Crazy Heart Quilt weeks 19 & 20

 Straight From the Heart Crazy Quilt 

Week 19

Applique heart with chain stitches laid side by side.

Week 20

Three textured crochet "buttons" and a running stitch border,

And as we here, in the Southern hemisphere are well on the way to winter, I crocheted up these squares (20 so far) to make a bodywarmer/tank-top/vest thingamigig.

The colours in the first photo are closer to the real colour.

A good week I think.

Happy Stitching

Back to Business

My apologies for going missing last week.

We had a last minute 'rush' as we got ready (yet again) to go for another week at the mountain view retreat, and only returned home very late last night.

I haven't been idle while I was away.

I was meant to be working on my  new  book on the  new  laptop that the darling man in my life bought me for Mother's Day, but we couldn't recharge it by solar panels power even though the man in the shop said we could. We will get a special (but expensive) transformer before we go off to our remote place next time.

Anyway, as I couldn't work on the laptop, I worked on my fiber and threads stuff.

 Building Blocks Quilt 

8 more 'steps' finished

That is the last of this stage made up now. I just have to start putting the next groups of blocks together.

 A Crochet Storm 

My own designs.

Four crocheted lace pieces. 

I did actually do five, but I've left one in the car and I can't be bothered to go out and get it.

Heart Crazy Quilt wk 18 ~ Crochet ~ Flowers

Here we go again, I've had another week of fun stitching for my

"Straight From the Heart" Crazy Quilt.

Four Crochet 3D flowers for scattering around the quilt.

Five Crochet Hearts and a bunch of textured embroidery.

I seem to have a 'thing' about pink and orange lately.

And a Checkered Heart with Crochet Lace edging that I stitched onto the blanket stitch surrounding it.

A strange thing happened this week.

I started reading a book that I found in a very old 'back up' file on an old computer hard-drive.

The story was great, and as I was reading it I started getting that de-ja-vue feeling about it, which made me think I had read it before, but I just couldn't remember how the story ended, and it was so good that I didn't want to stop reading. So I carried on, and you'll never guess what happened next (or maybe you have already).

There wasn't an ending. It stopped abruptly half way through Chapter 12, with me wondering what on earth was about to happen to those great characters.

Then it dawned on me. This was my book. The reason I thought I had read it before was because I was the one who wrote it.

Sad I didn't finish it though. If I ever complete it, I'll be sure to let you know.

Crazy Quilting wk 17 ~ Tatting ~ Crochet

What should I show you first this week?

How about the little birdie on the "E" monogram, updated this week with a flourish of floral vine twirling away in the background, and the little birdie now has a 'body' to help it sing its little heart out.

It is a fabric patch on my "Straight From the Heart" crazy quilt.

Simple, yet effective. I hope Emma likes what I did with her initial for inclusion on the quilt.

And here is a crochet flower motif. My own design. 

This is also going on the Heart Quilt.

 Tatting Update

 I have been practicing my tatting once more and made this motif. 

Still wonky, still mistakes, still learning, lol.

And..... for those of you who didn't get to see my excitement on Facebook....

Hold your ears while I sing a loud WAHOOOO.....

(American friends insert 'Ye Haaaa' if you wish)....

....... I ....... CAN ....... TAT .......

Oh my goodness, I can tat. At last. I finally get 'IT'.

Good old Percy did it again.

(Percy = perseverance)

Lesson learnt. See, you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

I've had a great week.

I wonder what the next seven days will bring.

Heart Crazy Quilt - week 16

Finished the Mandala from last week and created a monogram of my daughters initial for this week.

Heart Crazy Quilt week 15

 Straight From the Heart Crazy Quilt 

Week 15

A stitched Mandala (not complete yet).

I have had another try at needle tatting. Still not totally got the hang of it.

Something got a bit twisted in the wrong direction somewhere along the line, and its all a bit uneven.

I shall persevere.

Sorry if I'm a bit short on photos this week.

I have actually accomplished a lot more than just these two offerings this week, but I am not able to show you my other things yet as they have to remain a secret for a little while longer.

One of the projects is going to be published in a book, and a different project is going to be a freeform mystery crochet along.

Watch this space for more details on these 'things' coming soon.

Happy Stitching.

Heart CQ ~ Boho Skirt ~ Kumihimo

 Straight From the Heart Quilt 

Week 14

A few variegated leaves added to last weeks ruffle flowers, and I don't think it needs anything else now.

A crocheted purple and white flower has been 'planted' in a flower-pot.

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 Boho Skirt Update 

Wohoo, I have finished the front middle panel of the skirt.

Rough, raw fabric edges, uneven and sometimes wonky stitching (I love it).

I am not embellishing every fabric patch, just an occasional one here and there.

Love that musical fabric.

I might have to add more stitching to tone down the orange fabric to the left of centre bottom. It just seems a little bit bright for what I'm wanting here, or I may even froggit.

Now to carry on around the back of the middle panel.

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 Kumihimo Necklace 

Had a bit of a fun one afternoon and created this Kumihimo necklace.

Yet to add the fastening though. Still pondering on that one.

Heart Crazy Quilt Catch Up

This week I am playing catch up with my Straight From the Heart Crazy Quilt.

Here are three weeks worth in one post (is that good value, or what?)

Week 11

Machine work - haha - something you don't see very often from me.

Playing (experimenting) with free-motion quilting and also practicing with metallic threads.

Pink and purple satin fabric, only the purple one is the shiny, slippery little devil.

Hand stitched to the black rose fabric with buttonhole stitch.

Week 12

Reverse applique heart with a fly stitch decoration and a fabric 'ruffle' flower for the centre.

Week 13

Two more 'ruffle' flowers (just because I was enjoying doing them) and a Suffolk Puff flower (I am English so that's what I call them, you may know them as Yoyo's).

The stamen are made with Cast-on stitch.

The Suffolk Puff looks somewhat black in this pic, but it is actually a deep aubergine.

I may add some hand stitched embroidery in places on this, I'll just have to see what time I have spare.

 Quilt Show Photo Album 

The quilt show photos that I mentioned last week are on Flickr - all 108 photos.

You can catch them here

....and don't be shy, say hello over there...

There are too many to post to this blog sorry, but here's a taster for you....

Crochet - Hexagons - CHB Quilt Show

We are back home again now from our peaceful retreat.

It was a tranquil setting to sit and stitch, and I got plenty of stitching and crocheting done.

The pink and white mohair patch (from last week) has had some more texture added to it.....

And (groan) another project started.

This is going to be a bluesey neck-warmer collar type thingamajig.

The main reason we went to "the other place" was to level the ground ready to put a pump shed in place over the water bore hole. (We need water just like everyone else does).

I was meant to be helping t'other-half to dig the shed foundation, but I got tied up (almost literally) with measuring and marking out the house plot. So when I eventually turned up at the shed site, he had finished it and actually had a smile on his face and said the ground was easy to dig. Job finished, we could go home now, and we'd only been there two days.

Now seemed as good a time as any to tell him that we couldn't go home because I wanted to go to the quilt show there on Friday.

That seemed to wipe the smile from his face, lol.

During breakfast on Monday he decided that he could fend off his boredom if he went back home for one night (it's a six-hour drive just one way) to pick up the shed panels, and bring them back to Hawkes Bay the next day, then erect the whole shed the day after.

I rather liked the idea of being left on my own for almost two days of non-stop-stitching.

Photo before the shed arrived....

Photo after the shed arrived....

And if I turn around 180degrees from that point...

you can just see our caravan through the trees.

I took my hexagon patchwork with me to Hawkes Bay because it's one of those projects that travels well and is easy to pick up and stitch at any little spare moment.

This is how much I got stitched while we were away. Great progress.

I only have about the same amount again as this left to stitch into these 3-hex patches, and then I have the lovely job of putting all those 3-hex patches together to form the quilt top.

Woohooo, slowly getting there. It has only taken me about 10+ years to get this far, lol.

Just in case you have studied the hexies in the photo above, and are wondering why some hexies do not have tacking stitches holding the fabric in place over the papers.... well, you see, it's like this...

The hexies on the left (7 of the 3-hex patches) were stitched in the normal technique from Saturday to Thursday of last week.

Then, on Friday, I went to the Wine Country Quilts Show

and, I'm sure you know how it goes... there were merchants selling their treasures products, and this one lady was selling glue pens for fabric. Oh my!

She was actually demonstrating on tiny hexagons and has made the most exquisite small quilts.

I fell for them straight away and bought the glue pen.

Then, back at the caravan, I could use the glue pen on my larger hexies.

Voila! I now have hexies that do not need tacking together first.

My only disappointment is that I've nearly finished making all the hexies for this quilt. I so, so, wish I'd found this product sooner.

 Now, I bet you are wanting to know about the actual quilt show.

I will be sharing photos in another post later in the week.

And the Pukeora Estate is worthy of a whole blog post just for itself.

It's late now and I really must be somewhere other than my computer.

I've Gone AWOL but still Crocheting

I am AWOL........ gone to our retreat for a week of meditation. 

Hah, some hope of that. My other half needs help with the foundations for the pump shed, so I shall probably have a spade or pick-axe in my hand right about now.

I don't have internet access there so I pre-scheduled this post to show you that I haven't been slacking in the creative department.

Here are some recent crochet pics for the Winter Warmer project.

It's turning out to be a sampler (of sorts) for crochet stitches and designs.

A lavender and cream hyperbolic scrumble on a purple mohair base.

A starfish flower.

A plain circle....... because not everything has to be fancy.

I love the next one so much that I might just have to repeat it and make myself a soft jumper or shawl with just this pattern and yarn.

White mohair, a pale pink mohair, and a gorgeously fine silver boucle yarn.

So warm and cuddly, I'd have people queuing up to cuddle me, lol.

I know you've seen the pink scrumble before, but here it is in situ, along with some other textural stitching.

A wavy line and a sneaky bit of knitting crept in there too.

A bit of chunky texture......ya'll know I love texture.

Puff stitch in neat rows and random Popcorns

Purple Bobbles and Furrows

Lastly we have openwork shells

That's it for now on the Winter Warmer. 

I'll catch up with the Crazy Heart Quilt pics when I get home again.

Be good while I'm away....... See you next week.