tanks the day after our last downpour and we haven’t had any rain since then, so the tanks are still empty!

I’ve been keeping the greenhouse under control (just).  The cucumbers have slowed down, but we still get a few.  Now the tomatoes have come into season, and they’re really great, along with the French Beans and the salad crops from the cold frame.

We have a wasp nest in the old garage block: what a super thing it is.  Also, we have a lovely bumble bee nest in an old mouse hole outside our back door. We also have a couple of ground nesting wasp nests in the lawn, too.  These interfere with our daily croquet game, so we’ve had to introduce a local rule that if a ball gets stuck in the wasp nest the opponent player has to retrieve it and place it a yard away. The other local rules are that if the ball ends up in the mole holes, the player has to move it to a flat spot and if it ends up in the Bamboo area, it has to be moved a yard into the court.  And, if anyone hits any of the kitties, they lose their turn! So, you can see that our croquet lawn is not up to championship standard, but who cares when we have a glass of bubbly and some cucumber sandwiches to enjoy during the game!

Our Swallows reared 4 healthy young fledglings in their first nest – well done them.  Now they’re planning on a second brood, but not in the same nest.  Their first nest was in the most stupid place, in full view of the kitties, and right above the door, but they got away with it.  Now, they seem to have taken over an old nest higher up in the big barn, much more sensible.

Horus, our Alpha Male cat, got involved in a fight with the cat from the next door farm a couple of days ago.  He got bitten on the foot but it only took him 2 days to recover (with lots of luvvies from us, of course).  Now, he’s up and about as usual at 5am with Peter and all the rest of the gang.

I’m going to Copenhagen for a few days to see my friend Julia from Saudi Arabia.  She’s coming all the way from Dhahran for a few days so we can meet up during the Eid Holiday at the end of Ramadan.  Naturally, we have a list of fabric and quilting shops to go and see – what fun that will be.

We took the morning off and went exploring and found lovely quiet empty beaches.

Fields of daisies,bliss.

I have been working on my Dear Jane project, I would really like to see this quilt finished so have planned a weekly DJ day. The progress chart shows the shaded completed blocks so the end is in sight even if it feels like distant sight.I feel that a DJ day should coincide with a “lets bake a cake in the dodgy oven morning” so I can have cake and tea to spur me on.

I have completed rows, A through to D and all but two of the top border row, I have also done random blocks so its beginning to fill up. My plan is to finish all the blocks then pick out the terrible ones and redo them, i.e. the hexie block above is one such block!

Earlier this year Lizzie McDougall, Christina Stewart and myself got together and made this quilt with the help of some local people of all ages, the quilt will travel around the Highlands of Scotland with Lizzie as she tell everyone some of the many traditional stories and songs of the Highlands. It was so much fun making the quilt and meeting lots of friendly people.

My sister, an interior designer, commissioned me to make a quilt for a bedroom she was working on, here’s the finished quilt using the fabric supplied by Susan and her gorgeous room, don’t you just love the french curved end bed, the use of bold colours with the traditional, its inspirational.

I finally unpacked most of my fabric and put it in the studio cupboards.  My husband brought it all around with the tractor and trailer, there was so much of it.  He also put up one of my quilt hangers and here’s a picture of my cat quilt brightening up the wall, and others on my quilt rack.  Now I can get my small quilting machine set up and get down to some serious piecing for all my ongoing projects.

We’re flooded with cucumbers from the greenhouse at the moment, so I’ve sliced them up and started to pickle them.  With some peppers, they should make a fine pickle for the winter.  The next glut will be the tomatoes, so chutney will be coming!

One of our cats (Buttons, the youngest one, now a teenager and up to all sorts of mischief) got tangled up in the fly paper I put up in an attempt to keep the flies at bay.  It got stuck all round her back legs and she needed a good wash to get it off.  Luckily mother cat stopped her running away or I would have had no chance in catching her.  I think it will take a long time before Buttons forgives me for that.

Cucumber pickle

A quilt for daisy, hope she likes it.

After weeks of hot sunny weather the clouds rolled in and down poured the rain, thunder all around ad hailstones a half inch in size clattered down, I went to take photos and just as I went outside was nearly hit by lightening!! It was the most frightening thing to happen, the light and the noise was like nothing I have ever experienced before, I ran in with the kitties slammed the door shut and we all sat shivering for a while, I lit the log burner for the kitties had a wee glass of dark red wine and went and did some quilting, by hand as the storm had knocked out the power and the internet.