I'm not capable of coherent thought tonight, I've been slaving away at business stuff and will have to work over the weekend to get things finished. But there has been sewing; while I'm printing packs I sew leader and ender pieces, and the blocks are building up. I also managed to get the Maverick Stars in one piece, and now it can hang on my lounge-room wall for a while until I decide what sort of border to use as a finish. I like looking at it at night, all the crazy angles and little scraps. I'm very fond of it now. I don't know whether to make it 12 blocks, I don't think I'm finished with those stars yet....

I have done my run on the treadmill, watching my football team get beaten, and now I'm going to have a late supper. Does this look even remotely edible? It's positively glowing! But with a glass of red wine it will be divine.....

Read more...

This is a quilt I made for my son about 15 years ago. I had made a sample block for a house quilt, and didn't use the block in the final quilt. I added strips of blue fabric around the block till it was wide enough, and then added more top and bottom until it was the right size for the top of the mattress. The checkerboard border used up a heap of extra 4-patches from another project. It was super-quick to make and used up a lot of leftovers . I quilted it by machine, and it's still in good shape despite all the hard use it had.

I had plans to make a similar quilt for my DD, using a floral applique block in the centre, but somehow it never happened. I may go through my orphan blocks and see if any of them lend themselves to the same treatment; it's such an easy way to arrive at a finished top.

The other picture is of a Postage Stamp quilt that I made to showcase an English quilting design that I drew up for one of my books. It took more than two years to hand quilt using my floor frame, and despite my best efforts the summer sun faded the pink border fabric. The binding is the same fabric, but looks darker. One of the perils of quilting slowly in a climate with fierce summers.

I have been sewing madly on the Maverick Stars, but I haven't made any progress that looks any different, just more stars and more pieced sashing and more incidental crumb blocks. They will both finish at the same time with a flourish I am sure, so all of a sudden I will have two tops, no more scraps and a clear work table. I can't wait.

Read more...

My Dad was manager of the Interior Decorating Department at a local department store, and every season he brought home the samples that had been discontinued. We had carpet and wallpaper books to play with, delicious pamphlets showing the outdated laminex fashions, and sample books of the new-fangled printed vinyl that you could use for shower curtains or tablecloths.

This was the age of embossed and flocked wallpaper, and enormous murals of Greek ruins and desert vistas. We adored these, and desperately wanted Dad to paper our walls with these emotive scenes, but they were too expensive.

Our enterprising mother duly covered all our school exercise books with wallpaper and vinyl samples, and those patterns were ingrained into my subconscious over the years. I seem to have spent most of my time at school colouring in the designs on my book covers, mad with boredom at the lessons. I wonder if I developed my love of design from those patterns I studied so deeply, or if I just inherited it from my father. Hard to tell. I do know that the lessons left few memories, and the designs have stayed with me.
These sort of painted roses just tug on my heartstrings no matter where I see them; sheets, bone china, postcards, fabrics....

Note the 3-D appearance on the back of the samples. One of the ways I used to amuse myself was to see the leaf veins as popping out, and then try to see them as sinking down into the leaf. It takes a while, but suddenly it seems to change dimension, and you can't understand how you couldn't see it before. I have this ability to be able to imagine what a line drawing will look like as a3D object, which is really useful when I'm designing my quilting patterns; maybe I developed that knack from these dimensional wallpapers.

Meredith, when photographing these books for my post, discovered that within the binding of them is a 2" piece of every sample that was left when Mum cut out the page. Deconstructing the book will let us see all those familiar and loved patterns again. We'll have to think about whether we want to destroy what remains of the binding, not an easy decision.

Incidentally, at the time I cried bitter tears because Mum wouldn't buy brown paper coverings for our books, like all my friends had. I must have been shallow.

Read more...

There has been some chat on Stashbuster about mixed quilting techniques, and I thought I would show you my very first proper machine free-motion stitched on a real quilt. I had made countless samples and practise pieces, but this is the first FM quilting that made it onto a quilt and stayed there. The body of the quilt is done by hand, the border by machine.

I made this quilt around 17 years ago, because I saw a picture of a similar one in a British quilting book and immediately saw how I could strip piece it quickly. My kids were 2 and 3 at the time, and I had very little quilting time; quick was good. Because the original quilt was Welsh, I named this Welsh Bricks.

The colour scheme came from a description of a black and white photo of another old English quilt; rectangles of lavender and buff dress fabrics. I loved the sound of that, and made up my mind to use only those colours and variants in this quilt.

The top took less than 2 days to make; the strip piecing worked perfectly. Hand-quilting was a different matter. I began quilting it that week, but it was still not finished a year later, and I rashly promised it to a friend to hang in an exhibition. I still had no time, and I decided to throw tradition to the winds and finish the border with new-fangled machine quilting.

I wish there had been someone around then to
tell me what I should and shouldn't have done. Number one would have been check the thread tension straight away. I knew to do this on my samples, but the stress of quilting a real quilt made it fly out of my head.

The tension on the whole border is simply dreadful, as the close-up shows. Click on the picture to see it in awful detail. But I figured that no-one would be able to see it in the exhibition, and I would pull it out and re-do it later. I also did my first binding completely by machine on this quilt, and I like how it turned out, so I do all my quilts this way now.

Once the quilt came back from the exhibition my DD claimed it for her bed, where it did sterling service for 10 years or so. Somehow I lost the urge to correct the quilting mistakes, and went on to bigger and better things. Oddly enough, there is not a broken stitch anywhere, in all that dreadful quilting.

That became the basis for my philosophy of correcting mistakes. Live with it for a month; if it still bothers you, pull it out. It hasn't fixed itself, you can come back to it any time, if you still care enough. No-one in my family cared about the back of this quilt, just how warm and pretty it was. It still works as a quilt. And I could still fix it if I wanted, but I use it to reassure my students that their work will improve too, and that even their beginning efforts will be useful and appreciated.

I struggled with the thread tension for years, and ended up modifying the foot that goes on my Janome and a lot of other machines. The top thread had insufficient tension, and was being dragged under by the bottom thread. I tied a piece of bias binding around the upright of the foot, beneath the spring, so that there was less downward pressure on the foot. It meant I could move the quilt more smoothly, not dragging it along and reefing the thread through the tension discs. I know I can't prove anything, but I almost feel like the foot was keeping the needle bar slightly elevated, and releasing the tension discs. It was a cheap solution, and I've shown it to my students with the same good results.

Nadine on Quilt Epiphany has done the same thing to her Bernina foot.....

And the last photo today is the beginnings of my quest for herbal self-sufficiency. I have lots of parsley, Curled and Italian, dotted around the garden. I adore parsley, when we go out to dinner I filch everyone's parsley garnish and eat that instead of dessert. It makes my heart glad to see my plants growing so happily; now to see if the grasshoppers leave any for me.

Read more...

I spent a lovely day in the garden, sewing seeds and repotting plants and planning a garden bed under two huge fiddlewood trees. It seems ages since I had time to work in the garden for as long as it needs, I've barely been able to keep things alive over the summer. But now that the beautiful autumn weather is here I am finding the time to potter around and put everything to rights.

I usually over-extend myself with grandiose plans, so this year I'm concentrating on herbs and salad plants. I want to be self-sufficient in parsley, mint, shallots and simple salad plants like spinach and my new passion, Japanese Mizuna mustard greens. So lovely, I keep picking leaves to eat every time I go past the window-box where they are growing.

I was working on my roses when I saw this fellow. He was so gorgeous I removed him for a photo shoot. I don't approve of the way he is devouring my roses, but I know he will turn into a beautiful butterfly, and the world needs butterflies as well as roses.

I could hardly believe the intricate detail of him, I could only see it when I had the photos in PhotoShop. He's 4" long, and the black, cream and madder patterns of him mimic my favourite reproduction palette perfectly. Some of it even looks like stipple quilting patterns.

His false face was fascinating. When I touched him he would bury his real head and his tail would rear up, with the red horns attracting attention and the dots exactly like eyes. Just an amazing defence mechanism. Still, lovely as he is, I hope he doesn't have too many brothers and sisters out there in the garden.

There are several interesting things flowering at the moment, but this is the strangest. It's some tropical thing, I may try and track down the name of it later. It's growing up the cedar tree, and laden with these strange flowers. Click on the picture to make it bigger and see the detail. It's incredible the way it all fits together.

There is pattern and inspiration in everything around us. Caterpillars and flowers and wallpaper books and seed packets and tiled floors; it's good to be able to take parts of our ordinary lives and weave them into our patchwork. All the colours and shapes I see in my garden and my possessions contribute to the quilts I plan and design. It makes the creative process multi-dimensional, combining memories and symbols, favourite images and patterns.

Read more...

I gave myself a stern talking-to this morning. How could I call myself a Maverick Quilter if odd-shaped scraps made me queasy? What sort of free spirit could I be if I couldn't handle the sight of my table covered in fabric confetti? Was Order so important to me that it got in the way of creativity? How could I go on saving all these scraps if I was incapable of dealing with them? My hoarding of pieces then becomes a neurosis, not a virtue. I really thought I would enjoy this but it wasn't happening.

I realised that I was feeling overwhelmed because I was actually sewing three things at once, with different techniques. I was foundation piecing the stars, crumb-piecing the tiny bits, strip-piecing the sashes and trying to do a leader-ender project as well. I had made no attempt to organise myself so that I could find the bits for each section. I had upended 5 containers of scraps and was burrowing through the mess and not enjoying it one bit. Small wonder! I needed Order so that I could create without interruption.

So I packed away leader and ender pieces, to work on with my next quilt. Then I sorted the scraps into strips and squarish offcuts (henceforth referred to as wodges) and put away all the modern material that wouldn't fit in this particular quilt. That alone was a huge help.

I've made a lot of the pieced sashing , so I put all those all aside to work on later. I gathered up all the stuff for the stars and put that in one spot. And because there was just soooo many small scraps I decided to make 9" blocks in a combination of crumb and crazy piecing to use it all up.

I began sewing the wodges together, with no rhyme or reason. I picked up a bit, found something with a side that measured roughly the same and sewed them together. I did NOT at any stage use my judgement! I merely sewed. I did that for about an hour, then stopped and pressed all the little pairs. Then I repeated the same process to make bigger pieces. By this stage they were long enough to sew to strips, and trim the edges straight again. Behold, I was crumb-piecing!!

When we were in high school we used to go to country dances, in wonderful old community halls. The old-style dances were a joy, and we loved memorising the steps and twirling around those well-worn floors with the country boys. The steps were a recipe for success, everyone doing the same thing, to the same music, and all the dancers part of the intricate pattern.

Mum had been a wonderful dancer in her time, and the love of dancing was something we had in common. Once when watching an old movie we commented on the outrageous dancing some 1930's couple was doing. 'That!" snorted Mum derisively. "That's not dancing. That's jitterbugging." "Did you do that?" we asked, and Mum replied " I most certainly did not. I could have, but I didn't want to." Well it certainly looked like fun anyway.

We have always doubted that Mum ever could have jitterbugged; she just couldn't let loose and go with the flow. She was all about control. She was all about following the steps and getting the right result. That's how she was, but it's not how I want to be. So today when I came to the conclusion that I was being too staid and conservative I threw caution to the winds and just went wherever the scraps led. And I had fun. I made blocks.


How come I have to work so hard to do what comes naturally to people like Bonnie and Tonya? It's a mystery to me. I guess some people are born jitterbuggers, some people never want to do it, and some, like me, can learn if they try hard enough.

Read more...

Collections

I have collecting genes on both sides of the family. My maternal great-grandmother was renowned for never passing up the opportunity to buy a yard of lace, and my (Scottish) paternal grandfather donated 2000 books on Robbie Burns to the National library. My Mum had a serious wool and fabric stash, and my father cherished wood and old furniture.

The photo is that same great-grandmother's sewing basket, with a leather box that once held celluloid collars belonging to my Scottish grandfather. Both inspired me to acquire other baskets and boxes over the years.

I have collected lots of things, but always with limitations. Nothing cracked or chipped or broken. Nothing too easy to find; the hunt is most of the fun. Nothing popular and expensive. If the things I collect do become sought after, I stop collecting them, because I won't pay huge amounts for things I once picked up for a few dollars. It's that Scottish side coming out. As I have down-sized my possessions I've sold a lot of the things I once collected so happily, and I don't miss them at all. And I don't really collect anything now. We change as we get older, obviously.

I did have a serious thing with moulds. Jelly moulds, shortbread moulds, cookie cutters, biscuit makers, ravioli presses, chocolate moulds. I love the idea of being able to replicate exact copies.

I also love making things assembly line, lots and lots at a time. When the kids were little I got so carried away making their clothes one winter that there were 26 T-shirts to choose from in their cupboard. I make my own skirts and shirts in multiples of 5, and it seems to hardly take any more time. I would rather do three zips than one. Strange.

Maybe that's why I adore patchwork too, because so much of it is sewing the same sort of units together, one after the other. It's an act of creative meditation, making clusters of things all to the same pattern.

I was working in the garden on the weekend, and as I planted some seeds it occurred to me that they are the ultimate in replications. From when we were too young to read Meredith and I have been dazzled by the allure of seed packets. Plant these strange knobbled little lumps and they will all turn into nasturtiums, just like on the packet. Want a daisy, or purple beans, or carrots? Just buy the seeds and follow the instructions.

Meredith still has the seed packets we pored over as 4 year olds, a beautiful little slice of the packaging of the time and the promise of good things to come.

And as well as gardening I worked on the Maverick Stars, trying to decide on a setting.
I am rather partial to this checkerboard of 1" squares, which is devouring the 1 1/2" strips in the container at a great rate. I may use a different block as a cornerstone, but I'll decide that later on. I just need to make some more stars. and get busy with those sashing strips. Soon I will have conquered my scraps and strings entirely!!

Actually all I will have achieved is another quilt top, a lot of much smaller scraps and none of the blue fabric leftover. That seems to be the way of scrap piecing.

Read more...

Today I delivered the paperwork for our taxes to the accountant, which is a major achievement. I decided I needed a small treat, so I allowed myself to do some cutting for my next leader and ender project.

Last week Meredith sent me this link to a quilt on Ebay. (I hope the seller doesn't mind me posting the picture here)

I was mildly intrigued by the block, and drew up something similar in EQ6, and fiddled and mucked about a bit. I decide it would be nice pieced as scrap, and I played with settings and different piecing methods until I came up with about 16 variations. Then I made a sample block, and liked it, and decided it would be the block to use up all my remnant 2 1/2" strips.

This is what I've been piecing: it's my ideal block. For each one I make 3 half square triangle units, a dark and a light 2 1/2" square, and a dark and a light 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" rectangle. It's so easy, especially as I have most of these precut and leftover from other projects.

Then I went reading on the Maverick ring, and realised that what I had laboured over in EQ6 was virtually the same thing that Bonnie was making with her baby quilt. Doh! But I still like my blocks, and all the variations I drew up, and I'm piling up the blocks. They are a delight to piece, and they are using up those leftover 2 1/2" strips. I like it on point as well, so I may just amass a huge amount of these blocks and make several quilts.

I haven't abandoned the Maverick Stars, but I'm trying to decide on a setting before I forge ahead. And I have discovered that I dislike crumb piecing and using up odd-shaped scraps. It's too disordered for me, it causes me real anxiety. I guess once I get rid of this lot of scraps I won't make another quilt like this. I will donate all the odd shaped bits to someone who actually enjoys working with them.

Blame any spelling mistakes in this post on my latest craze; DH came home from the pub extolling the virtues of Gin & Tonic. Whatever, I thought, but he bought all the fixings and made me one. Hmmm, I thought, that isn't bad. I have read so many autobiographies of British expatiates in the tropics, and Gin and Tonic seemed to be the drink of choice. I live in the Tropics. Therefore I should drink Gin and Tonic. It makes sense to me...... It's a very complex blend of flavours, and I haven't tired of it yet.

I do like discovering things that I like. For years we ate very mediocre meals because that was all we could afford, or the kids wouldn't eat anything except boiled pasta and steak and gravy. Now we are discovering a whole world of fantastic flavours and tastes, and it's fun. I have lived on spinach, feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes for the last 6 months, washed down with red wine. Mmmmm!

Read more...

The weekend was not very productive, but extremely relaxing, and a most welcome change of pace. I worked on some more Maverick Stars, finetuning the pattern to make it easier to piece. I don't mind set-in seams, but I need a project that won't take forever to piece, so I've changed the size and the way I'm piecing it. The block goes together really fast, with no awkward spots, and I'm happy with how the finished blocks are looking. Now for the perrenial question, what size d oI make this thing?

My goal is to completely empty three small scrap containers like the ones shown. I've been hoarding some of these bits for 10 years and I'm sick of them. My problem when I finally come to use the saved scraps is that I try to conserve them, use up every last little thread, and that's not the aim of the game. I need to use them up and throw away the leftover bits and move on. Not agonise how I can get two teeny bits out of a mere snippet; use another snippet and get on with it!

If I don't maintain some sort of pace then I get mired down worrying which way is the most economic use of fabric and then I go and clean out the Tupperware cupboard instead because it's all too hard.

Read more...

I had an extremely stressful week, which I declared officially ended as I hefted the last parcel onto the counter at the Post Office. I do love getting big orders from shops, but I like to have more than 2 days notice! And three enormous orders in one week was a record.

I bought EQ6 last week, and it arrived today. I am playing, and watching the instructional videos, and drinking red wine and making more of the Maverick Stars. The weekend, a Stashbuster Retreat, is shaping up well.....

Read more...

Meredith and I swap a list of short-term goals each week, in an attempt to make us more focussed on what we need to be doing. Sad to say, my list is often the same for a month or more. I rarely get to cross everything off, even though they are all worthy items. I need some motivation. I did manage to finish the couch cover, which involved a bit of muscle as it was very thick decorator fabric and rather heavy when it was all in one piece.

(Incidentally, that white stick leaning in the background? That's my craft lamp. Every standard lamp I've ever bought has ended up like this, because the kids sit watching TV and play with them, twirling them round and wrecking the threads that hold the whole lot together. And it's another thing they don't grow out of either; even DH is guilty. One day I am going to splurge on one of those floor-standing Ott lights, and heaven help ANYONE who even breathes on it.)

I've decided that when I get my current list finished (20 items, but some are very tiny goals) I am going to allow myself to join a fabric club, probably a Judy Rothermel Civil War one. I have been virtually no-buy for 5 months now, and I don't miss the stash acquisition at all. In fact, as I am now doing my taxes and totting up all the fabric purchases from the year before, I am very relieved that I haven't spent any more on material. But I need something affirmative in my life, I seem to be working 10 hours a day lately. Working with my current stash is not very exciting, so a little infusion of Judy's wonderful range of reproductions would maybe pique my interest. First I have to get busy crossing things off the list.

Couch cover - check!
Post blog entry - check!!

Remember this blue and white quilt on Mereth's blog? This is my version of the same pattern. It's amazing how the different fabrics can vary the appearance of a simple block. My quilt hangs above our bed normally, but it has been retired for a rest as it was getting pulled out of shape. I'm thinking that to replace it I'd like to make a wall-hanging from those tumbler shapes that were on my design wall a few posts ago. It can go on my list of things to do....

Read more...

An interim photo of the sewing room, clean-up in progress. I've cleared away a lot of the clutter and fabric, sorted the scraps and put away the sewing tools. I need to reorganise the storage though, as I can't get to the cupboard where the strips of fabric are stored, and I need to change that. But there will be sewing taking place very soon, which will be a major achievement, even though it will only be turning the 7 metres of fabric on the floor there into a couch cover for the lounge room. It's on my list of things to do, and it will get that big wad of material out of the room and off my concsience.

Mereth was talking about her 'Never Again' sewing moment in this post; my personal moment was 15 years ago when I was asked to make 17 pairs of 'Happy Pants' for a bowling team, 9 men and 8 women. They were simple elastisized pants, with side pockets, but the material chosen was a wool/polyester plaid in a very large assymetrical check, which meant it was a pig to cut out and match the lines. Then they bought a single copy of a woman's pants pattern, which meant I had to cut out all the larger sizes first, then cut the pattern down for each smaller size, destroying the pattern in the process so I had to get it right first time. And I had to recut all the pieces for the men because they didn't want the waist as high as the ladies pants. I had to measure all 17 people in the lunch room at the bowling club, and taking the inside leg measurement of 9 strange men in public is not my idea of fun. The whole thing was a disaster, and I vowed that I would never again sew clothing for other people.

I thought that the whole incident was lost to everyone's memory, thankfully, until two years ago when my daughter was having driving lessons. She parked outside the house, and her driving instructor got out of the car and said 'You made happy pants for us' and I could have died. Let's draw a veil over that whole sorry episode. Last weekend while cleaning up the yard I noticed something half-buried in the ground under the trees; I couldn't believe that it was a scrap of the revolting plaid from those pants. It's haunting me.

Read more...

I'm running on the spot here, trying to get all my work finished before the end of the week, so I can have the weekend to do whatever I want. I have to go to Bunnings (big hardware place) because I'm having withdrawal symptoms and need to buy some plants and herbs for the garden. I need to spend time in the garden making all the surviving plants comfortable so they can withstand the last blast of hot weather (it's worse now than it has been for most of the summer). I need to visit the fabric shop for upholstery supplies, and the supermarket for vittels for the young'un. And tonight I'm going to the bottle-shop for my stock of red wine, which helps me take a relaxed view of life. I'm so glad the scientists have agreed that a glass, or two, a day is good for one's health. It's good for my soul as well.

I wouldn't normally post 'before' pictures of my sewing room, but I will this time, in the hope that it will make me prioritise the cleaning up. It's going to be a huge relief to see some order in here, so that I can sew in peace and tranquility. I don't like to sew when things aren't functional and nicely laid out; half the fun for me is being organised and orderly.

We have survived the first week of Uni, and I even made it to the gym on two separate occasions. I do weights and an hour on the treadmill at home, but it's good to get to the gym and do some more comprehensive exercises. I'm aiming for three times next week, and as DS has classes every single day I just have to pick the most convenient times to slot in a gym visit. The thing that keeps me wanting to exercise is reading; I only ever allow myself to read while on the treadmill or at the gym, so I look forward to both the exercise and the reading. Cunning plan, ey?

Tonight, after my hour of reading/running, I will be sorting out those tottering stacks of material and scraps and quilt tops, which is the first step in the sewing room cleanup. A little light music, and a glass of red wine and I'll be all set to enjoy the start of the weekend.

Read more...

I decided it's time I do a truly maverick quilt, and disobey some of the quilting rules. So I'm making these star blocks out of every last little scrap and nibble of my antique reproductions. I've wanted to do a quilt with a Lancaster Blue background for years, but I've never been brave enough to cut into my hoard of the stuff. But now is the time. I'm loving how these are turning out,, but I haven't decided on a final pattern yet.

The first one is paper pieced and has set in seams, which was OK, but a little cumbersome at the end. The second one has an extra seam through the diagonal and is pieced in two halves, allowing it to be entirely paper pieced with no set in seams. I don't know which one I prefer yet, so I will have to make a few more and then decide. They are so much fun, and I'm going to love the look of the final quilt.

My sewing room is a pit! I've chosen to sew in my few spare minutes, instead of restore order, but I'm afraid I will have to do something soon. I can't find anything I need, which is frustrating, so I will take some time tomorrow to sort out the main work areas. I'll enjoy that, even if it means that I can't get any more blocks done straight away. Can't work in a mess....

I went through some upstairs cupboards and found some tins of ancient UFOs, more than 15 years old and all hand pieced. They will sit by my chair in the loungeroom and I'll get the pieces put together and then use them in my orphan block quilt. I can safely say that if I haven't touched them in 15 years then I don't really want to finish them as I had originally planned. It's better that the pieces end up in a sampler quilt than languish in the tin for another 15 years.

A few years ago I bought this top on Ebay. It has some lovely turn of the century mourning prints in the blocks, but the alternate blocks are a garish '30s print. Sometime this winter I will separate the blocks from the unsuitable setting fabric and piece them together with something more in keeping with their era. It was a bargain, about $15; I love value for money. I may even hand quilt this, it would be a nice way to get acquainted with all the old fabrics. I'll have to be careful of all those bias edges around the blocks....

Read more...

I had hoped that this year would be a lot better than last year's jumble of trips away and sad times, but it's not off to a good start. We have just come back from a week in Brisbane, attending the funeral of my darling Father-In-Law. It was all very upsetting, as my MIL has been left on her own after 52 years of marriage. It's awful living so far away from family, it's a 7 hour trip down there, and I think I loathe just about every inch of it, having driven it so many times in the last 26 years. I hate knowing that we can't be there for her.

Dad was a fantastic gardener, so I brought back some of his lilies to remember him by. It will be therapeutic to pot them into good soil and see them thrive. Brisbane has such severe water restrictions that most of his garden was dying, so I've given these few things a reprieve from certain death. We need RAIN in the catchment areas of the dams, and it seems to be falling everywhere but there.

And life bowls along despite whatever else is happening, so I have arrived home to a sea of work and a garden on it's last gasp and cats that are determined to tell me about every minute of their abandonment. Get over it Guys! So if this sounds like a whinge then it probably is. I want something nice to happen.

This morning we have been out to the Uni to collect textbooks for DS, and his course begins again next week. I like driving him to Uni because it makes me schedule my gym visits more regularly; if I'm out of the house anyway I may as well go to the gym.

My poor sewing room has been overtaken by a sea of paper as I print out several huge orders, and I can't get near the machine for even a stitch. I haven't been able to work on the orphan blocks at all, so they will have to sit on the design wall a little longer. But I do like that Tumbler bit, I may have to cut out a whole quilt like that.

I am going to make an effort today to get the room put back the way it should be, and sew something, anything! Even mending would be better than nothing.

I like this Bear Paw variation; wouldn't mind making a whole quilt like this.

This is another quilt that came home from a quilt shop. It's one that I use to teach beginners. I like the brown and blue colour scheme, they are my two favoutire colours I think.


Like everyone else, I get a huge amount of spam and junk mail. Most of the titles are nonsensical, but some are intruiging. I liked the one that advised me "Have a Spatial". A Spatial sounds quite interesting, sort of a cross between a facial, Feng Shui and an out of body experience. Anyone know where I can get me one? Might be just what I need.

Read more...

We have been having some wild and stormy weather lately, with tropical thunderstorms and torrential rain. This tree on the road outside our house lost branches in the worst of it, blocking the road. It must have been a bit hairy driving around in those conditions, which is why I was entrenched in my sewing room.

When I came upstairs the back porch was full of brimming buckets of water; DS Rhys had discovered water pouring through the verandah ceiling as the gutters overflowed. I'm glad he was upstairs to deal with it, because I didn't have a clue it waws happening. The funniest thing was that the three cats had taken refuge on the kitchen table, absolutely horrified at the deluge of water. They had to be coaxed down, quaking, as if from Noah's Ark. "Water, Mum!' Bobcat told me, trembling. 'Water coming down INSIDE!' He had to have a snack to calm his nerves.

I was sewing this basket block, just to get the measurements and the cutting requirements in place. I'm not going to make a quilt or anything.... I truly am trying to do something with the orphan collection, and today a few ideas came together. Nothing to see as yet, but I know what I want to do now.

It's hard to ignore the Valentine's Day advertising, but I'm doing my best. It's not a tradition here in Australia, and I don't see that we need to feel guilty for not buying stuff and giving cards and making Hallmark even richer.

And the whole school thing where all the kids in the class give every other kid in the class a valentine, well isn't that sort of like a football match where everyone has their own ball? What's the point? (I know, I'm a heartless cynic, you don't need to tell me...)

Read more...

Another set of blocks turned into a finished top, and it didn't take long despite my false start.

This quilt actually came about because of the quilt on Lois' bed in Malcolm In The Middle. I only caught a fleeting glimpse of it, but liked the pinwheels and the brown stripe setting blocks. I couldn't find just the right brown stripe, but this browny-pink dotted geometric looks pretty good too.

This one isn't very big either, 60" x 76", a nice single bed size. I was sorely tempted to make it big enough for at least a double bed, but sanity prevailed. No more big quilts for a while yet. And now I have leftovers to go into my orphan block quilt.

I pulled out all my lonely blocks and UFOs that I will never complete, and sorted them into piles. I have a pile of blue/black/grey/white blocks, a heap of multicoloured cheerful ones, and another lot that are more antiquey colours with a lot of brown and green. It's very confusing and overwhelming to look at such a strange and motley collection, and I was tempted to stuff them all back into the drawer again. But I didn't, and I will let the antiquey ones sit on my design wall for a few days until they start talking to me. They will have to, in the end. Resistance is futile.....

Read more...

I try not to be superstitious. It's such a silly foible to have, believing in omens and knocking on wood and worrying. My great-grandmother was extremely superstitious, and my great-uncle once caused her to faint dead away by wearing black and opening an umbrella inside her house. Still, I have never been able to put new shoes on the table without experiencing a feeling that I'm pushing the envelope in some way. (Extreme bad luck will result...) I refrain from running in, screaming, from another room when my daughter is about to put the new shoebox on the kitchen table.

But in yesterday's post, when I said my new project was simple and should be whipped up in a few days I did wonder if I'd jinxed myself. And I knew I had when I discovered that I had only half of the blocks that I'd made, and the rest were completely AWOL. So I spent most of yesterday wandering around contemplating where on earth they could be, and tearing apart every cupboard and set of drawers trying to find the container. I knew where it was before I moved back into my downstairs sewing room; I just didn't know where it was now.

Logically, it always has to be in the last place you look, because once you find it you stop looking. And late in the afternoon I contemplated, yet again, the shelves in the cupboard containing all my backing fabrics. I knew that it was the most logical place for me to have stored the box of blocks, but they weren't there. In a flash of insight I realised that the material didn't reach all the way to the back of the cupboard, leaving a space....

I'm glad to have found the wretched blocks, cross to have wasted a day looking for them, and musing over the fact that it was both the first place I looked for them, as well as the last.

Read more...

These blocks were bugging me, and not in a good way. I made them to use up the leftovers from my Grey Havens quilt, and then they refused to co-operate when I tried to put them together. Those madder squares in the corners kept forming a secondary pattern when I tried to sash them with 2" sashing and cornerstones, and I didn't like the effect. I tried dozens of settings and different fabrics and nothing clicked. I din't mind the green and navy setting I showed a couple of posts ago, but Meredith obligingly pointed out that my Square-in-a square blocks have that setting too. And I didn't want to duplicate it. So thanks Meredith, the delay was all your doing.

I finally tried this dirty browny-grey print that I adore, and it worked. I wanted the quilt to have that ancient, multi-patterned look of 18th Century quilts, kind of like a faded carpet. I had just enough to make the sashings, so that is another metre and a half of fabric gone from the stash for good. And seeing it was a piece that I've been hoarding it counts for Judy's challenge.

As a bonus, one of the fabrics that didn't work for this quilt proved to be perfect for another set of blocks, so that will be my next project. It's a simple one, so I should be able to whip it up in a few days. Famous last words. It took great resolve and determination to get this latest top finished, and I had to ignore a few chores this afternoon so that I could get it in one piece. I kept repeating to myself 'I'm going to blog about this tonight, I AM
going to blog about this...'

I stuck to another resolve and kept this small, only 20 blocks. It will be a nice wall quilt, or one for the couch. The colours are very subtle and muted, and look much nicer in natural light than in the photo. I do like muddy combinations though. I'm not much into brights; love what other people do, but I don't buy bright material myself.

I'm going to pull out all my orphan blocks tomorrow and see if I can make a top from them. Just about every top I made last year had leftover blocks, so I will play around and see if I can be as creative as Bonnie....

Read more...

Piano Lessons

In the comments on my post about Suicide Tennis Tracey mentioned that she hadn't liked her piano lessons. Well we had to take those as well, and it wasn't a happy story either.

The piano arrived when we were about 9. Mum had recently been widowed, and this piano was a huge expense, even though it was aquired from an estate sale. Mum had wanted to learn to play piano since she was a small child, and now, we were going to live her dream. There was never ANY question of her learning at the ripe old age of 47; she wouldn't contemplate it.

So we were packed off each Tuesday lunchtime to a nearby Catholic high school for lessons with the nuns. To get to the music room we had to walk the whole length of the school, under the scrutiny of the enlightened young misses who attended that Christian community. May they rot in Hell.

It took only a few weeks for them to conspire to make our life a misery. All of them (around 120) would line the path to jeer and sneer and taunt and even spit at us. The only safety was the music room, and there we had to endure whichever nun was assigned to teach us the mysteries of music that week. We were perhaps not in the right frame of mind, knowing that we had to run the gauntlet on the way back, and that there would be no time to eat lunch that day, after we'd biked back to our own school. And like as not get into trouble for being late for the afternoon classes. Tuesdays were nightmare material. Music was so not worth it.

I suppose we were an easy target. There were two of us and we were absolutely identical. We were tiny, tiny children, always the smallest by far in our age group. And we followed Mum's advice of how to deal with the torment by putting our little noses in the air and marching on, side by side, regardless. It was hysterical to watch apparently. We endured that every Tuesday for two years. And no, Mum would not let us give up music lessons either. It would enrich us....

When we went to High School we went to the Convent for our lessons. No more evil tormentors, but a different class of nun. These were strange, elderly, embittered, lonely women, with nothing left of their vocation. They used a bamboo cane on unwary knuckles, scolded instead of praised, seethed with impatience and sourness. The door slammed on our retreating backs after the lesson, and Meredith and I would look at each other and feel that we were returning to the land of the living. And not another music lesson for 6 days and 23 hours!!

Because we were twins we had to play Duets. Nobody bothered to explain to us the concept of a Duet, so we discovered by accident that it sounded better if we synchronised our parts the way they were meant to be played. No more starting off at different times and hammering to the finish independently. Then we were enlisted to play at various church and school functions, and we were a great hit. We developed a Chopsticks routine that brought the house down, starting slowly, working through 8 variations with increasing speed and ending with a crashing, lightning fast climax. It was so popular we often had to play an encore. Bugger!

We had never heard of the concept of passive-aggressive behaviour, but we practiced it to a fine art. And eventually, after 6 years of fruitless endevour we made Mum throw her hands up in disgust and agree that we could stop the lessons. She was very strongwilled, our Mum, but she couldn't make us want what she had so desperately wanted. Sad state of affairs. If she had offered us riding lessons, or singing lessons, we could have done that with a glad heart. But they weren't her dream. Which we ruined for her.

I am glad to have some musical knowledge. Once when I was singing in the church choir a practice was going to have to be cancelled because the pianist hadn't showed up. I volunteered to play and the look on my DD's face was utterly priceless; 'How do YOU know how to play piano??!!' she demanded. There's a lot she doesn't know about her mother. But I still can't sit at a piano without a feeling of loathing.

Read more...