Time slips away so quickly these days, it's hard to schedule regular blog posts.  But I sort of have an excuse; I'm completely obsessed with cutting up my fabric.  It's hard to stop and do all my other chores, because the only thing I want to do is zip the rotary cutter through all these pieces until there's nothing left to put back in the drawer.

Why the grim determination to clear all these small pieces out of the stash?  Well, I sort of went mad one day, and ordered about 20 yards of fabric online.  It was a moment of utter insanity, and I'm not proud of it, but I can't take it back, so I'll have to live with it once the parcels start arriving.  However, I don't like the thought of trying to cram new fabric into the drawers that are already bulging at the seams, so I'm trying to whittle the stash down a little. 

I weeded out snippets and strips and bits less than an eighth of a metre, 800grams worth, which translates to about 6 metres; then I got ruthless and pulled out lengths and FQs that I hadn't ever cut into.  If I didn't love it,  then I needed to get rid of it. I'm going to make some pieced backings out of those bits.

Most big projects look much worse before the good results  are visible, and my sewing room is a pit, a shambles, a teetering stack of remnants. But I can see progress, room in the drawers for my new fabric, and a steady pile of pieces ready to be sewn into the block of the moment on the design wall. 

I'm just going to keep cutting, and keep sewing, and keep thinning out the stash, and before long I know I'll be a lot happier with the contents of my sewing room. 

I've been sewing late at night, with lots of coffee to keep me going.  Last night I was clipping the little dog ears off my triangles, and throwing them into the pretty cup that stops them migrating all over the sewing room. 

It ws inevitable that I was going to get tired and throw them in the wrong cup; when it finally happened I figured it was a sign that I needed to go to bed.  What a waste of good coffee!

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We've been busy these last few weeks, and there has been almost no sewing taking place.  Things have to change, I'm getting cranky at having no time for the things I want to do.  So my new policy is at least an hour a day in the sewing room, and 15 minutes in the garden.  That should help me see progress at the end of each week.

This last weekend saw me sorting out scrap containers and deciding on a new project for all my precious bits and pieces.

I like this simple block, and it will give me lots of practice making Flying Geese units.  I think I'll change that large centre square to lots of different little blocks, 4-patches, 9-patches, square-in-squares etc.  That will keep me interested in the project, and let me use us lots of tiny scraps too.

I came across a heap of black and blue scraps, so I made 56 nine-patches in two days, 

 

and they are nearly assembled into a top already.  If I'd had enough of the pink sashing fabric I could have finished this on Sunday, but it had to wait until the patchwork shop opened on Tuesday.  

 

I'm ready to cut out the rest of the sashing this afternoon and get this top completed; not bad, seeing it wasn't even on the drawing board last week.

And I was a bit bad at the LQS, and 4 metres came home with me.  (Pink and brown and shirtings, I can't resist, and even more hand sewing needles!)  1.5 will go into the sashing straight away, and the scraps I'm weeding out of the drawers will help lessen the pain of writing up more purchases in the spreadsheet..  I'm still over the 100 metres used mark, despite adding a fair bit recently.

Maybe I need to cut a heap of bindings and backings next weekend, to get even more fabric moving in the sewing room.  Sometimes it's a good thing, being forced to neglect quilting for a while; I feel so much more enthusiasm for all my projects after a little break. 

 

Time to finish lunch and get busy!

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We went to Adelaide for a quick visit last weekend, because Mereth's second-born son Rob, and his lovely wife Elisa, were visiting from Newcastle.  John and Liz have a new member of the family, the lovely Jezabel.  She's a sweet, good-natured kitten, very charming.

On Saturday morning Mereth went off shopping with Elisa, and the rest of us planned a trip to Central Market to stock up on fresh food and coffee and little nibbly things.

On his last trip home John wheedled the family recipe for Cinnamon Scrolls out of Mereth, and he and Rob decided to make a batch before we left for the Markets.  It was like MasterChef, with lots of conflicting ideas about hydrating the dough and starting the sponge ahead of time, and which sort of sugar to use.  I was just an amused spectator, except when I nursed the bowl of yeast sponge to keep it warm (it was a cold morning).

With the dough set to rise in the sun by the back door we set off for the markets.  It's such a fun place to visit, all sorts of cooked food available, and stalls selling the ingredients for just about anything you could dream up. 

I don't really care for any of the meat listed at this butcher;  I'm not that adventurous thank you. 

The camel sausages looked OK, but the kangaroo tails were gross; I have no idea how one would go about cooking a kangaroo tail.  Don't want to find out either.  I was much more drawn to the vegetable stalls, these Chinese Cabbage were so fresh and inviting.

We went and had an O-bun, fascinating little Chinese cakes like doughnuts, with a range of fillings.  I had a custard one, which was very nice;

maybe I'll have a cheese one next time, or coconut, or red bean paste

We bought food for dinner that night, and I stocked up on things I can't get in Crystal Brook, like soy flour and cocoa nibs and black turtle beans.  I had a huge carton of really strange food to take home by the time we'd finished.

When we arrived home the dough was nearly out of the pan; we'd taken  longer than we thought. 

John was being silly and worshipping the great god D'oh!  So while we girls sorted out the purchases, John and Rob got straight into making the cinnamon scrolls, with much banter and boasting about who's scrolls were going to be the best.

Once they were cooked we had to taste test them of course, and it was a tie; John's were sweeter, but Rob's were lighter.  They were all eaten in a matter of minutes, they were so good.

It was a quick trip, just to catch up with family, so there were no fabric shops on the agenda; we had a late breakfast with everyone and left at luchtime Sunday.  And it's been work, work, work ever since.  I'm glad the weekend was such fun.

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I have finished one quilt top with the Fig Tree fabrics, and it's very pretty.

It used hardly any fabric though, which ordinarily I would be pleased about; I've still got heaps to play with.  Except I'm not really sure I want to play with the leftovers; I might donate them to someone in our quilt group and be done with them.

I've had several reproduction projects on the back-burner for months, so it will be full steam ahead on those next.  Time  to put aside the duty sewing and devote myself to quilts that I truly adore.

On another note entirely, I wonder how many of us grew up with books showing mice in aprons and little waistcoats, and lots of little baby mice with cute curly tails?  I actively discouraged that view of anthropomorphistic animals with my kids.  When, as an adult, I faced the reality of mice that had to be disposed of I had to fight off that image of Mama Mouse with a wooden spoon and a pinafore, cooking dinner for all the baby mice.  I didn't want to burden my kids with that little hangup.

The whole district  had a mini mouse plague this year; whenever people met they compared mouse stories, and tallies of how many had been caught in one night (12 was the highest I heard).  I trapped 10 in my bedroom alone, erch!!   And as I disposed of each body I thought that most wild mice don't resemble the cute images in kid's books.  These were nasty, nasty vermin.

And hungry too.  These are little silicon moulds that I make chocolates in.  These were left on the dish drainer overnight, and some hungry mouse thought they were worth sampling.  Heaven knows what he was thinking, probably that it didn't taste very nice.

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I haven't done a Stash Report for a long while, but I"m still keeping track of my purchases and usage.

Used this Week:  17 m
Used year to Date: 141.6 m
Added this Week: 2.5 m
Added Year to Date: 38.25 m
Net Used for 2010: 103.35 m

I'm over the 100 metre mark at last, cause for celebration.  I should say that the 17m used this week is the total of two quilts I've been working on for the last month, and I never counted the yardage used till they were finished.  It's not like I had a wonderful week of sewing, cause I didn't.  And they're commission quilts so I can't show you what they were.  : (

I'm really pleased with the amount I've used this year, and the nearly 40 metres I've added is very moderate for me.  In the not so distant past I could come out of a shop lugging 40 metres all in one go, so it's wonderful to have controlled my aquisitions for 6 months.  Mind you, that 40m has cost nearly $500, which is kind of sobering.  If I stay in control for the rest of the year, and only buy that much again for the next 6 months, it's still a total expenditure of $1000 per annum.  

My Mum would be horrified beyond words at that, but $20 a week seems a small price to pay for a bunch of pretty stuff that makes me feel happy.  I could spend that at the movies, or twice that having my nails done, or I could drink it away at the pub or gamble it on Lotto.  2 packets of cigarettes would cost more than that; it's not even a downpayment on fancy shoes.  I don't have to justify it to anyone, but I do need to make sure that I buy what I actually want, not just something that appeals to me on a whim.  No more 'What was I thinking!" purchases.

It would be nice to say there's a bit more room in the sewing room, but there's not.  Or it's so disorganised that I can't tell.  My goal for the rest of this week and on the weekend is to clear out some of the clutter and make space, so I can work happily in there.

There's nothing new on the design wall, same blocks as last time; I will have to get cracking and do something interesting to show you, won't I?

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My design wall is full of projects that aren't the sort of thing I normally make.

I blame the whole jelly-roll thing for that.  I would never buy these fabrics by the metre, yet I willingly pay for a jellyroll of them.  Incomprehensible.The blue batiks are gone, all used up by that top.  However, the Fig Tree fabrics are proving harder to get rid of.

I had a jellyroll and a layer cake of these, plus some strips from a scrap bag from Hancocks.  (must stay away from Hancocks....)

I've cut 20 of these Churndash blocks out, and there is still a great pile of strips and squares and offcuts.

There's enough for at least 2 quilts, and even though these ranges are pretty, they're just not Me.  I'll have to buckle down and use them up, but I do think I need to be more discerning when I buy jellyrolls.  Or not buy them at all.

These Civil War Home Front fabrics are much more to my liking.

As are the French General prints; some of these are wonderful.  But there's that other jellyroll just waiting to be used.  How many quilts can we have in those colours??

 It's so easy to buy a jellyroll, there seem to be so many ideas for them, until the time comes to actually cut into one.  Then it's  really hard to make a decision, you don't want to 'waste' it, but you can't decide what is the 'perfect' pattern.  I should just make a comittment not to buy them in future; I'd be better off  buying a tower of FQs.

What am I saying????  I can't afford to add that much fabric to the stash on a whim!  I think I have to veto all these pre-cut options entirely.  And I will, as soon as I buy the set of Attic Shirtings, and maybe Cocoa Express....

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It was another busy day today, with customers picking up quilts and bringing in tops, Mereth quilting and me slaving away on the computer.  Around lunch time there was a diversion.  Last week I bought some fleeces from a hobby farmer up north, and they were delivered today.  

Can you believe that all that wool came from a single sheep?  The fleece was crammed into a wheat sack, so it's horribly tangled, full of grass and weed seeds, but still useable.  Mereth and I sat in the sun for half an hour, picking out the best bits and throwing away the rubbish.  We filled three grocery bags with locks that I will carefully wash, but the remainder of the fleece still seemed just as huge.  And there are two more like this!!  I will be spinning this up for years to come, and there will be a fleece every year as long as this particular sheep exists.  Good-O!

I think I have a fleece stash; there's a light grey fleece in the laundry, and a quilting customer has a brown one that she'll bring with her next quilt top.   I don't know when I'll find time to process them all, but it's a lovely hobby.  Mereth has plans to make a quilt with a homemade wool batt...

After lunch Mereth and I sorted out the finished quilts on the bed in the spare room; Dolly came in and begged and begged to have one of my teddies, who live on the dressing table in there.

She's already had a go at Ted, on the left, his face is a bit chewed.  Patrick and Olivia are unscathed so far.

Oh she wants them so bad!!!

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A few weeks ago we visited the patchwork shop at Jamestown, delivering a quilt.  I didn't really want any new fabric, but a jellyroll of blue and green batiks caught my eye, and before I knew what was happening, I bought it!!   I wonder if it was something to do with the incredible restraint I showed while piecing this top; at the time I struggled not to buy more of those fabric, and thought I'd done remarkably well.  Then, months later, out of the blue, 3m comes home with me on an impulse.

I cleared my design wall off on Saturday, and began cutting up the jellyroll, determined to use it up before it achieved permanent status on the shelf.  I made sort of  a quarter Log Cabin, which was blindingly simple and went together really quickly.  I didn't want much definition in the blocks, I was after a swimmy sort of underwater feel.  I think I managed that.

Some of the fabrics in this are so ugly I had to grit my teeth and make myself use them.  And they just blend in, which is a relief.  While I was sewing the strips together I had moments of doubt, but the uglies don't dominate.  That's the magic of scrap quilts.

I don't have anything in my stash to add to these strips, so the top had to be complete out of the jellyroll.  I had to piece two of the setting triangles from scraps, but I did it.  Now I just have to get all the blocks sewn together, hopefully sometime today.  The border will prove a bit of a problem, but I will take care of that on the next trip to Adelaide.  I love fabric shopping when there's something specific to buy.

Dolly and I went for our usual walk this afternoon, on the golfcourse.  It's a scene of carnage at the moment, for some reason.  There are rabbit and bird bodies everywhere, rather gruesome; I suppose the cold is killing them off.  Of course Dolly finds it all pretty interesting, and I have to drag her away from some of the more intoxicating  scenes.  At one stage I climbed a stile over the fence, so we could continue walking on the road; I was holding down a strand of  the wire fence, so Dolly could get through, when a strange expression came over her face.  She froze, staring at me; I could see her brain ticking over, thinking 'Hey, if she's on that side of the fence, she can't stop me doing what I want....' And she turned and galloped back to the nearest carcase and started throwing bits of it around in ecstasy.  I was so not amused, but she kept on leaping about, bits of bunny fur flying and indescibable things hanging out of her mouth.  Talk about disgusting!  She kept an eye on me, and when it became clear that I was going to climb back and deal with her, she charged over and got through the fence, good as gold.

Except she stank.  Thank heavens we don't have skunks in Australia, because day old bunny is bad enough.  It was straight back to Mereth's place and into the bath with her, while she grumbled that she didn't want to smell nice, she'd worked hard to build up that toxic-green aura, and it was all going to waste down the plug-hole.  We don't see eye to eye on what smells good.

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As Mereth pointed out in this post, we have been working seriously long hours for the last three weeks.  And I don't want to talk about work on this blog, so I haven't had much to say about anything lately.  I think I may be caught up now, enough to just put in 6 hours a day instead of 12, so just maybe I can have a Life again from now on.

Luckily for me, a lot of what I do is on the laptop, and with wireless internet I can work in bed at night.

Dolly adores this.  In fact, she's come to see it as the only place to be, now that the weather is getting colder.  She burrows down under the covers and luxuriates in the warmth, snoring gently and twitching occassionally.  What a life she has, a very spoilt girl. She's an excellent hot-water-bottle, and good company.

Late each afternoon I put on my walking shoes and we're off for an hour and a half, tramping the golf course and enjoying the winter scenery.  Dolly has caught three rabbits to date, and dispatched them swiftly.  That may sound a bit brutal, but the golfcourse is strewn with the bodies of rabbits that the foxes haven't been kind to either.  And in Australia, rabbits are vermin who destroy our environment, so a few less are no cause for mourning.

We've been for a few walks at Bowmans Park too, and came across this sandstone wall, sculpted by wind and weather. 

It is so soft a fingernail left marks, just amazing.  It would be fun to carve something out of this stone, it would be really easy to shape.  Maybe I'll take that up as a hobby, when I need a break from quilting,  (Like NOW).

I have made a few blocks of this Cracker patterns, for stress relief. 

It's so cute, and goes together so easily, perfect for those odd moments when I have time to sew.  Now that things have calmed down a bit I'll tackle my longterm projects first, like the Lady of the Lake blocks, and then jump right into kitting up more of the Cracker blocks.

Oh well, it's time to get to work, much to Dolly's dismay; she'll have to leave her natural environment, my bed, and go sit in the office and keep me company.  Her work is never done.....

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 Seems like lots of people want to know about how to take cuttings; it's not hard, but some plants grow as cuttings more readily than others.  Chrysanthemums are among the easy ones.  This site had good instructions, but there are plenty more out there if you google it.  A lot of commercial flowers from florists are treated so as not to grow as cuttings; something to do with the plant breeders wanting to retain control of their products. That's why I used bouquets grown locally, in an ordinary garden.

I use a mix of sand, peatmoss and perlite as a growing medium, but you can buy bags of  it from any garden centre.  I sometimes use a hormone powder to dip the ends of the cutting; it promotes lots of root growth, but I've hade good results without it. 

And to answer another question from the last post; a heavily quilted custom quilt like that, 98" square, doesn't leave much change from $500 (Australian, of course).  And while some readers are gasping at how much that is, others are thinking that it's awfully cheap.  It was on the frame for 5 days, a whole working week; it's always a relief to get those huge custom jobs finished and out the door.

I put in a huge amount of time and effort over the weekend, and finished the main piecing of my commission quilt.  British police drama DVDs get me through a lot of duty sewing; this time it was Prime Suspect that helped me stick to the job at hand.  Midsommer Murders has been a helpful in the past (ímprobable plot lines and beautiful English scenery in equal amounts), but Inspector Morse is my all time favourite.

I have two borders to add, and then my design wall is clear.  I'm sure it will take a while to get going on another project, so I'll just putter around with some longterm UFOs, and more crumb blocks, and I just may make a DJ block or two.  One of the girls in my piecing class has begun a Dear Jane, and her excitement is infectious. 

I actually have photos to load, but blogger is being obstinate and won't co-operate; maybe tomorrow...

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I've been busy this week quilting this very large machine embroidered quilt and finally the end is in sight. It took four whole days, hovering over the machine, making sure that the quilting was in exactly the right place.  The embroidery is beautifully done, so the quilting had to be spot on. 

The centre and sashes still needs some freehand work, which Mereth will do on Monday, and then I need to clip about a thousand thread tails.  I feel like my life is not my own until this quilt is finished and back with it's owner.  She's going to be surprised when she sees it, she had no idea what we would do with it. 

Cross-hatching at this density doesn't always work with embroidered quilts, as the quilting can pull the fabric in too much.  Luckily with this top there was a bit of fullness in the blocks, mainly because they were all separately backed with pellon before embroidering. 

The fullness meant that the heavy quilting actually made the block flatter, all the puckers quilted out like magic.

I will put a flower in the middle of the heart shape on this block, and that will tame the centre fabric.  This is going to be one gorgeous quilt when it's finished.

Once the owner picks it up I am going to have a day in my sewing room, puddling around in my stash and making progress on my projects which have been ignored for too long.  I miss my  sewing room. But while I was quilting all day I had to spend the evenings catching up with other business things, so I had no spare time.  Next week should be quieter. Mereth will be glad to have the machine to herself; we had to take turns with Millhouse, zipping my quilt off so she could go to work after I'd finished for the day.

I really enjoy Mother's Day flowers, they are always chrysanthemums for me.

My kitchen table was covered in vases of them; one from each of my kids and I bought two local bunches so I can grow cuttings from them.  Three of the cuttings from last year grew and are blooming, so it's definitely worth trying again. 

I just can't decide what my favourite colour is, so I'll have them all.

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It seems as if I've loved florals with a blue background forever.  And I certainly have collected a few of them.

I used this one as the backing of a favourite quilt.

And I have 2 metres of this one

1 metre of this one;

2.5 metres of this one;

4 metres of this one;

3 metres of this;

1 metre of trhis;

and 2 metres of this latest one, which is my current favourite.

I just adore this, couldn't leave it behind.

I'm sure, absolutely positively sure, that I have enough blue background florals to make all the quilts I could ever desire.  But this little beauty, from a Charity charm pack, has my fingers itching to go shopping online.

It's in my shopping basket at Hancocks, I just haven't pushed the button yet.  How much is enough? It's useless to ask if I need it, of course I don't.  But it's pretty, and I want it.

Below is a picture of the fabric that caused this obsession. 

My Mum had a bedspread and curtains she made from this beautiful barkcloth; it's so faded now, but when we were little it was a beautiful vibrant sky blue.  The set was in constant use until we were 15, and they're a bit dingy and damaged, but I still love them.

It's interesting to think that this material had such an impact on my tastes; as a child I would sit by Mum's bed admiring the pattern and the textured fabric.  It was as good as a picture book in my eyes.  I'm actually very grateful that Mum never made us go to Kindergarten; we spent all those years before school at home, playing with fabric and books and amusing ourselves.  And if I wanted to lie on Mum's bed for an hour, looking at the roses and dreaming, then she let me.  A little quiet contemplation is a good thing.

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I felt the need to deal with my scraps last weekend; for the last two years I've been throwing little snippets and strings into a seagrass basket, and it was full.

So I sorted it out into little scraps, and longish strips, and large scraps, and then started sewing them together.

It;s lovely mindless work, no decisions to make; if two pieces are roughly the same length just feed them through the machine.  I had a lovely time, enjoying the simplicity of sewing, not even caring if it was a proper quarter inch seam.  I love crumb piecing because there are no rules to obey, you just do what the pieces dictate.

I only finished three blocks, but I sewed nearly all the small scraps together into larger pieces.

Next time I work on this project I'll concentrate on using the strips and large scraps to build the blocks large enough to trim to a constant 10.5" square.  None of the blocks will resemble each other, but that's the way a crumb quilt should be.

Last time I did this I ended up with this top; it's still not quilted, but it's on the list and waiting it's turn.  I like it a lot; it has something in it of just about every quilt I made in the last 10 years, and I love looking at it.  It's not something I'll get tired of in a hurry.

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