fuchsia - facing finally finished

I finally finished the edges of this little quilt! I didn't want to use binding so I finished it with facing instead. I like the fact that you can't see the facing on the front. This is a fantasy fuchsia. The idea for it came after doing a class with Jane Sassaman in which we used a photo of a flower, erased a lot of the details and exaggerated what was left. I like the way the colours worked together!

a challenging subject

I made 'Foxglove' as my entry in a quilt challenge my quilt group had recently. I actually remembered to take step-by-step photos as I went. The background is one of my hand painted cottons, and the flower is a chiffon (I think) that looks like it's been tie-dyed. The theme for the challenge was Pearl (to celebrate our group's 30th birthday this year). I decided on the flower design and stitched in the pearls after everything else was done. The piecing and free motion quilting was done on my little Husqvarna Lily. I L-O-V-E my Lily!

our daily bread

Murray and I have been baking our own bread ever since we bought our first bread machine at Christmas 2000. A lot of the time we just do the mixing and kneading in the machine and bake the bread in the oven. Some of these are done like that. The others have been made following recipes out of a book called Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I got the book out of the library first, but I liked it so much I bought my own copy. I love making bread and have been doing it since I was a teenager in the late 70's.

A bit of a catch up

I've had another long break from my blog.  I've been doing all sorts of bits and pieces since last time I posted here so I'll try to do some catching up. I crocheted this rug over the winter using heaps of leftover scraps of yarn from my stash and my mother's stash, and a few bits from one of my friends too. It's as big as the quilt on our spare bed (large single bed) and took so long to do. I enjoyed making it but it got so heavy and awkward to turn by the end that I was glad to finish it. Now it's packed away in a cupboard away from Miss Millie the cat until next winter.