I am still alive and kicking, in case you were wondering.

 

Oh my goodness I hadn’t realised just how long it had been since I last wrote a blog post – and yes I have reprimanded myself sternly and whacked myself with a wet bus ticket too.

I can’t really blame any one thing for my tardiness but I will have a go at spreading the blame around

First of all my little shop has been so very busy, I guess that’s the beauty of being the first shop as you enter the boundaries of our town.  No sooner do I settle down to stitching something than the door opens and another smiling face enters.  Tuesday is usually our closed day, but if I’m home I’ll open up and just lately I am so pleased I do. 

A couple of weeks ago three gorgeous ladies, two of whom are from our side of New Zealand came into the shop along with the niece of one of them.  You know they were just so lovely and for ages playful bantering went on.  I’m sure if they are reading this they will recognise themselves and hopefully be sitting there smiling. Thank-you ladies, you made my day.

Part of the joy of living and working in a tourist town is that many people come back year after year.  Our shop is nearing it’s 5th year of being open and I see some of the same faces each Summer since we opened. Just lately that has really so very obvious and for some of the customers/tourists, we are almost able to pick up conversations where we left off a year ago.

It hasn't all been shop work though and I do have a couple of things finished and ready to go onto the new OPAM tally when it gets up and going again.

Firstly, a bargello spiral.  I had a lady come into the shop asking if I would teach this to a group.  As I suspected it would take longer than the time allocated to complete I thought I’d actually give it a time trial.  Yes, it did take well over the time and as I really prefer to only teach classes where flimsies are complete or near to complete this one is definitely more than a one dayer.  I chose to quilt it using a metallic thread – a new thread for me, but with the assurance from the retailer (thanks Jackie) I gave it a go. WOW!  This thread is going to be used a lot more often – it is fab!  Anyway, I didn’t know just how I was going to quilt the flimsy and left it all pinned up for over a month.   Eventually I took the bull by the horns and just did it.  I love the quilting that many of our long arm quilters produce but am also aware that many quilts these days are so densely quilted that they are no longer soft and supple.  Well, this quilt is the total opposite of that.  Minimal quilting is how I went, mostly because of ability on my part but also because I just couldn’t decide on anything different – oh wellll.  By the way, sorry about the poor quality of the picture – it was bucketing down outside so it’s an inside shot I’m afraid.

The next completed quilt is a sample for our next Strippers Club day.  I used a Bali Pop and a couple of colours from the  Michael Miller Krystal range also.  It’s more of a lap size, but a comfy lap size.

Since my last post I have had the not too thrilling job of totally emptying out my sewing cave so that one of the walls can be relined and also so that the carpet we replaced in the lounge could be put down on the floor in the cave.

Well, as a result of that Mr BHQ now has a fairly accurate idea of just how large my stash is – oh the shame (heehee).

Watching him as yet another box of fabric was carried out of the emptying room was priceless and in the end I just gave up trying to hide it and compared my collection to his large collection of tools – especially power tools in the garage.  Well, that soon stopped the “what more” comments and as for ‘the looks’ well, I got good at ignoring those.

Now I have a lovely light and bright sewing room cave where I can hibernate over winter quite happily. 

Well that’s about it from this little part of paradise for now, there is another quilt on the go and along side me here a little stitchery for evening work, but I’ll share that later.

Have a great week everyone

hugs