2020 Wk 12 - Jelly Roll Race

I finally braved the state in the sewing room, unearthed the started jelly roll race, and finished piecing and quilting it.

I love the total randomness of the blocks!

My lovely niece, Indi, and I recently had an Instagram chat during which she said yes please she would like a quilt for her bed

Music to my ears of course!  What to make?  - Mum brought an Australian Jelly Roll home from Australia for me, from her recent visit to my brother and his family.  It was displayed in the shop made up to  Jelly Roll Race, and that's what caught mum's eye. So that was a good idea, but could I add more to it?. . .Indi has lived all her life in Oz, her mum is quarter Spanish, and her dad is half English and half Norwegian.

They used to have an Akita dog, she did a tandem parachute jump for her 12th (!) birthday and she is a great little driver, accompanying my brother to race tracks when he races.

So a quick shopping trip to Spoonflower added some other relevant (but eclectic)  fabrics:  Hopefully she will see it as a grown up version of an i-spy quilt

Trimming and binding still to be done, then get it sent off to Oz!

Quiet? Or Quite a Lot?

I haven't blogged for the last week or so as I didn't feel as if there was much to blog about, but that really isn't the case!

First let me introduce you to my new babies:

Possibly to be christened Lemon and Sorbet, these were an early birthday pressie from the family, aren't they gorgeous!

Next I can show you two exciting postal packages:  Not exciting on the outside . . .

But awesome on the inside

A free sample from Spoonflower (thank you Kathyfor giving me the head's up) and a fab goodie bag from Just Jude as I won a giveaway on her blog - I'm really looking forward to some therapy colouring with this fabric.

I have done some sewing too. Renee (Wren) gifted me some unwanted charm squares and they included some sock monkey fabric.  Inspired by Fiona's recent quilt I bordered the charms with two sides of 2" and two of 1.5" strips. There were 23 blocks which didn't quite make a top, so I also embroidered a sock monkey to fit a double block, so it will look something like this

Last Monday, at Richmond and Kew quilters, we played with some thermofax screens, and I came home with these blocks.

I wasn't sure what to do with them, so I have made up some zippy pouches.

One has gone to a friend, but the others will go back to R&K group to be sold or our craft stall at next month's exhibition.

Posted with Blogsy

Time Travel

This post was written a while ago, but I couldn't publish it as my mum reads my blog, and it's about a present for her.

A *very* long time ago ( 1918) her grandfather bought her father a postcard, and posted it - it didn't arrive until somewhere round about 1925, but that was to be expected.

The sale of the postcard, and others like it, was to raise money for the Roald Amundsen's North Pole polar drift expedition that was planned to depart in a ship called Fram in 1918.  The money would help pay for the trip and the postcards would be carried on the voyage, " . . . across the Polar Sea and afterwards conveyed by post to the addressee".

Although Amunsen originally planned to use Fram, it became clear that the Fram was no longer suitable for an arctic expedition, so Amundsen decided to use a new ship called the Maud.  The Fram postcards and the subsequently printed Maud postcards all made the journey with Amundsen.

My grandfather's was one of the first batch; with details of the Fram ship:

(sorry, just cannot get it turned the right way)

I guess my great granddad was confident that they wouldn't move in the following seven years!

My mum had the postcard for many years, but then passed it on to my brother.  I got him to send me a photo, and I then did a bit of playing at Spoonflower (do you know the site? you can get almost anything printed onto all sorts of fabrics) and then clicked on the [place order] button.

A few weeks later this arrived:

 And all I had to do was cut the images apart, and hem them,

and I had four of these:

One has been given to mum, another is being posted to Australia to my brother, I have kept one, and the last one will probably go to my Great Aunt in Norway - Although at least one of her 4 brothers obviously had a postcard, (and the other three probably did too,) I don't suppose she had one, as she wasn't born until 1919!