Aloha!

Warning; photo heavy!!

For the last (nearly) two weeks,  I have been a very lucky and happy Ganma spending time with our newest little grandbaby girl, Olive. 

Quite an adventure, too, as our son and his partner now live near Honolulu where her work is based.

Olive turned 4 weeks old while I was there, so she really is a newbie!

Of course the attraction was the wee baby girl and the cuddles, and giving her parents a bit of help and down time.

But we did also do a bit of sightseeing. After a day to rest after my flight, we drove to the eastern coast of Oa'hu, stopping at the beaches to soak up the warmth,  paddle in the equally beautifully warm water, change nappies, and so on.

(In the beach photos I'm just going by the location given with the photo on my phone. I don't know if the actual beaches are called what I've written, or if it's just the general area of where we were.)

Punalulu 

We even whale watched, an event I didn't catch on camera, and okay the whales were out to sea but we could see the splashing and the odd fin.

And a big turtle sunning himself —

Turtle at Kaneohe 

 

Haleiwa beach

We then had 3-4 days of really bad weather,  a Kona storm, not quite so bad where we were, but it caused some quite bad damage around the islands and blocked off some of the areas we had visited. 

Never to mind,  there was a baby to tend, and Ganma got her fair share of time with her. 

I'd been looking forward to watching my son play rugby for his Honolulu team but sadly all the grounds were closed.

Walking the dogs during a fine spell

We went for a drive another day, in another direction where my son surprised me by delivering me to a Fabric Mart at Pearl City, which apparently had the best selection of Hawaiian fabrics around. 

I had regretted not getting a few pieces at the Dole Plantation shop on our previous travels, so it was thoughtful of them to hunt this place down for me. Yes, I made a few purchases, including a fun children's print my daughter-in-law picked out for Olive.....hmmm that's pressure to actually do something with it!

This was followed by another coastal drive, on the west coast this time. The ocean was really churned up after the stormy weather and the water was not the beautiful Hawaiian colour it usually is, apparently. There was a lot of driftwood on the beach and the kids were busy building wee huts and structures with it.

Waianae.

It was a very interesting look around. Definitely not an affluent area, many homeless camps, the hills and mountains were fascinating. Usually not as green,  I believe, and we could see where waterfalls had been a few days before. 

These photos were in the Waialua area (with my son) —

A close up of part of the fascinating mountain range - 

The last big outing was a get together at Waikiki, taking advantage of the overlap of visits between myself and another grandparent, plus a few friends. 

The beach was beautiful and I can see why it's such a tourist attraction —

It was Spring Break and the kids were really taking advantage of the pounding surf.

As you can see - quite a lot busier than the other beaches we visited!

Below, the odd looking Banyan tree which sends roots down from the branches to become the interesting trunk formation you see here —

The park had a few statues. The restaurant we dined at was named after Queen Kapi'olani, photo below. I loved the way all the statues had Lei draped on them —

View out towards Diamond Head from the restaurant. 

And all too soon, my visit was over! How lucky was I?! Hopefully it won't be too long until I see sweet baby Olive again ♥. 

I had to have one last tourist photo at the airport —

Leaving Auckland Airport on the last leg of my trip home —

'til next time,

Happy stitches,

Raewyn

My Claytons SAHRR 2025

Here in New Zealand (and Australia too, I think) there used to be an advert for a drink called Claytons with the byline, the drink you have when you're not having a drink. The word Claytons rapidly became part of every day language to mean something you're doing when you're not really doing it.....or similar renditions. 

I feel like some of my projects are Claytons projects.....I'm doing a quiltalong but at my own rate, or a challenge but I don't join up with the link parties, or make my own rules for a sewalong. I pretend I'm taking part,  but aren't really!

The other instance is that I start a new project,  but it isn't really a new project because it uses scraps, stash, or orphan blocks.

(OH the things we tell ourselves!)

I've realised that I love the inspiration,  I love to be making something......hmmmm starting something new is always nice.....I love visiting blogs and seeing how different people are interpreting the theme, but I feel bad when I don't join in physically,  comment, link up, or have breaks to the routine......this has happened a lot over the last couple of years and so I've developed this thing of sitting on the sideline, participating but not quite participating in a Claytons sort of way.

Which brings me to last year's SAHRR (January 2025). The annual Stay At Home Round Robin, hosted by Gail at quiltinggail. You stay at home and your work stays at home; as opposed to many Round Robins where the quilt (often) travels from maker to maker for each new round.

Gail and her team post regular prompts for each round. 

So in my Claytons way, I joined in.

I started with an orphan block. You may remember that in the past, I test sewed patterns for Juliet of Tartankiwi designs. This block is part of her Singing In The Rain  collection and I sewed it back in July 2023. I always wanted to come back and sew all the Dancing in the Rain girls and the cloud, but never did.

I decided that this was an ideal time to use it.

The first round's instruction was to make a King's Crown block OR a block that begins with our initial. 

To be honest I can't remember the exact logic behind my choice, and my notes are back home where I'm not right now.....I will come back and update the details at some stage.....I'm sure it was something to do with Royal (my initial) which I thought quite cleverly tied in with the King's Crown idea too. And I think I elongated it to form the frame -

Round Two asked for Half Square Triangles which was nice and straightforward-

The third prompt was Stars. I felt it was the perfect time to bring some of the red liberty fabrics back in. And a pop of colour with the gold.

You can see that I've also decided to do chains heading out to the corners. 

The next instruction was to make a split block. Basically slice a square of fabric, add in a strip of fabric and sew it back together again. I had some ideas for this round but my work hung untouched on the wall for quite some time.

Fast forward to this year and my Claytons participation of the Chookshed Challenge AND a monthly challenge with the Thursday sewing ladies at my work. 

While I was busy sewing my Show and Tell blocks, I leader-ended my simple rectangle split blocks.  

Whoops I forgot to take a photo of the individual blocks but you can sort of see them here-

The narrow gold strip finishes at half an inch.

And joined to the centre-

The photo doesn't show the fabric variation in the border very well and you could say that it would have been a lot simpler to use one long strip of light blue, one of gold and one of the dark blue......but where is the scrappiness fun in that?

I feel like I will probably be tempted to come back and swap out the latest cornerstones for a triple patch,  rather than a 4-patch, but I'll see what happens when the time comes.

Even though this latest round frames the quilt quite nicely,  there are two more rounds to plan. I'd like some more red and gold. 

So this is where I'm at with last year's Stay At Home Round Robin. One day there could even be an update!

Sorry I got a little wordy,

'til next time, 

Happy stitches,

Raewyn

Some (sort-of) finishes

The Country Yard held its New Year's Launch on Saturday - I've been sharing lately about trying to get my Show and Tell quilt finished in time for it.

As time went on, with lots of life getting in the way, I realised that the best I could hope for was to get it to a 'presentable state' rather than completely finished.

That was a realistic goal which really took the pressure off me. (And being stubborn, I like to quilt my own quilts even though I don't always have the time or the skills for it!!)

If I could master Edge to Edge designs on my Sweet 16, it would make life easier. One day maybe.

Prior to quilting  - yes it's a big quilt! (The pattern has other size options but of course I went for the largest!) —

Anyway, I've had lots of requests to show the completed top and here it is —

The quilting I did achieve was outlining all the animals and their quilts, quilting the mini quilts, some in-the-ditch quilting to stabilise it, and then basting around the outside. And trimming the outer edges to 1/4".  (All the pins were removed!)

At the shop, we hung it above the door as it has great impact there. The incomplete quilting wasn't very noticeable, and quite a few of the ladies I spoke to on our open day didn't even realise that it wasn't quite finished.

(The twins' family has claimed this quilt when the quilting is done and shop has finished with it.)

I quilted the mini quilts with a variety of techniques - some were meander style quilting, others had a little bit of ruler work and some were cross hatched.

They don't need anything else doing to them, but I would like to quilt some features in the animals and of course come up with a suitable background fill.

I couldn't resist taking a photo of these four ladies discussing it from across the mezzanine floor —

[As encouraged by Andree, I have now linked up to her regular I Quilted This linky party, which celebrates free motion quilting (FMQ), ruler work and walking foot done on a domestic machine or custom quilting on a long-arm. I use a sit-down Sweet 16 for my quilting. You can visit Andree's linky party *here*.]

The launch was a good day; it was great to show off our new projects and ideas.

Another thing I completed for the launch was this bag using the blocks I shared in my last post—

It's a Sewbe pattern and once I'd made the blocks, it came together really nicely.

The pattern asks for sewn fabric ties but I preferred to use the cord - luckily I had the perfect colour at home.

The above blocks also appear in another Sewbe quilt which we are making as a sewalong - more on my version in another post.

I keep coming across things I haven't shared......last year a few online friends and I decided to make a Temperature Tree.

It used the high temperature from each day, each branch is a month and each leaf is a day. It was fun to do it and I actually kept up quite well and finished it not long after this year had started!

I would have liked to have done it with the low temperatures as well as the highs but I'll have to save that for another project....and besides I haven't quilted my 2020 temperature quilt yet!

It was interesting to make this with the Australian ladies whose daily highs were right off MY chart!

I have yet to decide how to finish this - I'm thinking it will probably end up in a frame?

I know I've bombarded you lately with Lily and George's sewing adventures (with school holidays and their mother attending a 2 week training course I've seen rather a lot of them recently) but I have one last make of theirs to show you.

Lily made this little pouch prior to making the cushion of my last post. At the time George was piecing a 'blanket' which I don't have a photo of.

Four squares of fabric and a strip for the flap. Totally designed by her. I suggested sewing Right Sides Together to neaten it, and of course I cut the fabric for her.

She chose the pretty button which I sewed on but it took a while to work out the loop for the button. I was going to use some cord or something but then came across the wee hair tie which worked perfectly!

I think I'll sign off here before I find more things to talk about!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Raewyn