My dear brother-in-law decided to choose the long weekend in January to take us on a road trip!! We travelled west to Barcaldine and then we were meant to go east to Emerald and pick up some work equipment for my BIL and continue east and south to home. Ahem…. no one counted on the rain that was going to deluge the east coast and throw our plans into disarray. The upshot is we ended up spending an extra 4 nights in Roma while waiting for the creek to go down in Chinchilla which was cutting the main highway to Toowoomba.
We are lucky!! Only our plans were changed – this cyclone Oswald has changed some people’s lives forever. Our hearts go out to all those people who have lost everything. Sadly, there have been some lives lost as well. After the events of 2010/2011, and now this, it is going to be a long way back for some areas of Queensland.
(Historic pubs in Roma)
I was also able to revisit the Ace Drapery shop in Roma (three times). A small purchase was made when the man found the DMC No 8 threads in amongst all the other rubble.
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Sorry about the blurry photo. This aisle is now fully blocked with stuff. (Photo taken in 2011) The DMC was in another aisle) The shop has got worse in regards to disorder. The poor man needs help!!
Before I left, I was powering along with a bit of arty stuff and sewing. Since coming back I have been all out of whack, but just so thankful we have all our possessions unlike some people in the north where whole houses were just washed away.
I saw some ‘fabric paper’ on Annet’s Fat Quarter blog which she got from Barbara’s site here, and thought I would try some and show our art quilt group how it was done. Here is my effort.
Yes, there are wrinkles and one broken area, but I like the texture. I used dye na flow fabric paints for the colouring but you could use watered down acrylics. Now it can be cut up to use in projects or embellished further with stamping, stencilling, stitching, or anything your heart desires.
The Toowoomba Quilters are holding an Open Day on Saturday 16 February and they put forward a challenge. It was a table runner using two fabrics which were chosen for you to use, and you could add others of your own.
I had been wanting to make a table runner using some Australian Botanical fabrics I purchased some time back. When I got the compulsory fabrics only one of them looked remotely like blending in. The other one was, well…. ugly.
This is the ugly piece (furnishing fabric) after a little tea dyeing. Then I got stuck into it with a gold shiva stick and paints. It eventually blended in and I used it only in the binding.
This is the end product. The lattice is the other challenge fabric.
Handmade tassels were a requirement of the challenge. Thank you to Shirley who coached me on the tassels. They have a glittering gold hood. I used a red botanical for the backing and labelled it with a piece of the back of the ugly one “Runna Botanica”.
The challenge runners will be on display at open day and a small cash prize will be presented to the one with the most viewer votes.
