I think my favourite colour combination is blue and green.  I have made so many quilt tops from those colours that I've put a huge dent in my stash.

Picture is way too yellow, this is very blue in real life.

Batik quilt.

Scrappy Bargello 

Many Trips Around The World

My blues are looking pretty sad and inadequate these days.  However, there are several containers full of scraps from those other quilts, and I keep trying to use them up.  All that happens is that I have more quilt tops and  the scraps are still there. The recently finished Checkered Lattice gave me another pile of blue-green leftovers, and I decided to use them up in some easy patterns.  

So I cut heaps of 2.5 x 4.5" rectangles from the scrap baskets and set to work

First I made a small top of Spinning Rectangles. 

I tried to do it scrappy, but I didn't like that, so I planned it so that each pinwheel was the same fabric.  It was slower, but I was much happier with the result.
There were many rectangles left over, so I started sewing them together randomly, and made a cot sized top in stair steps..

This was much easier to put together, no worrying about what went where. .  Then I made the mistake of tipping the stair steps on point to make chevrons.

Bad idea.   I really like it like this.  A full size quilt would look wonderful, especially with lots of batiks.  I managed to resist the urge to abandon the cot quilt and jump straight into the chevron quilt.

But there are still so many pieces to use up.  These are the scraps that never end, but maybe that 's not a bad thing..  I could play with these colours forever.  In fact, I'll probably buy more on my next shopping trip. I rather think I'm going to have to admit defeat.  These colours are here to stay.

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Yet again, my sewing space is in shambles.  I was totally distracted from my projects by the need to sew something for the shop, and a commission quilt. Of course I didn't clean up first, so now there is an extra layer of fabric and scraps and project parts on top of all the other stuff.  And I will get in and clean it up today, but very carefully, because there is a spider on the loose in there somewhere , and I am the world's biggest coward when it comes to spiders.  If I see the horrible thing again I'll be out of the room in seconds.

Last weekend we went down to Adelaide again, this time for the 21st birthday of our youngest niece.  Anna.

 She's grown into an amazing person, studying to be a ranger in National Parks.  She has an internship this summer, near Roxby Downs in The north of our state, where she'll be trapping native animals and recording numbers.  It's lovely to see her following her passions.

Whenever I see my brother Greg I remember 1977, when he had a motorbike accident on a  remote property and nearly died from a punctured lung.  He was in a coma on life support for 6 weeks, with doctors continually telling us that he wouldn't pull through.  But he did, and 20 years to the day after that accident, Anna was born. It could all have been so different, and instead we have Susie and the girls added to our family. I thank God every time we see them.

Isla was the life of the party yet again, chatting to everyone and eating whatever party food she could filch off the table.  At one point I caught her drinking a glass of Pepsi, which she's definitely not allowed to touch.  I don't want to see Isla on caffeine. She had a big conversation with Anna's Italian grandmother, Nonna.  Nonna's English is not good, and Isla was so excited she was babbling and we couldn't understand her either.  Nonna watched Isla tell a particularly intense story, with lots of hand waving for emphasis, and then said carefully 'You speaking Italian, and I speaking English!' They were so cute together.

It was also cute to see two 19 year old guys with Thomas, one holding him carefully, and the other armed with a paper napkin, dabbing off the drool with surgical precision.  Thomas was laughing and drooling in equal proportions, but the boys weren't fazed.  I just love watching all the layers and generations of family, enjoying each other and building up memories.

It was just a quick trip, we were back the next day, and now I have to tackle that sewing room. 

There are quilt finishes about to happen, if I can just get to the ironing board and the sewing machine.

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October is always a busy month in our family, so many birthdays, anniversaries and events added into the usual business.  Mereth and I decided that we were taking four days out of the calendar, and running away for our birthdays.  We went on a little road trip, just pootling our way down to Adelaide on the first day, spending two days doing fun things, then home on the fourth day. It was a fun way to spend our last days being 50 something.  From now on, we're sixty something!!

We went to Burra first, which is a tourist spot about an hour away, where we visited several antique shops, and had coffee in  a secondhand bookshop.  We were all set to leave until I spied a little room with art books, and then we stayed another hour.  Just love all the inspiration in these pages.

We had a little picnic lunch after that, then drove to Angaston, where we bought some fabric at the sewing centre there.

 That was a nice interlude, rummaging through bolts of fabric to find what we liked.  I'm glad I lost track of what I bought this year, because I wouldn't want to be adding the totals from this weekend.

Then it was on to Seonaid's place, where we were welcomed by these two.

Isla adores Mereth, I'm just background noise when she's around.  I guess she doesn't see Mereth as much, whereas I'm always showing up.  All our grandchildren call whoever isn't their real grandmother OtherNanna, which gets confusing when we're all together, so we're trying to educate them to call Mereth Nanna, and me Nan.  The difficulties of having twin grandmothers...

The next day we were off to Hahndorf, to visit the home of Hans Heyson.  He was a South Australian artist, and we've loved his work since we were teenagers, so it was a bit of a pilgrimage, and a nice way to reconnect with our younger selves.  When you're younger there's much more time to be passionate about things, and in later years that time gets taken over by everything else in life.

So it was good to stand in his studio, and remember.

He painted a picture of his wife sewing at a treadle machine, and Mereth and I bought postcards to put in our sewing rooms.  She was sewing baby clothes for their 5th child (there were 8 altogether).

It's such a tranquil image, a lovely intimate moment.

That took longer than expected, so we skipped lunch and went to the next important location; Tricia's Fabrics.  Oh we love that place, so much fabric, and the prices are pretty good too.  I was buying for projects, so I didn't go too overboard, but it was still a decent amount.

Mereth is such an enabler, I was buying half a metre of one piece, and she talked me into taking what was left on the bolt.  I'm glad now, but it made a hole in the Budget!

We grabbed a coffee from Macca's and then it was home for a birthday dinner at Seonaid's.

 She cooked 4 curries and all the accompaniments, and we had a right royal feast.
I don't know how she did it all while wrangling a toddler and a baby,  she has much better management skills than me.  None of us can plate up a meal attractively though....

The next day was local shopping, and a visit to Spotlight, where I resisted Mereth's urgings to buy a whole bolt of a lovely floral.  Absolutely not.  I added some black and whites to my stash and lots of FQs, but I was sensible.

The next day we went home, via Spotlight to buy the bolt I rejected the day before; once I looked at the docket and saw how cheap it was, I realized my mistake.

There will be a couple of backings in this piece, and it's always good to have backings on hand. Then onto Bunnings, for the obligatory Bunnings sausage for lunch, and I purchased some plug-in LED lights for my sewing room.  When I move from here, I hope my new sewing room has windows and good lighting, I"m sick of working in artificial light all the time.

And so to home, and while we enjoyed running away, it was lovely to be home again.  My sewing space is still my favourite place to be.

Turns out, being 60 isn't that different to being 59, who would have guessed?

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