A finished scrap quilt

I have finally sandwiched, quilted and bound this patchwork. Another quilt ready to be sent to the orphanage at Hope Homes International. This quilt I made totally improvisational. But to give it some structure I used a 1 inch strip of red in random places. It has a lovely flannelette back to be snugly on a bed. Pleased to get it done as it has been sitting in the wardrobe for a wee while.

I just stippled it as the batting was a lot of leftover bits, so stippling for quilting keeps it altogether. I am trying to do all my mending and bits lying around. I have a new overlocker I have not yet used because I just cannot start another project. But have cleared it to the point that there is a space to put it. So when I come back from my work trip I will have some fun with it. In the meantime my mending meant I had to learn a new skill. 

I taught myself how to do shirring. I love shirring but have just been too scared of it as it looks so complicated. But it really is not. The blue is the practice and the shirt is now mended. Four not quite even or straight rows, but I am pretty pleased.

Linking to these places and Crazy mum quilts. and 

An new hall seat from upcycled chairs

Last night I finished this. Completely upcycled hall chair. Hammered, nailed, glued, painted and upholstered by me. I asked Aaron to come and see the result and he actually liked it. He thought it was going to end up being a tacky piece of ick that he would have to destroy somehow.

Eli determined to be able to sleep on it

9.20pm when I finished and it was put in the Hall 

Eli's comment was "A seat is only good if you can sleep on it. So he decided to try that and ended up with his foot stuck through one of the slats and had to have parental assistance to extricate himself!

I am particularly pleased with the material and paint match. From my favourite store - Femme de Brocante - I purchased the Annie Sloan chalk paint (paris grey with a 1/3 paris grey and 2/3 old white mix on the middle slats) and the fabric for the cushion. There was a much "safer" fabric choice of grey with white dots. But after a bit of debate I decided this fabric would at least give it some individuality. 

reupholstering - really pleased with my neat finish.

Some of my tools at this stage. Cutting the foam for the seat was not easy.

You win some and you loose some. I really wanted to get this right so after painting and waxing the chairs I used the previous seat tops to template on cardboard and then put in situ to set the correct space for the joining blocks. If I had looked closer I would have realised that seats were straight so all that time spent shaping has left a rounded seat that slightly protrudes. Blast! 

Painted and ready to create seat base and topper - see the joining blocks in the middle.

So this hall seat started as two broken $5 chairs from the dump shop. I had to construct and glue a new strut in and then do various other gluing and filling as well as a bit of pattern making to work out how to get them to hold together the best. I found using power tools really relaxing as my concentration meant a clear mind at the end, not muddled by other things.

Linking to these places and Crazy Mum Quilts

My latest adventures

beach art

So my eldest turned 14 - wow how did that happen. The next weekend while the youngest was at Soccer trials Jakob and I went for an hour and half walk to the beach and back. Even though it is summer it was cool. Jakob picked handfuls of tiny tiny stones and threw them specifically to make artistic patterns in the sand. We then took photos to analyse whether it looked good or not

The beach always has driftwood houses built. This one was well past high tide and survived well. If the weather was icky it would be the place to retreat to.

The walk goes past about 25 plum trees. A couple still had some very ripe plums on them to snack on the way.

Post operation I have now been permission to get back in the pool. So am doing a couple of mornings at aquasize and then some family length swimming time.

Turning these two chairs into a hallway bench seat is well in progress. Loving it so far, just need to finish.

There has been a lot of travel for work to catch up on the time out from the operations and so a bit of stitching has occurred on a few flights. Sometime I have been too tired on the way home, to do anything.

I wanted to get into running and was managing to get started when my calf muscles pinged a couple of times. Not good. Now I can do these things my body is letting me know that it is a bit old!!

A walk on a hot day to our favourite place. Two days after the walk a huge fire raged and thousand of people were evacuated. The area is now just burnt out.

This was climbing almost to the top of Sugar Loaf. I have not been able to go up for five years. I was so thrilled to be heading back to getting views.

My gorgeous boys.