Quilter's back exercises...

A few little chickens, log cabin and plain, that I have made lately for gifts and fetes,





After 6 weeks of not being able to exercise, this week I am back!! I have been having more than the usual back and neck problems in the last year or two. My hands, especially, the left have been going numb of a night and getting painful and with less maleability generally
...the things I have broken would stock a house! Needless to say, stitching and keyboarding have moved to the backburner as well.

The shoulder pain is scoliosis related and has been going on since I was 13 but the rest is the last few years, I have often thought it could be the start of MS but when it got really bad recently I have seen 2 chiros, a doctor , a couple of masseurs, had x-rays and am now at the physio who is achieving great results. The x-rays were because they thought it was a pinched nerve or spinal cord, everything has come up clear so the physio is hard at work at

1. fixing the constant shoulder and neck pain.

2. fixing the numb fingers

3. stopping it all coming back

Has achieved #1, it all feels great and I am back to pilates, boxing and circuit training, but I have to do a range of specific exercises and the main two are really exercises for all quilters so I am showing you. DD is the exercise model.

This is a tennis ball in circulation stocking with knot at the bottom. This is for getting right into the shoulder blade and muscles around there. You just rub that up against the wall, working both sides.

These are stretchy physio bands. Grip these, with nice soft knees, not locked up, and pull your shoulder blades together, effectively sticking your chest out. This should be done very regularly when you have been sitting sewing. I have to do it 10 times +(x50) a day!

Nice easy ones, that may help your quilting back pain as well. yell if you have had similar trouble.

Have made a few things of late, My little niece, Daisy is two already, I had her bday last week, she scored an eyespy of all her favourite animals as her baby quilt. She is also wearing the little pik tutu I made her. i made her a couple of other little denim and applique skirts as well. She loves wrapping her babies!

She is cat mad and got a pretend cat for her bday, she wrapped and unwrapped that about 20 times!

i made her a little pram one with the scraps.

The rest of the time I have been chasing sheep and lambs...the head count for lamb pets was 9 this morning, but I conned 2 more onto a foster mother so I am back to 7! Thanks for the spider assitance, a banded orb weaver seems to be the consensus, with perhaps slightly unusual banding.

Have a great day, Tracey

Any idea on what this spider is?

Going around the sheep in the fog this morning and found this spider in a tussock, anyone know what it is...it's big...at least maybe 3 or 4 centimetres.

Sheep, sheep and more sheep!

The school market has come and gone, made $9500 this year, $1500 up on last year, which was $1500 up on the year before. Very satisfying result for the organizer...Now I don't have to think about the madness again until about next February!

The lambs basically started arriving about the day after the market. Dh puts the crop in while I handle the sheep, so here's a little explanation to where I have been of late...

A VERY rare photo of me...and holding my first 5 babies. Feeding them about 5 times a day at present...I actually did paid work teaching school today, so had to take the two youngest with.....the others could now last but 1 day olds can't! Kept them in the sports store in a plastic tub and got them out at recess and lunch to play with the kids and have a feed.....I felt like the olden days when I taught a few days while DD was a baby and I had to express to feed her at lunch! Well....okay, it wasn't quite the same!! These get formula!!

I go around the sheep on the motorbike, I have been blessed with great weather but still, with cold, frosty nights and clear days you get some orphans/neglected babies. I've been bringing lambs home for about 30 years, but I have never had a result like the one coming up...

I saw this fellow in the grass, dead supposedly. I hopped off the bike to see if he was missing a tongue...a sure sign of fox....and felt a slight sign of life. He was stiff but I jammed him down my vest and bought him home

warmed him all day in my kitchen window on a hot water bottle and under a light..

Still not a lot of movement..used a funnel to pour my home made colostrum down his throat and here he was the next night....

Out in the barn with the others, up and happy and drinking. I was a happy lamb rearer. (In the photo with me it is the one facing you second from the right.)

If I bring them home fit and well I try to foster them onto another mother, but if they are struggling that's tricky. I've fostered about 10.

I've now got you up to speed on where I've been...there's some quilty stuff next post...thanks for staying tuned! Cheers, tracey

An update on ANZAC Day.

Hi, what happened to all those weeks?


Internet is now finally sorted, it seems to have been an aerial issue, not all the things every "expert" said it was!!


School market is the main item on the agenda at present,






So far there are about 160 jars done for it. The big new one this year is preserved figs...you preserve the fig whole and have it on your cheese platters...beautiful with camembert.


As of tonight I have about 30 foot of apple strudel in the freezer. Mixed a few apples with some figs too ripe for preserving tonight and ended up with this strudel version....and yes, it's a winner! There will be a few more of these going in the freezer I think.

I put the word out for apples and ended up with boxes.... and boxes.... and boxes...mostly ones people weren't even going to worry about picking that would have ended up wasted. One of the things I love the most about the strudels and all the fig things is turning something that would go to waste into something really useful...just like with scrap quilting (!!) but also the fun of getting rid of the real waste bits. I get a bucket full of ends, cores, and peels for about every 7 strudels and I just love taking it out to my chooks, they honestly think housescraps are Christmas....

I have also been doing a little bit of gardening...don't fall over! Again, it's for the school market. I saw a blurry picture of a round succulent hanging basket in a magazine and have had a bit of a go at coming up with a nice cheap version. (Rather than wiring 2 wire hanging baskets together.) These are the latest attempts...(made out of chicken wire ..amazingly!!) I have done nearly 15, I'm going to put a nice cheap price on for this year and if they don't sell I'll bring them home and add a year's growth, think that will look good. My only problem with them is the same as with my quilts...I want to keep them all! They are planted with little succulents at fairly regular intervals and the idea is that they will eventually be a hanging mass if succulents.

Today is ANZAC Day in Australia. We went to the parade and ceremony in town this morning, as School captain my girl had to march, it was a big day for her and she did well.-polishes up well when she is out of her farm clothes I think!!

At the ceremony this soldier was entertaining his horse behind me and I couldn't help but snap a shot...doesn't he look the real deal!

Reminds me of every Australian war movie and minseries I have ever seen...'Gallipoli' is my favourite, can't go past Mark lee and Mel Gibson... who's with me?

Anyway, it was a moving ceremony, and very well done...

Have a great day, Tracey

Birthdays and retail therapy.

Almost Easter here, so much going on! The Australian Football league season has started, sitting enjoying that with a few friends after Church tonight, go Brisbane!. I have to be the narrator for the Church passion play tomorrow so have run throught that...and my brother has written a movie and is now producing it...very low budget, all the actors are camped at mum and Dad's old farmhouse for Easter location shots...so I had to drive 100 kms yesterday to fill the fridge and freezer as the catering isn't available Good Friday...and it is very low budget!

Went to Melbourne for a long weekend this past weekend. I visited my oldest friend who turned 40, changed my mind on the hexagons and got this finished by midnight the night before we left.

It's from the fig and plum range, a bit over a metre square.

She seemed very happy with it. After a night with her my girl and I headed off for the rest of her birthday treat, we went to a theatre performance of CATS. We both thought it was great, stayed in the city...listening to the sounds of the Melbourne formula one grand prix and shopped the next day before coming home. A great girls weekend.

Hancocks had free post last week. With the dollar so high the exchange rate is great...between that and free post i couldn't help doing a little more retail therapy. I got a few things on sale, but invested in the new frolic range as well.

I love the colours, which are nicer than this flash shot.

I am hoping to sew tomorrow, figure that's not work on Good Friday...pure fun! Would be nice to get 2 minutes to drop around my net friends as well!

Look after yourself, And Happy Easter, love Tracey

Same old, same old....

Another week has just disappeared! Plenty to catch up on when you are away for 5 days, but it was well worth it. Our favourite, Garth Tander, won. He drives for (GM) Holden.

On the way home we saw his car carrier setup, thought there may be some petrolhead out there who'd appreciate seeing that!

Not sure if quilting and car racing are generally 2 hobbies that go together, but why not!

Came home to photographing the school athletic sports, getting the ball rolling for this year's school fete, getting back to the gym, buying a new bull and 13 stud angus heifers....amongst the normal!

Today I took family photos for a Church family at their farm...an actual paid job! I am very happy with them. Then spent the afternoon cooking Apple strudel and sausage rolls-my girl baked muffins

... I felt like my mother!- the only thing lacking was Dolly Parton on the radiogram! Instead I was watching Transformers on the big screen, my Mum wouldn't have imagined anything like that 30 years ago!

I bought a few things last week at the closing sale, the photo of the main bulk I accidentally scrubbed this morning making more room on my card...and by now everything is dispersed to where it belongs...pretty much!

I did have these photos of a couple of the panels I grabbed.

Hope everyone is great, I have lots of emails to reply to and posts to read...if only the world would stop for a day of two just to allow me to catch up! It reminds me of one of my favourite Helen Kelley quilting stories that I originally read in a a magazine and is in a selection of her work i have in book form as well... about the night she was given the gift of time...her clock stopped and she kept working most of the night!! It felt like such a gift...that's the kind of gift I need!

A holiday and a hex

Hi from sunny Adelaide in South Australia! DH and I are on holiday...at V8 supercar racing! At least there is one other woman with our group this year, last year I was the lone ranger! She and I headed into the city for 7 hours shopping yesterday, well and truly made up for me missing the gym!

I am here for the car racing as well, but I love the proper racing, I don't need to trawl the pits and watch all the lead up races. I will glide into my grandstand seat, joyously shaded from the rapidly increasing temperature this year, just in time for the start. I may even take some pics if I can get more batteries for the camera this morning..was going to have a few hexagon photos but it's gone flat just after this dud! I made hexagon's all the way over here with a vision to making my oldest friend a special something for her 40th. This isn't the layout I am going with, I am thinking i will go with Libby's layout. She is actually lucky enough to have a husband who bastes!

I am about to head off to the stitch in Time quilt shop, used to be in Naracoorte and do a lot of field days, their email says they're not going to have a shop front anymore and are having a closing sale...would be criminal of me not to support them while I am in the area!LOL! Better go, would never be able to explain it if I came 600 kms and missed the race!

So, did it get presented on time.. and on budget?

The "on budget', is of course a joke!! This is my lowest budget quilt ever...unless you count what 12 years of my girl's clothes cost me!! We could call it my Hurt Locker quilt..rather than my Avatar!~The foundation pieces are an op shop pre quilted cotton bedspread...cost $2! And the backing is some left over bright pj flannel I had in the stash.

But, yes, it was presented on time, here she is tucked up on the couch

after having it presented....

And here is a big picture for you...

She just loves it, what she doesn't recognise she loves hearing the stories about...about her mother's learn to sew process with her as the guinea pig. There are smocked pieces of baby clothes, the top of corduroy overalls, satiny nighties, stretchy pjs and the skivvy she is wearing in the first photos of her baby brother at home. Because I went so gung ho at it I have 9 left over blocks...and they're 13 inch. I have some strips left as well, so i am thinking I may just make a few more and the birthday girl's mother will have a little memory quilt to keep as well!!

All the leftovers are being put to use( I feel like I am going for recycle queen of the year award!) The leftover strips from trimming the blocks to size, though only a maximum 2 inches, looked cute so i sewed them into braid type strips for baby Born. Baby Born has a lot of this fabric in her outfits as i used to make them both dresses to match-so it was only reasonable that she get the keepsake as well!

And what was the picture from the last post? All of the leftover fabric scraps went straight into this old tablecloth I sewed up and are now being very happily slept on as Rosie and Archie's new dog bed...all those clothes...all those happy endings...I feel like I should be chasing Laura and Carrie Ingalls down the hill!

Happy Birthday to a great kid it was a pleasure to spend 26 hours sewing time on in the last 10 days! And hope your day was great, Tracey

One day til d-day..or is that b-day!

I must have held my mouth right and have internet connection tonight, yay!!
Well, that is one big stack of trimmed string blocks, looks a good sign? Well, watch this space tomorrow to see if the quilt is handed over to my girl on time! They have ended up huge blocks, over 13 inches trimmed, I allowed for a lot of trimming and didn't need to do too much. Next time I wouldn't make them so big when using children's clothes, if I hadn't had a number of bigger recent dresses and a bunny rug I never would have been able to manage to get enough of the long strips in the middle of the strings blocks.

Very little of my girl's clothes collection will go to waste, even the trimmed offcuts have a job. Can you guess?

Had quilters here on Friday night, Robyn is making a braid one from the jelly roll book Dawn sent me in Chooky's Christmas swap. Virtually no waste and the cutting came together really quickly, I love the look of them, of course it's now added to the list! I am going to have to live a long, long time to make this list....Tonight there's only one quilt on the list that matters..so I better run! Have a great day, Tracey

Daughter's Memory quilt..Step 2!

It looks much brighter than this, bright yellows, pinks and blues...her cat, Magnum, is helping!

We have an amazing amount of progress so far on the birthday quilt..especially considering the birthday girl has been home with a cold. As of 5 minutes ago there are 19 out of probably 42 blocks done, just needing to be trimmed to exact size later on. They're all around the 13 inches at this point. I showed my little boy and he was flat out telling me which fabric came from what dress, so if a 9 yo boy can pick them out, she should have fun!

It's late here, i am watching the olympics closing and the light is shocking for photos, but I still took you a few progress pics.

The strips are all cut, the next 23 foundation blocks are all cut and have 2 strips attached, so I am on the home stretch for getting it together sooner rather than later. When I get a chance to just sit and sew like this it makes me wonder why I don't spend more days this way...is there really much better fun than watching something bright and fun appear from a heap of now unwanted fabrics/clothes? I can't think of anything anyway!

Tune in soon for the next exciting installment..and have a great day!

Tracey