I’ve been a busy bee making blocks for the Simply Solids Bee : I was waaaaay behind but am now all caught up and have even finished and sent my May block before the month begins! I imagine my fellow Fallow hive members will just about fall over from the shock!

My favourite blocks so far are that one up the top which is a scrap vomit b block using Katy’s tutorial but 2″ not 2.5″ squares and my other fave is the block I made for Adrianne which you can see here.

After taking almost 2 years out from bees, I’ve joined two this year. It remains to be seen wether or not that was a good idea! What about you? Do you like quilting bees and swaps? Are you in any right now? What works for you (and what doesn’t)? Have you any tips for me on how to keep on time? That relates to life in general around here, not just with regard to bees… After being an early bird all my life, I seem to be forever late now… Hmmm…

And let me know where to find you, I’m on the hunt for some new reads.

Jxx

I have developed a few recipes of my own (which I will share next time I make them and remember to take a picture!). Sometimes though, it is nice to stumble upon a recipe where all the hard work has already been done for me. This chocolate cake is AMAZING!

I make some changes (because I can’t help myself) by making it with just cocoa, not ground chocolate as that contains milk and I don’t use cream cheese icing. My solution to the icing factor is to sprinkle the cake with about 120gms of fresh or frozen blueberries prior to baking and then dust with a little icing sugar when serving. Yum!

And if the cake is not going to school, or another nut-allergy avoidance zone, I replace half of the flour with ground almonds which adds to the moistness and makes it a little more on the healthy side.

You’re welcome!

And here are five random things you may not know about me:

I do not clean toilets.
Not ever. I married a man who is clean and tidy by nature (some might call him anal – ok, so I’m the one who calls him that, but not without good reason!). I just will not clean the toilet. It’s gross. And the Mr does it for us so nope, you’ll never catch me with a loo brush in hand.

I swear like a sailor.
My language is best described as atrocious gutter talk. I’m also direct and I speak my mind. I don’t mean to offend people but I’m certain I do. It gets me in trouble.

I love biology.
In high school I was a bio nut and my weekend job was as a pharmacy assistant where I learnt about all kinds of interesting diseases. After leaving school, I worked for radiologists as the darkroom technician, when they used real film (back in the day!) and I was convinced I wanted to become a radiographer. Then I assisted with barium enemas. Change of career path right there.

We were married on April Fools Day.
My Great-Gran and Pop were also married on April Fools Day. I didn’t know this until after I was married.

I love to cook.
And I’m pretty good at it. BUT, I can’t cook toast or rice. I almost always burn the toast and let’s not even start on the rice. The Mr bought me a rice cooker for Christmas, bless his little cotton socks.

In essence, my mother-in-law Rosemary was an amazingly talented woman in so many facets of her life but her quilting skills were outta this world. In her lifetime, she made more than 100 quilts, and most of these were given as gifts. They were usually pieced by machine and quilted by hand but thankfully we have two of her more labour intensive fully hand pieced gems in our home. She was inspirational and I learnt so much from her (although, I think she’d be horrified by me as machine quilting and binding are more my thing!).

In early 2007, our dear Granny Rose lost her battle with breast cancer. Sadly, she only got to meet the first of her three granddaughters. When I was clearing out her wardrobe, I kept a number of the shirts she had made herself from Liberty and other similarly printed cotton lawn fabrics with the intention of making a quilt for our then only child. That quilt is still in progress as it’s an entirely english paper pieced grandmothers garden. Now that we’ve had two more baby girls, I’m trying to make each of them a granny quilt. Realising though that I’ve no hope of ever finishing three hexy numbers, and remembering one of Rosemary’s beautiful triangle quilts, I’ve paired some of her shirts with some of my Liberty’s and a whole heap of various solids to come up with Violet’s first birthday gift : “Lifetime of Liberty”. It was quite the process, deciding on the final design, I spent hours upon hours moving it around on the design wall and on the floor and seeking the opinions of brutally honest very helpful friends.

Inspired by the conversations I used to have with Rosemary, I have quilted some “words to live by” on the feature triangle: laugh, dream, cry, think, care, believe, dream, love, struggle, inspire, travel, still, create, parent, desire, lifetime.

So, here is the front of Violet’s granny quilt:

and the back:

I absolutely LOVE this quilt. I am so very happy with how it turned out. And I’m very glad I added in those yellow pops which in turn influenced the final colour of that main triangle (Art Gallery Pure Elements).

As a result of my satisfaction, I got cocky and back in November, I submitted an application for the Quilt Show at QuiltCon. Much to my shock and delight, this quilt was accepted. It is now winging its way across the oceans to Austin. I am so very thrilled that my modern quilt, inspired by a very traditional Granny Rose is going to be hung in a show.

The three smalls of the human variety have been fascinated with them and although we’ve tried to maintain our distance and let mother hen be with her babies, the hourly visit to the chook pen to see these little cuties is just too much to resist.

We popped out yesterday and picked up some chick feed and placed that along with a gorgeous! pink water container, chosen by the middle small, in the hen house with them. They are eating and drinking and generally just being super adorable. Back to the chicken watch – they’re calling us, I can just hear them (I may or may not be just as taken with them as my children are).

Jules xx

When they feel poorly, I do get lots of snuggles. It makes me feel helpless to watch them ill and not be able to do anything to stop it but oh how I do love the stillness of these sleepy, sick snuggles. One thing this Mumma can do well is give comforting snuggles.

So, apart from my little QuiltCon announcement, it’s been more than three months since I’ve been in this little space of mine. Not that I’ve not been crafting mind! Probably because I’ve been doing lots of crafting, not photographing it or writing about it.

I have:

** Made quilts. Four in the past three months just by me (which seems like a whole lot but is not as many as I’d like to have achieved).

** Quilted three quilts for a client:

** Taught a friend to let go of the rules and make a quilt that she will love. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It does have to be. And, then quilted that quilt for said friend as a farewell gift (she and her family are moving to France on a posting!):

** Enjoyed spending time helping another friend towards a finish.

** Taken on the role of co-ordinating book reviews for this ace website while my friend and her family travel around Australia for a whole year (no, not jealous, not. at. all!!).

** Learnt to crochet and made countless washcloths as Christmas gifts for family and friends.

** Watched my (not so much anymore) baby girl learn to walk and climb:

** Celebrated Birthdays, Christmas and the New Year with family and friends.

** Welcomed some new family members:

** Enjoyed the company of my children and their friends during these summer holidays. I’ve also enjoyed how slow we can be without having to rush out the door to school each weekday:

How have the past few months been for you? More on those quilts I’ve made soon, but for now, back to the summer holidays.

Jules xx

I am sitting here tonight thinking about so very many things but it all keeps coming back to one HUGE event for me! I can’t focus on any of my actual work as I just realised that in just 36 days time, I am heading to Austin for QuiltCon, the inaugural Modern Quilt Guild conference and show.

Needless to say, I am completely thrilled at the opportunity and also at the prospect of seeing Austin for the first time – I have travelled to Europe and Canada, but I’ve never been to the USA.

I’m starting to plan my packing so am in need of a few tips… We are in the middle of an extremely hot summer and with most of the past two weeks hitting around 38 degrees Celsius (100F), it’s tricky to get my head into packing for winter mode.

So, anyone been to Austin in Winter? What do I need to take? Where can I shop when I get there for a great coat? Any thoughts about travelling solo? Are you going to be there too? Do come play with me, it’ll be amaze balls, I guarantee it!!!

Jules xx

With the middle small by my side snipping the threads between the chain piecing, and by roping in anyone who happened to call by the house, this quilt came together in a flurry of activity and with very little thought or effort in a relatively short amount of time. I did modify the pattern from the book and in my typical fashion, I messed up the measurements for my version. With a little help from a maths minded friend, I was able to improvise my way out of what could have been an enormous waste of fabric!

As the quilt was destined to be a family picnic rug, I used repurposed fabrics including scraps leftover from previous projects and some pieces from my growing stash of second hand fabrics found on trips to op shops {thrift stores}. This project contains an assortment of remnants of seersucker tablecloths, silk taffeta, linen from a skirt, a bag and my maternity pants (won’t be needing those ever again!), cotton drill kitchen curtains and a wild 1970′s paisley poly/cotton blend which was used as the backing. It was great fun to throw together an odd bunch of texture, quality and colour and come out with something fun and practical.

My favourite part of making a quilt, always, is seeing it put to use. I am not precious about the quilts I make for home. We have picnicked, slept and snuggled on and under this and I love that my family can wrap themselves in Mumma love and comfort on a chilly afternoon.

NOTE: This quilt came to be as occasionally I am privileged to be able to review books for Whip up. My most recent review was of Denyse Schmidt: Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration. When I opened the pages and saw the Basketweave quilt, I quietly desired immediately HAD to have a version of it.