I'm back!!
Wow, almost 6 weeks without my computer was a big test. Why do I feel like I should have accomplished more??!! Well, I always feel like that, there just aren't enough hours in the day.
I have a very short window of opportunity today to post, had to cater a funeral all day, so the many pics I have to update you on my projects will probably have to wait until tomorrow night. My girl turns 9 tomorrow and there is a party of over 20 little darlings to pull together by tomorrow morning and a little stitchery quilt to finish...and a centre block for the new rounds of friendship at quilters tonight. Wow, I really need to get off this computer!!
Thanks for all the comments re:DD's tummy trouble. After extensive treatment we have now had 9 good days in a row-lucky for the birthday! She has been fully ultrasounded and blood tested and it isn't coeliac. I'm not sure what RX treatment is, we've been doing something called QXI0 and that has achieved the best results so far.
With my new start on the computer I have also bitten the bullet and changed to the new blogger so you will have to tell me if everything still works! Cheers, Tracey

Hi, long time no see!
My computer is awaiting a new fan from overseas, i will hopefully be back on line within a fortnight. My lovely friend, Helen is allowing me to check-in on her computer so no pics, just me.
Been a busy few weeks. Unfortunately my dd only lasted about a week of full school before the irritable bowel kicked in so my time to myself was brief. I should have madly sewed, but I thought I had time...don't we all...so I cleaned and made double batches of sauce and chutney and soup for the neighbours-and then she was home again.
For those who are interested we are trying a different treatment involving re-igniting her nervous system!! We were desperate, this has been going since October. Results are actually quite good so far, she is doing her first half day for a fortnight this afternoon. I'll give you a full report when i'm back on deck.
Getting some hand sewing time at appointments so am 3 rows into a templated Lone star, I am quite proud and may even be motivated to HAND QUILT!!
Need to run as I have to do storytime at school, hope all are well, back soon. Tracey

Hi, an unofficial post here so you know that the computer is turning itself off AGAIN and has to go back in and meet thy maker! So I may be offline for a few days. I'm telling you because it is a little worrying when someone just disappears, ie, has anyone heard from Hedgehog since Dec.26th?

Answer to my little quiz question-this is my bulb flowering, an amaryllis belladonna or n*ked l*dy, because the flowers come long after the foliage has died away. These are my kind of plants-you see them dotted around paddocks where 60 years or more ago there was a house. They may be the only indication left but they refuse to give up. I like their style! They also remind me a little bit of why I make quilts because the idea that my work leaves a little bit of colour and a lasting reminder of me long after I am gone appeals. Cheers, tracey

My string quilt-take two.
Before I get distracted,- I neglected to repeat that the Gratitudes quilt i posted pics of on my last quilt was from Sunshine Quilts, Judy Laquidara's blog. Judy posted hour a day instructions on a variation of this quilt and I then adapted Judy's instructions to make it bigger and change the borders. Thank You, Judy!!

These first two pics are an example of how I get distracted by juicy projects. Those blocks from the string tutorial have grown and grown and here are two variations of how I could place them. Not sure which is grabbing me here so feedback is most welcome.

Next we have a sad pic! I showed you the box of strips I getting my strips from when I started the tutorial-now look! After making all those blocks you can't really see where I have been. Just goes to show how far those scraps and offcuts will go and why it's a pity not to keep them.

Another little tangent I went on on Friday-DS had a little girl's birthday party and informed me one of my bags would be good and that she likes pink, unicorns and princesses! I made a matching gift tag as well. This is the end result and he was very happy, hopefully this young lady he is so in tune with liked it as well.

As promised I have included a picture of my shirts4quilts stash. Recent visitors to my blog may like to go back to the early posts to see the variety of quilts my group and I made from an op shop shirt challenge. I am planning a few more, mainly for charity and gifts and here are the lucky recipients soon to be given a second chance at life.

The final picture is of my two little precious' heading off to the bus at 7.45 am on the first day of school. Very stoic performance put on by their mother ...until they ran off towards the ute and I didn't have to be brave anymore! Have since enjoyed three afternoons in the sewing room and it was GOOO_OOD!!

Is anyone else having trouble getting in to comment again? Or is it my cleaned up computer? If you think I'm being rude and not saying anything it may be because your computer is telling me to log in or not giving me the letters to identify. I find it hard enough identifying the letters when they are there, least of all when they are not!!
have a great day, Tracey

Gratitudes all round!
Hi, very quick post as I have a family waiting for me in the pool. (I know, I know, it's a hard life here today...)
The computer is all better-and it never cost me a cent. Apparently they get all dust in through the fans at the back, even in a lino office on a shelf under the desk, and they need to be blown out with compressed air. Where was that written in computing for idiots? That is apparently responsible for crunching noises, etc, etc. It's also been anti-spy wared and virused to within an inch of it's life so hopefully I'm right for a while.
Got heaps to post about and heaps of pics so I'll clear these 3 quickly from the "to-do" list.

Bingo-Bonnie wanted to see my finished Gratitudes. As it's so big it took a bit of organising. Here is my little family helping me out. DS was meant to be on the bale, but it was too high so he was in charge of stopping the edges blowing up, Dh took his spot. The whole thing turned into our normal working with children circus when DS only wanted to be in the family portrait behind the quilt! In the end I like the photos-kind of quirky! Got to run, more v.soon. Tracey

(Posting my chooks with the idea I may use this as my profile pic)

I'm still standing...
Well, the computer has managed to stay on so I thought I would attempt a quick post before it goes in for a going over.
Lucky I got the phone back on yesterday afternoon because I could start to go a bit nutty here if there wasn't a phone or computer and my two little mates are back to school tomorrow! Life would have been very quiet.
I have had an extremely hectic last few days-a cabbage patch doll afternoon tea party that we had to cook cakes for and my Christmas cabbage patch attended with my DD's and my SS's beanie kids; a few good games of star wars Monopoly (that I won); a few hits of cricket (that my 6yo with a good eye for the ball won) and a day out in town shopping and lunching with my girl yesterday while her Dad and brother went up north for fertilizer...So not a lot of sewing time but "everything has a season" and tomorrow they go back to school and a nice proportion of my time will be my own. Kinda happy about that, kinda not. I would imagine by tomorrow afternoon I will be well over the separation and enjoying getting stuck into things.

Some of my new little "I've found good fabric websites!!" material purchases. Nice to have a few "real" fabrics in the stash, I'm hoping to do a few purses, bags, and little wall-hangings for some sewing money, so these should help with that! some is also for summer dresses for my girl-I think the pink floral in the bottom left and some of sonnet's teal bluey colour will be great for dresses. There's some Nell's flower shop, blackbird village and cornucopia there as well. A good range for a year filled with quilting1

It's a sad thing when you buy fabric for your children's clothes only after giving full thought to how you can sew with it later! DH was telling someone the other day that he is constantly having to retrieve shirts that he still thinks are fine from the shirts 4 quilts pile! Speaking of that, I'll have to show you the shirts4quilts stash because I'm thinking it is about time to chop into them!!

Hopefully back online very soon (at least it's got an extended warranty!!)LOL Tracey

My computer has now moved from dodgy to completely unstable and shutting itself off. I've just managed to get back on and am taking it in tomorrow to the technician. So if I'm not posting it's nothing major. Well, kind of, how will I go without the net!!

Don't you just love a baby!
Well, I do anyway! I got to spend some nice time with the new Great-niece the other night when her grandfather (and my BIL) celebrated a special birthday. Found myself giving a little moral support later in the evening as well. Remember the days when the baby took over an hour to feed and wanted to feed every 2 hours-and you still thought you should be able to do everything and be supermum!! Well, I think she's at that spot and with no family within 2 hours so a couple of us spent a lot of time saying "just write these couple of months off as baby time" and were getting somewhere when an older woman came over and started telling her she shouldn't be yawning (although it was 11 pm and she had a 3 week old baby) and that everyone else has done it and it's not that big a deal! That fired me up-Note to woman: It is a big deal, you can be tired, your body is knocked around,your life is upside down..... and your superwoman persona fools no-one who knows your children!! It always amazes me the amount of people who have to put other people down in order to build themselves up and validate their own decisions. Anyway hopefully the negatives didn't get through and DN spent a good break at the in-laws.

Here's the final result picture on the quilt and the little Millie wall-hanging I played with the day before. Thanks to Tonya at Lazygal for the general idea, but I was well away from the computer so had to do what felt right. It's a bit pale but done to match the quilt and the colours DN chose. My junior critic thought it was great and is hinting madly!(Even without hot pink!!) she has also pulled the splish splash tin out of last weeks fabric purchases and is hoping for a wall-hanging with that and embroidery including her new cat. Do you think she has come to the right place? I love it when all she wants for her birthday is a quilt from me-how to make friends and influence people!
Her best friend had a birthday, she's mad on little things and polly pockets so I borrowed from an idea from Fiona in England and made a little Polly bed with pillow that can lie or hang. She was very happy, as were the pollys.

I have shelved the hexagon idea for a while as I have gone mad for Lone Stars. I have the templates, the fabric came the other day and this is the general idea, to hang in the kitchen and match this couch. I have 27 of this moda blackbird range so after I baste I can check to see if it works and make any appropriate changes.

Last pic is my gratitude for the day AND the reason I plant these everywhere. I'm not going to tell you what it is, I'd like some guesses please. The only clue I will give is that it is summer here. This plant always amazes me and lifts my heart as it comes out of the dry, bare earth and gives us all hope. There will be a flower pic very soon by the looks of these-but if I waited for that it would would make it too easy!!Ps, that's some of my tougher rosemary in the background-I actually have losta fair bit with the drought and the weeds are because i've given up on the garden until it rains!

Updates: I have already backed up everything onto CD, it's just that all the photos are still listed as being on the Kodak Easyshare program and I can't work out a way of deleting them from the collection except one by one! V. tedious.

Hedgehog is a great slice made from Marie biscuits (or just a plain sweet type biscuit) sultanas, butter, condensed milk and cocoa. Then iced with choc melted with a bit of butter. Probably not a health food but delicious for a treat.I haven't had a phone for a week (rural living!) but when I get it back I'll ring Robyn and see if I am allowed to share! Thank goodness my internet is satellite or a very quiet week would have been far more of a crisis!

Have a great day, I need to go and decide whether I watch my Aussie cricketers flog NZ or Speedy Gonzales have a red hot go at the Fed. decisions, decisions. I envisage much channel surfing. Tracey

ps In case Katie Holmes ever Googles her name (because I would) -WELL DONE on the support (suck it in) underwear you were snapped in today. Much better to have everything looking sleek than to do a Britney. Also, same look as actual exercising!!Works for me!!

My "string" quilt.
I have been interested to look at all the string quilts happening on the blogs. I went to the new Heartstrings site and found all the detailed instructions which were great. I've always done mine a little differently and as I like this look as well I thought I would share.

1st step: Find those containers, like the above, that are full of your strips and scraps. You can probably see here that there have been times when I have been all enthusiastic and cut and rolled my scrap strips, but from the rest of the containers you can see it doesn't happen often!

2nd step: Pull out a range. I just grabbed anything and gave them a quick iron, I didn't worry about tiding the strips, they were sewn 'as ironed'. If you want red centres to your block you should probably have a fairly wide red middle strip but I wasn't worried about that. they are best if they are at least some varying widths as you don't want it to look like it's meant to match but is a little out-make sure it looks a lot "out". Or you can go the completely different way of having all your strips the exact same widths and getting an equally good end result, just with actual precision required! Sew these together and press, all one way is the easiest when later joining them together.

3rd step: Neaten it up. My strips seem to wanted to come out at around the 9 inches long so I trimmed them to be exactly 9 long and 9 wide. You can make this part as big or small as you like depending on how many strips you want to use and how wide they are.

4th step: Cross cut as shown. I've separated them to show you but don't separate them between cuts.

5th step: Start playing!! This is what 4 of those blocks has produced in around 10 minutes. As you make more you can play around further with how you want it to look and get some quite interesting patterns happening. I quite like how this is looking and had forgotten what fun it was so I will probably shelve a few things and finish it off! (This is why I have to make aims on not starting 2 quilts in one day, I am easily sidetracked!)

Have to run, DH calls, I may try to answer a few questions and post tonight, Cheers, Tracey

Add-on: Nov. 20th (i think) has a photo of a quilt done in brights and made using this technique. Sorry, it wouldn't re-upload and I don't know how to link so you will have to search if interested.

I NEED THE NET!

Feeling very refreshed-it's 10.15 here, only about 16 degrees celcius and I've just hopped out of the pool! A girl swimming here today apparently left her goggles so I was the lucky volunteer who had to search. A good chance to get a few laps in, especially with no-one trying to swim around my neck! My knee's been a little dodgy lately and swimming is preferable to walking. I would like to say it is some sporting injury but far more likely to be RSI of the sewing machining knee!

Cooked a bit today. If I am making one slice, I may as well double or triple it. This was Robyn's highly tweaked and popular-with-everyone Hedgehog. I make it, then cut it into sixths or quarters and freeze the slabs. Fabulous for when the kids are going somewhere for a play,quilters, bible study or when I'm on meal support for school or church. It's all there packed and waiting.

I have been spending ages trying to clear up my computer, especially seeing it is now making groaning and creaking noises when I turn it on or ask it to change jobs. After a lot of effort I managed to get off all of the pictures out of "my pictures" but The Kodak "My collection" is still listing 3727 images! I'm manually disappearing those one by one-there has to be an easier way-or do I even need to worry if they are off the hard drive. I have tried to get onto my friend's 16 year old for help. 16 year old's are the best, they think like computers (recalcitrant and think they know everything!!) But he's away for a week, AnywayI think I've also managed to save my documents and my email contacts and that's about the best I can do. If I go offline for a while it wont be me that's dead, it'll be the computer!

Do you know that my Fat Quarter Quilters order (15 pounds!!) came today (Wed.) and I only ordered it from the U.S on Friday. It was all presented beautifully as well so I am basically just walking around here rubbing pieces to my cheek. It's kind of sad but I think some of you will understand!

Another little Internet thing- (this is basically an internet based post today, tomorrow will be quiting, I promise!) I worked out that jennifer Chiaverini was someone who wrote quilt themed novels as she had an excerpt in one of my Christmas books, so i googled and found a place I could get her sampler book , with the first 3 Elm Creek novels, for $27 delivered, Australian. I then took the ISBN into our bookshop to be locally supportive and they said I probably couldn't get it but if I did it would be $46!! I had a look at the 2nd hand bookshop in W'Bool but they'd never heard of them. Two guesses on where I'll buy it?!

Now, an echidna is well worth googling for more info. They ARE similar to a hedgehog but have a pouch that their baby lives in and they feed it milk-all really amazing.

To finish, we noticed tabitha was a little smelly so here are the junior workers applying themselves to that task of bath. I got a little distracted taking the photo and they ended up letting her go while she was soaking and we all spent a hectic 5 minutes chasing her all over the house and getting her out from under MY bed! Stop laughing, stop laughing NOW! See you tomorrow when I will hopefully get time to show you how I make my string quilts.