Hello to any new visitors!

Hi to anyone visiting here at Stone House Quilter. My blogging life has sadly been lacking for a little while now. My apologies for that. I have been mainly using my quilt page at facebook for a while now and I tend to keep that pretty well up-to-date. I would LOVE for you to come and visit me there! Please leave a message there so I know you've visited. Thanks, everyone.

My page is called Stone Cat Studio. I hope to see you there sometime.

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.

Next step?

This is what is up on my design wall at the moment. I don't really have a plan for the next step. All the little circles are fused on but the big circle is just pinned at the moment. I thought of doing some kind of freehand feathery quilting in hot pink thread, or quilting more rows of circles, or maybe both. Any suggestions?

another 3 or 4 months flown by!

It's been a long time since my last post here. Summer is not a good time for me. One of the symptoms of multiple sclerosis is heat intolerance, and I feel it more and more each summer. For me, extreme fatigue is the biggest problem. While I won't go into what MS-related fatigue is like (you can google it if you're interested), I will say that it is NOTHING like feeling tired after having a few late nights, which apparently is what some people think.

It wasn't all bad this summer though. I managed to get some quilty stuff done - yay! I need to get some photos off the camera's memory card and onto the computer soon so I can share them. There are a few obligatory photos of Miss Millie the cat but you probably don't want to see them. Some glorious sunsets too, and probably a couple that are quilt-related thrown in for good measure.

The photo above was taken on a gorgeous summer day when I washed the quilt that is usually on my bed. It is a simple 'turning twenty' quilt and it's the first one I ever did freehand feathers on when I got my longarm quilting machine. I want to make another one that is in brighter colours but I need to make it so big that I've been putting it off. Maybe I'll gather up all my hand-dyed fabrics and make one like the wonderful quilts that Melody Johnson makes. I love her work!!

I'm a cover girl...

...or at least my quilt is. Another photo I forgot to post. My quilt Psychedelic Peonies was chosen to be on the cover of Australian Patchwork & Quilting machine quilting issued in July. What a thrill! I doubt it will ever happen again so...

...here it is!!

amazing sunset

Isn't this the most amazing sunset? I took this photo a couple of weeks ago and meant to post it then. This is straight from the camera - no detours through photoshop.

Fuchsia Fantasy 3

I felt like doing some quilting on my little Husqvarna so decided to finish up this little quilt top that I made a few years ago. The flower was inspired by a class with Jane Sassaman, where we had to choose a photo of a flower, do a pencil sketch, erase most of the detail and exaggerate what was left. I really like the fat little fuchsia flower that I ended up with!

When I quilt on my domestic machine, I like to use squares of non-slip drawer liner instead of quilting gloves. I find the gloves make my hands too hot, and I'm forever taking them off and putting them back when I want  to thread needles, grab a mouthful of my cup of tea or whatever. I also put a square of it under my foot pedal to stop it sliding on the tile floor.

Quilts in the Garden

On the weekend of November 9/10, my local quilt group Devon Patchworkers and Quilters together with the owners of Hawthorn Villa in Carrick held an open garden and quilt exhibition to raise money for the MS society of Tasmania. This is the second year that Quilts in the Garden has been held. Hawthorn Villa is described as  2 storey residence built in the gothic revival style in 1875. The owners , Nicole and Innes, and Nicole's parents Judy and John, put in SO much hard work in the weeks leading up to the weekend as well as on the weekend itself. The members of the quilt group were also wonderful, not only providing so many quilts to display but also setting up and taking down the quilts, selling raffle tickets, talking to visitors and a myriad of other things. We had nonstop rain on the Friday and some rain on the Saturday, which meant that the quilts had to be displayed under cover. On the Sunday, which is when we went up to Carrick, the weather was just perfect! Beautiful sunshine, lots of visitors and the garden was just beautiful. I took lots of photos and thought I'd share some random photos here.

NOTE: this is a very picture-heavy post so it may take a while to load.