A WIN AND SOME FRESH PRODUCE

Hi everyone I am having a great Australia Day. This morning I was looking at the blogs I follow and couldn`t believe my eyes when I clicked on to Among The Gumtrees site. They had the winner drawn for the SPRINGTIME patterns posted and I had won it. I had a follow up E-mail from jenny informing me I was the winner and my prize would arrive in a week or so, I am very excited and already thinking what fabric I will use to do the quilt in. I will let you know when I have decided.


DH and I then had to pick our cucumbers and Zucchini. We picked14 cucumbers and gave some to our neighbors and daughters and the rest I have preserved into bread and butter cucumbers ready for winter lunches. The zucchinis will be made into a vegie slice and frozen for when I dont feel like cooking, some will also be roasted tonight with my huge leg of lamb.

Todays haul of cucumbers. We picked a similar amount on Sunday so our plants are doing well.

Here are the cucumbers I preserved on Monday and they are very tasty.

Todays zucchinis, only a few but plenty more on the bushes.

DH bought home a load of satsuma plums and so far I have made 51/2 kilos into jam
and hopefully tomorrow I will make the spicy plum sauce that I use as a marinade on chicken and beef.

Well thats it for now except to wish all Aussies a happy Australia Day.

Cheers Judy

A GOING AWAY GIFT

My SinL has been transfered to Richmond Airbase in NSW and my daughter and two grand daughters will join him shortly. I am going to miss those little girls terribly. I have them one day a week during school holidays and we go out and about on the buses and do lots of interesting things. Jade, the elder of the two is also a budding quilter and crafter and I will miss our sessions together of just looking and feeling fabrics as well as those sewing lessons. Little Brooke is a joy to have around and has an opinion on everything and I will miss that as well. I also think they are going to miss their Nan, so I have made each of them a worry pillow. I will give the pillows to them when they fly out of Adelaide and tell them to hug and talk to their pillow if they are feeling sad or just missing the family members back home and the Worry Dolls will help them feel better.


Jade`s pillow is in her favourite colour and was easy to make.

I couldn`t do Brooke`spillow in her favourite colour of purple as I didn`t have any matching colours to do the doll in. But I hope she will like it.

The pattern is Worry Dolls designed by Kellie from DONT LOOK NOW. I have not made the quilt, just the bonus pillows using dolls from the pattern. Very easy and quick to make but I used blanket stitch instead of raw edge stitching around the aplique as I think it will be more servicable for little girls. I am also getting better at free motion quilting but I still need lots more practice.

Well this has been a long post So I will leave it there and be back soon with more news.

Cheers Judy

THE OLD AND THE NEW

I have just finished this table runner and it was one I really liked doing. It was a Charm Pack mystery challenge from Our Craft Forum. Participants had to send charm squares to others in the swap and other sewers made up the block and sent it back to you. The final e- mail came with the instructions to make it up and I decided to finish it straight away to avoid another UFO. I did it a little differently to how Dawn had advised us to do and I am very happy with the results.
It will now grace my table unless one of my daughters takes it for them selves.

I also wanted to share with you the first quilt I ever made. I went to a local Neighbourhood House and was taught by some very experienced mature English ladies. I had to hand piece all the blocks and this took weeks of sewing and many pricked fingers from the tiny little needles they said I must use. Fortueately after working out how much material was required to finish off my quilt I was allowed to sew the sashings by machine. Then to make a quilt sandwich which I soon found out was not going to be my lunch that day and taping it all to a table and hand basting all layers together. Then again all quilting was to be done by hand with even smaller needles. More sore fingers from the needle, finally bound and it was finished, and my addiction had well and truly begun. So thankyou to those lovely ladies who have given me a new direction for my leisure time. And finally I have not made another quilt by hand, thank God for sewing machines.

GIVEAWAY

The Gumtree designers have a great giveaway and I am hoping to win it. It is a complete set of patterns for the charity quilt they have designed for Fresh Hope. You can access it from the button on my side bar directly under the new button for the Gumtrees blog. So give it a go and enter, you just might be the lucky winner.

XMAS COOKING AND SOME GIFTS

I have been very busy since before Xmas and things have started to slow down now so here I am adding a new post. My daughter arrive 2 days before Xmas with 2 of my grand kids and when she went for her checkup we did some cooking. The Greens cake brand have a lovely gingerbread packet including the decorations and the cookie cutter and this is what we made.


Here are Charlie and Emma rolling and kneading the dough. They enjoyed doing this and their hands got sticky and were licked many times, and I think they liked that even better because Nan didn`t tell them to stop doing it. I think it was the most kneaded dough in Adelaide.

Next we had to decorate with smarties for the buttons and little silver balls for the eyes. luckily I had plenty of smarties extra as 1 button went onto a gingerbread man and the next into a little mouth. Needless to say that not much dinner was consumed that night. Then into the oven they went and for the next 8 minutes I was asked "Are they ready yet?" Finally out of the oven and on to the bench to cool. More asking if they could eat them yet.

Finally onto the plate and we enjoyed them with a cup of tea or milo and they were delicious. I enjoyed cooking as much as the grand kids did and we will be doing it soon with some Easter cooking. cant be far away I saw hot cross buns in the shop today.

I cut this bag out before Xmas to make a gift for myself and then ran out of time to make it. So yesterday I got down to it and as it was such an easy bag to make I finished it in 1 day. I now will make another for my sister. Its from Homespun but I cant get to the book at the moment so I cant tell you which one.

this is the cow I made for my other sister and she loved it. She has a property at Springton and it will join the other real animals there. She has sheep, cows horses and a donkey and I dont know what else and animals are her passion.

Well that`s it now as i am going to have a cuppa and go to bed.

Cheers Judy