Sights and Smells of Summer

Summer is fast approaching and some of these sights and smells are filling my senses.  This beautiful peach coloured rose which usually buds about 4 to the stem.  Looks and smells wonderful.














One of our magnificent star jasmine creepers.  This smell always reminds me that the Melbourne Cup is just around the corner.  It also evokes memories of when our children were small as we had it growing over our balcony in our very first house.

 










This is where it grows and my silly husband who had to get in on the photo.


This is where I depicted the star jasmine at our first home on my crazy quilt entitled "My Crazy Life - So Far".


The seasons first peaches and nectarines.  They are on the kitchen bench and the aroma is filling the kitchen.  Mmmmmm.

 
Around the garden.  The recent rain has done much to improve the floral show this year.  Our bottle brush bushes are absolutely full of blossoms this year and we love the way they attract the birds.

Summer - bring it on.

The Glenvale Block

After about 5 years of languishing in the UFO box  and getting the occasional airing, the crazy blocks for my quilt "My Crazy Life - so far" are finished and ready to be put together.

This is block No 9 "The Glenvale Block".  This block represents where we are living at at the moment.

 The bottle brush which always puts on a lovely display each year and below that a representation of our little pink miniature roses.















The wattle which is in flower around the countryside right now, and our flowering peach tree which is in bud and will look magnificent in the coming weeks.


















Our dove cote which, in reality,  is looking a little worse for wear right now, but I have done a 'before' version here.  The fan is there because - well just because.  It actually breaks up a rather large piece of the white fabric. 














The heart of our home.  The edging of the heart is done in what Robyn Ginn calls the 'row of roses' stitch.  It starts with a cable stitch and the rest of it is too hard to explain here.  I think it is often referred to as 'oyster stitch'. 












On this part of the block, I have done my interpretation of the Toowoomba violet.  Satin stitch is not usually my favourite, but I was happy with how this turned out and won't be so scared to try it again now.  We have a lot of the white daisy in our garden and in spring and summer it is just like a white carpet.  Very pretty.

Crazy Block - Brisbane

This blog post is dedicated to my dear friend Shirley who has endeavoured  to teach me some ribbon embroidery.  These rosebuds were done by instructions via an email from Shirley as we live some 1 3/4 hours away from each other.  Shirley always gives so freely to me and is a wealth of knowledge on anything embroidery.  She is quite the 'star' on Stitchin Fingers as she shows her work from present times and times past.  She kicked off the current frenzy to show your needlecase over on SF.  Anyway, Shirl, I know you will read this and hope these little rosebuds don't disappoint you too much.  Some turned out better than others!
 
 
This is the Brisbane Block and represents that part of our life spent in our very first home.  We were there from 1981 to 1992 and they were truly fun times.  We still keep in touch with our old neighbours.  Both our daughters were born while we lived here and  the memories evoked while stitching and looking at this block are very special.
 
Blackberries, done as per the instructions in Robyn Ginn's embroidery book.  We lived in Blackberry Street.

Crazy Blocks - Roses by another name

Here are just some of the roses I have done on my Crazy blocks from my Crazy quilt, "My life so far"

 

Can you tell I am mad for roses?  My favourite is blue moon, but alas mine died, so will have to replace it one day.  

I have done a whole block dedicated to roses.  I will put a picture up soon of that one.  I love doing the bullion stitch and was shown a wonderful way of doing it at a workshop put on by my quilt group and taught by a lady called Cathy Sotiriou.

Also shown here is a chain stitch rose, cast on stitch rose (blue moon) and silk ribbon (woven ribbon rose).

It seems there are so many different stitches around to do roses and I look forward to experimenting with some more.

Check out the little bees, they were done in the bullion workshop with Cathy also.

A Trip to the Country

On Sunday I took off for a trip to the country to catch up with an old (I mean long time) crafty friend, Shirley.  We have known each other for some 18 years now and we love to get together and bounce ideas off each other.  She looked after me well.  
This is how Shirley's studio looked when I arrived

 and this is how it was after about half an hour. 

We did have some fun.  Shirley was showing me how to do some silk ribbon embroidery.  I love it - and look forward to doing a lot more of it on my crazy blocks.  This is the on-going project of the CQ which I have been working on for about 5 years.  I am determined to get it finished this year.  Check out some of the blocks here.  I will post some more finished ones, and explanations soon - I promise.

Here is a little sampler of silk ribbon stitches Shirley gave me to look at while I experimented.  Love doing the roses.





 Go over and check out Shirleys new blog.  She does the most exquisite embroidery.  Her underwater scenes have to be seen to be believed.

Crazy Block No 3 - revisited

My sewing days have been a little restricted lately, so I am revisiting crazy block No 3.

Life has been very busy around here, and quilting/sewing has taken a bit of a back seat. Every day I try to snatch a couple of minutes to put needle to fabric, but it doesn't always happen.

We have only 3 weeks to wait now for our first grandchild and I have been visiting our daughter off and on over the past few weeks as she has been feeling poorly. We are all getting very excited!

To the left of the saxaphone, I created a "McIntyre" tartan. It is a criss-cross of stem stitches and closed herringbone stitch in the tartan colours in a vague pattern of the tartan. Now, the truth..... it became a tartan because the stripey brown fabric underneath just did not work with this block, so I had to devise a way to completely cover it up. My mother's family originated from Argyll district in Scotland, so I came up with the idea of their tartan!
Aquarius, the "water-bearer", embroidered up in the right top corner there is pretty self explanatory. I am not a great follower of astrology, but whenever I do read the traits of Aquarians, I must admit a lot of them seem to sum up my personality.

The monogram "D" is done in a closed herringbone stitch shown to me by Robyn Ginn. For some reason I love doing herringbone stitch, and it shows up often in my crazy blocks.

It would not be a 'me' block without my favourite flowers, roses. The silk ribbon roses on this block are my very first attempt at silk ribbon embroidery, and I loved doing it. I just followed the instructions in a book and I think this one was called a woven rose - very easy. I also included some chain stitch roses in deep dark red in the heart embroidery. You just go round and round in chain stitch til you build up what resembles a rose. Robyn Ginn also showed me this technique, and what I like about Robyn's work and her instruction is that she uses all the basic stitches to build up her designs. The other roses I have done beneath the silk ribbon ones are bullion roses.

Lastly, the pictorial embroidery at the bottom right, represents a memory of going on Sunday picnics as a child with my mother and her best friend and all the kids piled into a small sedan (no seat belts in those days). We would go to a beautiful little creek which was lined with willow trees. The bullion stitch teddy bear is having cake and tea under the willow tree. The cake and tea came from the local cafe "Hamlyn's Cafe" (just pretend). My paternal grandparents had a cafe in the 1930's - 40's in our small country town, and my grandma did all the cooking as well as rearing five children. Home made cakes, pies, sandwiches etc. She was a legend!!!

The willow tree trunk is built up with stem stitch and the branches are lots and lots of fly stitches. I enjoy doing sketches with outline stitch like the saxaphone and the tea and cake and have done more of this in subsequent blocks.

GOAL - to have this crazy quilt finished sometime in 2009.

Crazy Block No 3 - The "Dianne" Block

This Block is all about Moi. There is no guessing anymore about how old I am huh? Another 54 would be nice, in fact, I may need another 54 years to get through all the UFO's!

When I was about 15 years old, I was wanting to pursue my love of making music. My mother was a talented pianist and I had dropped out of piano lessons. They were too structured towards the classical and I was wanting to play popular music like my Mum. She could not teach me, as she did not read music and played totally by ear. I could also play by ear, but wanted a more portable instument so that I could join a band. My Dad came up with the saxaphone, an instrument he had always loved the sound of. They bought me a sax, and my Mum drove me twice a week to the nearest music shop which was about 20klms away, and I was taught by a wonderful man called Cliff. Cliff loved music from "hip" groups like "Tijuana Brass" and such, and he also encouraged me to join an old time dance band to learn the old time favourites which I loved. For a couple of years I spend Saturday nights playing in a small old time band all around our district. Of course at about age 17 I was looking for something a bit more stimulating. A group of us local teenagers formed a band called "Impulse". We didn't last too long, but had a lot of fun putting together our "gigs".

Much later, when the children had grown up a little, and we were living in Rainbow Beach, I dragged the sax out of it's box again and joined a couple of locals to form a trio. We played at a few functions, but most of the enjoyment was from simply getting together and making music.

I had fun embroidering it on my block and remembering all the joy it has brought me through the years. I still have my original sax and get it out occasionally to blow the cobwebs out.

More about block 3 later..............

Crazy Quilting - Block No 2

Spring has arrived and this seems an appropriate time to introduce Block No 2 of my crazy patchwork project.

Block No 2 is all about flowers. I love flowers! I love looking at flowers, smelling flowers, drawing flowers, growing flowers, embroidering flowers - everything about flowers.

My love of flowers started when I was a very young child and we stayed with our paternal Grandmother. (of ginger biscuit fame - see above post) She often baby sat us when Mum was busy helping out in Dad's butcher shop business. In later years when we were a little older, we stayed with her for an extended period while Mum and Dad took an overseas holiday. She had a typical country garden with standards such as snapdragons, sweet peas, pansies, daisies, lavender, roses and lots of other beautiful and perfumed plants, fruit trees and flowering shrubs. She always had great big vases of flowers around her huge house. Her house was an old army hospital, a remnant of the army's presence in Oakey during the 2nd world war. It had many rooms and lots of lovely nooks and crannies - ideal hiding places to play our favourite game "hide and go seek".

The top left embroidery reads " I love flowers" Can you make it out? It is not such a good photo, I'm sorry. The heart is done in Robyn Ginn's stitch, row of roses. Basically a coral stitch surrounded by a lazy daisy stitch. The text is done in every variety of stitch I could think of that would fit in with the relevant letter. Then there are some little rosebuds underneath done simply with a fly stitch and a lazy daisy stitch.

Gosh, I am sorry about these blurry images! The blue butterfly is a bit of a cheat. It is broderie perse to which I have added some extra embroidery. The hollyhocks under this are once again the "row of roses" technique. I just love this stitch. There is a simple feather stitch heart in the centre of this block to which I have added a very elaborate swag of lazy daisy flowers filled in with colonial knots.

The large white daisies are of course lazy daisy stitch but elongated a bit. The pale blue "flowers" are actually tatted by a friends mother. My friend had a whole bag of these little tatting motifs and kindly passed some on to me. The yellow butterfly in the left of the block is also from this collection. I was very please with how the bouquet of bullion stitch roses turned out (bottom right). The colours are very striking and I was worried if they tied in with the other colours, but I think it worked okay.

Sometimes doing a crazy block is a bit like painting a picture, you have to know when it is finished and I think with "the flower block" I may have just gone past the finishing point. Guess I just got carried away with my favourite topic!

Crazy Block No 1 - Revisited

After reading my post about Crazy Block No 1 "The Oakey" block, I thought I would journal it a bit more and explain how I came to do some of the motifs, stitches etc. Someone may find it interesting, but really, it is for my own records and for my family to look back on.

The little sheep in the top left hand corner were done in a bullion stitch workshop at quilting group with a lady called Cathy Sotiriou. I added some hay bales and grass. These little sheep set the block on the path to being the Oakey block. My dad had sheep, cattle and pigs and had the town's only butchery. There was another large abattoir just outside of town which was more of a wholesale and export abattoir. Our family, my dad and his brothers, operated a small slaughter-house which was situated adjacent to the pig sty. Dad was the "cattle, sheep, pig man" and did all the tending and buying and selling, his one brother was the "slaughter man" (don't envy this job) and his younger brother was the "butcher shop man". It was full on, and my dad started work at approx 4.30 am every day and returned home at dark (earlier in winter ). Sundays were done in shifts, approx 5.00am to feed the pigs, home for lunch and a nap, and back to the pigs in the late p.m.

My sister and I loved going to "the pigs" (apart from the atrocious smell), but we rarely ventured to the slaughter house. Only the once did I visit there when I was about 10 years old, and the memory is forever etched. It's a wonder I still eat meat - no choice really, we were served up red meat morning, noon and night.

At "the pigs" my sister and I loved going into the chook pen and checking for eggs. The chooks were the domain of my dad's younger brother and he collected the eggs and distributed them to family members. There is one of the little chooks, chickens, and old man rooster there on my block.

The grapes were done in a stitch shown to me by crazy patch guru, Robyn Ginn, and are a cable stitch surrounded by a lazy daisy stitch and worked in 6 strands of embroidery floss. Occasionally my sister and I were babysat by my dad's cousin and husband and they had a most wonderful orchard and vegetable garden. I can still taste the sweet, juicy grapes plucked straight from their vines. The pumpkin in the bottom right hand corner also came from memories of their garden, certainly not from ours, as dad was too busy working to be gardening, and Mum was more of an inside house person. Thus, we had a very low maintenance yard and employed a gardener to keep it all tidy. The pumpkin is outlined in stem stitch and filled in with closed herringbone stitch.

We had a lovely old stucco house with a little white picket fence at the front and along the front of the fence we had some miniature pink rose bushes. They were very hardy (needed to be) and tolerated the wicked frosts we had in that part of the country. There they are in the top right hand corner of the block, with bees hovering and the bluebird of happiness dropping by as well.

The bees and roses were also done in the bullion workshop and the bluebird of happiness is a representation of my first jewellry, a little bluebird brooch.

As a child I loved to collect feathers, and there was a plentiful supply of these at the pig sty and around the chook pen. My feathers are shown there in the left bottom block and adjacent is the sheaf of wheat. Apart from all the other things my Dad and his brothers did, they also inherited from their father and puchased for themselves a good deal of wheat farming land. During the 1960's wheat farming was very viable and the weather was very conducive to growing. A good deal of money was to be made from wheat, but the workload was excessive. During harvesting, my dad would come home, have his dinner, push his empty plate away and promptly go to sleep with his head down on his hands at the table!

The heart in the centre is my heart, it still belongs in my old home town.

This block has brought back so many very wonderful memories of childhood, and the process of creating it has brought me so much joy and given me the impetus to explore much more crazy patchwork and embroidery in the future.

Crazy Quilting - A work in progress

This is a project which I started some 3 years ago after doing a "session" with a very talented lady called Robyn Ginn (OAM). OAM stands for Order of Australia Medal, and Robyn received this medal on Australia Day this year for her outstanding contribution to the Arts of quiltmaking and Needlcraft. She is very inspiring and set me on the path to crazy quilting using a pictorial kind of approach.

Originally, the blocks were going to be very traditional using browns, creams, gold and laces, pearls etc.!!!

Well -------- as you can see by Block No 1 it all took a very different path. It is turning out to be a glimpse of my life so far - and I can tell you it's not all that interesting. Hence, what started out to be a quilt of twelve blocks is now down to nine. Even so, the journey has been a lot of fun, and I enjoy attempting all the different stitches and working out the designs to use. In fact, working out what comes next usually takes longer than putting it into stitches.

BLOCK NO 1:
This block is "The Oakey Block". Oakey is the little town I grew up in. It is in a rural area, and my Dad was a wheat farmer, butcher and raised cattle, sheep and pigs. He led a busy life and he instilled in us a solid work ethic. It was a great town to be brought up in and these images bring back memories of experiences as a child.
I am still looking for some egg-like buttons to place under my little chook. The rooster is a design I made up myself and I think he looks pretty grand.

I will put some of the other blocks up over the coming weeks, so hope you enjoy looking at them and of course, if you have some feedback for me, that would be nice too.

Lisa from "Ivory Blush Roses" has inspired me to put them up on the blog. If you are interested in crazy quilting, pop over to her blog and enjoy her wonderful creative work, gorgeous photos and inspirational words.

Sorry, my photos aren't up to Lisa's, but I have a very basic digital camera and I am still learning.
I found Ivory Blush Roses through Allies in Stitches, another blog I love, so go have a look at Allies work too. Fantastic!