A dark, dark day for NZ

No doubt many of you have heard about the Christchurch earthquake yesterday that has destroyed a beautiful city and taken so many lives.  It was bad enough Christchurch suffered a devastating earthquake in September and then we had the mining tragedy where so many lives were lost just weeks after.  Now, Mother Nature has shown us her ferocity again and attacked without thought or regard....a mother killed as she clung to her baby in her arms, people crushed as buildings fell on their cars or the bus they were in, office workers trapped in their buildings, unbearable pain and sadness amongst the tragedy.

Our iconic beautiful cathedral in the heart of Christchurch, before & after

Photos courtesy of the TV 3 news website

The government is reporting that it is our worst national disaster.  Stay strong, fellow Cantabrians. our thoughts are with you.

A surprise and a finish

Finished the baby quilt a couple of days ago, so just in time for the baby shower on Sunday. I just used the blue print from the front on the back as it is kinda cute for a kid with all the bugs and butterflies. I just did straight line quilting along the seams and around the outside of the small boxes. Since it was a gift I didn't want to stuff it up with FMQ as I have not had much practice with that.

And today when I got home from work there was a package waiting for me. I won a giveaway a couple of weeks ago at Canton Village Quilt Works. Nine luscious fat quarters of Pat Bravo's Paradise. This really is just beautiful. To tempt me more Pat enclosed a catalogue of Art Gallery fabrics. Oh my, such lusciousness to drool over!! I guess this is what my hubby feels like when he opens a Repco catalogue or Supercheap Auto catalogue lol

Baby quilt top done

With the hot weather this past weekend, it was much cooler to stay inside and sew.  Remember my friend who is pregnant...well her baby shower is in 2 weeks time so I pieced and sewed the top to the quilt I am going to give her. As I don't know the sex at this time I wanted to make something in bright primary colours that would suit either a boy or a girl.

I used Elizabeth Hartman's Frames baby quilt as a base and just mixed it up a little differently.  It looks lovely and bright in real life. The photo seems to pick up the lime batik more than it looks on the actual quilt top and has washed out the other colours. I hope to get it finished this weekend.

Can it get any hotter?

It is so hot and muggy here at the moment.  It's kind of weird knowing that places like Texas are even getting snow and we are in such a heat wave. What is going on with the weather in the world?

Even the girls are hot...

So we got a shearer in to give them a haircut!

Yay, much cooler. Thanks Mum!!

That giant triffid you can see in the background of the photos above is a self sown pumpkin in my compost bin. It has totally taken over all 3 compost bins and the back yard. Covered in pumpkins!

Postage Stamp Quilt top all done

I have been enjoying the Postage Stamp Quilt Along that Rachel has been hosting from P. S. I Quilt.  I used Keiki Tweet Tweet and Kona Snow. It didn't take too long to sew all the blocks together and I love how this has turned out. Now I just have to decide how to quilt it. I have several blocks left over that I will use for a pieced back.

It was a great ad filler-in!! I was watching a movie on TV and was pinning and matching my squares while the movie was on. As soon as the ads came on, I would hurtle out to the sewing machine in the next room and there was just enough ad time to sew a block together! It was one of those quilts that I  had to do "just one more block", so I ended up going to bed about midnight last night!! There is a lot of crap on TV after 11pm if you don't have Sky TV, I have realised. Was a little hard to get up at 5.45 am this morning, I must admit.