This can't be normal

There should be a rule that you don't have to get out of bed if the mercury is below 0 at your normal rising time and even in the house you can see your breath in a little cloud in front of you.



I live in Sydney. Not Melbourne. Not Antartica.

So imagine my surprise when not only is my car covered in ice this morning, but that my hose is frozen so I can't hose it off and melt the ice. And that when I do, in my morning stupor, finally figure out why despite putting the tap on full power nothing is emerging ,and manage to find working tap and buckets to try to melt off said ice, the water just freezes on contact .... not melting the existing ice, but adding to it!

So that despite preheating the car during the whole long and involved process of trying to find unfrozen water to turn into sheets of ice on the windows, it takes almost my entire drive to work for the defrosters to clear more than an orange-sized hole in the ice to enable me to see where I am going.

It is just not natural!

Bits and pieces

I finally finished 9 blocks for my scrappy string quilt and put the first border on. I'd like to make the final border scrappy, foundation-pieced too but I am a bit over this technique now, so am putting it aside for a little while.



Another thing I found in one of my scrap bins was a stitchery. From memory, this is an Ann Dimmer pattern from one of the magazines (maybe Handmade?) and was made into a bolster cushion. I made the bolster cushion for a friend once, but this time, made the stitchery into a normal square cushion with some scraps from the same bin.



I had a good time at the markets this morning with my friend. I got some vegies, bread, books and a pile of old doilies from a woman who had a mountain of them for 50 cents each! I bought 9 of them because that's all the change I had.



I realised I had too many vegies when I came home, so I've been doing some preserving this afternoon. I've got some skinned red capsicum strips in oil and herbs (yummy antipasto stuff) and some eggplants degorging waiting for the same treatment. I also have a big pot of vegie and lentil curry on the stove, with green beans and cauliflower in it. It smells good, so can't wait for dinner!

Anything Goes

I've started trying to use up some of the scraps in my various scrap repositories and this is what I have come up with.



Gee, it is slow going though. I only made 6 blocks yesterday afternoon.

I am foundation piecing these string-y blocks. I started using paper but got sick of having to tear it away so started using fabric foundations instead. I know it will make quilting a little trickier, but I love the way the additional layer of fabric gives the block such stability and an extra layer of warmth.

I can't really call it a string quilt. Some of the "strings" are a couple of inches wide! So that's the reason for my post heading - anything goes with this quilt. Any fabric, no matter how ugly or how little it seems to go with its neighbours, or how crookedly cut it is, is going in, and the fabrics can be of any width at all.

Mess, mess, mess

Last weekend I finished those bright jelly roll blocks I started some time ago and put them together into a little lap quilt (shown below in sad, un-ironed state). I did intend to add a final border of 2 1/2" squares but somehow between last weekend and now, I have managed to lose half of the scraps I had left over! Would you believe it?



Well, yes you would if you saw the state of my sewing room!

I wish I was as organised as others and had everything in neat little drawers. Some of it is, but, well, there is SO MUCH that the drawers overflowed years ago.

I use my dining table as my cutting, organising and everything else table. The piles of fabrics and assorted scraps just pile up until people come over for dinner and then I hastily stuff it all into a plastic tub or bag and hide it away in my sewing room. Then I forget about it and the whole process starts again with new fabrics. So you see, I end up with dozens of bags and tubs filled with who knows what. Like this:



This tub included some stray blocks, assorted scraps of both fabrics and wadding, plastic bags, cord, a strange leaf, a bedsock and a pair of tights. So my task for today is to rummage through a few boxes and try to sort things out, or at least think of a great scrap quilt to use some bits and pieces up.



And lastly just a cute photo of Spice having a nap on the sofa yesterday. She is so gorgeous!

A bit of spoiling

I decided to spoil myself a bit and joined up for Faeries in my Garden's Gift of the Month subscription. A bit late, so I was thrilled to get the first two month's postings this week and couldn't wait to start the adorable coffee plunger cosy and heat mat. I love these pretty pink fabrics!



I made the plunger cosy yesterday. There it is, lying flat above, and below is it wrapped around .... well, a cashew nut jar, as I don't have a coffee plunger.



If the weather gets wild and wet this afternoon as they are predicting, I'll be staying inside and working on the matching heat mat.



I've also been a bit spoiled by friends and colleagues this week. The lovely roses above are from a good friend, for no particular reason, isn't that sweet? And the flowers in the coffee plunger photo at the top are from a gorgeous bunch given to me from some work colleagues - I recently retired from our Social Club Committee due to work commitments, so the remaining Committee members gave me some beautiful flowers as a thank you for the work I put it in the past.

Cot Quilt

I finished by cot quilt yesterday. I just quilted it very simply, in diagonal straight lines. And sewed on the binding snuggled up in front of the fire and a DVD.



This fabric (Birdie) is so cute. Lots of sweet flowers and birdies flitting arond in bright colours.

Autumny Weekend

It's getting cooler here in Sydney and we are just a week or so from winter. It's been a nice quiet weekend, so I've had the fire on and it has been so lovely and cosy and have done some crafting for the first time in a while.



I finished off this little jacket for a colleague's new baby girl. Beneath it is a cot quilt I also pieced together yesterday and hope to get started quilting today.

I need to catch up on my Jelly Roll Sampler blocks too. To start with I was impatient for the next block to come out, and now I find I am two blocks behind!