Drawing and other random stuff

1.  My Diploma of Textile Arts course started a couple of weeks ago and one of the first things we've been doing is to learn how to draw - we'll need this skill to visually communicate an idea without actually making the idea up in fabric (or whatever medium we choose).

My eldest son has awesome drawing skills, but I've never classified myself as being able to draw.  As our teacher says, everything improves with practice and a little know how - so we have to practice everyday....

First page of my new visual diary - oh dear!!

My Doc Martins - the left boot looks like it would fit an ogre!

Doodling - zentangle style

My coffee 'table' - actually it's 2 stacked boxes  - and Picasso's Don Quixote is riding on in...

I'm quite enjoying the drawing - and try to draw something every day as instructed - and concentrate hard on getting perspective right - it is hard though!

2.  I'm actually supposed to be writing an Occupational Health and Safety report on my workplace/sewing room - but I'm bored already......

Garden Path block

Across the Sea blocks

3. I sewed a little yesterday and got blocks made for my Quilt Australia sewing bee and for do.Good Stitches.  I also repurposed a gigantor bag I made months ago which was too big to be practical - it's now a smaller tote bag, with lots of pockets, a pencil roll and a boxy pouch - I've made these to carry things to and from school and I don't have pictures as it's all a bit naff!

4.  My vegie patch is producing copious amounts of eggplant (and I'm the only one in the house that eats it) and purple beans - my freezer is FULL of purple beans.  There's also about 20 pumpkins (butternut and queensland grey varieties) and watermelon meandering all over the place - can't wait for these to ripen!

5.  My youngest son and his girlfriend have found a place and will be moving out this week - I have mixed feelings about this....

Now I really must go - only so many hours in the day and I have got soooooooooo much to do.  Arrivederci!

Happy Mail

I've been following Shay's blog, Quilting in my Pyjamas for quite a while now - she writes with an irreverence, in what could be termed a totally Oz style - she doesn't take things too seriously and has a healthy attitude to rules, eg, if the rules don't make sense, ignore them!  Shay's take on life, whether it's of a quilty nature or life in general is a seriously funny read.  She doesn't like housework and avoids it all costs (obviously a long lost sister) and to top off all this wonderfulness, she's incredibly generous to boot.  Let me explain......

At the beginning of February, Shay mentioned in her blog that she's starting the Farmers Wife Quilt Along and had decided to 'Rock the red and white' - now, I've been doing the FWQA too - I started ages ago - and am also rocking the red and white - so I suggested we should do a swap of reds (you need an awful lot of reds for the FWQA blocks)........and look what arrived....

This little bunch of lovelies doesn't include a further 6 or so pieces that I already have - I've sent those back to her with pieces from my stash - it's fabulous that we both live in Oz and we're still able to find many pieces of red and white that we don't have in common - fantastic!

I will get organised with a few more FW blocks - soon I hope - but school has started in earnest and I already have quite a bit of homework - coupled with my teaching and a few quilting commissions (plus a new commission to make a complete quilt) and several other things I have on the go, I beleive that my own personal sewing will be a very poor last on the list - not to mention the frequency of my blogging.

Thanks Shay - love the fabric - and this blogging quilty collective is just such a wonderful place to be...

What happens when your BFF decides today is the best day to clean out the sewing room....

We'd been talking about it for a while - it really was a disaster area - I couldn't find anything, I had to move piles of stuff out of the way sew with any freedom - but first we went on a big shopping day on saturday (oh, but the best kind, we went to The Quilters Patch at Shop 9, 3 Tuck Street Moorabbin and had a lovely chat with the owner - and bought a couple of things -  her shop is filled with a range of fabrics for all tastes - had a fantastic coffee and a divine vanilla slice at Sweet Lovers round the corner - the owner of that shop showed us a wedding cake he was ready to deliver and it was simply amazing - very talented fellow - then off to Amitie at 103A Gardenvale Rd, Gardenvale - their new premises - and bought too much stuff - and left a lot behind too! - then off to Mornington where my BFF treated me to a shirt and a frock for my birthday - how spoiled am I?? - , then we stopped for a bite to eat, then home....and into the sewing room....)

everytime I picked something up, fabric fell out from under.....

had to move all the tubs out into the other room so we could move

starting to make some sense of the fat quarters - it was either keep (so refold) or throw into a 'sell' pile

While the room isn't completely sorted out - there's magazines, dressmakers fabrics, patterns and other things to go through - I've been able to put the fabric away (I found a great shelf unit in the shed that used to be a mail-sorting unit from when I worked at HSBC many years ago - it needed a good clean and it's perfect for fat quarters),

the grey mailing unit fit perfectly into the shelving unit, width ways at least - serendipitous!

so now I can get to my fabric and I have a better less vague idea about what I have...thanks Miss Lizzie - wouldn't couldn't have done it without you!!!!!

tubs now only hold scraps, batiks, ufo's and pieces I'm 'playing' with or actively making

this lot is to be sorted and sold on line

still need to get in here and sort it out - but that's for another day

I have the Leutenegger man coming tomorrow to discuss my buying their fabrics and start selling them on-line - so I best go and hoover and dust the rest of the house, which has been sadly neglected and then (and only then) can I go and sew....

WIP Wednesday and being just a little slack...

Not slack in the sense of sitting on my duff doing nothing, but slack in that I haven't done a lot of blog reading nor commenting this week.  Mostly this was because Telstra and I had a little contretemps - they insist that I exceeded my quota re broadband (which is horrendously expensive and SLOW in Oz) and reduced my connection speed to 64 bits per minute (or whatever the damned thing is) - a consequence of this is that the internet takes 10 mins to open pages and it completely gives up the ghost on my mailbox - a new billing month started yesterday so it's back up to speed - but I had a full day of teaching yesterday too (classes in the morning, afternoon and evening - BIG wednesdays during term times) so didn't get round to anything internet related....ooh, sound like a moan but really, just stating what's happened - and then the dog ate my homework....

Today, it's off to the sewing centre to find out why my new machine is giving me conniptions about FMQing, out for drinks tonight with friends and then tomorrow my course starts - phew!

So this is a very quick post of WIP's, a link to Lee's WIP Wednesday on Freshley Pieced, then it's off to the shower, get the laundry out and jump in the car..

This week I finished my Mouthy Stitches pouch..

Did some dyeing...

Made a couple of blocks for Quilts of Hope...

Made the February block for the Quilt Australia Bee..

Got one FWQA block done - Rainbow Flowers..

Started a new quilt (on my Winter/Summer Stitching list) which started out as a garden path block quilt, morphed into a Sanctuary Squares and then when I didn't like the look of either using the fabrics I have (the quilts I've linked are totally gorgeous - their colour and pattern combos totally work), morphed into this...

I think it needs a couple of more rows on the bottom - which will necessitate a trip to the shop for more grey solid (damn!!) and a bit more cutting out and sewing - any suggestions regarding layout etc will be gratefully received.

Then go and have a look at the other linkees - again, some seriously wonderful WIP's being whipped into shape out there (sorry about the lame joke!)

Dyeing to meet ya - or how to become Na'avi in one easy lesson

So I thought I'd dye some fabric - and thought I'd use a paintbrush to apply the dye, rather than soak the fabric in beer cup dye pots, and also thought I wouldn't need gloves.....

...and you know what thought does to you - oh dear - after the dyeing session my husband asked me when I was joining the cast of Avatar on Pandora - I had blue dye everywhere - my hands, feet (I had flip flops on), forearms (I dye outside and the mozzies were fierce yesterday), down my pj's (because I didn't get dressed until much later in the day - and only then when we had a few friends drop in...) but I did have fun.

I was using the painting technique I thought I'd seen on Deborah's blog - but I've since found out that Deborah uses fabric paint and I used procion dyes and a large paintbrush - oh well, still loved the process - even though it was a bit messy.  I only mixed 2 colours, blue and black, and after 'painting', rinsing, drying and ironing, I have 8 FQ's of fabric ready for a new idea I have brewing...

This fq was used to wipe up all the dye on the table after I'd slopped it around a bit

For this effect, I splodged blue dye all over the FQ and then threw large salt crystals on the wet fabric - the salt protected areas of the fabric creating this mottled effect, which reminds me of whale shark skin

for this one, I painted stripes of blue and overpainted some with the black.  I then 'wiped' the brush between the stripes without reloading the dye

This one was 'striped' all over and black splodges added

For this one, I simply put dye all over the FQ, including a little of the black and the paler marks were created by the fabric lifting off the table

The remaining FQ's are more of the same.  I think I'll do another 8 using different colours - red/yellow maybe, or red/turquoise.....must get some more PFD fabric and soda ash....

In the meantime, my new Janome Horizon is having a bit of a spak attack with FMQing and I have a date with the Sewing centre I bought it from on Thursday - hopefully it will be sorted out and I can catch up with Laura's QAYGFMQQA asap...

Mouthy Stitches pouch swap - 'Mulleting around the twist' - finished!

The pouches showing up on the Flickr site for this swap are amazing - the expertise, skill and inspiration evident from all the swappees is amazing - and their willingness to go that extra little bit in terms of finish is just awesome...I'm in some seriously amazing company...so obviously all stops needed to be pulled....

I stalked my secret partner - examined her mosaic, read up on her blog and carefully monitored her comments on photos in the group - and concluded my partner has eclectic tastes - I concluded a few other things too but if I write them down, it'll be very easy to identify her - so I'll keep those to myself..

From there I shared a few ideas, some of which weren't enthusiastically received, so changed things around, added some other colours, took some out, thought a bit more......and came up with 'Mulleting Around the Twist'.....

The front is reasonably formal, a little pleating (with a few buttoned up twists), a little stitchery.....but......in true mullet fashion, there's a party going on in the back...

A whirlpool of patterns and a tickertape 'Sew around the twist'.

The inside is fully lined...

So on the days my secret partner feels a little formal or in need of a little calm, the front of the pouch can be facing her - and the little twists can entice her to do a flip and have a party, if that is her want - best of both worlds?

I really hope my partner likes it - it was fun to do, a bit of a challenge and now all that's left is to add some scraps and get it in the post.

Quilts of Hope

Last month I received an email from Deborah who asked me whether I would make an 8" block which would be joined with other blocks, from other donors, and be made up into a quilt which will be raffled to raise money for Deborah House and Missio Link International.  Any remaining blocks will be made up into quilts for the girls who attend Deborah House.

I don't know Deborah - so I looked up the websites and decided making an 8" block or 2 would be a nice way to help.  Of course it wasn't until I was virtually sealing the envelope to send them that I wondered whether it was 8" finished or unfinished..........so a quick look at the conversation link and I found out it was 8" finished - damn - back to the sewing machine and I whipped up a couple more, the correct size this time.  Apparently I wasn't the only one who made the mistake so luckily, Deborah can use both sizes - she'll just put the 7 1/2" finished blocks together in a quilt.

So, if you have a spare 8" block hanging around, or you feel a bit crafty and can whip one up, details of where to send them are on this website, Quilts of Hope.

I made 2 very simple 'autumn tints' blocks.  The larger patches are cut 4 1/2" x 4 1/2" and the smaller ones are cut 2 1/2" x 2 1/2" - easy peasy and great use of those scraps.

Wednesday, again??? - and it's now Thursday even...

These weeks are sneaking up on me - can't believe it's WIP wednesday again - which was actually yesterday - so 'Thought it was Wednesday Thursday' then?

I haven't even redone my WIP list, so it's going to be a bit of mish-mash til I can get myself organised.

I had a couple of finishes...

from the UFO bin - gift for a friend who will faint when it's presented!

I finished my mouthy stitches pouch but I can't show it as it's a secret - but I can show a detail of it...

...and a I wrote a tutorial as to how to do the twists - it's my previous post

I did some more on my hexy quilt border..

I made a couple of blocks for the Cherish do.good stitches February quilter...

love this - might have to make a quilt myself!

I made another little mug bag to show my wednesday ladies that you can make the little bag with whatever scraps you have leftover...

and forgive me, I stitched a little counted cross stitch teacup...

I finished one sock and started the next...

and I've just spent 4 hours in front of the computer reading and commenting on blogs - Gordon Bennett, must do something about that - but I love reading and seeing what others are up to - so check out other Wednesday WIPpers - and Lily's Fresh sewing day - and Lily's small blog meet...whew