After a short holiday while my granddaughter stayed it's time to get back to work, I will start with this blog post about Lois' quilt. Made of many sweet little houses and framed off with a little picket fence, this is hand-pieced quilt. Lois asked me to custom quilt this little treasure for and I was delighted to do so.
Lois used Yoko Saito's book: 'Quilts from Traditional Blocks' and used all the lovely woven muted fabrics that Yoko Saito is known for. The quilting needed to be subtle and not over powering. Everything is stitched in the ditch, some soft stipple in the background of the houses, cross-hatching on the sashing between the houses the straight echo lines on the framing sashing. Lois and I had many email discussions about the quilting for the border, Lois didn't want anything to compete with the picket fence and nothing 'frilly'. So we ,high fived, on organic wavy horizon lines.
Did you notice the house on the bottom right hand corner is facing the opposite direction to all the other houses? Lois tells me she copied that idea from Yoko! I like the odd fence post that is off skew! Lois gave me a lovely piece of linen for the backing and chose wool/poly as her batting choice.
What a pleasure to have had the opportunity to quilt this little sweet quilt, thank you Lois!
My granddaughter is now back home, we had a fabulous time together, sewing, baking, colouring, playing board games, visiting a petting zoo and she even came tramping with me!
Those are some of her Plasticine creations! And the crazy Lego castle that was made over several days.
Our last day together had us off out tramping. After a short boat ride from Paihia we headed over to Urupukapuka island. Such a beautiful place and we had the island ourselves (27 in our group).
The island is a bird sanctuary that is pest free, so we saw and heard many birds. This area of the island was heavily populated with shags nesting in the trees, it was a sight to see (and smell!).
We also saw many saddle back birds which are such beautiful birds of black and a deep burnt orange.
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| This image is from Google as I couldn't get a decent photo of these magnificent birds. |
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| making friends on the boat trip! |
