A special quilt for a special teacher...

Well..... Elsie (and I) have been so incredibly blessed to have such a wonderful teacher for her first year of school, and since Mrs East is a quiltmaker herself, I wanted to make sure that I made something special for her.

With the help of the wonderful teacher aide, Mrs Wagstaff, all the children drew a picture of Mrs East.  They were just gorgeous!  They all had the big smile and glasses, and most the lovely blonde hair (one cute3 little man even put in a couple of stray grey hairs... how cute!)  I smiled everytime I looked at them and  I loved the way they were so different.  So many of the girls included butterflies, handbags, bracelets, even buttons and rings. 

I then printed these pictures on to special photo fabric, and made them into a quilt alternating with pinwheel blocks.  I held a sewing afternoon at my house and had the help of some lovely Mums matching, snipping and ironing.  It was a huge help as it got a lot of the initial work out of the way. 

We presented the quilt to Mrs East this morning, and well.... she was just slightly pleased to say the least!  The tears were still flowing when we left..  The children had so much fun pointing out their pictures to her and were all so excited.  It was such a joy to make, and to give.  To give a quilt to someone special whom you know will treasure it is just makes it all the sweeter.

Here is a closer up image.  Hopefully I will have some more tomorrow as a lovely Mum took some photos (the couple I took at school were blurry... probably because I was shaking..)

Have a great week,
Michelle xx

p,s,   cant tell how excited I have been to share this!!  I couldn't share this earlier because this special lady does pop over here every now and again!

Quick and Cheerful table runner.

Quilting doesn't always have to be intricate and time consuming... sometimes the fabric (ok.. maybe a lot of the time!) is just so gorgeous its ok to let it talk for itself. This late shipment of Christmas fabric arrived in the shop the other day, and knowing that I'm quickly running out of time for making Christmas presents, but REALLY REALLY having the need to make something, I decided to make my mother in law a quick table runner. After cutting out the fabric I knew that I just HAD to have one too, so made my 'pattern' even quicker and easier... 30cm of the feature fabric, bordered in the contrast. What could be simpler? Those batting off-cuts are perfect for table runners, and I'm not going to get too fussy about the backing fabric for this one either. I will spray baste, quilt it very simply, and Bob's your Uncle! (or the man next door, or whoever Bob would like be really...) Ok...must.clean.house.so.I.can.quilt (todays mantra..) Have a great week, Michelle xx
p.s. the pattern for the larger 'square in a square runner is Liisa's and available at/from the shop. Gem of pattern, I have made a few already!

Our New Little Veggie Box

My lovely husband spent a few precious days of his leave building us a couple of lovely big veggie boxes down the side of the house. All has been going well, the tomatoes are growing, the beans sprouting and we all like going out to see what has changed from day to day.

We have had some very hot days in Brisbane this week so I went out to check on them yesterday afternoon when I got home from work, hoping my little babies hadn't wilted. We had put up a little temporary fence, to keep Charlie out while it was all still new and exciting, and I could see that I had left it open.... OOPS! But then I turned the corner..... Charlie had indeed had a wow of a time..... MAJOR OOOOOPS!!!! He had had a lovely time in the first box, somehow didn't manage to knock over the bigger tomato plants, but had certainly rearranged the other things. He had also dug some monster holes (a little hard to see in the photo). I spent the next hour re-levelling dirt and re-planting, but was just thankful that he hadn't touched the second box with the beans! He looks quite innocent doesn't he? Michelle xx