We are asked to do all sorts of things by our customers, not just quilting.

I spent a lot of time last week completing a doll's bassinet, which was interesting.  A lady made the green one for her daughter, and never found enough time to make one for her second daughter, so she asked if we could do it.  It's not something I would normally do, but I agreed to have a go.  We can't have two little girls fighting over one lonely bassinet.

The pattern is a Rosalie Quinlan one, but I haven't been able to find a link to it.Cute, isn't it?

There was no time for sewing this week, I was in designing mode in all my free time, plus there have been customer quilts on the Statler constantly.  I did take some time to put together a shelf unit for my paperwork and a new table for my office equipment, which is in my bedroom.  Alas, now it feels like I'm sleeping in my office, not working in my bedroom!  But everything is much neater and more organised.

I did manage to make my design wall larger, using the cardboard box from the shelf unit.  I just taped it in place between the two display boards, and covered it all with the polar fleece.

 It works well, and here is the finished picture of my scrap quilt. 

I know I said it was going to have a pieced border, but it absolutely refused to have anything but this material.  I will keep all the HSTs for another project.


All the talk about my sewing machines in the last post made me go look on Ebay again.  They should have a 'Ban Me' button you can click, so there are no more impulse purchases.....

A friend of ours has a Bernina 730, from the'60s, and she constantly works the poor thing.  She used it to sew metre high stacks of terry towelling bibs for an old folk's home, thick denim patches on her hubby's jeans, more than 40 applique numbers on the back of footy jerseys. Plus all her quilting and patchwork.  The 730 just did it all, without complaint, and it has lovely sleek retro lines to boot.  I think I fell in love with her machine the first time I saw it at our patchwork group, and I've wanted one of my own ever since.

I already have two of them, one from a school and one from Ebay.  The school one is so battered, lots of paint missing, and the motor blew up, so it's not functioning.  The other one needs some TLC to run properly, and it smells overpoweringly of old oil, like it's been stored in a garage.  Not nice.  So......., I succumbed to the temptation last week, and bought another one on Ebay.

  Don't you just love the onboard storage for cotton reels and bobbins and accessories.

 Cosmetically it's almost perfect, but the needle position lever is stuck. I will go on trying to find a fix for that, but it sews a beautiful straight stitch anyway, just too wide for a 1/4" seam.  Surely, out of the three I can build a perfect 730!

Read more...

I had a productive weekend, finishing all the blocks for the Triple Irish Chain.  I like how it looks on the design wall, nice and rich.  The next step is to add extra squares around the edges to complete the chains and large light coloured areas.

 I know I could plan that in EQ7, but sometimes it's just easier to get the graph paper and pencils out.

Another morning of sewing should see this in one piece, but I'm all out of 2" strips; looks like I will have to cut some from the stash drawers.

The Doors and Windows blocks that I am making as leader-enders are mounting up, but there's no room on the design wall for them, so I don't know how they will look.  As soon as the chain quilt is done I'll be putting these up and seeing if the colours are right; they seem rather sombre right now, I may have to add a few happier fabrics to the mix.
During the week Mereth and I had fun putting together some very sturdy shelving to hold my sewing machine collection. 

I don't think I'm normal, I get far more happiness from metal shelving than shoes or makeup or jewellery.  It makes my heart glad every time I see all my machines in their new home.

Read more...

My internet has been even more erratic over the past fortnight, and rather than struggle with it, I've just ignored the computer except for business stuff.  It's amazing how much time that frees up for things like sewing and spinning and gardening and cooking, but I do miss it.  I even left the computer up at the Hall, so I wasn't tempted to spend my evenings watching things struggle to download at 7kps; I've been living a pre-internet life after work hours, and it's been productive.

I've done a fair bit of spinning, but no photos of that, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  I finished the scrap quilt on the design wall, but no photos of that yet, it's quite large and I need to modify my design wall before it will fit up there.  And I started a new scrap project.

At the start of the year I said I wanted to make lovely quilts this year, with my good stash, not just scrap and utility quilts.  That hasn't happened at all.  Most of my stash is still at the Hall, while I sew from the scrap containers at the house.  I won't be living here for all that long, and I haven't felt like dragging 30 drawers of heavy fabric into the house, so when I need to start a new quilt I just pick a scrap drawer and start cutting from it.  So far I've cleared out the 2.5" drawer, and whittled down the 3.5" drawers.  Last weekend my eye fell on the overflowing drawer of 2" strips, and that was it.  I was off and running on another scrap quilt.

I've always adored strip piecing; from the moment I first discovered the concept I've embraced it wholeheartedly.  There's not as much variety in the fabric placement, and it needs strips rather than any little scrap, but I just love sewing the strata, and then slicing it into segments.

 It's so quick, it seems like in no time at all there are blocks stacking up.  I was going to do a Double Irish Chain, but somehow I found that I had sewn the strips for a Triple Irish Chain. 

No matter, it uses up a heap of scraps anyway.

 I didn't have access to fabric to make that large square, so I made it out of a four patch, allowing me to raid the 4.5" drawer and cut those strips down too.

 These blocks look pretty dull until the alternate blocks are added, and then it's like magic!The whole design lightens and the chains appear, marching across the quilt.  I love making chain quilts, and I love the quilting opportunities that those large light spaces offer.

I'm close to having exhausted the possibilities of the scrap drawers, so I will have to decide on a 'good' quilt to make next.  I'll cut it at the Hall, with access to all my gorgeous fabrics, and then bring just the pieces home to sew.  Sounds like a plan to me.  And knowing how I overcut for every project, I'll have restocked the scrap drawers in no time flat.

Read more...

We have a long weekend here in South Australia, for the Queen's birthday, and it's lovely to have extra time off.  I really enjoy the first and second day of a long weekend, knowing there's more leisure time to come.  And I've been using all that time constructively.

DD Seonaid came to stay during the week, and we cut and sewed madly to produce a flannel and chenille quilt top.  She did all the sewing herself, except for a couple of the final seams, which I finished yesterday.  Now all I have to do is find a purple flannel back and get it quilted.  I'm thinking I might be able to find flannelette sheets to use as the backing, I have to go shopping and see what I can find.

Well done Seonaid! 
 I've been having a bit of trouble with RSI lately, so I've had to be careful of the way  I use my hands.  The cold weather doesn't help.  I can sew, but I have to iron the pieces a few at a time so my hands don't seize up :(

I am determined to get rid of all the precut 2.5" HSTs that have been around for ages.  I'm so sick of the same old fabrics, and some of them are so inaccurate; I'm used to the die-cut ones now, I love their accuracy as compared to my more slapdash cutting.

I want a little pieced border for my current scrap quilt, which needed 140 HSTs, so I laid out a heap of pairs and chained them all together. 

To make it easy to keep track of how many I'd made, I cut them apart in lots of 10.  Once I had 14 of these strings of triangles, I knew I had the right number for the border.

All the blocks are made, I hope to get them into one piece by the end of today.

It's freezing just lately, and my house is like an icebox.  The high ceilings make it hard to heat (it was lovely and cool in summer, which was welcome then, not so much now).  Instead of sitting in the loungeroom with a heater on at night, I just get into bed with my computer and work in comfort.  It's very green of me,  doesn't use up all that electricity and Dolly gets to be under the blankets with me, which is her favourite place to be.  Thank God for laptops is all I can say.

Incidentally, the heater that I use in my sewing room was bought by Mum when we were 7 years old. (You can just see it above the rotary cutter in one of the photos)  I even have the cardboard box it came in, because Mum carefully packed it away after each winter.  It's 46 years old, and still going strong.  What a change from electrical stuff made these days.  I hope I get many more years out of the dear old thing.

Read more...

 I've made more progress on these blocks, I'm up to 36 now, I've sewn more since I took this photo.  They go together really quickly once the HST are made.  I've been making the triangles in sets of two, and making lots of these units.  The block is just four of these, rotated so that the lights and darks alternate.

To make sure the seam allowances all nest nest together, in the blocks themselves and in adjoining blocks, I always lay out the pieces for each unit the same way, with the dark square in the top left corner.  When I press the seam allowances I press the first seams towards the squares, and twirl the centre insection once the two halves are sewn together.

 It doesn't mattern which way these units are rotated, the seam intersections will nest together, so long as you make them all identically.

Four units make a block.

You can see how the seam allowances swirl at all the intersections.

The final block looks like this on the back; I like to press the seams on my HSTs open, but this pressing scheme works even if they are ironed to one side.  I love it when  blocks go together nicely, I hate having to mash seam allowances together in a big lump.

Once I put the blocks together I will be dealing with pinwheels formed by the intersections of all those triangles.  I'm not going to worry too much about making them meet exactly; I don't have time to be unpicking things on a scrap quilt like this.

Read more...

I had a productive weekend, certainly dealt with that pesky drawer of strips!

There's a few strips left, that I know I want to use in other projects, but all the rest was chopped up and will become leader-enders for the forseeable future. It's a good feeling to know those bits that have lingered on for years are finally going to be used for something.

I sorted them into colours first, making a pile of all the dingy and muted ones that I seem to pass over every time;

I cut them into 8.5" rectangles, and they will be sewn into Roman Stripe blocks; there aren't enough to make a quilt, but they can bide their time in the block drawer.  I'm sure I will collect more dull fabrics to add to them.

There was a bunch of red and cream strips, and I decided to cut them into 6.5" rectangles;

they can be part of these sort of blocks, framing a ninepatch,

or they can be sashing for small blocks; if I wanted to I could make Rail Fence blocks with them.  I'll decide later, but for now, they are out of the drawer.

I consulted Mereth's Tutorial for cutting 9 patches, and then cut up all my dark blue, dark green and shirting scraps into 9 patches. 

I know I will find a setting for these blocks later, I can use them as simple nine-patches, or build a more complex block around them.  They will make great leader-enders while I decide what to do next.

The bulk of the strips were cut into 4.5" rectangles,

and I have plans for a quilt that Mereth designed, Doors and Windows.   (Instrutions here)  It's a lovely simple block, I'm looking forward to combining the colours.

Now I just have to tackle the 1.5" strip drawer!

Read more...

I've had a little blogging holiday; in truth I think I was sulking a little bit because my internet connection is so unreliable, and it was so infuriating trying to update the blog when a photo took two hours to load. If it loaded at all.   However, things have been a little better lately, so I will give it another go.

I've been busy with the usual round of postie work and quilting and designing.  I haven't even been in my sewing room much, too distracted by piles of fleece. One was 30 years old, bought for me by my mum before I moved to Queensland in 1981.  All these years I have treasured it; I didn't have a wheel in Queensland, so I couldn't spin it there, and anyway, it was too hot and humid to even think of working with fleece.  It's been bundled up all those years, and I didn't once unpack it completely, knowing I would tangle it up.  But I finally decided the time had come to deal with it, so I dumped it all out on the floor and started to sort it.

It's terribly 'crispy'; the lanolin has hardened, and the locks feel quite dry and brittle; I wasn't even sure that it was worth spinning, but I had to give it a try.  I've been handwashing the locks a little at a time, then combing them and spinning them into a sockweight yarn. 

 Amazingly, the fibre is still so strong that almost none of it breaks in the combing process, and the resulting yarn is lovely.  All these years I thought it was just dark grey, and it turns out there was a beautiful light grey patch hiding inside.  The yarn is still a bit uneven, but I choose to see that as 'charming', rather than a fault.

I've also been spinning up some blue roving I purchased a couple of years ago.  It's so nice to be able to spin it without any preparation, and I do love the colours. 

 But somehow I love raw fleece so much more, even with the lengthy sorting, washing and combing time.  I just love taking something so basic and turning it into useable yarn.  It satisfies the peasant in me.


 I think I've been spinning ,because my sewing room is in such a state;  I just stand in the doorway, shaking my head over the piles of scraps, and a bit paralysed by the amount of them.  Yesterday I got stuck into sewing HSTs for this scrap quilt,

and today I want to sew more blocks, and then tackle this drawer full of 2.5" strips. 

I need to see the back of this lot, I can't even get it back in the cabinet it's so full.  So it will be a major cutting day today, and we'll see if there's any progress to report tomorrow.

It only took 35 minutes to load these pictures, things are improving.....

Read more...

I think I've decided on the sashing for the blocks, so I'll get started on putting them together soon, and make some trial blocks for the borders and setting triangles.  I don't normally make quilts that require quite so much piecing, but it's a nice change to take some time and trouble over a project.

I'm actually quilting something of my own at last, the Honeycomb quilt from last year.  It's so satisfying to see it getting finished; it's off to be photographed after this, I'll have to say good bye to it for a while.

My home internet is still non-existent, so there won't be much blogging in my future; it has to wait till I go to work at the Hall, and then I'm busy doing 5 or 6 other things.  Oh well, I don't have time to be bored.

The crysanthemums just keep getting better and better, those colours are amazing. It makes me happy just to look at them.

Read more...

 I'm at that annoying stage of needing to choose the sashing for these blocks, and not knowing exactly what I want.  I must have tried  20 different fabrics, and none of them jump out and say 'I'm the ONE!'  I'll just have to be patient and keep trying, because somewhere along the line I'll find the perfect colour and print, and the quilt will be the better for it.  It's just irritating not to be able to wrap it all up right now.

For a bit of easy sewing I've been making these scrap blocks from my mountains of 2.5" scraps.  They are fun and easy, and good leader enders.  I'm getting sick of the same scraps showing up again and again though, so I think I'll empty them all into a bag and sell them on Ebay.  Then I can start again with new fabric.  Is that a weird way to think?

It's my favourite time of year, nearly Mother's Day!  That means crysanthemums in the shops, and I've already added 7 to my collection.  I have about 12 blooming from the ones I bought last year, so it's Flower City here.  I love them so much, I can't resist the new ones.  Next on my agenda is to build a garden bed so I can plant them all out, and they can grow as big as they like instead of being confined to pots.

The last customer quilt was so pale, the one on the frame now is exactly the opposite.  What an explosion of colour in this poppy quilt, it's gorgeous. 

 I'm just glad the owner didn't want custom, I have no idea what I'd do on this.  I'm still awfully busy, so it's great to be able to set a panto stitching and then get back to work on the computer.  I do like being able to multi-task like that, but my idea of luxury right now is being able to concentrate on one thing only, until it's done.
Actually, there is one thing I can do on it's own, Dolly reminds me; "Take me for a Walk!"

Read more...

I've been working very hard lately, and decided that today is a day off. I'm going to potter in my sewing room and do whatever I fancy.  I'll put something on the TV this afternoon, and stay in my sewing room doing whatever I want. I've earnt a little time to play.

I don't think I showed a picture of the inspiration for my current quilt; I know I photographed it from one of my books, but I can't remember which one, so I'll have to track that down. 

Those multiple borders intruiged me, and I think I will add them to my quilt.  It will take a lot of work, but it will be amazing when finished.  I'm leaning towards a dull brown sashing instead of the grey I originally had in mind, but I don't have to make a decision any time soon.  There are still 20 blocks to make, and then those setting triangles around the edge.  I'll be working on this for a while yet.


I spent my spare moments this week quilting customer quilts, when I wasn't working on the computer; I desperately want to quilt something of my own, so that's what I'll be doing next week.

This cream Disappearing Ninepatch was made for the customer's elderly mother; it's so subtle and sophisticated, it was fun to quilt, and watch the pattern coming to life on the pale fabrics.

It's a panto of mine called Avon Rose, I'm so happy with how it stitched out. Terribly hard to photograph, but lovely in real life.

Read more...

I can't believe it's nearly 3 weeks since my last post, life sure got in the way of blogging.  I still have a few deadlines to deal with, but I've cleared a lot of things off my to-do list; hopefully I will be able to get back in the sewing room soon.

Every year I leave my taxes till the last possible minute, and every year I swear I won't do it again.

I really mean it this year.  No, Really!  I think I would have enjoyed being an accountant, once I'm in the swing of it I love it.  It's just that I don't keep the bookwork up to date all through the year, and that's because I'm a hopeless procrastinator.  Actually I'm very good at procrastinating, that's the problem.

DD Seonaid came down with a horrible flu, so I drove to Adelaide and rescued her, bringing her back for 4 days of pampering.  Dolly loved that, sitting in Seonaids's bed helping to eat her toast each morning, and snuggling under the covers with her.  I'm sure she helped the patient with her recovery.  It was so lovely to have my girl home, even if she was sick; I made her some of her favourite childhood meals and tried to make life a bit easier for her.  It's no fun being sick and on your own.

We had a mini family gathering a couple of weeks ago, with Mereth's sister and brother in law and neice arriving at our brothers place to give a Thermomix demo to us and John and Liz.  That was a very interesting night, I've heard about these machines and wanted to see one in action.  The bread-making in 1.5 minutes was something I couldn't quite believe, but it was true. The buckwheat rolls were every bit as good as ones that have been kneaded for 10 minutes and had two rises.

The machine is a considerable investment, but it's on my wishlist for the future.  We had a lovely meal,with lots of good conversation; it's lovely to catch up with family members who live far away.

Yesterday I received a large envelope in the post, and it contained this magazine;

there on the cover, peeking out of the cupboard, is my Jacob's ladder quilt.  The magazine did a great job of photographing it, it looks fabulous. I'm thrilled with the photos and article, it's wonderful to see your own quilt in print.

This issue should be in the shops now, and it's full of interesting things, including some lovely knitting and an article on something dear to my heart; coloured sheep.  I ask everyone I know with farm connections to keep a lookout for coloured fleeces for me, and that resulted in the 7 fleeces I had stored.  I've started spinning two of them, and two regretfully had to be disposed of, as whoever did the shearing made such a mess of it the fleece was useless.  I still have plenty to work with though. 

These two skeins are just the beginning of a gorgeous dark brown merino,very soft and lovely to spin.  I think these first efforts at spinning (after a 30 year break) will be made into a tabard, sort of a cross between a vest and a tunic. 

It's very satisfying to make finished yarn from raw materials, even if it is time-consuming.  My tabard will be a labour of love.

Read more...