The big finish

The smallest quilter in the house had a very proud moment today.  A finish.

.... And all done without help from a pesky sewing-teacher mother.

 The pesky sewing-teacher mother was bustin' out all over with pride, watching the confident 6-year-old working her way around the improvisationally pieced quilt with the fancy-schmantzy Bernina Stitch Regulator.

 A ridiculous number of photos were taken... ahem... and a video....

Her confidence with the machine is a joy to watch, but the biggest surprise is that this  has been an ongoing project since the Christmas holidays, and she has kept coming back to it.   Little Miss Attention-Span-of-a-Gnat's-Eyelash has really WORKED on this project.  And it's for me.... a quilt to keep my knees warm while I work on the computer.

By just after midday we had the proud hold-it-up-and-take-a-photo moment.

 I'm loving the slightly unconventional binding on the quilt.....

The kid is determined to do things her own way.

Her independent, creative spirit inspires a cocktail of pride, hope and excitement about what the future might hold for her ..and an absolute terror of what lies ahead for me as her mother...  But right now, I'm just so very, very proud of her.

She told me that the quilt is full of love...but she didn't have to tell me that.

Quilted!

The holiday project is complete.   The wonky-block, make-it-up-as-I-go-along quilt is finished.  Quilted and bound and amply covering the double bed.  I'm just waiting for a sunny day to wash and dry it to snuggly it up a bit.

 Today's little hang on the line was a staged photo opportunity.  Seeing it like this makes me feel a bit pleased (it looks like I invisaged it) and a bit annoyed with myself (that I didn't unpick and rearrange the blocks for the third time). 

 I'm not as sure about the chopped-off running-off-the-edges blocks as I was when I ran them off the edges and chopped them off.  (Ho hum.  You don't notice them when it's on the bed.)


The backing fabrics are a mish-mash from the stash, with a bit of Andalucia from the Quilt Fabric Delights sale page.

 The "panda quilt" is also done and has been claimed by the wee girl.    She won't notice that the wonkiest machine quilting occurred on the areas where black thread shows the most.

I've had a lovely stay-cation these last few weeks, but it's time to prepare for the year ahead.  We open for business again on Tuesday.

Getting serious

My little holiday in quilting land saw me back at GJ's yesterday, investing in some batting, thread, extra fabric and EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE (again).  I think I've learned as much about quilting from the help the GJ's staff have given me as from any other source.

 
And today, I fell in love with my machine and my studio space all over again, as I free-motion quilted the scrappy quilt.  Binding is tomorrow's task.

In other news, the wee girl decided that she must cut her hair.

But was only willing to let go of the length below the elbows.  And she wanted a fringe.  She looked a bit like this (and I didn't like it).

 Today she was fed up with mid-length hair getting in the way of everything she did, and insisted on a shorter cut.  We found a hairdresser with a vacancy and we now have "an easy little bob", which has been flipping about the place since, while the wee girl sings the praises of half a metre less hair.

I've been marvelling at my confident, competent girl.

Here she is, sewing up bags (of her own design, with no help from her mother welcome or tolerated), confidently threading the machine,changing stitches and ....ahem...wearing the wrist band from the swimming pool yesterday.  Doing her own thing.

She asked, "Can I go to Sewjourn?"  

It's like... random.

We harvested more storm-damaged vegetables today, trying to bring some sort of order into the shredded mess that was the "bastja" (not sure of the spelling, but it's Macedonian for vegetable garden).

Our heritage variety carrots are full of free-spirited personality and colour.  Not one of them looks like a carrot, but they taste GREAT.  And I think the smell of newly-harvested root vegetables is one of my favourite smells in the world (...that and night-scented jasmine.... I know, the two are quite different).

Storms and tomato-eating beasties permitting, we're looking forward to a bumper crop of tomatoes within the next week or two.  They survived the pummelling from the xmas-day hail better than the rest of the vegetables, and are destined for loads of tomato sandwiches and salads.

 Once the sun got too hot and high, the girl and I retreated to the shade of the lemon tree and splashed a bit of cheap PVA glue around with some scrap yarn.  I'm not quite sure what we're going to use this for, but it sounded like cheap entertainment.

Of course, the exercise involved a long argument about changing out of the new dress she donned for gardening and wearing something that didn't need ironing every time it was washed.  Things are never as simple as they appear in blog photos. 

 At some point in the afternoon, I announced that if I didn't escape to the studio to play with my new fabric, my head would explode. 

I'm prone to hyperbole.

A couple of hours at the sewing machine and I was feeling much more like my old (non-exploding) self.

 I wanted to see what the "quilt" will look like when the plain bitter-chocolate colour is added to the mix.  

Adding to the list of challenges to keep me interested in the project, I've decided that the layout has to be one with a variety of spacings between the blocks. 

I started sewing bits together.... only having laid out HALF of the blocks. Quilt chicken.  Let's see if I can make it come together in some sort of cohesive to-all-appearances-looks-like-I-thought-about-it design.

All you real quilters can look away now.... this is where I almost run out of pants-seat to fly by.

So... how was YOUR day?  Random...?

Le Tour de Fabric

What a huge day for fabric love....

A lovely bundle arrived from Quilt Fabric Delights.  I was a bit excited about their sale page and the fact that they still had a small piece of the Patty Young "Andalucia" print that I needed, so I put in a little order on the weekend.  (And yes - they stock my patterns, too!)

 Then there was a bit of a gathering of friends at Lara's house.  Annie, Jodie and Rachel came into town for the day and we went ON TOUR.... after the exploration of Lara's sewing room....

 ..and awestuck gazing at the VERY TIDY cupboards full of fabric stash.  (How DOES she manage it....??)

And there was a fair bit of posing against the famous wall....

 

We then went to Rathdowne Fabric & Remnants and then to GJ's.  I forgot to take the camera out in Rathdowne, but managed to snap a bit of Annie in action at GJ's.

 ...and pretty-much lost everyone amongst the rows and rows of luscious fabric....

 ...and rows of toys all over the floor.  (No idea who's wee girl that is....wearing a cat-print dress...)

 I'm not sure if it was noticable, but I loitered around the pre-cut fabric shelf a few times.  It looked a bit sweet-shoppish to me, and I was feeling a bit like a child..... but I resisted.  I have to finish my quilts-in-progress before embarking upon any new adventures in the world of patchwork.

 That small child in the cat dress took up position at the counter and talked "cats" with anyone who had a cat.  Luckily (for her), Jodie, Annie and Suzanne (behind the counter) all have cats.  As does the woman who was waiting patiently in the queue behind us.

 My purchases were quite restrained, and mostly geared towards turning my quilt blocks into quilts.  (I even managed to sew on the border of this one late this afternoon).

I also found enough spotty cotton fabric to make the back of the quilt.  (The idea was to make a cot quilt, but it's now a single bed size.)

 
The only completely-without-purpose purchasing I did were these pieces, below - a mixture from both stores.  They were too cute and too well-priced to pass up ($5.95-$8 per metre) and they'll go into the stash.

The only thing that I could have used but I DIDN'T buy, was the EXACT Patty Young fabric that I was looking for on the weekend.  Along with the QFD piece that arrived today,  I've organised Lisa to send me some from Sydney.  And here's a bolt of the stuff, in my local fabric store.....

Our shopping day ended with a short trip to my studio for lunch and a chat.   (I forgot to take out the camera again).  The kids all played beautifully together (Rachel's kids are ANGELS, I tell ya - ANGELS!)

Thanks, lovely ladies, for a grand day out.  I'm counting the days until we're sitting around the table together at Sewjourn again.

Playing fabric chicken

My fabric piecing continues, and new challenges are being set all the time. 

It now HAS to become a quilt, and it has to involve as much of my stash as possible before purchasing any more fabric, and the super-bright colours at the centre have to be made to look like they link back towards a bitter chocolate base colour (I invisage plain bitter-chocolate-coloured homespun as the only fabric I will have to buy, since there is none in my stash).

I've used a lot of Tina Givens fabrics, because she manages to pull off some pretty unusual colour combinations, which - strangely enough - seem to be working in with my mad and unrelated mix.  Then I moved on to Patty Young's Andalucia ("fire" colourway). With my heart set on this particular print with this particular set of quilt blocks,  I dared not measure and estimate, in case I had proof that there wouldn't be enough.  I WANT this fabric here and don't want to have to consider anything else in its place.  I went for it, head-on, with high hopes of just scraping in with millimeters to spare.

Ok.  So there wasn't enough, and I have 3 more 5" blocks to turn into 9" blocks. 

I've googled and searched Etsy and trawled through my favourite fabric shop websites.  No joy.  Does anyone (preferably local) know if it's in any bricks & mortar shops or have a bit in their stash that I could purchase...?

Bravery is finished.  I'm on to begging.

Slipping to the dark side.

An impromptu invitation from nearby cousins, to play in their new pool, had the wee girl changed and out the door before I had time to contemplate how to best use my child-free time.  Overwhelmed by crafty possibilities, I flapped about in unfocused circles for a bit.  Decided to go for a swim.  Came back, looked at the thread-and fabric-strewn floor and got the vacuum cleaner out.  Decided life was too short (and child-free time is shorter still) so got out the new quilting book and a bunch of pre-cut fabric.

 I carefully followed instructions (which was made super-easy by putting the book under my extension table and overlaying the fabric bits.  Loving that!).

It all went well enough, experimenting with geometric shapes, the simple maths and construction of it all, but it didn't grab me.  The whole thing got far more interesting after I set the challenge of making the same size  blocks (12") until I'd used up ALL of the fabric scraps. 

 My puzzle-solving brain clicked into gear, and I finally got what it is that makes people want to sew lots of tiny scraps of fabric together.  (Until this point I was completely bemused by the whole notion, which was why I started to think I needed to try it.... I needed to understand it.)  When the little swimmer came back, I kept sewing, stopping only to toss a few noodles about in a wok for dinner and kiss her goodnight.

Then I put the quilting books away, pulled out the leftover bits from the cat quilt, chopped them up randomly and started stitching things together in an ad-hoc manner.... and stayed focused on the puzzle until the wee hours of the morning.  

At one point, I found myself saying to the man of the house "I think I'm a scrappy quilter" and then feeling like a complete fraud, knowing that I'm not really a quilter at all.  I have NO IDEA how this story will end.  Possibly not in a quilt.  The man of the house nodded and tried to look interested (but I think he was thinking about the cricket).



As I stitched together my riot of random colour scraps, my new pincushion smiled at me.  It made me smile back (especially that machine-stitched closing of the seam.  My girl is all about instant sewing gratification!).

 And what of the vacuuming.....? 

Well...life's a bit short, really.

Ah, Sewjourn...

A little oasis of calm and a much-needed break from busy-busy brain and crazy-crazy life..... I need a dose of Sewjourn at least twice a year. 

I'm incredibly lucky to be able to go each May and November.  I'm truly blessed to share the experience with an amazing group of women.

Lara, Annie, Karen, Rachel, Kathryn, Megan and Tanya, THANK YOU for a restorative, calming, inspiring weekend. You are truly wonderful people and fabulous company.  I'm looking forward to May already.

 Jodie and Catherine - you were missed and we hope you can make it next time.

It was lovely to see Tanya making my Petal hat (from my book).  I'm sure it'll look even cuter on a little someone (with a head).

The fashion parades were great, too.... Lara was busy making tops that fitted and suited Kathryn, Rachel and Karen.  And it was a thrill to get up close to the amazing array of Annie's quilt blocks that appeared on the design wall.

I didn't get any sewing-for-me done.  I didn't even get the planned  AQM bag samples done.  I finished the wee girl's quilt.

 That colour kinda hits you in the face a bit, doesn't it? 

I was up into the wee hours, free-motion quilting hearts all over the thing. 

Before I started, I had NO IDEA how long it would take to do the quilting bit.  That was probably a good thing.  I'll be thinking long and hard about all-over motifs if I ever venture into Quilt Land again.

Another surprise was how long it took to decide on the arrangement of the patched-together backing.... and how much it resembles a Licorice Allsort. 

But I think my trip to the craft show in Caulfield a week or so ago, to get a fat quarter of the "I love my Kitty" fabric, was worth it.  It really brings the whole thing together ...don't you think?