Progress Update...

well as you can see I am still working on it and have now decided that I need to add another row

I have photo's drying at the moment...

 Happy Easter

wishing you all a 

fantastic Easter time 

with

family and friends

may your Easter basket be full

to the brim

with 

happiness

and chocolate of course...

 Today...

this baby was born

 and grew

 into this

Happy 21st Birthday Liam

we are so proud of you and your wonderful achievements 

and 

the outstanding young man you are turning into

we wish the world for you

love Mum and Dad

Shearing Is Over...

But was it the last one for us???

It's the pets turn in the shed to be shorn...

 Our classer of the wool...

 Naked pets...

Our middle daughter and her partner were up for shearing and they have Joe's sister...

she has longer hair than Joe and her coat is so soft...

 Cleo is her name... and they have had the best time playing and over in the sheep yards...

Cleo left this morning to go home to Perth (and have a bath)... Joe is so tired he is under my computer table on my feet sound asleep...

Below is the start of my son's 21st memory quilt...

I have been doing a little each day during shearing when I have had a spare half hour here and there...

at the moment I have it pinned onto a sheet... my make shift design wall... 

now I can see how it is looking and will be able to play around with it as I make stars...

today I will print out more photo's...

the larger stars are 12 1/2in and the smaller are 6 1/2in...

WooHoo It's Here...

My ''colour swap'' parcel that is... so exciting and do you know it has taken ONE MONTH to get to me...

how ridiculous is that... generally mail from one side of Aussie to the other should or does take one week... mail from me to England takes five days????? go figure that one......

Anyway

My colour choice was ''lime''...

on opening the box the most wonderful smell came from it... there was a sachet in there but there was also a sprinkling of something else lavender I think...

 beautifully wrapped...

 two pieces of wonderful lime fabric... variegated thread and a stitchery...

 a mug which I just love... a pencil case or it could be used for threads and things for a small project... yummy mint chocolate and THAT sachet that smell glorious..

aaannnnnnddddd three tea towels and these will be getting put away for my new home and I will be trying out that ''apple pie'' recipe on one of them...

so you can see I have been terribly spoilt and it was so worth the wait...

Thank you Carole for your wonderful generosity...

An Award.... For Me

The lovely Jan-Maree at Cherry Red Quilter has awarded me this

Thank you and thank you for thinking of me...

you need to go check out her blog as she is one of those ladies who is always busy and this past few weeks she has been make quilts for Queensland along with a few of her friends... and some of them are just gorgeous and cute...

I now need to choose 6 other bloggers who I think have ''stylish blogs'' 

and there are soooooo many of you out there...

the chosen ones are

Shauna... Hobbies with a Little Bit of Life

Cathy... Cathy's Sewing Room

Bobbie... Its All About Me

Jolanda... atelier-arte

Sue... http://quiltedhugsandothernonsense.blogspot.com/

Leah... Quilted Delights

Now some of these ladies might not want to follow on with the award but that is okay... I just want them to know how much I enjoy there blogs...

Now I must tell you 7 things about me...

WOW

1. I taught my children via School of the Air

2. I was born in England and came to Australia when I was 6 months old... 

and I am still not Australian hahaha

3. I love swimming... especially naked hahahaha

4. Chocolate is my biggest downfall

5. I have taught myself to patchwork... no classes out here

6. I did gymnastics as a child and loved it and now I can't do any sport 

due to bad hips and operations on them

7. I wish I lived in blogland then I could visit you all in person and have a cuppa

geez that was hard...

Blocks blocks blocks...

This month I have been very lucky to have had to swap partners with Quilting Block Swaps Australia and both my partners are Aussies...

This is the block I made for Rosemary who requested a log cabin in greens and autumn colours...

I hadn't sewn a log cabin for so long and it was great to do one...

 My other partner Debra requested a wonk y house or tree in bright/modern colours/fabrics...

now this was a challenge as when I searched the web for a pattern they were either to small... wrong shape block... so I found a bit of a tutorial on how to do your own... and this is the end result...

 I do hope that it is what Debra wanted and I must say it was fun to do...

And...

this is my block from Rosemary

a wonky star

 and I just love it... thanks Rosemary...

Today we start shearing... we only have 3000 to shear which is pretty sad considering we generally shear between 6000 and 7000... dingo's and drought have not been good for us...

and sheep are worth so much at the moment and we have a heap of green feed..

A Finish...

Last year I participated in Vicki's ''Flirting With Flowers'' BOM

and I got behind with it as I always do when I see so many other wonderful things on offer 

through out ''blogland'' and all those great magazines out there...

Well the last 2 weeks in the early hours of the morning while watching something on the net I have been finishing the last of the hand stitching...

and

yesterday

I finished the hand sewing and put it altogether...

its not like the actual finished wall hanging that Vicki had designed with borders and all.....

I am thinking this will be a table centre or maybe a change mat???

anyway it is in my ''finishes box''...

Meanwhile Vicki has another BOM happening this year "out of the box'' go looky...

My It Has Been A Little While...

But I have been busy even though when I look around here it doesn't appear to look like it....

My ''mexican rose'' outside the dining room is in flower and has butterflies all over it...

Trying to get a close up of the butterflies is a bit difficult with them moving and the closer I got they would move...

I have several ice cream containers near my cutting table table 

so that I can add strips from projects that I work on... 

the aim is to make strip blocks out of them... 

I also cut up used computer/fax paper into 6 1/2 inch squares to use as the foundation

every now and then I spend a couple of days trying to decrease the containers... but they always seem to be overflowing... especially some colours... orange doesn't seem to be a colour that I use much?  these are all then put away for a future quilt... and I feel better that I have recycled the paper and used up some more of ''those scraps'' and haven't wasted any fabric and eventually I will have a quilt or two....

someone wants to say hello

and here he is with his Dad

he annoys him all the time... Baz jumps up onto the tray of the work ute to get away from him hehehe

but he is really good with him... he doesn't bite him just grows when he has had enough and Joe knows its time to ''back away''

Hubby is busy mustering sheep... we start shearing on the 11th... we have plenty of feed not enough sheep the dingo's are closing in and now they poor sheep have fly strike... can't win...

ho hum...