Starts & Finishes

This past week has seen both finishes and starts – well, quite a few starts actually.  More starts than finishes, definitely, but they won’t all be shown here.  Firstly, I finished the small community cuddle quilt for the local hospital co-ordinated by Toowoomba Quilters club.

I have always wanted to do ‘echo quilting’, so I went around each heart about 1/2’ away.  It looked good, but I think it made the little quilt a bit stiff and I could have spaced the quilting a bit wider . It is 24” x 24” finished.

Next finish was done because there was a time frame.  I seem to work better when I have to have something finished by a certain time!
“The Uh-Oh Bra” is a take off of “The Ahhh Bra” which is advertised as being the best u-beaut bra on the market.  Well this poor ol’ one has seen better days. 
I painted it purple  which was the theme for the “Cuppa for Cancer” fund raiser at Toowoomba Quilters this year.  You can read all about the great day we had and all the decorated bras HERE.  I used Dye na Flow fabric paint  and then went to town to destroy it.  Hitting it with the heat gun almost set it on fire and I thought I was back in the 60’s woman’s lib movement burning bras.  It caught on fire and was quickly put out.  I then put the heat gun away and got out the scissors.

Our Art Quilt Group is doing portraits at the moment and I decided on a self portrait.  Scary……
Shirley manipulated the photo for me on Gimp and I have traced off the outline.
The plan is to free motion quilt it from the back through the drawing.  Free motion quilting is my nemesis.  I have watched all the you-tubes, plenty of DVD’s (which sent me to sleep), and read all the hints and tips I can, but still I seem to be hopeless at free motion. Oh, I have also done a workshop!!  I know, we are supposed to practice and that is what I am doing at the present time before embarking on the portrait.
But…. all I seem to do is a mess with it.   My attempts are far too ugly to be showing here on the blog.  Will keep practising.


WIP – Another collage journal cover started.  This time I wanted to experiment with image transfer and chose the gel medium method. After a lot of messing around and a lot of You Tube videos watched (latest addiction), I ended up with this

The image didn’t come out very strongly, but I kind of like the ethereal look of it and it’s ragged little edges. Lots more fun to be had with this yet.
Gotta run now and practice my free motion!!

A Hard Day’s Night

Backup, Backup, Backup.  It is drummed into us.  Still we sometimes become complacent.  Which is what happened to us. 
Since we have got back from our trip to the south several things have gone awry.  One of them was that we lost all our business data going back to last financial year (June 2012).  I guess we weren’t too worried about our computer crashing as it was only a couple of years old.  AHem.  They don’t make ‘em like they used to apparently. 
So, my friends, I have been busy trying to get back on track and waiting around for technicians to see if they could retrieve anything. They retrieved some, but not a lot.  Now we have a new computer and it is a matter of re-entering as much as we can.  Nearly there……

(Some soothing photos!!!)
In between the madness and mayhem I have been doing a little crafting and surfing of the net.  My latest addiction being ‘You Tube”.  It is so amazing what you can see being done on ‘You Tube’ !!
One thing I have been watching is very talented people art journaling.  So I thought I would like to do some pages and make a little booklet.  Then I had the bright idea of covering it and giving it to a friend who just turned 70.

My messy dining room table.  Oh how I would love to have another space just for fiddling around with art stuff.  No more room left in this house!!

Linda’s journal cover (opened out).  I am loving doing some fabric collage at the moment and I think hand stitching  makes it look very unique.  It was fun to practice going around the flowers and doing the embellishment on them with the free motion.  Gotta do more of that!

The magazine page which inspired the journal cover

The little journal inside.  I used pamphlet stitch to sew it all together.  It was easy peasy and such fun to make.
Another friend is turning 50 soon.  Yvonne, if you are reading this log out now!!!!

She is having a blue and red quilting party on Thursday so I made her this collage card to go with her blue and red fabrics I have got for her.
Last week Toowoomba’s annual show was held and we went along with our daughter and little grandy, Lilian.
Here are some photos of her enjoying her day and entertaining Nana and Grandad!

Back to it

Our holiday to the Great Ocean Road is beginning to be a bit of a haze now, but it was so much fun.
  (Bay of Islands)
 Since we have got home and got back into it we have had nothing but misfortune with technology  grrr1!!@##@  Firstly our main computer bit the dust (had to buy a new one), then Telstra decided to cut the phone service in our area for 22 hours with no warning (no internet).  After this it just kept happening.  We thought our router was broken  when we lost the internet the very next day.  No… our server was off the air for 24 hours.  Then…..there is more…. our electricity supply was cut for a whole day.  Still we have not been able to get hold of a technician to retrieve our files and set us up properly on the new computer.  Will try again after Easter.  Just gonna chill out now.
What can a girl do when the electricity gets cut.  Answer – not much.  She did manage to paint and play around with some up coming journal pages. 
On a brighter note, here are some pictures of the magnificent coast line of the Great Ocean Road.  Our trip was magical and my 5 star sister announced after about 10 days that she ‘loved camping’!!  Very funny, but good in that we can now organize another trip with my sister and b-i-l for the future.

London Bridge                                               The Arch

Mutton Bird Island                                          The 12 Apostles

The Grotto
As soon as the power came back on Wednesday afternoon,  I got to and sewed up this little Easter bag I had cut out.  It is for Lilian and we will give it to her Sunday morning with some little goodies inside.  This will be a one off as it was very fiddly diddly.  A very cute pattern by ‘Melly and me” designs and the pattern is just the size of a postcard which has all the details and pattern pieces inside.

Does anyone else suffer with ‘stumbling at the finishing line’ syndrome?  It seems that when I am on the last leg of a project and just want to get it done before any more distractions come my way, all manner of things go wrong!!!  Finally I got the fiddly part of the top of this bag done, but don’t look close – Don’t, I said!!

Our garden has managed to survive in our absence due to the massive amount of rain Toowoomba had.
One of the loveliest flowers we have in the garden at this time of year is this deep red dahlia.  It never disappoints.

Down in the back yard (where I rarely go these days) my husband discovered this tree flowering.  We don’t know what it is but it is so pretty and unusual.

I am not a zoo person, so when I see our native animals in the wild I get very excited.  We were lucky enough to see heaps of koalas in the Otway NP (Victoria).  One might say they are far from extinct in this particular area.
We didn’t see them til early in the morning and they were all asleep.  Even so, doesn’t this sleeping koala look the cutest??  He has his little arms crossed  awwww.


Black Kangaroo, Griffiths Island near Port Fairy  Vic. She may have a joey in the pouch, but the trees got in the way when I photographed her.  Hard to photograph wild animals!!! 
Lastly a couple of camping scenes for your entertainment.

Sister blowing up bed and in her fashionable fly hat (the flies were extremely bad in the dry heat!!)

Brother in Law trying to stay dry in Mt Gambier SA

Too short for this camp. 

Bad smell at this camp.
Gotta love the great outdoors.
Til next time, happy stitching – I hope to be doing much of it in the coming weeks. (if I can get away from my latest distraction ‘you tube’.)

Back Soon

What have I been doing?  Not much,  but I seem to busy all the time.
Piecing is not my forte at all but I did this Jewel Box Block for a secret project.  The recipient doesn’t have a blog or read blogs so I am pretty safe to show it here.  She is 70 years old in April.

The background is a tone on tone black and we were to use jewel colours in batik or similar.  It was a fun block to make and should look stunning when all the blocks are together.
This past Monday I celebrated another birthday.  Wish they would stop coming around so darned quickly.  Anyway, we can’t stop them, so we may as well enjoy them.  I had a lovely day with my friends doing coffee and then lunch with Shirley, followed by some retail therapy.

We went to coffee on Valentine’s Day so all the coffees were presented with the heart motif.  Too cute.

Tomorrow we are off on another adventure in the company of my sister and her husband.  We are going in our camper and my sister and hubby are tenting it.  They haven’t camped since about 1970 when they were just teenagers.LOL  this is going to be really funny.  My sister is a 5 star girl normally.   (She is looking a bit worried here  LOL)
It should be loads of fun.  Back in about 4 weeks.  Ciao.

The Longest Long Weekend

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. 
T
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.

Joys in Life

It has been so darned hot this past week it has been difficult to think about picking up sewing.  Soon I will have air conditioning in the sewing room so that will help in summer. My sewing room is on the western side of the house so is very very hot in summer. 
Some of the joys of summer though are extra day light  and blooms in the garden.
Our agapanthus are still putting on a nice display and they are such a glorious colour.

Here are some other things still blooming regardless of the heat wave.

Hubby has started up a vegie garden again now that he has a bit more time on his hands.  We have beetroot growing and that will be a joy to eat.  We enjoy it just grated raw onto a salad, but also love it pickled.

We also have lettuce, zucchini, cucumber and tomatoes growing.
The biggest joy in our life at the moment is our little grandie, Lilian. 
Lilian loves to paint and draw.  Here is a bird she drew and I think it is fantastic for a little girl who has just turned 4.

Isn’t it wonderful?  It has a beak and eyes and wings and even a crest.  Perhaps she is going to be artistic and crafty – I would love that!
Here she is in her fave dress at the moment, her ‘ballerina dress’.  She has always had a cheesecloth wrap with her at bedtime and when she needs it for comfort.
She calls it ‘sooky’.  Sooky goes everywhere!

Sorry about some of my close up shots.  Still getting used to the macro etc. on the new camera.
Until next time (when I hope to have something stitchy to show you), enjoy the joys in your life.