Photos on the go

I have a lot of blog posts with 'draft' next to them. I start to write ideas, leaving spaces for a photo or two, go hunting for the camera, take a few shots, wrench the computer away from whichever 'YouTwitFace' teen that is hogging it, upload, resize...you know the drill.
Somehow, though, I reach the 'go hunting for the camera' or, more likely the 'wrench the computer away' hurdle and it all ends there, with that nasty little word 'draft' staring at me every third post or so.
But no longer... I have a new bloggy helper

Photos when I want to, even crop or turn to black and white. Internet access when I want. I. am. happy. (and I do like it's name better than its new big brother/sister)

This says it all...

Thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

My Place & Yours - What I'm reading

Yippee 'My place and yours' is back. I do like a good peek at what others are doing - and of course you're always invited to take a peek over this fence!
Summer holidays are at an end. I went back to work and Princess and Miss Bee returned to Yr 11 and Yr 5. Minky doesn't start Yr 8 till tomorrow. MATH (man about the house) will have the place to himself and BATH (boy about the house) is off to enrol in uni. Oh wait. I have Friday off too! Maybe I'll just finish the chapter...
The best thing about holidays is the uninterrupted read read  reading that I finally get to do, so this MP&Y's is perfectly timed.
What was I reading? Left over quilt magazines that got ignored through the year. Christmas presents from last, last year. Books belonging to the kids. My own indulgences ( the new Jasper Fforde cost $32.00 *gasp* that's nearly 1.5 metres of fabric!).

Arty b&w photo because of the book and because I can!
Hop on over to Punky & Me to find some other great reads.


Thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

...of holidays and happiness...of paisley and perfection

I have been away for a week visiting the area that my Dad grew up in. My Aunt still lives there and I wanted to make the trip to see her too.
We spent time at Tathra Beach, Candelo and walking in the national parks. It was the strangest sight to see the area so brown and drought ridden, when my memories are of a full and flowing (and at times flooding) Bega river and lush green hillsides. 
We stayed in 'eco' cabins on the edge of the Bournda National Park. Every morning and evening King Parrots, galahs, cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets and kangaroos would come down and could be fed seed and pellets by hand.

We were even visited by this big fellow, probably after eggs in a nest!




The owners of the park must have know something about me. This is what I found on the bed spread!


I was very tempted to cut out a bit to put into the 'paisley quilt'.


Fortunately there was a 'therapy centre' not far away - Mandeni Needlecraft and it is truly as inviting as the pictures on the website show.


Here is the haul from there - 
(actually the magazines came from the newsagent in Merimbula). Yes, you can see 2 pairs of thread snips and no, I'm not that bad at unsewing...the yellow pair is for Marisew, cause as Miss Bee says 'we like to have everything the same'!


So...what have I been doing since I got back from holidays..........


....TA...DAAAA....

...and as soon as I post this I'm off to do some more. (If I can sneak past Diva because she reckons I should be finishing her quilt off...she's probably right, but we all need a WIP to come back to, don't we?).

Thanks for taking a peek over the fence....

Resolving one Resolution

That idea floating about in my head with the paisley fabrics might just have floated out into the real world. I have something on paper with the help of Quilt Design Wizard (this is the baby program to EQsixtyzillion and has been great for a baby quilter!).

At first was simply going to do colourwash squares to let the 'fabric do the talking'...but that just didn't seem right - with all those beautiful, whimsical, colourful, gorgeous patterns and designs. So I am going all out with a medallion quilt that will include a Mariners Compass, log cabin blocks, pieced hearts and square-in -a-square blocks. I can't even show the full design because QDW doesn't actually have the capabilities to show it properly, so the design is a mix of on-paper and on-computer mish mash. I do know the NUMBERS add up though!.

Now to master the finer points of paper piecing! (Didn't I mention that there would be paper piecing, template and rotary cutting as well as inset seams?)

Can you believe that I have done this much already?

The photos show one half and what the light/dark blue point looks like and the lt/dk pink points will look like when put together (this is one quarter of the block). Toooooooo excited for words.

It took a while to find a 'compass' that I both, liked the look of and that was the right size. (I knew MATH  would come in handy for resizing the printout - he has even taken to calling himself the in-house IT guy!). I have some patterns in books and magazines, but either all the points were not the right length, too skinny, too fat, didn't go to the edge of the compass, had a circle in the middle etc - in short were NOT what I had in my head. In the end I settled on the Bear Paw one and have just adjusted it to square it off, rather than the separate 'template A'. (If you hear a scream from the vicinity of quilary-land you will know I stuffed up somewhere...).

For some Mariners Compass goodness try looking here at Quilted with Love or here at Bear Paw Productions.

This should be a piece of cake if I pin carefully, sew in the correct sequence, sew along the marked lines, finger press the folded fabric, keep the loose fabric out of the way, match points and remember to trim the seams before going onto the next piece.

                                          

Yeah, paper pieceing and I can be good friends for a while yet (*maniacally crossing fingers*).

Thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

The best kind of New Year Resolutions

It's a cool, rainy day in Sydney. Australia is doing very poorly in the cricket, reflecting the drab day. 
I'd better cheer myself up by working out what my resolutions for 2010 might be.

I have to finish quilting this: 

and this:

I really should take this be machine quilted:

She really needs a mane and tail.

I'd like to do a bit more of this:




Play a bit more





















put this together for Minky:

and figure out how to turn this plethora of paisley into an I <3 Paisley quilt.