Congratulations to Linda Steele!

Linda Steele is a prolific quilt maker and embroiderer who lives in Melbourne, and her work consistently wins many awards.  I have seen many of her quilts at quilt shows around Melbourne, as I'm sure many of this blog's readers also will have done.  She has just posted some exciting news on her blog - one of her quilts has won "The Best Of Australia" award at The World Quilt Show in New Hampshire USA.  She mentions that quite a few other Australians have won prizes.  You can go to Linda's blog here, or straight to the World Quilt Competition winners here, to see photos of all the winning quilts.

Jewellery organiser.

For anyone that takes issue with my spelling of jewellery, I just spent 10 minutes reading dozens of websites about the various versions of the word, and I decided to go with this one!
Chunky jewellery seems to be the 'in' thing over the last few years, and I've accumulated a few pendants that just make a mess in my jewellery box, so I left them lying on the dressing table.


   When I found a website with instructions on how to make a jewellery organiser, I thought what a great idea!  I found a cork board at our opshop for $1.

 Took some fabrics from my stash...

 Used this craft glue...

 to stick the made up fabric on to the corkboard.

 Put a few of these pins on the board...

 Tra la!   Neat row of chunky pendants, with room for more when I add to my collection!

One good turn deserves another!

RAKs are popular among bloggers lately.  Random Acts of Kindness, or one good turn deserves another, whatever you call it, has a way of working in unexpected ways.  A friend contacted me about a month ago, to ask if I knew anyone who collected swap cards, as she wanted to get rid of her childhood hobby collection.  I do collect them myself, but not the cards from C's era of the seventies, so they were of no interest to me.  But I suggested to C that I ask the swap card  collectors club if they would like to buy them, and she said that's fine.  So I phoned 'B' the secretary and arranged to take C's cards over there and see if she thought the club would like them.
B was pleased to see me, and delighted with the cards.  We sat in her kitchen and while reminiscing over a cup of tea, she suddenly remembered she had something for me.  She disappeared for a minute, and returned with an old card table cloth.  She remembered that I collect linens, and has had this one for years. 

Needs a soak of course, but it is in excellent condition, and is a different design to the others that I have in my collection. After some more talking, B remembered that she had unfinished embroidered items from her mother and grandmother, and as B isn't an embroiderer, she offered them to me. Whooo hooo!

 Unfinished apron complete with cottons.

 Sweet little supper cloth above, closeup of design below.

 Doiley to match the supper cloth.

Centrepiece and matching doilies, started in very neat stitching.

 
 A box of threads...I don't know how people can work with a tangled mess like this!  I will only keep the skeins, the rest will be thrown out.

 A box of skeins in one colour which is such a beautiful shade of gold-beige.  I'm sure I can find a project suitable for this!

CQ block finished, fabric stash, opshop find.

Doesn't take me long to bounce back after a virus (non computer) attack!  This gal has too many things on her agenda to be lying around in bed all day.  Seriously, the MOTH is laid low with a virus that has hit his lungs hard, so he'll be lying around in hospital if he doesn't come good by the end of this week, according to his lung specialist.  I'm just very fortunate to be a fairly healthy person with no chronic conditions to slow down my recovery of everyday bugs.

The first thing on my to do list once I was up and about, was to finish the long overdue July CQ block.  Here it is - red, white and blue theme.  I'm not really happy with the layout of the ties, but I'm certainly not going to pull it apart and start again!

 I even got as far as laying out the ties for my August CQ block (which in theory should be half finished by now...) the theme being 'elephants' as I discovered I had seven ties that featured elephants on them.  I'm not going to do the usual 'crazy' lay out of fabrics this time, instead I've done a sort of log cabin thing.  I just thought it looked better with all those elephants.

 Two parcels arrived in the mail today - both full of patchwork fabric.  This was provided by Jan-Maree to motivate me to make more quilt tops for Aussie Heroes.  Don't need too much motivating, sweetie!  Thanks heaps!

 I found this six piece set of embroidered placemats at Vinnies today - $3.  I LOVE Assissi designs!

Nothing being done here.

I've got the flu.  Not just a cold - that wouldn't slow me down.  But this is horrid...I won't be doing any sewing for a while.  The best thing about getting sick now is that I should be over it by 28th August - the day we set up my linens display at Bundoora.  There is no way I could have done that yesterday or today!