Dyeing Fabric and Wool

I'm trying to clear up some loose ends around the sewing studio, and with a 2-day class at the end of the month, have started organising items on the needs list. I wanted some background fabric that will have pieces of colour added on top in a mosaic form.
Time to dye and use something pretty ugly!
Here is the fabric, and some plain white homespun wool I put into the same dye-bath.

 As I was using the Dylon permanent fabric dye, mixed in a bucket, I was able to dye both at the same time. It takes about an hour with occasional stirring.
This is the end result:

The fabric on the left was in the dye-bath for the recommended period of time, the fabric on the right was left in overnight.
I made myself some slippers with the homespun wool:

The pattern is a free one from Ravelry.
I tried to make another pattern to felt knitted slippers, but using homespun Romney wool doesn't felt very successfully!

A New Book for Inspiration

Sometimes it's really hard to think of a quilting design to use in a quilt you have made. I really like to design the quilting as part of the overall design, but sometimes I'm in such a hurry rush to get a quilt finished (there are so many other things to do after all) that I just can't figure it out.
Yesterday I had a short course for work to attend in Wellington. Fortunately for me, there was time to visit Minerva bookshop in Cuba Street. I used a Christmas voucher to buy this book:

use Amazon's look inside feature. 

There are lots of ideas and I especially love the Peony quilt on page 56 (it is also on the back page).

I hope you are finding lots of inspiration for your quilting!

Stash UFO

I found a small pile of quilt tops and backs in a wardrobe a few weeks ago. It's time that these were finished and sold. So here is one I have finally finished - the blocks were left over from a very large quilt I made a couple of years ago. Actually the original quilt was too big, and I had to take off the flying geese blocks along both sides - they have been used here. I used almost all of the fabric up including having it on the back.

girl's lap quilt - measures 38" x 51.5"

Here is a close up of the quilting - I started with a feather heart just above the center, then quilted row by row.

Off to do some sewing on a quilting group challenge quilt which needs to be finished by next month.

A New Chicken House

My parents came up last week from Blenheim to stay a few days and on the back of their little truck, Dad brought a new chicken house he had built. We finally got it in place today after I painted it on the weekend.
It's  a Jubilee House - painted in royal colours of red, white and blue:

Front door-way facing north to get maximum warmth in winter

4 internal nesting boxes - we'll see if the bottom ones get used!

Self-feeders - especially useful if I'm working late or going to be away for a short time

The flock were very suspicious tonight, even though I feed them outside the new house - I guess it'll only take one to use it on a cold night.
Also made up 4kgs of feijoas into jam this morning - mmm! delicious!

ANZAC Collection Title

When I exhibited my ANZAC quilts at Tote & Gloat, I needed a title. After much searching, and research, I came up with Lest we forget : remember & honour. I was going to just laminate it but decided to make one with fabric.
So here it is finished ready for hanging:

It's not competition quality, but I think it looks OK - has a New Zealand flavour in the quilting designs which I traced onto Solvy to get them to fit properly. I tried tracing them with fabric carbon paper but it  didn't work too well and I was a bit worried about using something dark in case it didn't come off later (I've had that happen where the 'dye' was trapped under the quilting thread).

Dinner and a Quiz Evening

Last night my quilting group, Quilty Pleasures, gathered at my place for a relaxing dinner and quiz evening. We invited our partners as well and had a great time. We all had to find 5 questions, one of them being a multi-choice, on a chosen topic. It was interesting to hear the questions from everyone (what they had chosen), and then to find out how much we didn't know!
I made the pre-dinner nibbles.
So here is the corn bread (thank you Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage):

This recipe makes quite a big bread, very filling and would be fantastic with soup. I gave everyone some to take home as well.
Next I made some ricotta using citric acid instead of vinegar or lemon juice.
Here are the curds forming:

And this shows the curd being strained:

From 2 litres of milk I had just over a litre of whey. That's not wasted, I used some in the cornbread and the rest I'll use in scones or something.
I also made a Moroccan hummus and had chutneys from my own produce (the fresh fig and a pear chutney, my own Kasundi relish and a feijoa 'cheese'). The table looked great and had interesting flavours:

Another thing to celebrate:
This is my 500th post - WooHoo!

Happy Mother's Day

To all you beautiful, caring, loving Mother's - thank you for being caring, loving and beautiful. My wish is for you to know that you are loved!

Sharing a gorgeous lily from a beautiful bouquet of flowers from my dear Derrick!
Figs!
I have a large number of figs - some are small-ish because we haven't had much rain to plump them up, but the tree seems to have grown higher and wider in the last 2 months and as a consequence there is a lot of fruit:

Too many to eat fresh, so I made some fresh fig chutney for the first time. The initial tasting was delicious, but I do have to wait for a month for the flavours to develop. I found a couple of recipes on the internet and did a little bit of adjustment to add spices which I like.
I think I'll be making some more :)