I'm starting a new quilt

Rock Garden by Umbrella Prints

Echo by Lotta Jansdotter

Miscellany by Julia Rothman

Avalon by Jay-Cyn Designs

Reunion by Sweetwater

Can you guess which one of these absolutely scrumptious stacks I'm going to use?

Pros and Cons of Camping

Thanks for the great suggestions for books on my last post.  I love finding great books and was able to find some of the books at my local library. We've been enjoying reading "Just So Stories" by Rudyard Kipling and some of the "Tashi" books. I plan on tracking down the rest of the books too.

We went camping at Innes National Park last weekend and had an amazing time. However, camping with three young children is not always easy. Let me share with you some of the highs and lows. 

Pro - Spectacularly beautiful beaches with soft white sand

Con - Fine black sand that gets into every nook and cranny

Pro - Inquisitive wildlife visiting every morning and evening

Con - Inquisitive wildlife ripping through our rubbish and scratching at our tent in the middle of the night wanting our food (they kept coming back so we had to put the food in the car)

Pro - Letting the kids run and play with the other camping kids
Con - Trying to stop the kids from kicking up huge dust balls into other people's tents (and making 'snow angels' in the dirt)

Con - Long drop toilets
Pro - Amazingly they didn't smell!

Pro - Discovering an amazing cave that opened up into a magical rockpool.  The sand in the rockpools was incredibly soft and billowy and we could have stayed all day!

Con - We brought soap to try to bathe, but the soap just wouldn't lather in the salt water and turned into wax!

Pro - Enjoying the simple joys of camping - discovery walks, card games, telling stories in the tent.

Con - Being up half the night with a baby, so she wouldn't wake the rest of the camp ground.

It was tiring but definitely worth it.

And for those of you living in Australia - two things ...

I'm so excited to be attending the "Power of Moms" Sydney Conference on March 16th and 17th. You can win a free pass over at Seven Cherubs and Retromummy!  The retreat is going to be fantastic and I can't wait! I'm even making a list of questions... its getting long.

And I've joined the One Million Kilo Challenge. It's going really well (except for the chocolate cake with chocolate ganache last night). One week down, 9 to go.  My scales are broken, so I'm not sure if I've lost any weight, but my stomach felt flatter this morning, so I'm taking that as a good sign. I'm not really following it properly, just trying to exercise everyday and have healthy snacks instead of chocolate. Anyone else taking part?

Five fantastic books to teach your child resilience

A while ago I went to a presentation about teaching your children to be resilient. It was a good presentation but the best thing about it was the suggested book list at the end. I went straight out and bought them all and each one is fantastic. My kids love them and I love them too.

"Zagazoo" is an absolute must for every new parent - The story is brilliant and the pictures just lovely! One of my favourite children's books of all time

My kids get really sad when Gerald is teased, but you can feel their exhilaration at the end, when he finds his own way in "Giraffes Can't Dance."

My husband was given this book ("Oh the Places You'll Go") by his boss when he started as a financial advisor and its inspiring for children and adults. My favourite line is "With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street... Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you."

"Possum Magic" is an australian classic (happy Australia Day for tomorrow!). Mem Fox is a master storyteller.

And talking about master storytellers, here's another one by Dr Seuss.  "I'll watch out for trouble in front and back sections By aiming my eyeballs in different directions." Good advice!

We have tonnes of books bulging from our bookshelves, but these have been great additions. Although I must say, my kid's favourite is their dad's made up stories - can't beat them (my dad used to tell us made up stories and we loved them too.)

Do you have a favourite storybook?

Pictures at Pittwater

Before Todd and I were married I thought I knew him pretty well. He loves to surf, great with money, a teensy bit tone deaf etc. We have this saying when one of us does something that is slightly annoying but predictable "You knew what I was when you picked me up". For example if I were to eat a block of chocolate in one sitting and Todd were to make a 'comment', I might say "You knew what I was when you picked me up".  Or if Todd 'needs' a surf and then a nap, he might say the same to me. Anyway, when it comes to quilting and creative pursuits, this is certainly a new area that we didn't know about each other. I only just discovered my love of quilting a few years ago, and I've also discovered that Todd has a great eye for design too. In many of my patterns he has made little suggestions that have really added something different (although sometimes he makes suggestions that are wildly impracticle and I have to kindly shoot him down).

Anyway, Todd designed this quilt for his cousin's son, Cohen. He picked the fabric and designed it, and then I sewed it up. It was fun sewing something together where I didn't have to make all the decisions! I like his minimalistic style.

I designed this simple back as Todd was at work by the time I was up to this bit.

I was planning on straight line quilting the whole lot, but I liked texture created by quilting densely in some sections and leaving other sections plain. It kind of looks like the little fish are swimming through sea weed (sorry I didn't iron the quilt - we have been away on a wonderful beach holiday and I couldn't find an iron).

Todd took the pictures as well.

They were taken at Clareville beach on Sydney's northern beaches, where we used to live. Such a beautiful place!  One of the days we went out on a boat with Todd's cousin and his family and the kids had a great time discovering little coves that were only accessible by boat.

I hope you like it, Cohen - sorry its a bit late!

I also wanted to share with you a couple of quilts I've come across lately.

I love how Marit paired my Skittles pattern with a dark background and organic straight line quilting (blogged here).

And you can see Jess' beautiful quilt (using my Fussy Fairytales pattern) over at Quilt Story today. The quilting on this is amazing too.

Pattern Sale

My pattern sale is finished. Thanks to all who bought my patterns.

On another note, my little boy graduated from Nursery (his little class at church) yesterday. I was grinning too :)

Christmas at our house

I've been making Rocky Road again and it's still the best ever! I posted the recipe here if you would like to wow your friends and family (or pretend to make it as gifts and then just slowly devour it by sneaking it piece by piece from the fridge).

I've also been making some cute little biscuit houses. Recipe here. I'm not sure if these biscuits (cookies) are available worldwide, but I'm sure you could easily substitute.

It's a great activity with kids. Sarah made hers all on her own by following her Aunty Kaila!

The women at church even had fun making them (at a christmas craft evening that I helped organise), as well as some easy bunting (and earrings, cards and paper flowers).

Now that our tree is up (I just love the smell of a real tree) and nativity scene carefully placed on top of the piano it really feels like Christmas.

We also have the kids version that they can play with (but ofcourse they're not quite as drawn to that one as the forbidden one on top of the piano).

The best bit is the 'warm fuzzies jar' (bottom right of the photo, explained here). Last night we watched this beautiful animation, and talked about how when we do something nice for someone we are really doing something nice for Jesus. The children loved that idea and this morning we have had lots of helpful acts and kind words.

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you're enjoying this wonderful season.

Grand Designs

I'm making this quilt for my Sister, Kelly. I chose the fabric and design with her specifically in mind. She has a lovely modern artistic flair, and her new home is bright with lots of natural materials (wood, granite and stone). I hope this will fit in well there.

I think she was a bit apprehensive when I first showed her my sketch. Isn't it wonderful how an idea can start as a scribble on a piece of paper, and then be brought to life into something you can hold and enjoy. I actually got the idea for this design from an episode of "Grand Designs". I love that show! I tried to find the peice of sandstone artwork which inspired me, but I couldn't lay my hands on a picture (I think its at the top of these stairs just out of the picture).

I briefly toyed with the idea of leaving out the sashing, but I like my fabrics to have a bit of breathing room around them, and these Alexander Henry June Bug fabrics deserved to shine!

I made up my own templates for the curved blocks, and although they don't all line up perfectly, I'm surprised they line up as well as they do!

This hasn't been a quick project, but I'm thrilled with how its coming along. I will be combining machine and hand quilting for this one. It will be nice to have a hand quilting project again.

Now I just have to motivate myself to get started on the back (not my favourite part). I'm planning on doing some sort of curvy pieced back, but we'll see.

On the move!

At 7 months and less than 6kg, Grace is smaller than most, but it certainly hasn't slowed her down. She's been crawling for over a month, and is now pulling to stand and cruising along furniture. This means I'm constantly following her around picking up choking hazards off the floor. This video was taken a couple of weeks ago, the first time she walked along the couch (try to ignore my extremely high-pitched motherese voice - I was a bit excited).

Grace is also sleeping better, and every time I take her into her room to go to sleep she reaches out to her brother's bed so she can hold onto the side and bounce. It's now part of her bedtime ritual (note the grubby knees where she's been crawling around).

Needless to say, I really haven't been doing much quilting, but I've enjoyed watching Dane painstakingly pick out and place every little bead himself to create this fantastic pot holder. He has such patience and persistence

And Sarah is doing amazingly at school - already doing basic reading. She loves it... except when she dresses up for Christmas dress-up-day, and ends up being the only person in the school dressed up (she was two weeks early). If I was a good mum I would have packed her uniform just in case. Ah well... I'm teaching her resilience :) And she looked soooo cute.

A wonderful surprise

I've just been in Sydney spending time with family for the last couple of weeks, and it was a lovely surprise at the end of the journey (it took 21 hours to drive home with the kids!) to see a copy of "A Quilters Diary" in the mail. I've always wanted a quilting calendar or diary.

Well you can imagine my astonishment when I flipped it over and saw my Whirly Garden quilt on the back!! How cool is that?

And then ofcourse I had to go digging to see if any more of my quilts were inside and ... yes in deedy I found another one - Blowing in the Wind (renamed Baby Mobile). I can't decide whether to actually use this diary or keep it for posterity :) I might just have to go and buy another one to use.

It's reminded me that I should get my but into gear and release the 'Whirly Garden' pattern in my shop (for those who didn't get the magazine) as I've already written it up. I just have to take a couple of pretty pictures for the front of the pattern. I love the quote that was paired with this quilt - "I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read (all the quilts I want to make) and all the friends I want to see - so true.

I haven't been on the internet lately, but I just checked over on Saffron Craig's blog and was blown away by her new fabrics. It's a mix of some of her favourites (and mine too) in new colourways. There's some Magical Lands there in a reds (so beautifully unique)...

... love the squiggly flowers in red...

and a brand spanking new one - Dandelion Kisses. Absolutely gorgeous!

Check out Saffron's blog to see her other amazing fabrics and enter the giveaway while you're there - entries close Friday.  I certainly can't wait to get my hands on some. A little sundress for Gracie perhaps?