Vegie Garden

Treasure has replanted my vegie garden over the past couple of weeks. He has cleaned it out, dug in new manure and planted many seedlings. He has planted tomatoes, lettuce, silverbeet, kale, asian vegies, onions, carrots and some new herbs.

Last year's crop was great. The lettuce, tomatoes, cauliflower, beans, asian vegies and herbs were fantastic. There was an abundent supply of silverbeet, spinach and silverbeet. The zucchinis and squash were enormous and seemed to grow overnight.

I just hope this year's crop is as good, especially as my Mum will be visiting in August and she loves vegies. It is always so nice to eat you own vegies and herbs as they taste so much better.

I'm so glad that I have treasure in my life as he is a great gardener and handyman. I certainly am no gardener. I just have to remember to water the garden when he is away up north working.

Drive In Movies

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Drive In Movies near my place. It is really good value $15 for 2 movies. We saw Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Robin Hood. Prince of Persia was a great movie but we weren't impressed with Robin Hood.

It really took us back to our youth when you spent many a Saturday night at the Drive In. They haven't changed much apart from the fact that you don't hook the speaker up inside the car window but turn the radio to the right channel.

This is one of the only Drive In's in Queensland (if not the only one). I would hate to see the remaining few close down as where else can you see 2 movies for $15 in the comfort of your own car wrapped up in your quilt on a winter's night.

It certainly would be a great tradition to lose forever.

Busy Weekend Part 2

Today, I decided to have a quieter day.

I spent the morning reading. At the moment I'm reading a John Grisham book called "The Street Lawyer". I've never read any of his books before but my neighbours lent us 2 of them and they have both been very easy to read. The other one is "The Partner".

I spent the afternoon sewing a flannel quilt. It is going to be a lap quilt for me to use in winter while I'm lying on the lounge watching the TV. I bought the fabrics from Kim at Honeysuckle Cottage in March. I just love these rich maroons, greens and creams.

This is the start of the top. The back is also going to be made out of flannels and will be a different pattern so I can have a reversable lap quilt. Hopefully, the top will be finished next week.

Busy Weekend Part 1

It was a very busy weekend.

Friday night I went up to Brisbane to see Beccy Cole and Adam Harvey in concert. For people that don't know who they are Beccy and Adam are 2 of the best Australian Country Music Stars.
They areare great artists and both have a great sense of humour and really get the crowd going. It was a great night.

On Saturday I attended a course on Researching Your Family History. The topic was on Internet sites for researching your family history. It was a good couple of hours and I really learnt a lot about what sites to use especially UK sites as I would really like to research my father's family history.
Just another thing for me to find time to do. If only I could retire.

I then headed back up to Brisbane and went to the Mind Body and Spirit Expo for the afternoon. I didn't have a reading done but did have a Reiki treatment.
Overall it was a very good but busy day.

Road Trip

My Thursday sewing group decided to take Lynda's advice and visit the quilt exhibition "Fabric of Society" at the Ipswich Art Gallery.
So on Thurs we loaded into Nellie's wagon and headed off on our road trip to Ipswich. I acted as the navigator and actually didn't get us lost at all.
The quilt exhibition was wonderful and truely inspiring. Those women were extremely talented making the intricate quilts by hand and with just lamps for light. I don't think that I am that talented. It certainly made us very grateful for modern tools, such as rotary cutters, sewing machines and electricity!!

After the exhibition we had lunch at a coffee shop and then headed to Handmade Heaven. It is a great shop full of handmade gifts. I bought 2 chenille facewashers. I was tempted to buy some cotton crotched dishcloths but then decided that I would try to make some myself. Just need to buy the cotton and add it to my list of things to do.

Next to Handmade Heaven was a shop selling Cupcakes. The other ladies just had to go there but I wasn't tempted to buy as I don't possess a sweet tooth.

Our last stop was of course The Country Quilt Co. I only bought some special buttons and a packet of clear grip. No fabrics, now that is amazing!!
It certainly was a great day which we all enjoyed.

Back on the Farm Block 1

Last month we started on our 1st Block of "Back to the Farm".
It should take us 1 lesson to do each block or so we thought!!
3 lessons down and we now have the 1st block ready to quilt.

We spent the whole1st lesson drawing the animal applique pieces onto fusible webbing and then cutting them out. There was over 70 pieces and most of them were tiny.

At home we had to iron them onto the fabrics and cut them out.

The next week we made the animals up.

Last week we ironed the animals in place on the background fabric and then started to machine sew around each animal. I didn't do much sewing as my machine just didn't want to work properly, or maybe it was actually me that was the problem!!

We are not using the darning needle and feed dogs down as is in the instructions. We are using an open toe foot and straight sewing with a long stitch as Chris (our teacher) thinks that is much easier especially if you haven't done much stippling and machine quilting. We will do some echo quilting and stippling on each block after sewing the animals on.

Each block is supposed to be done in one lesson but there is far to much to do in 3hrs. I think we will be doing lots of homework.

It will look stunning when finished but so many tiny pieces and fiddling bits. Lots of work, I just hope I haven't taken on too much.

Back on the Farm Week 1

In April we started a new Block of the Month at my local quilting shop.
We decided to make McKenna Ryan's "Back on the Farm".
Each month we are going to have a lesson where we make 1 block. There are 9 blocks so we figure it will take approx 12 months to make this quilt.

Eagerly we went to class on the last Wed in April ready to start our 1st block.
This didn't happen as our 1st class was spent sorting out the many fabrics that are used to make the quilt. 3 hours later and we had all 49 fabrics in their own individual plastic bags.
Now when we make a block we just need to get out what fabrics we need, which is making it so much easier.