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Sunday, 26 June 2011

Look what 'followed' me home...

Friday was SHOW DAY
If you remember the previous post when I was silly enough to mix husband and fabric shopping, you may well roll your eyes when I tell you that I asked the MaTH if I could go into the city with him on Friday to go to the Craft Show. He was doing a consultancy job in near Pyrmont (not too far from Darling Harbour), the only catch being that I'd have to walk to the show and I'd be nearly an hour early for it opening...well it turned out to be a brilliant plan....and I had a lift home too (which, we all know, means that we can take home just that little bit more!)

First stop was booking into the screen printing workshop - like I really need to start another obsession craft.
I admit it - I can't draw and had a thought that maybe we'd get to choose a stencil...but no, it was draw your own!
Since we were screen printing on a tea towel, and I just finished this mug rug with a cute embroidered tea bag, I went for the obvious!
I'm very happy with how it turned out and I'm told that my artistic blobs in the corner should maybe, perhaps one day wash out if I don't heat set them when I iron the design! Handy hint: don't hold a screen full of paint and lean over to ask the teacher what should you do next!

My Horn sewing cabinet is over 15yrs old, and in some places is showing its age:
Not any more: despite going to shows for many years, it never occurred to me until today to actually go the the HORN stand and ask about whether it's possible to get new seals/surrounds!!!
 

I've also ordered the insert to fit my Brother sewing machine. I can't wait to get it and have the machine flush with the table top - goodbye neck aches.

There were a few other things jumped into my bag on the way around the show. 



 I've admired the grey and red pinwheel quilt forever...now I've seen it, met the creator and got my own little pinwheel magic tool to make my own version!




...and in the end I needed to get one of these to hold all the goodies...
How else was I going to manage the long trip all the way back to near Star City where the MaTH had parked the car?










thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

Tuesday, 21 June 2011

Hot Drink Weather...

Freezing winds rattling the windows and snow falls about 100km west of here are making me think of lovely hot drinks...

Do you like your  hot chocolate with sprinkles?
Or maybe you like a hot cup of tea?
Or perhaps a steaming cup of coffee?
or do you just like to look at cute little coffee pots?

You know what all this means?
I’ve finished my mug rug for Leona’s swap. It’s due to go out by June 30th and I have it ready 9 days early…miracles still do happen!

thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

Friday, 17 June 2011

After the Rain...

You may be wondering what I bought when I was stranded in the rain.
These two fabrics – the floral and the green filler - are for the backing and binding of my current embroidery project. IMG_2578 IMG_2577 I wasn’t sure if all those flowers were a ‘bit too much’, but seeing them in the photo – and there will be miles of white blanketing (apparently we now call it ‘negative space’) between the central design and the edges – I think it will all work quite ok.
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I also picked up a backing that I’m going to use for the ‘bubbles and ruffles’ quilt. I like the embossed pattern because it picks up some of the pattern design of the main blue fabric (and it will also be much easier to quilt with white in the top and bottom threads!).

IMG_2586
I just had to play with that photo effect and it does show the pattern in the white.
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This week I sewed the bottom of this bag - on the machine - and surprised myself with how well it turned out. This'll be added to the pile of "things I'll make again". It has an oval bottom that is pinned in place, then both the base and bag are bound and it’s really easy to machine sew the binding, a definite plus when you want to have more in the 'finish' pile than the 'whenever' pile!IMG_2567
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Finally , I've been getting work done on the mug rug for this swap.  I am going to add some embroidery with stranded and perle cotton, rather than machine quilting – just for something different.
IMG_2572
Well that’s been my week – I won’t bore you with the vacuuming, washing, folding, dinners and all those other things that usually make up my week and eat severely into quilting/sewing/crochet and embroidery time!!

thanks for taking a peek over the fence.

A Wet Weather Tale...

....or why you should go fabric shopping on your own...

If it was a really cold, wet, windy miserable day and you had the bright idea to go to, say Logans Patchwork Fabrics, and you thought that if you suggested to the Man About the House that if he came to, say Leichhardt, and spent a small amount of time at, say Logans Patchwork Fabrics, that afterwards you and he could go and have a leisurely, delicious coffee in a cute little cafe, out of the rain...
you'd think that it would turn out to be a wonderful, really lovely day,with 2 people happy with the coffee and company and, for arguements sake, the fabric they'd purchased?

Well not if you were me!
No,  what would happen is that I'd go into Logan's Patchwork Fabrics,
and the MATH would sit in the car and leave the air blowing, but the engine turned off, and I would be slightly longer looking for exactly the right shade of green, and then I'd come back to the car and we'd go to drive off for the coffee bribe part of  the trip and the car wouldn't start!

Yes a totally dead battery in the blustery, cold, wet, windy, rainy, freezing outdoors!
So I headed back into Logans (I always get the hard jobs) and Lois kindly brought her car up and let us jumpstart ours .
In the process it became pretty obvious (so I'm told) that the battery is an acid coated, rusty looking lump of near uselessness and if we continued our plan of going to get coffee, we'd be stuck somewhere less pleasant than outside a fabulous fabric shop.

So the NRMA are called - and here's an important tip - if you have a 'dead' car on a wet day in Sydney chances are the first thing you will be told is "there is a 90 minute wait" (this I know from bitter and repeated experience) however when we said the magic word - battery - the nearest van is a mere "20 minutes wait"!!!

The lovely Logan's staff then invited us inside to keep warm and offered us coffee.
However, I'd spied a cafe just a few minutes walk away and was determined to keep my end of the bargain  with the MATH (ie cafe coffee and cake) and volunteered to head off, despite the building storm clouds, to get said coffee and cake. Just as I returned, and put our steaming cups in the car, the service van arrived.

So there I am warm and dry with a hot cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin,
The MATH and the NRMA mechanic are under the hood of my car,
and down comes the rain - well actually sideways blows the rain - and there's no escaping it...

And for the third time, I headed back into Logan's
and asked if I could have a jug of boiling water (because apparently you can't test a battery
when it's terminals are covered in white gunky stuff).
These people deserve a medal - not one little bit of eyerolling
when I went back into their shop to ask for their help a third time!

Well, $200 dollars and a new battery later and after having coffee and cake in "Cafe Mazda 2", we headed home.
Me - 3 hrs of fabric shopping, magazine reading and coffee drinking.
MATH - 3 hours of his life that he won't get back.

The moral of the story - always go fabric shopping on your own!

thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

Friday, 10 June 2011

SameliasMum - Go! Baby Giveaway

Yes you read right!!
Anorina from Samelia's Mum is giving away a Go Baby.
picture captured from sameliasmum.com
She's a beautiful quilter, a great blogger and has a huge following and you'd be mad not to head on over there now - unless of course you didn't go there so I had a better chance!
If you must - go here for you chance to enter.


thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

Our Creative Spaces...Bag 0' Fun

So where did that week go?
Thankfully there is something to show for it!
I made this bag, from a pattern that I bought earlier in the year down in Berrima (this has to be a record for me - using a pattern this early in owning it!)
Also there were some lovely colours in my fabric stash that made it easy to put together:
As a bonus I worked how to do a machine join on the binding. The join looks really neat and the binding sits so nice and flat. Now I know how to do it, there will be a lot more of this in my binding repertoire.

Love the look of padded bag handles. Sewing long straight lines is really quite soothing!
The finishing touch...
To bag an eyeful of some more pretty creative spaces,
head on over to Kootoyoo's Our Creative Space

thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

Thursday, 2 June 2011

Thursday's Creative Space - embroidery

After week 2 of a wool embroidery class
gum leaves and gum blossoms...
 mastering the colonial knot...
Learning to do this at Oatley Cottage.

You'll find a few less knots over here...

thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

Look what else I "made" for myself...

...the last swap item I've been waiting for arrived!
This gorgeous bag made by Jennifer...

I have been eyeing off Sugar and Spice by "The Quilted Fish" (great quirky name!) and gave in to temptation by buying these not so long ago...
Sugar Paisley in Green Sugar & Spice in Red Sugar Stripes in Green
(all the above pictures are from hawthorn threads
Now I have some new buddies to add to the collection courtesy of my lovely swap partner. Thank you Jennifer for the bonus fabric - I love it!

I've got a couple of ideas for using them - either this tutorial or this tutorial are the ones I'm thinking of making...nothing like a matching clutch!
How lovely is it to have a swap partner who likes the things you like?

I've been following Shruti of 13 Woodhouse Road 's Bella Fiesta for the last month - she featured one Bella Solids colour each day for all of May.
I was lucky enough to win a yard of the RUST colour...
...courtesy of the FatQuarterShop. Thanks to both Shruti and the Fat Quarter Shop!


thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

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