Where were you 31.08.1997?

It's a date I cannot forget, my late husband's birthday, we were in England visiting relatives while he was in remission - and Princess Diana died that morning..........

This is Molly, one of my granddaughters, aged ten and enjoying stitching on my 'new' old sewing machine.  This Singer was given to me by a lovely lady, Wendy, who used to help teach at the prison but who has since moved across the ditch.  She gave me the machine when she left and I feel so fortunate to have it. 

This is the model I bought when we first came to New Zealand; no money, clothes dear, fabric cheap and a young neighbour who willingly taught me to sew - perhaps influenced by the presence in the household of two boarders, young men who had moved to Wellington to join the civil service ..... [At school I did domestic science for only a year before I was streamed to maths and science] - so it was a win/win situation.  And I am still sewing.

I mentioned the Margaret Millar class at Symposium '93, she taught it afterwards for those of us on committees and I had a great time.  We did all the preparatory cutting before the class, then played with hundreds of variations of settings - this is the way my blocks wanted to be arranged -

It's not a large piece, so I was able to use all the leftovers for the back -

One of the quilts I made for my five inch squares class resulted in a lot of half square triangles in blues, so I got them out to play and decided on one of my favourite blocks, light -

Or dark

Some of each.  But how to arrange them?

To sash or not to sash, a bit static - so how about

That's better but not quite right

That's it - I like having more dark blocks.  They all have the same centre piece

Oops, that's just pinned - but it is a finished top so I will find a better photo later.  Once again the batik works so well for the border.

I have come to a decision about my floribunda, I made four more blocks for another row and have cut the two borders - surprise, surprise one is a batik!  I will post a photo when I have sewn them on.

And I haven't forgotten the quilt I want to make with the fabric my son brought back
from Italy but I have been using small squares for starters and enders so I now have a large number and I am considering making them into four patch blocks, putting a dark square around and then a light square and then staggering them............. however, I might not have enough four patches sewn, so if I do the Italian top first............

Thank you for stopping by - as Jean Cocteau said "This sickness, to express oneself.  What is it?"  and that was written well before the internet!
June