Wind, Grass and Going to Class.

Usually it is November when we get pesky wind that bashes my lovely Copper Beech tree when it is just resplendent in it's new red growth, but it is happening now. I guess it's only 10 days or so to November. It also damages the little new shoots on the Kiwifruit vines and leaves some swinging, never to be any good. See how big my favourite deciduous tree in the garden  has got...that is 33 years growth.

This is just one months growth on the patch of new hydroseeded grass / lawn.( Farm Girl and Chooky Blue that's quite good growth isn't it if it was pasture? ) I can see I need to crawl around on it and remove the weeds that are big enough to get a grip on.....I wonder if I will do that?
    All excuses aside I have a busy weekend coming up. I am going to a 2 days course with about 12 other ladies from our P and Q group. We have Hazel Foot from Auckland coming down to teach us....a method of making art quilts/ wall hangings. We have to take 3 or 4 photos or pictures that we are going to print on tissue paper????  We have to take suitable fabrics to use around the photos and embellishments etc. I have been getting everything on her list ready - I seem to have so much to lug.( I even changed my machine needle, and cleaned the machine! )
   All of that is not difficult....the hard part was deciding what photos to take....I have so many! ( The Inspiration part. )  I looked what the ladies in Whangarei used last year when they had this same course and almost all except one who used famous buildings, used flowers or seashells.
 I narrowed it down to 2 categories. Radish or mail boxes. The mail boxes won. I have some pics I took that I really like. Unfortunately I woke up about 3 am this morning with some extra good ideas about what to take to use as embellishments ...all to do with mail, string; stamps packages etc. That was good I suppose...but I then got to thinking about solutions to some other problems....needless to say I was tired when I got up this morning. I hope to sleep well tonight ( before the class ) but have a good rugby game to watch first which doesn't start till 8.30 pm.  Then of course there is the "other all important game," on Sunday night....Can the All Blacks do it?  Yes. Will the All Blacks Do it??????
      A little good news about Rena. They managed to pump 60 tonnes of oil off her during the night.

Quilt Class.

Friday proved to be a great day. Long awaited and much prepared for by me. We were asked to get there early and be ready to start by 9.30 am ( instead of 10 or after when our group usually meets ). The building has separate rooms so as the class was only 6 of us (in the end ) we were all able to fit in the smaller side room away from the general meeting.

Jill our Tutor for the class, had made a quilt we admired during a Show and Tell, she called Blue Illusions,( in one of my photos ) which she had made from a book she had "40 Fabulous Quick Cut Quilts ," by Evelyn Sloppy. That's how she came to be taking us for the class. She was pleased there was just 6 of us as it made an intimate friendly little group for the day. 2 chose her colours of blues and browns, one chose greens and blues another pinks and greens ( in photo ), another reds and fawns/ golds and I chose as you already know, purples and icky greens. We laughed that there were 5 Bernina sewing machines ( all different models ) and one Brother - that is not the norm..... usually within our group there is a huge range of different machines, so maybe this quilt was one that appealed to a certain personality type? ( glad we didn't all decide on the same colour ways ! ) There was nothing difficult about this quilt. The things it depends on are careful pressing, straight cutting and organisation. ( Nothing new there )The basis really is 4 strips sewn together( purple/ green , purple /green ), pressed towards the purple; trimmed very carefully down to 8.5 across the ends. 2 sets of the 4 strips are placed face to face, marked diagonally sewn on either side of the line then cut. And from there just continue cutting and resewing to new parts. In one photo you can see my 4 components that then form a larger block. We had cut enough strips to make many large blocks. I have completed 4 big ones so far. Once the big blocks are sewn together secondary patterns emerge.( At one stage someone sewed the parts together incorrectly and they still looked great - so this pattern is adaptable and could be changed for a different result! )

We sewed for far too long really, but this day coincided with our Midnight Madness session.I think about 40 ladies stayed and enjoyed yummy Pizza dinner ( see photo ) (we couldn't finish it all) then kept on sewing. I eventually sewed a wrong piece and realised it was time to stop. Some others in the other room working on hand work or their own machine projects were still working when I left ( about 10 pm ) - but some had only arrived after 5 pm. I don't think I remember ever sewing that many hours in one day!

Now at home I am just continuing on and off making more blocks at my own pace. I love being able to organise my piles of strips and leave it all readyso when I have a little time, I work on it. SO FAR I am very, very pleased with it - But I so loved those fabrics I was bound to like it!

As always I was taking the photos so am not any of them - but you can see my quilt blocks and I will continue to report my progress.