I took advantage of a delay with a customer quilt and threw the blue Anvil top onto the frame. It was quilted with a double clamshell panto, and it turned out just the way I wanted it to look. The texture is wonderful, and with the cotton batting I just expect it to get softer and more cuddly every time it's washed. Now to find a binding for it!The heat is worse than it's been all summer, which seems cruel. The sun is tracking directly over the long axis of the house now though, and it's amazing how much cooler the rooms are with the roof insulating more efficiently. But it's oven temperatures outside, from sun-up till well past midnight. You can all remind me of this time when I start whinging about the cold, in a few months time...

I braved the kitchen last night to do some baking; in between mixing and measuring and oven-checking I retreated to the air-conditioned computer room, so it wasn't too bad. I try to eat lo-carb, and these are cheese muffins make with an Atkins baking mix. They are mighty good, especially with the addition of jalopenos and cayenne pepper and sunflower seeds. That's all my snacking taken care of for a week or so.I'm not particularly keen on fruit, but these pears are appealing to me lately. They look like Delicious apples with an identity crisis, and sort of taste like that too. Very nice with a sharp cheese and a glass of wine. The colander they're in came from the op-shop; I was admiring it when the elderly lady running the shop told me that it had belonged to her mother, and she could remember it from when she was a tiny girl. Something in the way she said it made me think she was sad at having to part with it, so I brought it home. Whenever I use it I'll think of her as a little girl, and the mother who scrubbed it so clean repeatedly. What a lot of work it's seen over the years.

And because we were a little claustrophobic the other evening, we set out in the car to go for a drive. We only went along the road for 20 minutes, then came back again, but it was a lovely outing. On the way home the sun decided to set in spectacular fashion, with the whole sky a blaze of molten gold. I love living in the country!

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The weather has turned hot and horrible again, and I'm trying not to lose patience as I wait for autumn to arrive. We need rain so desperately, I'm hoping some of the older trees make it through. It's dreadful seeing tall trees that have lived for 20 or 30 or 50 years come to grief in this hateful heat. And the rest of Australia is flooding! It makes no sense at all.

On the way to pick up my sewing machine the other day we took an 80k detour to a fabric shop, to get binding for a customer quilt. The air-conditioning in my car is very effective, so it was probably a good day to spend driving. I may have bought the ends of about 7 bolts of fabric, nearly 8m total. However I only did it to help make room on the shelves; in this particular shop the shelves are so packed with fabric that it's a struggle to pull anything out, and damn near impossible to get it back. I did my bit to make some room. The bits I got are nothing rivetting, just useful backgrounds and borders and bindings. I feel positively Virtuous! And I cut up a load of fabric this week, so the total gain is only 1.4m.

The Blue Anvil is in one piece, and I'm not delighted with the borders but at least I didn't buy fabric for them. This was supposed to use up all my blue-greys, and it did. It would have been ridiculous to buy more to finish it off, so I made do. But I think I might splurge on the odd metre of pretty blue, because my blue stash is woeful.
Can you spot the mistake? I sewed this together without once standing back to look at what I was doing, and the little single corner block is rotated the wrong way. Not that I care; It's quirky. It so is!

My backing cupboard is getting bare too, which is a bit frighteneing, as I have more than 20 tops to quilt. I think it's time I went shopping for backing lengths again. I don't know that I have enough expendable fabric left to make pieced backings.

And the pile of unfinished quilts just got to me yesterday, so I did this. The Night and Noon, and Half & Half are totally finished. The Carolina Coverlet and the blue/green quilt have the binding attached and just need to be sewn down. Today I will have to put the air-conditioning onto frigid, but at least it will get done, and I can cross another 4 projects off the spreadsheet. Yay!

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There is not a great deal to report on the sewing front; I am chained to the computer for the forseeable future. I'm starting to enjoy what I'm doing; designing a new website, tidying up my taxes, making the initial files for a new computerised quilting system that will hit the market later this year. It's all quite exciting, but exhausting too. Lots of late nights and brain fades, when I just can't make sense of one more new process. I know it's supposed to keep you young, learning something new, but it makes me feel old and weary when I do too much. I never had this trouble when I was 10 years younger....In between other chores Mereth quilted my Half & Half quilt, and I love how it turned out. It fits the bed nicely, and looks good in that room with the rich red walls. That Flying Geese border was so worth the effort.The panto is one of mine called Limetree, and it makes a nice swirly, leafy texture. It's not a new one, I've used it several times and I like it every time. We did this at 10 1/2 inches, and it went quickly, but covered the top well. Gotta love that.

I think I will make some time to do a little easy sewing on the weekend, I've worked hard this week and I deserve some free time. Maybe I'll do some sewing on my latest machine, a Peerless treadle in excellent condition. I just had to rescue it from the junk shop where it was jammed in behind a stack of other furniture. I spent a bit of time this evening cleaning ancient lint and grease out the moving parts, and sewed a few seams to make sure everything worked as it should. What a little gem. We had a power blackout that lasted 5 hours a few weeks ago, and it was awful not being able to sew. My other treadle isn't up to scratch when it comes to making a nice stitch, it needs some work. But this one is ready to go.

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This is what I did this afternoon, once I had all the Anvil blocks joined together; it took a while to find the table top, and even longer to sort away all the random scraps, but I kept at it. Now I feel really tempted to start cutting a new project, but I'll be good and work on my UFOs. The Anvil top needs borders before I can call it finished, so that will be my first task. Unfortunately I've cut my blue stash so drastically that I'm going to have trouble finding anything suitable. I may have to BUY something.

Then I will start cutting the sashing for these scrap blocks, and sewing them together. I really like this yellow floral fabric, but there's a blue that looks lovely as well. Come back tomorrow and you'll see which one won out in the end.

I didn't get the binding finished on the Carolina Coverlet, but it will wait patiently till I get round to it. The weather is a bit warm today , and I didn't want to be sitting under several square metres of quilt for an hour or two.

I printed out the spreadsheet of my projects, and was disgusted to find that I could only cross two of them off, even though I've finished 5. One was a totally new project and two I never even wrote up on the sheet, so I missed out on the fun of marking them as finished. And I had to add the two scrap four-patch projects I started on the weekend, so I feel like I'm going backwards. Only 72 more to finish.......

But the Orphans and Siblings is on my bed, ready for autumn weather. I'm planning to make a wholecloth quilt to replace my antique English quilt; it really is far too good to use every day, but I've enjoyed having it there on the bed for a couple of months. It can go live on the spare bed now and be treasured instead of used.

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After a solid day and a half of sewing the total achievements are

• the Carolina Coverlet quilted,
  
• 15 of the 9-patch blocks and 8 of the cross blocks completed,
  
• the blocks for the blue Anvil quilt finished and the sashing sewn on each block,
  
• the binding finished on the Orphans and Siblings and
  
• the binding for the Carolina Coverlet attached and ready to be finished tomorrow.

That's not bad at all. I'm really glad those Anvil blocks are over and done with; they were a lot of work in the end, and the seam allowances didn't mesh nicely so it caused me some aggravation. Now it's just a matter or sewing the blocks together and bordering them with something from the stash. That will be a pleasure, to actually use up some yardage.

The binding on this quilt is a brown mini-dot from the early '90s. I was glad to cut the last of it up for the binding, and a few small strips for the drawers. Mereth scoffed when I proclaimed it All Gone! 'That fabric will never be entirely gone' she said, 'there will always be some lurking in the Stash.' She has pieces of it all through her sewing room too. Sure enough, not 15 minutes later I opened a drawer of scraps and found another 1/2 yard of the stuff. I think I would need an exorcism to get rid of it. It strobes quite violently in the right lighting, but it's such a useful colour.... I do like it for this binding.

The Quiltathon was such a good idea. Several times we were in danger of being distracted, but the official Quiltathon kept us focused and sewing hard. There was a dangerous moment when I googled something while having my afternoon coffee, and found myself on a really interesting site about Heraldry, but I made myself bookmark it for later and get back to the workroom.

And in case you thought I had reformed and was working in orderly, efficient conditions; this is my cutting table at 11pm. Mereth turned pale and had to have a lie down when she saw this mess. There will have to be a major tidy-up before anything else gets done here.

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We started our Quiltathon Down Under in earnest after a very late lunch, and I don't feel like I've achieved a great deal. In reality I have, it's just that I've been working on several things and I felt scattered all day. I need to spend a long time just sitting and sewing, and that will make me more centred.

The Carolina Coverlet is quilted and trimmed and the binding is cut and waiting to be sewn on tomorrow. I'm too tired to wrestle with that much quilt tonight. It ended up being 86" square, a very respectable size and it weighs a ton with all those seam allowances. It looks really good though; I quilted it with a clamshell design and it was sooooo easy. I like it a lot.

The binding for the Orphans and Siblings is cut and made, and it will be sewn tomorrow too. It will be great to get two quilts entirely finished. I used up 50" for the bindings, which helps restore the balance after all my stash enhancement.

In between tending to the Statler and making coffee and cutting fabric I sewed my 4-patches. I'm making two sets of blocks; the ones on the left will use up some of my 2.5" strips, which is a good thing. The ones on the right will clear out all my remaining red 1.5" strips, and then the sashing will come out of my 2" strips. If all goes to plan I will need to cut LOTS of new fabric for the strip drawers.

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• Garage sale visited - Check
• Orphan quilt finished - Check
• Carolina Coverlet loaded on Ms Millhouse - Check
• plants watered, laundry done, lunch and tea for the next two days cooked - Check

I guess there's nothing for it but to start sewing!

The garage sale was full of kids toys and clothing, but I managed to pick up 8 metres of material for $4. That floral is an old favourite, it cuts up well for Log Cabin quilts, so I'm glad to have another metre of it. The blue and white print is long enough for a backing, and the black floral rayon will make a lovely dress for autumn. I'm pleased with my loot.

I finished the Orphans and Siblings last night, and I'm happy with how it turned out; I'm going to bind it this weekend, so it can go straight on my bed as my autumn quilt. I love the colours in it, I'm still delighted with it. I've made a lot of quilts that failed to delight me when I'd gone to great lengths to finish them, so it's a bonus to have a quilt that makes me so happy.

I'm testing new pantos before I release them, so it will be a busy time while I get all the details sorted. There's lots of computer time ahead, but for this weekend I'm concentrating on the sewing and quilting. I'm off to the machine right now......

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In my usual distractable, obsessional way I have done nothing but sew the 4-patches together, in any spare moments I had. And the grand total is 485! All from two little drawers of strips. If any of us with decent size stashes have illusions of being able to use it all up we should abandon them now. There is no hope of turning all that material into quilts; especially if we keep adding more fabric on a regular basis. And yes I may have bought more fabric, but it was only stuff I didn't already own. Surely that's OK.......

Mereth and I intend to join Judy's Quiltathon over the weekend, so I was trying to get the 4-patches finished so I can turn them into blocks, and get the Orphans and Siblings quilted so I could load the Carolina Coverlet and be stitching that tomorrow too. And I was supposed to go to bed early, but it's now rather late. But I'm calling it a night; I sewed dozens of patches together before I realised the bobbin had run out, and then knocked my little scissors onto the floor. They landed so close to my foot. I'm taking this as a hint that I need to give up and make a fresh start tomorrow.

There is a garage sale that we want to go to first thing, but then it will be back to the workroom and some Power Sewing! We have found a few interesting things at the Op-Shop lately, including this milk glass vase, and the cute jug and enamel pan. I let my new things live on the dresser in the entry for a few days, so I can admire them every time I go past; then I find them a permanent home somewhere else. I'm just enjoying these colours grouped together.

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I spent Sunday sewing strips together, and managed to clear out the strip drawers nicely. The only things left are bits that are earmarked for projects already begun, and a few that I like enough to carry over to the next lot. It took quite a while to sew them in pairs, and just as long to iron them, and then even longer to cut them into 1.5" slices. That was a lot of work to get through, especially with fabrics that I didn't even particularly like anymore. Which may explain why halfway through I cut a few more shirting strips, and some more indigo ones,and began making these 4-patches as well. I AM usingup the contents of the strip drawers. It's just that I may be making these blocks as well, and using the scrap 4-patches as leaders and enders. I don't know how it happened. But I do like this new project.

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This photo shows a few of the WIPs on my worktable this morning. I finished all 20 blocks of the True Lovers Knot on the left, so it just needs sashing and borders. The Monkey Wrench blocks on the right are my take-along project for our patchwork club meetings; I need 81 and I have 34 finished. Nearly half way on those, but I don't want to sew them together anytime except at meetings. However I do like to make the HST units beforehand, so that it's just a matter of fitting the pieced units together on the day. I need to cut some pieces out of my gorgeous new fabrics, and start to choose a setting fabric to show off those rich browns.

In between other chores today I put the borders on my Carolina Coverlet, so that's another finished top to join the pile.When I have a spare day it will have a panto quilted on it. It may be a challenge to quilt, with all those tiny squares on point; it's not as flat and square as it could be, but I'll deal with that as I quilt it.

We had a lovely overcast day today, and the gentlest sprinkles of rain. Mereth and I spent time working in our gardens, repotting plants that needed it and fertilising and weeding. My garlic chives are flowering, and the clusters of flower buds on their long stalks are very graceful. I am slowly collecting the herbs I use the most; parsley, mint, rosemary, basil and chives, and some stranger ones like Brahmi. It's a herb to improve memory, and I like to put a couple of sprigs in a pot of tea (if I remember!). It grows like a weed, which is good; the tablets are expensive so it saves money to have it for the picking in my backyard. As soon as it gets cooler I will start sowing salad herbs again, I loved growing them last year.

I rather fell off the Stashbusting wagon with my latest puchases, but no doubt I will come to my senses soon and stop buying. The exchange rate is so low that it's very tempting to put in just one more order; however, there is a time for buying and a time for sewing, and it's sewing time now.

I am a bit jaded with my drawers full of cut strips. These fabrics have been around forEver and I"m tired of using them, and tired of all my quilts having the same fabrics in them. So I'm going to sew all these 1.5" strips into 4-patches for some undecided project, and then replenish the drawers with entirely new stuff. It will be interesting to see how many 4-patches I get out of this lot.......

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Thanks for all the kind words about my Orphans and Siblings quilt. I can assure you that it will be promptly quilted and on my bed by autumn, which is only 2 weeks away now. Not that I am counting or anything.

Summer is having a last spiteful fling, and we've had two days of gruelling heat. On days like this there is nothing to do but endure it as best you can, but some of my plants may have given up the ghost. We'll see how many I can coax back from the edge of expiry.

The pattern for my Delectable Mountains blocks came from this 1986 Ladies Circle magazine, and I made them as soon as I bought it. So it feels good to finally put those 22 yo blocks to good use.

For the border I used up the scraps from my Double Anvil border, and because there wasn't enough I went to the brown stash drawers and found this piece that has been waiting for 6 years for the right project. I think the children work in very well with the orphan and sibling theme.
Mereth and I were a bit concerned about how neglected our respective homes were becoming, what with us spending so much time working with the Statler. So we decided to devote a day each week to Powerhouse Cleaning. Over the years there have been several times when we've had cleaning jobs, and we work well together. Our new regime is to spend a whole day going through our two houses as if we were being paid to clean; we tried it out last Thursday, and to put it bluntly, we were knackered by nightfall! We not be young no more. However, it was a raging success; I love seeing polished wood gleaming in the afternoon light, and knowing that there aren't any household chores that I should be doing. I just hope we've recovered by next Thursday, so we can do it all again.

It helped that I had stopped at the Post Office on my way to Mereth's house and picked up three fat parcels from Hancocks and Judy Rothermel's Schoolhouse Quilts. I wouldn't open them until we had accomplished major cleaning goals, and it certainly helped spur us on. Fabric is the best bribe!

Aren't these wonderful swatches of Judie's fabric? Mereth will have to order her own set, because I"m putting these into a scrap quilt.....
I joined Judie's fabric club and received her latest collection of shirtings; I can finally feel as if the shirting drought has broken. I made this sample block up in my new fabrics, and can't wait till the work slows down a bit and I can kit up a whole lot more.

I'm still designing, and amassing a lot of quilting patterns that I will put into packs. It helps to rummage through the antique shops and find little treasures like this Victorian paper clamp. That feather at the top is the same as a traditional English quilting pattern called Goose Wing, and I love that shell shape at the base.
I found these two buds of Julia's Rose in Mereth's garden today and rescued them from the heat. They are famed for their odd brown colour which I don't like, but they are the only roses we've had for weeks, and I appreciate them anyway.
Honestly, it could rain couldn't it? We have clouds for heaven's sakes! These look portentious and a bit surreal, as if they are a fleet of podships from the planet KottonWool.
And finally a picture of puppy great-nephew Curtis, who brought his Mum and Dad to visit me on the weekend. He's such a droob, into everything. I have grubby pawprints on the top of my china cabinet now, but seeing how tall he's become it's not surprising

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As I said, the McCall's magazine has lost it's cover and is very tattered, though I do have another copy that I picked up in an op-shop (just can't lay my hands on it now). You don't seem to mind when I ramble off down memory lane, so I'll tell you the story of this poor old relic.

When Mereth and I were teenagers it was hard to find good craft books and magazines, especially in our little town. Once we were deemed responsible enough by our ever-careful Mum, we were allowed to take day trips to Adelaide for shopping expeditions. I guess we were 16 or so. We often wax nostalgic over those magical trips to the city; we left on the 7am train called The Bluebird, which was usually packed with other country people out for the day. A trip to the city was always referred to as Going To Town. If it were a Friday or Saturday the platform might be stacked with trolleys full of homing pigeons in wooden cases. They were sent off by train to the far reaches of the state, and let go at the proscribed time, to come winging home hours later. That's not something we see a lot of now!

As soon as we arrived in Town, at about 10 o'clock, we always scarpered off to the Buttery at David Jones, or the tearooms at Myers, for coffee and cake, then set off on a round of shops to track down our treasures. Our favourite knitting, crochet and tapestry books were by Burda , printed in German but we managed to decipher the instructions anyway. There was a record shop we went to for our folk music albums, and european music. Several hole-in-the-wall shops that sold wool and craft supplies, and the best thing of all, Beck Book Co. That remains my favourite second-hand book store; it was a treasure house. We went there last, so we could stagger straight back to the railway station with our puchases and wait for the train. How we did it wearing platform shoes I will never know! There was a ramp down into the station, and we always checked out the newstall at the top, found more than one Burda book there, and then set off down the ramp to the lovely old station to wait for our late train. When we climbed into our carriage we spread our purchases out on the seats and gloated over what we'd found, and ate hot curried peanuts and read as much as we could in the appalling lighting. On one such trip in 1975 I came back with this McCall's magazine, and was thoroughly addicted to quilts by the time I got home that night. I was in Lurve with antique quilts!

The 'full instructions for each pattern' went something like this. 'Sew 29 pieces together for each block. Assemble into a quilt top. Layer with batting. Quilt.' It was not a huge amount of help for a novice quilter, but it got me started.

That lovely railway station is now a casino. I might be heading into old codger territory soon, but I'm awfully glad I knew that place when it was a thriving station. When I read Harry Potter it's our old Adelaide station that I see, with it's soaring ceilings and light filled windows and tall stone walls.

Mereth is ready to thump me, because I am being obsessive. Obsessive=Boring in her eyes. I was obsessing over my Orphans, for four whole days. They lay on the floor of the workroom while I crawled around and tried bits in different places, squinted at it thoughtfully, went and did some work and came back to stare at it some more, place one piece just so and deliberate some more. It was a LONG process. When I did get inspired it involved great activity with piles of strips and scraps, and consequently my sewing area looks like a fabric explosion. I am spending my spare time today sorting it out and restoring order. I don't know how else to work, I'm sorry.

Putting the blocks on point made it so difficult, but it just wanted to be that way. I just built it in pieces and lopped off the excess. I wasn't looking forward to putting on the borders, I thought I'd have to do a lot of work to square it up, because I hadn't measured a single thing. When Mereth and I ran a tape measure over it I was amused to find that the measurements in both directions only varied by 1/4". It couldn't have been any better if I'd agonised over every cut.

I was going to put some words on it, but it didn't want any. I gots to do what it tells me. My favourite thing was using those Delectable Mountain blocks around the edges; they have sat neglected and unused for over 20 years, and they finally have a home. I'm calling this quilt Orphans & Siblings.

And by the way, I just love it!

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Yesterday I was very focussed, and spent many hours on one of my oldest UFOs, started in 1984. It's from that same McCalls magazine that I took the Night and Noon from. There's four or five more quilts in that magazine that I want to make; it was a great issue.
This project has had a long, hard life; there are 41 pieces in each block, and I don't think I ever managed to hand piece one in a single day. It took forever to do each block, and I had almost no fabrics that I deemed suitable for an 'antique' look. There are old clothes and op-shop finds in the first blocks, but by the time I did the final ones I was using reproduction vintage fabrics from America. Times certainly changed while I worked on them.

They suffered various indignities; cats and kids were fascinated by the pieces and the fluttery qualities of the stack of blocks. I ran out of the horrid unbleached calico (muslin) for the background and sashing twice, and had to substitute others. The original, accurate cardboard templates degenerated into ragged shapes as I traced around them repeatedly, and the replacement ones I made were just not the same. The final blocks were a nightmare of ill-fitting pieces, even though the new fabric was wonderful.

The worst thing was an accident that befell the blocks and the partly pieced top 15 years ago, which involved most of them getting saturated and requiring a bath. The magazine suffered too, and is in bits now, but I won't ever throw that away. I rescued it all, but I just never seemed to have enough courage to tackle the job of getting them put together.

Look at those seams! My heart quailed at the prospect of making them all lay flat and tidy again.
But I'm nothing if not stubborn. I made my quilt using only 30 blocks instead of the 36 in the magazine. It's quite big enough, and will fit the bed nicely. I think it will have a cotton batting and some heavy quilting to disguise the mis-shapen bits and crooked piecing. I'm so very, very grateful to have this thing done at last.For the first time in ages I felt like hand sewing, so I'm working on my Periwinkle quilt; only four seams to go and that's another UFO off the list. I'm so amazed that I've finished all these things to the quilting stage; it's most unlike me.
Today has been random; I'm jumping around from one thing to another. Several of these blocks have been sewn together, and 4 of these shopping bags cut out. I am so sick of those horrid green bags, so I am replacing them with these lovely ones made from printed duck. And you thought I only bought stash fabric at Spotlight! There's some skirts to be made next.....

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