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’.)

Another Year Passing By

As another year passes quickly by, it reminds me of my goal each year to become more organised around the home.

(Pile of magazines needing culling)
Life seems to overwhelm me sometimes and the clutter around me doesn’t make me feel any better.

(Where to start?? – June 2011) – (Love the look)

(Scrap box before)
This year, I believe, I achieved a lot in the organisation department.  Thanks to my friend, Shirley, we got into the sewing room where she introduced me to the plastic box.  Not that I didn’t know about them, I just didn’t know where to start with the sorting.  She had some great ideas and I am still working on amalgamating all of the stuff into their respective categories.

(Boss Shirley)

(Some progress)
Each year I start with the idea of disposing of an item a day and this has worked very well.  It usually fizzles out, so I have kicked it off again – right now!  I have discovered this website “The Organised Housekeeper” and she has the de-cluttering 52 week challenge right HERE, which I am gong to attempt to follow.  (Hope it goes better than the TAST challenge LOL).  Of course, we have planned trips once again for 2013, so I will have to double up some weeks to achieve the goal.

During the past couple of years I have made some of these embroidered felt pin cushions which I was going to sell at our exhibition.  When I showed a friend, she bought the lot and I didn’t get around to making any more.  Shirley has gifted me some of her embroidery wool ‘double ups’ and I have made a few more since, and intend to make some more. 

This past Sunday was our precious little princess’ 4th birthday.  Where did that time go?  Of course, being a princess, she wanted a princess party.

The princess and her princess cake her Mummy made.

Princess Lilian with her new Doctor’s set – she loves playing doctors and calls her cubby house her “Goctor’s Office”

Princess Lilian in her tiara.

Learning from Friends

It has been a week of learning and doing.  Finally a little craft time.
Firstly there was my TAST project to do.  After a couple of days pondering and tweaking the design I have come up with ‘The Look’ (named by Shirley because she thought it looked a bit like an eye)

I was having a devil of a time trying to keep those french knots in a straight line and under my control.  So, I turned to the ‘master of french knots’, aka Shirley, and she put me on the straight (sorry about the pun) and narrow.  Then, most of them went straight and I learned the correct way.  It made me really confident about the stitch and I ended up quite enjoying them.  Also enjoyed doing the beading and learnt a few tricks of the trade from a video I recently purchased called “Bead it like you mean it” by Lyric Kinard
Here is the journal entry for french knots where you will see I had other ideas too.

Teresa over on All things Vintage was very supportive when I couldn’t quite ‘get’ a pattern I was trying to make.
It was Isabella’s journal from Faeries in my Garden and for the life of me I could not understand what to do.  I knew Teresa had made this one so I contacted her being too embarrassed to contact the people from Faeries and looking like  too much of a dumb cluck.  In the end, it was all too much and like the song goes, I did it my way.  It is okay and I know the birthday girl recipient is going to love it anyway, cause I made it for her.

Anneliese from Stitching Lady has inspired me to try my hand at stamping and colouring my backgrounds.  I have done a little bit of this but may now start doing a few of my TAST samples on my ‘new fabric’.  The kitchen table was turned into an art space yesterday and I painted some backgrounds.  Now to embellish, stamp etc.

Kitchen table after lunch.

Some pretty washing.

The formy thingy I bought at a craft show and have just remembered after reading Anneliese’s blog.
You heat this up, not too hot, press it onto something textured and then stamp with it.  When you done with that stamping, you reheat it back to plain ready to do a different one.  Brilliant.  Can’t wait to try it out.
Thank you Anneliese for your inspirational work, and thank you to my friends for helping me out.
Drop into Pintangle and see what others did for the french knot (Week 16 of TAST).