My girls

My chookies are looking soooooo much better..... the new girls from the battery hen farm are getting new feathers and are so much more confident and happy. They have learnt to come when I call and rush to get their scraps. The older girls are still hen-pecking them a bit but are gradually accepting them. The newbies - all six of them - all sleep together in one little nesting box (made from recycled eskies). I go out there each evening and rearrange them, I'm worried that they will suffocate each other! With any luck the girls will start laying again soon, I have only been getting one a day lately...Ian has been threatening them with "the pot" but I have it in our pre-nups that my chookies will retire to our old-folks home lol.....

Their new feathers are starting to come through....

The older girls stick together!

Some pics from the garden........

The sweetpeas are galloping up the wires, the carrots, broadbeans, radishes and lettuces have gone mad and everything is growing, growing, growing! We have had gorgeous weather here the past week, still frosty in the morning but glorious all day, great growing weather. Hopefully the warmer weather will last for a while so Ian can build my shade/glass house...... I need somewhere to raise my spring vegie seedlings......

Sweetpeas

Peas and Chillean Lettuces

Broadbeans and Radishes

Carrots

Rhubarb.

A friend gave me this plant, a "pup" of a plant grown by his Dad since 1953!

It has two lovely new leaves...........

Parsley

Strawberries

Daffodils starting to come up

Merlin deep in thought.....

I am a bag-making machine!!!!

I am having a real run on bag-making lately............

For ages I have wanted to try felting recycled jumpers, so I finally gave it a go.

This bag is the result, only took an hour to make and so cuddly to use in the winter.

As you can see I have lined it, and added some interesting vintage buttons to jazz it up a bit!

Now I'm off to get ready to go to the pub.........

A tad chilly!

It's been a little chilly here of late with many days below freezing....the kids thought it was hilarious watching our outside cat Rascal trying to get a drink from the horse's trough this morning, poor boy was ice-skating lol........

Blossom and Vixen proving the theory that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence - or should that be whiter?

Poor Victor shivering... he does have a little house to go in I promise!

My vegie garden, thank goodness I planted frost hardy vegies lol.......

All these pics were taken through my windows, I wasn't going out, too cold for me!

My op-shop quilt.

Are you all sick of quilts yet? Lol.......Now that I have finished Merran's raggy quilt, the next project is to reconstruct the quilt I bought from an op-shop last year. This quilt cost me $9 AUD, so I was happy to pay such a small price for something that will take a little work. Whoever made it must have done a sampler quilt course, but not known how to finish it. Every block is a slightly different size, and it was joined together with extremely uneven sashing in the light blue colour. The blocks themselves aren't too bad, although I have to completely remodel the one on the bottom left hand corner as it was cut crooked. The maker had actually overlocked the edges of the quilt, cutting it in the process.
I'm not into pinks so I will put the quilt together with navy sashing and tea-dye the lot to tone down the pink and antique the lighter blocks. I think the navy will show off the blocks quite well. Not sure how I'll quilt it, probably just in the ditch around the blocks. Hopefully it won't take me as long to get done as the last one!

At last!!!!!

It's been school holidays here for the past 2 weeks, the kids go back to school on Tuesday. Being a realist I decided housework was a waste of time with 4 children in the house and also that I needed some sanity saving sewing time. With this in mind I could justify finishing a raggy quilt I had started 2 years ago for my step-daughter Merran (10). The fact that it's been very chilly here and Mez has had a cold only gave me more reason to finish it! Luckily Ian had a couple of days off so I trotted out to the Doll House to do some patchwork. When I started this quilt I was really winging it. I had seen a couple in magazines and kinda worked it out but I made the mistake of having the wadding the same size as the top and bottom squares. This made it extremely difficult to snip to get the raggy effect. I also used a recycled flannalette sheet as the backing. Not a great idea as every square stretched! The quilt was tossed aside for a very long time. This time I made the squares of wadding an inch smaller then the purple and flannalette squares. It was soooooo much easier, both to sew and to snip. I think Merran likes it by the grin on her face! This pic was taken before I washed and tumble dried the quilt, the pic on the bed shows the raggy effect better.

Please ignore the texta marks on Mezza's forehead!

Don't you just love the lumpy bumpy kid-made bed lol...

Now, to just get time to paint her room......

My coin purse....

My wallet has a broken zip so it's off to the cobbler's to be fixed. This left me with a need for a coin purse, so here's what I came up with. More Kindred Spirits fabric, a bit of pellon, some lining fabric and a zip was all it took. Oh and of course the trusty Featherweight.....

Just whipped this one up........

I made this doll this afternoon. It's nice and warm in my doll house and the weather was very bleak here so what better to do than some sewing? She's made from a pattern by Not Forgotten Farm, with my own touches. Very quick to make as the body is the clothes (except for the skirt) and you just paint over the fabric to create the head, hands and feet. I needle felted her raw wool hair on and printed a feedsack apron to tie on her. I love how she turned out!

What a bargain!

I answered an ad in our local paper and picked up this beauty..... It is a single bed size handmade bow-tie quilt. Actually it is a quillow, it has a pocket on the back so the whole quilt can be folded into the pocket to make a pillow..... a lovely old man was selling up some of his stuff so he can go on holidays to Canada, and this was one thing that had to go. His SIL had made it, I hope she doesn't realise he sold it! She's done a great job, machine quilted around the bowties and hand quilted in the plain blocks. She also hand tied in between! Certainly much more work in this than the $45 AUD worth I paid for it.......

I love the quilt on my queensize bed as a topper. The gorgeous teddy bear on the bed is George - named after George Clooney for his dark eyes and strong jaw lol....... He and I have been through a lot together, I bought him after my first marraige broke down, so he has earnt a permanent place on my bed!

Kindred Spirits Bag.....

I've had the kit for this bag for a couple of months now and finally made it this weekend. I love how it turned out. I am a huge Kindred Spirits fan, love their fabric and patterns, so this bag was a must for me. Even the lining and inside pockets are gorgeous...... I machine quilted the handle and sides, hand quilted around the designs on the front and back pieces, and added the button closure.

Now the only question is, is it daggy to carry a handmade bag?

Who cares, I love it!

Front

Back
Lining and inside pocket.
A close up of the handquilting and embroidery.