bits of news

My sister is stateside!  She has actually been here since the beginning of the month and I haven't seen her yet.  She spent a week in Manhattan with her partner John and they had a fab time crossing things off their bucket list as they visited places all over the city.  Now they are winding their way through New England and this morning they are leaving Boston after a three day stay there.  They get to us the last week of October and I have been busy trying to catch up on my quilting so that I can enjoy their time here with us.  We are going to Broadway one night so I will be sure to blog about that!!

It is hard to believe that our Pieces from the Heart Quilt Show was on again this past weekend.  Where did that 2 years go to?  I was thrilled to see quite a lot of customer quilts that I had quilted displayed in the show.  Still have to pinch myself that this is my job!  We have so many talented quilters in our county, and one of the very talented is this years featured quilter, Susan Reed.  Her work is so inspiring and just beautiful. 

two of the quilts that I quilted there were in the show..

Our chickens have started laying eggs and we are terribly excited to be eating fresh eggs for breakfast.  They do taste delicious but we don't have cooked breakfast during the week so I am thinking that some of my friends in the area will be sharing our eggs!  On the weekends when John is at home, we let the chooks free range and the dogs are very good at herding them back into their coop in the evening.  In fact they look forward to it.

Ruby earning her keep!

Lastly, a couple of recent pics of my darling granddaughter in Australia.  She is 7 months old now and growing up fast.

 

Time to start my day.  I will try and get back here more often.  Ooroo.

Peeking out from under the pile called life

Was my last blog post really in February?  I guess so!  This year has been jam packed and here is a snippet of what has been going on since the end of Frb....

 My big news is that my first granddaughter, Acacia, was born on March 12 and she is absolutely delightful and growing up fast.  I just love her to bits! 

I started working every other Friday at The Quiltbug.  Went to Australia for two weeks to visit family and friends. Started helping my son with his new company in Africa, ordering supplies from here etc.  Completely revamped our veggie garden into raised beds and have got some chicks and built a chicken coop!  I have done all this in between quilting for customers and being the domestic goddess that I am in my own mind.  ha!
Sadly I have had to take a step back from my etsy team as I just have not had the time to be a fair member.  My etsy shop has suffered because of this and I hope to put some effort into this when the cooler weather sets in.  I miss Etsy and my team!

One thing that I did manage to get done in the first part of this year was a red and white challenge quilt for my local guild.  A couple weeks after our challenge deadline, the quilt was sold to a lovely lady who was visiting from New Zealand and the quilt has made its way down under to it's new home..

 

 

 Then I made a whimsical quilt for a paper bag challenge at another quilt shop near by.  I got the idea for this quilt from a pattern in an Australian quilt book that my daughter had sent to me a couple of years ago.  I had fun embellishing this quilt with buttons, lace and yoyo's.

Lastly I made a little Americanna quilt to hang for July 4th.  It was a cute paper pieced pattern that I was lucky to find on line..  I need to get some dowel so that I can hang it nicely without pins!
 

I have a new PC and I am loving it although windows 7 is a little challenging..  How wonderful a big screen is though!
I do hope everyone is having a nice Summer.  I am going to try to visit other blogs this week as time permits.  It's nice to be back...

the other side of me

Some people know, some people don't.  Yes I have an etsy shop.  Yes I am an Australian living in Upstate New York.  And yes I have a Long Arm Quilting business too!!  It occurred to me recently that there are a lot out there who have no idea what my business is about.
And for those who aren't quilters I will explain what I do...

Lots of quilters sew their quilt tops together, be them elaborate works of art or functional utility pieces.  They are all made up of pieces of fabric sewn together to make a 'quilt top' or what some call a flimsy'.  Now some choose to sandwich this quilt top with batting and another piece of fabric as the backing piece and then hand or machine quilt it themselves or tie it to hold it altogether to form the finished quilt.  Other people choose to send their quilt top/flimsy to a professional long arm quilter to have it quilted for them.  And one of those LA quilters is who I am!  I have local customers and I have customers who mail their lovely quilt tops to me and I ship them back as a beautiful quilt.  I absolutely love my job and feel so blessed that I can work from home all year around and never have to worry about winter commuting.
Here are some photos to help explain the process.

a quilt top or flimsy on my frame and in the process of quilting

the finished quilt

a close up of the quilting stitches

my machine

the name of my business, Pieceful Hollow Designs

So there you have it.  The other side of me!

I have something else to share with you...
I am off to Australia in 32 days to see family and friends there!!  Do you think I am excited?  You betcha!

Ooroo for now!

Surprise!

Yesterday I had a wonderful surprise. I will start at the beginning... Yesterday I had to teach a short program at my quilt guild. A lovely lady who I met out here in blogville and had never met in person had told me last week that she might show up. She lives not too far away. With all that is going on in my world and preparing for the guild program I had totally forgotten about my little blogger friend. I arrived at guild and was busy catching up with everyone before the meeting started. Finally sat down and someone at the table behind me tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see this unfamiliar but kind of familiar face smurking at me! It was Sharon Vrooman! I was so surprised and excited to finally meet her. What a lovely lady she is and so knowledgable too! Most of my guild already knew her because her Mum and her are really quite legendary in my county. They even live in Quilt Lane! How about that? Sharon thanks so much for making the effort, Quilt Lane is definitely on my list of places to visit this Spring! Here is a photo that one of the guild ladies took of me and the class quilt yesterday. I am sharing it because all you can see is my head! haaa!! The quilt is now on sale in my etsy shop!

Needle Felting

One Friday evening of the month in winter a group of us calling ourselves the Mountain Girls Cabin Fever Club, get together at Ginny's house. We range in age from late teens to 80ish, around 10 of us. The idea is to work on our own projects and chat and share food and have a blast when usually it is too cold to get off this mountain. Ginny had 300 sheep until a few years ago and she is a spinner/weaver and makes gorgeous shawls etc. Anyway at our last meeting one of the ladies, Nina, who I think still has some sheep, taught us all how to needle felt. How fun that was, even though we all pricked our fingers several times! We made snowmen and I have to say they came out pretty great for our first attempts. We used wool roving from Ginny's and Nina's fleeces and a single felting needle and this is what I accomplished in a couple of hours. I added the buttons and the twigs at home. His hat is a beret so he is a French snowman! Meet Pierre!

I am counting down the weeks until I take off for a girls vacation in Australia for Easter with my daughter and sister. Yippee!

Help!

I have this new blogger format but now my reading list has disappeared! Where have you all gone???

the big chill and a giveaway!

The temperature this morning read -9f when I got up. It is now 8.23am and it has warmed up to -8f! Westkill Creek which runs through our property and is always running, is almost frozen over and not running! We had to take buckets of water out to the horses. I will be surprised if we reach double digits todday although the sun is shining and the sky is a lovely blue! It is very pretty looking out from the warm house.

Yesterday was a very good day for me. The owner of a local quilt shop called me and ask me if I would like to quilt the shop hop quilt! I am really excited to do this. I am really the new kid on the block in this county and have only lived here for 3 years. A lot of my quilting jobs in the first year came from not so local people but now I am beginning to get more local customers and this is just what I needed. I have quilted a couple of things for her before but never the shop hop quilt. Hooting here! I ran up a couple of Valentine wall hangings for my etsy shop. One sold and this one is still for sale. It is quilted in a 'hearts a flutter' pattern. Valentine quilt

Lastly I would love to tell you about a great January giveaway over at patchworkdelights! Fiona is graciously giving away some threads and a lovely book. All you have to do is become a follower of her blog, her shop, her facebook page, all easy things to do because she has such fun pages and her shop is 'delightful'! Check it out!! It is time for me to get a wiggle on here. Have a great day out there my friends and stay warm!! Ooroo for now!

Becky's Song

My nephew Mitch Davis is a wonderful song writer and musician. Becky's Song is a song that he wrote for his young friend who sadly lost her battle with cancer in 2011. Mitch is my sister's boy and he is from the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. We are getting a bit of everything here this morning, rain, sleet, snow and wind. I have just been out in the elements getting the horses fed and watered and now I am going to retreat to my basement sanctuary where I can not see out into the gloom! Leaving you with some photos from yesterday morning. Have a good one wherever you may be in the world! Ooroo for now.

High Tech on the Hill

Besides having a computer which is almost 4 years old now and a cellphone, I really am not high tech at all. Heck until Christmas time I was still listening to my audio books via CD on a ghetto blaster!
Enter Santa in the form of he who pays the bills. Yes good old Santa tucked an Ipod touch into the bottom of my stocking. Squeezed right in there under the peppermint bark, scratch tickets and woolly socks!

It took me a good week to work that I needed to install a wifi router to get it working to it's full potential. But having done that and figuring out how to download books, I AM IN HEAVEN! This thing is the bomb!! I can now lie in bed and listen to my books at all hours without waking the buzz saw (he who pays the bills). I have very fitful nights and now I don't have to toss and turn or leave my bed to go read in another room. yay!

I have also purchased a thing called a docking station. Of course you all know what that is, just like I did (NOT). This docking station thingy lives down in my basement studio and my ipod just attaches right to it so that I can listen to it without the ear buds. Woohoo! Now I can work away and listen to my books. I am stoked to say the least! Another good thing, my lovely big soft comfy Sony headphones also fit this little gadget. another WOOHOO.
Saving the best bit till last. I can also get all my emails, facebook messages and etsy convo's from anywhere in the house, in bed, in the dungeon, wherever, unlike my so called Blueberry that only works when I stand in the snow on the right corner of the deck with one foot in the air and my right hand on my head.
Yes as you can see I am a very happy INan!
Ooroo for now..

a new year

It's a new year, I am going to make it a new start, a new attitude and a new health regime. A goal is a dream with deadline, I saw this on a sign at our local firestation yesterday. I have set myself some doable goals and the deadline is the end of 2012. They are also my dreams, some are personal, some are business. One such goal is to write in my blog at least once a week and to keep track of all those wonderful bloggers who I love to read. Yes I have been slack and sometimes wallow in my own mire.

What would be a blog without photos. Here are a couple of little bits that I made at the end of 2011. Some for gifts and some for orders.

Happy New Year to all and ooroo for now..