After much agonising...

... I removed the darkest blocks from the quilt - they are the ones along the bottom. They had the most black in them and I think the quilt looks more harmonious without them. It is now all picked up in numbered rows for sewing together ......hopefully sometime soon!

Rusty

Seems I'm a tad rusty re the whole quilt making process. I made 120 blocks but hadn't done the actual maths or measured the bed! Decided it would be good to make it the correct size for my bed so using there is an option. Turns out I needed more blocks - making those extra 12 blocks was hellish. Anyway on completing the last one I realised I had made no allowance for borders! duh
So do I take off a row on both sides or just make the quilt a little bigger? I could make a lap quilt for the sofa with the redundant blocks plus borders. And...which border fabric do I use. Decisions decisions.
But I do like it - it's nice and old worldly, has that antiquey look. I think just a narrow border would look best.

Therapy

So now I'm doing some therapeutic quilt making - trying to get all the 60 blocks I have cut finished so I can sew the quilt together before the end of the holidays. Wherever I lay things out, the cat seems to find them, sit on them and rearrange.

Autumn

I came home from Tauranga to find these things all over the lawn - feijoas! A sure sign of autumn. 

The hydraengas are turning all sorts of wonderful colours and the white rose is having once last glorious bloom before winter.

About Mary

My sister in law, Mary Anne, passed away on Monday 5th April as a result of a long battle with breast cancer. I had been cutting the remainder of my quilt on Sunday afternoon when I made a sudden decision to go and visit her. I drove over to Tauranga, getting there before dark and sat with Mary for a couple of hours, she even said hello to me. Apparently I was the last person she spoke to. When I left her she was stable but her breathing deteriorated during the night and she died at 5.15 on Monday morning.  To know Mary was a privilege. She was one of life's treasures. She was up front about everything and great fun to be around. She leaves behind her three children - Nick, Sam and Emma and her partner Roger who loved her dearly. Ka kite ano Mary.

Above: Mary's last night at Paengaroa.
Below: The Knitters - Oma, Mary Anne, Christine. Taken in 2008.

February

February means heat and back to work - neither of which are conducive to creativity. Plus a family wedding thrown in the mix, it's been a busy few weeks. I took the pre-wedding photos and will not be giving up my day job any time soon.

 The wedding flowers were beautiful - apparently the florist had books of different shades of pink roses you can choose from - imagine that. The roses were the most delicate pink, darker around the edges.

Today I finished all the blocks I had cut - 56 altogether. So I laid them out and am pleased with the effect. You can see darker patches where I have made myself use more mid-tone fabrics. I think it will make a great bed quilt and would like it to be quite large so am going to have to do a whole lot more cutting. Oh dear.

And to top it all off it's tomato season! I've have had to halt all other activities twice now to  cook up huge woks full of tomatos - home grown tomatos are so sweet. Delicious with lots of basil.

Horrors

I found another kiwi quilters blog with a similiar name - twenty cent mixture - so I decided to change the name of my blog - she's been doing it longer than me. Spooling relates to both quilt making, photography - remember when we had film on spools? - and life in general. Mine always feels as if it's unspooling. So anyway, change is good, I might just change the name regularly.