It's my party...

It's been a lovely birthday this year.


There was cake.., (GF of course!)


Family to visit, so we had a lovely trip out...






T insisted on wearing my hat!




J informed us that there was another person on crutches which I found quite amusing (least he didn't shout it out LOL)


and lovely presents...

Thanks Hubs

I can't wait to start cooking with this baby!

Thanks Kate!

(Kate those hexagons are TINY!!!)

Thanks MIL!


I'm hoping something grows :-)

Thanks Estelle!:

So bright and summery!

Thank you VickyC!

So wonderfully rosy, I love the FQ and the card with roses and spots!

So I was thoroughly spoilt and very grateful for all the wishes, cards, thoughts etc... Thank you!

Wish you were here...

A friend I studied with in South Africa once said to me that she never got homesick unless the sun was shining. And it's true. When the sun shines I miss my South African family and friends very very much...

In England you find things like this bench at the side of the road...


And in Africa you can find things like this by the side of the road...

I bought this sewing person in Franschhoek from a vendor who had a little stall on the roadside.

His head, arms, legs, hand crank and scissors are made in a darker wood to the rest of the body, sewing machine, seat and table. The darker wood bits appear to have been glued on.

I love the ethnic fabric that he is 'sewing' and the bit of string representing the thread.


I do love things that you can sometimes be lucky enough to see at the roadside.

African swap block

Kate and I are still swapping African blocks, although now we are doing 6 inch instead of 12 inch blocks. I rustled one up quickly this week while looking for fabric to swap with Elsie who sent me some wonderful reds for my Lilies.



These were just quick blocks to let Kate know that I am still in the swap and will do something better next time I promise!

As always, photo taking in this house is tricky if you're not fast enough :-)



Birgit sent me a completely unexpected and lovely Easter surprise:


Thanks Birgit!


I received another lovely swap parcel this week as well which I will blog shortly. And I also won a giveaway so to celebrate that bloggers/quilters... are generous people I will soon be having a giveaway myself... also very shortly I will have been blogging for 3 years!

Has it been 6 years already?

Happy Anniversary Darlin'. Here's to at least 6 more! :-D

Cheeky Little Monkey

My little monkey quilt for our friend's baby girl is ready to be delivered...


I phoned to check the spelling of her name for the label and learned that they had decorated her room in non-gender specific colours i.e. reds and creams, but I love that this little quilt/playmat... is very gender specific. I think for Mom's like me, who only have boys it's nice to make something pink once in a while!!

The back is beautiful soft flannel from the same range of fabric and the fabric is all (except the shocking pink) from my win on VickW's blog way back when. I made the label from a scrap piece of pink monkey fabric...


I do hope she likes it enough to use it, throw up on it etc etc - :-)


My Double Delight is back from the Longarmers. It could have been here months ago, but I guess not every one knows that you should never leave a message with my husband if you want me to get it :-)))


I still need to unpack it and to decide on the binding for it, but I can't wait as it will live on our bed as soon as it's done!


Yesterday we did an Easter Egg hunt with the boys in the garden. I love this photo of what looks like a strategy meeting :-)


And they liked the baskets I made them too!

Happy Easter

We have not had any sun to take pictures since I finished the Monkey quilt so I thought I'd show some of the Easter crafting we've been up to in this house instead...

Normally I wouldn't craft specifically for Easter, but the boys had to make bonnets and eggs for school.

(DS2 refused to wear his so DS1 modeled both!)

Four cracked eggs later...


We ended up with 2 eggs for school....

Hopefully lessons were learnt that you can't play with them or hide them in your room!

One of my online groups had a challenge for March which was making fabric eggs.


The pattern can be found at: http://retro-mama.blogspot.com/2009/03/easter-is-in-air.html

Lots of Lilies

I am still hand-stitching* my Carolina Lily by Marti Mitchell the English Paper Piecing way. (*The original pattern by Marti is for machine sewing, but I changed the sizes and just decided to do it the long way.)



Slow and steady wins the race as they say although I am in no rush anyway, I only work on it in the evenings or while waiting at hospital or physio appointments if I can. Now that I feel more confident about my leg, I sew for a bit on the machine on other projects or sometimes I just relax - vegetating in front of the TV is new to me, but sometimes neccessary as hopping and crutching around the house all day is exhausting, so I'm not always up to much even though I have many projects in hand yet again!

I discovered fabric glue works a treat for keeping those stems nice and straight - my second Lily's stems were very wonky after they had only been pinned in place...



Two whole Lily units are completely done with all three flowers and stems. One Lily unit needs the leaves and stems stitiching down, another needs the 4 units sewn together and then stems and leaves... and then I have many other flowers in various stages...

All in all I need 8 units with 3 flowers, stems and leaves and then some more flowers for the borders so I was delighted to receive a swap parcel from Elsie with more reds! Thanks Elsie! (Of course I have forgotten to take a photo of Elsie's great parcel, but perhaps I'll take one later and show it together with what I will send Elsie in return...)


The pink Monkey quilt has been basted, S.I.T.D.'d and I hope to sew the binding on tonight if I don't fall asleep while putting the boys to bed...


So more Monkey business next time...

Monkeying around again

Our friends have had a baby girl and so I thought I would make use of more of the wonderful monkey fabric that I won on VickiW's blog some time ago. Thank you yet again Vicki!! There were so many great bits of fabric in the parcel as well as one 8" nine-patch orphan block (with the green squares) and one 8" plain square of fabric (the one in the centre) so I used those as my starting point.

I decided on a simple layout which meant that I then just needed seven more 8" nine-patches which I cobbled together from some of the pre-cut strips and scraps. Then I needed sashings. I searched my stash... I'm not really a pink girl and only had a fairly bright pink that I could use. I cut the sashing strips only to realise I was a bit short, hence the pieced centre sashings :-)

I am not good at quilt maths which is why it is no surprise that I was short for the sashings, so even though I believe that "if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail", I also believe that quilting is fun and that surely you are meant to 'patch' things together with hopefully happy results...? I am happy with the result:


I am not going to put any borders on, but I am going to use some of the lovely stripey fabric in the parcel for the binding and also in the parcel was some soft and gorgeous flannel which I will piece together for the backing...

I hope to baste it and quilt it as soon as possible.

I had a hopsital visit today and although there is a tiny vision of bone regrowth, it's very slow and so I am still non-weight-bearing or at a maximun 'touch'-weight-bearing until further notice. I am so exhausted from these crutches and when my surgeon asked how I was, I moaned: "I'm cooking, I'm putting kids in the bath and to bed, I'm doing laundry, I'm running around after kids etc etc" and he said:

Drum roll please.

"Good!" LOL. I guess it's better than lying around all day, but it really is quite tiring!

Something Old, Somethings New

A few observant people noticed that I changed my blog header to a photo I took almost 2 years ago. . .



I guess that's not really UP-dating then is it LOL!

The original post with a few other photos of my version of Bonnie's Orange Crush quilt on a travelling caravan is here. I remember I drove around with the quilt top on my passenger seat hoping for just such an opportunity and even though a German tour bus stopped to watch me, it was a thrill to see my quilt displayed on such a work of art. I think these caravans are just amazing. Slow and a traffic nuisance, but amazing!!

Chris, the Longarmer, says my Double Delight quilt top is ready so perhaps I will drive around this summer (crutches and or leg - willing) with that quilt in the car, with the hopes that a friendly traveler will let me have another photoshoot. I do hope that wasn't a once in a lifetime thing :-)

On another note, I have put some of my coin purses in my Etsy shop.





More to come, I hope, but quality production cannot be rushed :-)

Of Mothers & Others & Hints of Spring

The boys were talking about Easter the other day and of course they remembered hunting for eggs last year with their friend Luca. I had some Easter fabric bought at Birgit's shop absolutely yonks ago and decided to make them each an Easter basket for collecting eggs. (DS1 wanted to know if I was going to put a Bionicle into it!!)

I was going to do a tutorial on how to make an Easter Basket, but to be honest it's basically just a simple interfaced tote bag with a bit of 'Cheater's Binding' around the top...



Here on the farm we have some lambs...


And the Crocuses are out...


So it's starting to feel very Spring-like indeed... :-)))))

It's still a little on the chilly side, so I just had to include this photo of Granny C showing DS2 how to keep his hands warm when you go out for a walk :-)




Last Sunday was Mother's Day in the UK and I was lucky enough to spend it with my Mother and my Mother in Law. In fact, I was lucky enough to hobble around and cook a roast dinner for 8 adults and 2 children! :-) It was a really nice day and the day started with 2 very excited little boys wanting me to get out of bed at the crack of dawn to be given some presents. At school, they had both made me cards and cute boxes (filled with iced cupcakes). And they were so excited and sweet. Silly really as everyday is Mother's Day - when you have kids there truly is no rest for the wicked :-D

DH bought me these seeds for Mother's Day:


He clearly has high hopes. I was hoping to start small. A few tomatoes, maybe some pumpkins, but it was very kind of him to show such faith :-)

I made my Mother, MIL and SIL a coin purse each...


My MIL & SIL are off to Disney for Easter so I popped in a few spare dollars from my last trip to the US which was also ages ago (definitely pre-kids!!)


And here's a parting shot of a parcel DH ordered last week. Actually he didn't order a parcel, he just ordered the washer, but it came all the way from Germany in this box!


We had a good laugh about it especially as the delivery chap insisted I sign for it!

Love is...

Love is...

... being able to use my sewing machine again for very short periods (until it gets uncomfortable to sit or until my 'bad' foot starts feeling weird and cold LOL)

Love is...

... making 5 heart blocks for bedside table toppers. All our beside tables need toppers so I thought I'd make them with some of the beautiful reds I recently received.

Love is...
...Lots of sunshine
...New lambs on the farm
...Blue eggs from our neighbours

Love is...
(fill in the blank!)