stone house quilter

what I've been working on recently - a cushion!

2011-12-26T18:43:00.000+11:00

I don't make cushions as a general rule- they're small...and fiddly...and, well, not very satisfying. I make quilts, and they're mostly biggish ones. But for my city and guilds assessment, I made this cushion. The photos don't show up in the order I thought they would (I never can seem to get that right) but I'm sure you can follow them. I used plain white homespun and some of my hand dyed fabrics.

I had to show where I had tried out various different things for the quilting and applique, which slows down the process considerably. Usually I decide on something then just go ahead and do it. If it doesn't work, I say 'oops' and then unpick it or, more likely, tell myself that's what I wanted to do in the first place! I did find it useful for this project though, as I changed my mind about a couple of things after doing the samples.

On the whole, I'm pleased with my cushion. I hope you like it too.

Cheers, Cat

Ricky Tims is coming to town!

2011-12-14T17:29:00.000+11:00

Well, to Adelaide anyway. Tracey and Sharon, the two wonderful women who founded the Australian Machine Quilting Festival have arranged for Ricky to present a full-day seminar on Friday 28th September. He's one of my quilting heroes so that's yet another reason for me to go. The accommodation is already booked! If you want some more info, follow this link: ricky-tims-all-day-seminar

See you there!

cuddly koala

2011-11-07T11:22:00.000+11:00

I found these photos on my husband's camera. We took them in about July 2009 I think. We were driving along the south coast of Victoria and noticed a car stopped by the side of the road. The driver was out looking up into some trees and this is what he was looking at. A couple of koalas, one was a mother with a baby. Thanks to the wonderful 'zoom' facility on madern cameras, we were able to get some photos without worrying mummy koala too much. She opened her eyes for a few minutes then went back to sleep. We had to get a few shots of baby before he would show his face. Hope you like them!

mystic eye1 & 2

2011-10-11T15:25:00.002+11:00

I was looking at a quilt I made a few years ago and decided to make another version with completely different colours, different quilting and a different shape. I still really like the first version but I think I like the new version better.

First version

Second version

progression

2011-10-11T15:12:00.000+11:00

I had an appointment with my neurologist yesterday. She confirmed what I had suspected - my multiple sclerosis is transitioning from 'relapsing-remitting' to 'secondary progressive'. Not really surprising since I've had it for more than 25 years. It's probable that it will still be quite a slow progression, which is good. I thought I'd be upset at this new stage of the disease but I don't really feel that way. Resigned to the fact that it was inevitable, accepting that there will be more 'stuff' to adapt to, thankful that I have support from my family and a few very close friends - mentally I feel like I'm in a pretty good place.

And to finish, here's a photo coz I don't like posts with no pictures - and this one makes me laugh!

keryn's quilt

2011-10-11T11:59:00.000+11:00

Here's some photos of the quilt I made for my sister Keryn. It was meant to be for Christmas last year but I didn't get it finished till June this year. Better late than never, right? I did some more stitch-in-the-ditch and freehand feather practice and was quite pleased with the results.

africa quilt for my sister

2011-06-27T18:45:00.000+10:00

When Mr Stone House Quilter and I went to the big quilt festival in Chicago in 2007, we picked up quite a few different bits of African fabric. I also had some ordinary quilt fabric with African inspired designs which fitted in with it. When my sister Rose saw them she really liked them so I decided to make her a wall quilt for Christmas last year. It is a sort of design-as-you-go quilt. You know the kind - if a piece of fabric is too short, sew something else on the end of it; if a piece of fabric is too long, chop a bit off. Great fun! I pieced all sorts of wonky blocks into it as well as odd shaped strips of varying lengths and widths. The quilting was mostly just a freehand spiral.

Sorry about the blurry photos...

the old tulip quilt

2011-06-27T18:01:00.000+10:00

In June 2009, I posted a photo of a quilt top I made over 25 years ago. I did actually end up quilting it but never did show any more photos. Here's a few just to prove I did it. I keep meaning to go back and quilt something in the middle of the feather wreaths but haven't got round to it yet.

shattered nine patch

2011-06-27T17:35:00.000+10:00

This is one of the quilts I finished last year. Yeah, I know I've been a bit slack in getting the photos up! I started it in a shattered ninepatch workshop with Fran Williams from The Quilt Patch in Launceston. The fabrics are various Japanese styles in blues and purples. I modified some of the blocks so I could add the applique designs. I gave it to my Mum for her 75th birthday. Oh wait, that must mean I finished it the year before last. Wow, I have been slack with the photos!

south africa part 3

2011-04-01T22:27:00.001+11:00

I loved the different markings on the giraffes and zebras. The first photo was taken in Zambia. We stayed at the Royal Livingstone hotel which is right at the top of Victoria Falls, and in the grounds they have giraffe roaming around (as well as a zillion monkeys). This giraffe was so comical - the top of his head must have been itchy and he was trying to scratch it on a tree branch. The giraffes we saw here were quite a different colour to the ones we saw in South Africa.

Our driver in Kruger told us that giraffe can be really curious, and we noticed that whenever we saw a group of them there was always one or two that watched what we were doing. We thought they must have been the group's lookout. Apparently this does play a big part, but some of them are just plain nosey!

We saw lots of giraffe and zebra. Of course everyone on the tour took heaps of photos, which amused our tracker enormously. "All this excitement just for a couple of zebra" he said, shaking his head.

south africa part 2 - the rest of the big five

2011-04-01T21:53:00.001+11:00

Still in Kruger National Park, we saw all of the big five in one day. That's elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo. The elephant gave us a bit of a start. We saw him about 100m away on a track off the side of the road. We lost sight of him so our driver drove slowly along and as the road rounded a clump of trees, the elephant came round the trees from the other direction. We startled the elephant and he trumpeted and flapped his ears and did a little mock charge, which of course made everyone in the vehicle jump! One of the ladies in our group was videoing and when she replayed that bit of the video, she'd captured the sound of the elephant very well but the only vision she got was the bottom of her husband's trouser leg and the floor of the vehicle (the elephant scared her so much that she'd dropped the camera).

Apparently we were very lucky to see a couple of leopards out in the open right near the road as they can be quite elusive. One wasn't particularly worried, but one looked at us then decided to retreat further into the bush. Beautiful animals!

We were also very lucky to see a female white rhino and her calf. We watched them for about 5 minutes or so before slowly moving off to let them eat in peace.

south africa part 1 - the lions!

2011-04-01T18:08:00.001+11:00

The highlight of any trip to South Africa is probably the animals. While we were there we had a couple of days in Kruger National Park, which was absolutely wonderful! On one of the game drives we came across these lions - 3 adult females and two cubs, one was about 6 weeks old and one about 3 months. They weren't at all worried about the vehicle being so close. They just looked at us for 5 minutes or so, then decided to get up and amble past us and wander up the road for a while. It was just magic! We followed them for about 20 minutes before they headed off the side of the road and into the bush.

We saw the male lion on one of the other game drives. He wasn't really interested in moving either. He looked like he'd had a good feed and was content to sleep in the sun.

It's been a while...again!

2011-02-24T16:24:00.001+11:00

I can hardly believe that it has been over a year since I wrote on my blog. It seems to have been a busy year but I don't actually have much to show for it.

We had our ensuite totally ripped out and a brand spanking new one put in during Jan/Feb. It's a lovely light room now, which we definitely couldn't say before.

We went to Melbourne in April to the Australasian Quilt Convention. I did a 2 day class with Rosalie Dace, which I enjoyed very much.

We had a wonderful trip to South Africa in May, with a couple of days in Zambia to see Victoria Falls. We came back with some magic memories and lots of photos of wild animals. We managed to see all of the 'big five' and quite a lot of others as well. My MS didn't give me too much trouble except for the fatigue.

We lost our beautiful fur-child in July. He developed what the vet first thought was an abcess in his lower jaw, but it turned out to be cancer. He was 19 years old. Trev the Wondercat, we still miss you.

Another short trip at the beginning of October, to Adelaide for the inaugaral Australian Machine Quilter's Festival. I really enjoyed myself - I had lectures with Kim Brunner, Pam Clarke and Anne Bright, and managed to spend a bit at the vendor's market.

We are in the midst of organising to have our kitchen totally renovated. I think it will be happening at the end of March. It was due to be starting next week but there's been a delay in delivery of some of the stuff we want. That's okay - it gives me more time to empty all the cupboards!

I'll finish up with a photo of Trev in one of his favourite spots, sleeping in a sunbeam on a nice warm quilt!

city & guilds stuff - part 2

2010-02-05T18:24:00.003+11:00

The next step was to slice the main piece again and insert the remaining smaller units.

Nance Crow has her quilts hand quilted, but I machine quilted mine. I haven't done much in the way of hand quilting for the last 10 years so it wasn't a difficult decision! She mainly uses straight lines or grids so that's what I did too.

After I'd finished the quilting and looked at it, I decided to do some little wavy, swirly bits in a few places.

I really enjoyed making this and I have a few ideas on how I can go further with this technique - all I need is the time coz I sure don't need any more fabric for it!

city & guilds stuff - part 1

2010-02-05T17:44:00.005+11:00

One of the activities I had to do for my city & guilds course was to choose 3 internationally known quilters and make a little quilt based on their style. The first quilter I chose was Nancy Crow. I love her work, I find her inspirational. I decided to focus on her strip pieced quilts and tried to strip piece without it being anything like Nancy's work. I needn't have worried - mine is like kindergarten work to her wonderful quilts!

I wanted to use some of my hand dyed fabrics so I chose 3 of them as well as some quilter's muslin and a grey homespun.

I cut them into strips of varying widths then pieced them together into several different units.

Then sliced the biggest unit apart and stitched in two smaller units joined end to end.

Here's a few photos...

2009-10-04T17:59:00.004+11:00

...but I still need to take some more photos of some of the stuff I've been doing since I last posted (in the dim, distant past).

Some friends came over to my studio one Saturday in August, and we had a great day playing with fabric and paint. My camera skills are definitely lacking because these are the only two photos that didn't come out blurry! The first photo shows Beryl and Anne and the second one shows Lynda and Edith, all hard at work.

I really enjoy the days we have these get-togethers. Having them here at my studio means that I can get the place ready over the preceding week, I don't have to travel anywhere with heaps of stuff and don't have to pack anything up at the end of the day to travel home again. The 'fatigue' part of my MS sometimes becomes overwhelming so being able to have playdays here is great.

This coming week I should be able to get some more photos organised and posted!

cheers
cat

speaking of the Kemshalls

2009-06-14T17:43:00.003+10:00

Linda and Laura Kemshall also run the online City & Guilds patchwork and quilting courses ( as well as Creative Sketchbooks and Creative Computing). I've wanted to start the quilting courses for a few years now, and recently I decided that now was as good a time as any. So I'm now doing Level 2 7822-10 Patchwork and Quilting, which is the first course of three. My dream is to be able to do all three of the courses but that will depend on finances. They're definitely not cheap, but are high quality courses of study. I've got a while to decide though.

Module 1 was about colour mixing and fabric dyeing. I've done LOTS of fabric dyeing over the past 10 or 12 years so I got through that module fairly quickly. Module 2 involves playing with acrylic paints among other things, and I'm having a great time with that at the moment. My husband had carved a heap of lino stamps for me this week - I tried but don't seem to have strong enough hands. Apparently plumber's rubber gasket is easier to carve and the resulting stamps work the same. I have no idea what plumber's gasket is, but will try and buy some so we can test it out.

little challenge quilt

2009-06-14T17:28:00.005+10:00

Linda and Laura Kemshall are well known in the quilt world. A few months ago they ran a quilt challenge called the 'Love Colour' challenge. You can read about it at the link below.

http://www.lindakemshall.com/LoveColourGallery.htm

I made a little quilt for the challenge, and I'm tickled that a photo of it is on their website! It's a variation of the big fuchsia quilt I made earlier in the year, and was a lot of fun to make.

Busy couple of months...

2009-06-14T16:54:00.004+10:00

on the quilt front. In May I went to the State Guild's annual retreat at Poatina. I think it's about the 12th or 13th year we've gone to the same place, and I've missed 2 of those years. It was a tad cold up there in the mountains, but stayed fine while we were there. Here's the website for Poatina village if anyone's interested. http://www.poatina.fusion.org.au/ One day I'll learn how to do links properly!

I got quite a bit of quilting done on my tulip quilt. I did the applique in 1983 - the stitches are about 1/4" apart and all the stitching on both the pink and dark green fabric is done in white thread. Mum had kept the quilt top for the last 25 years then gave it back to me. I was tempted to just throw it out but then decided that it was part of my quilting history so I would finish it and keep it. I'm doing the quilting on my faithful Husqvarna, and enjoying it too. It's going to be 'feathery' - I'll post a picture when it's done.

Thank you, everyone...

2009-04-06T14:58:00.002+10:00

...for all the comments! I posted the photos on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning our modem died. It could have at least done it during the week when businesses are open. So today we have a brand new modem and I'm connected again.

Gale, I hope you love Jane's class as much as I did. And yes, start taking photos now! If you can take some closeup photos of your favourite flowers and leaves from all different angles and at various stages of development, all the better. That's if your doing the same class? Even if it is a different class, the photos will still be inspiring for later projects.

Stephanie, the last time you saw my class project it was still a sketch on a piece of baking paper! It was so hot in that classroom that I didn't even get my fabric out of the bag. Just as well because I totally changed my mind about the fabric I wanted to use...about 5 times at least.

Right now I'm going to give my studio a bit of a tidy-up (well, when I finish my cuppa) as I'm having a couple of quilters and their husbands over for a meal tomorrow night. At the moment there are little piles of 'stuff' everywhere - but I do just about know where everything is. After it's tidy I probably won't be able to find anything at all. Sound familiar?

quilt-as-you-go blocks

2009-04-04T20:23:00.003+11:00

So far my tally of blocks has reached 65. These will be on their way to Victoria on Wednesday. I have another 20 backings cut to size and oodles of strips cut ready to make more. Most of my bits of spare batting have been used up but I still have a bit left. I've enjoyed making the blocks and can't get over how different they look when they have been trimmed to size and all the raggedy edges have gone.

fuchsia fantasy

2009-04-04T20:01:00.003+11:00

At the end of February I went to the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne and did a class with Jane Sassaman. I LOVED the class! I won't go into details about the class - you'll just have to buy her book called 'The Quilted Garden', which has just been reprinted. I took lots of photos of fuchsias with me and designed this quilt using the photos for inspiration. The whole process was so much fun, and I have drawn up a few more designs using the same flowers. I could make a series of fuchsia quilts without even thinking about moving on to any other flowers!

So I loaded the photos backwards. There's a couple of views of the back of the quilt showing the free motion quilting, then a couple of closeups of the front, then a full view of the front. I couldn't get the colour right in the full view - the first closeup is closest to the actual colour. All the fabrics for the flowers and leaves is my own hand dyed cotton, and the blue background is one of the Moda Marbles range.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

a couple of fun projects

2009-02-17T17:00:00.003+11:00

I'm onto the second groups of 24 QAYG blocks. The fabric I used for the backing is driving me crazy coz it's not sliding across the sewing machine easily - I have to fight with the d--n stuff! Aaaargh!! So to distract myself I thought I'd put up a few more photos here.

The 'tribal dancer' quilt started out as a piece of calico that I used as mop-up cloth when I was palying with some acrylic paint. I mopped up paint drips and cleaned the paint brushes on it. It didn't look too bad when I'd finished so I added some more paint and stamped it with rubber stamps, but then I didn't know what to do with it so it sat on a shelf for a couple of months. I liked the tribal dancer stamp so I enlarged the design and use if for the applique motif in the centre. It's quilted to death but the quilting was the most fun part!

I like to see the backs of quilts as much as the front (well, that's if the backing fabric isn't too busy) so here's the back.

Some of my medication comes in these white boxes, so I get a new one every couple of months. A quilt magazine will fit neatly in them so they're a useful size. I've given heaps of them away but still have 8-9 in the studio. I decided to try out some paint on one of them to see how it looked. Oen problem was that the pharmacist had written my name in black pen, which the paint didn't cover. My sister Rose and Mum were visiting at the time, and Rose suggested putting some flowers or something on to cover up the writing, so I did.

Mum asked if she could have one of the boxes to put some stuff in so I gave her this one. If I'd kept it I would have done a few more layers of paint or similar to it, but I have plenty more to play with yet.

bushfire quilts part 1

2009-02-15T21:42:00.003+11:00

I've made some progress with the quilt-as-you-go scrap blocks. This is the pile of strips thatI cut on Friday. I cut 6 layers of fabric at a time which made the process much quicker. I had a lot of check fabrics in the stash from 10-12 years ago so I made use of them here.

I cut twenty four 13" squares of backing fabric and batting. I'll cut the finished blocks down to 12.5" when I've finished them.

Here's the blocks as at 9.30pm Sunday night. I just have to fill in the corners. They're certainly not pretty but they are colourful. Tomorrow I'll have to scrounge up some more backing fabric to cut out another 24 or so squares.

I've actually enjoyed stitching these. It's so mindless! This week I had been planning to start quilting a quilt for the state exhibition in July but there's plenty of time for that. These blocks will take precedence for a while.

On the 25th we fly over to Melbourne for the Australasian Quilt Convention. We've been to the convention the last 2 years but this is the first time I'm doing a class. It's a 2 day class with Jane Sassaman called Abstracting From Nature. I'm looking forward to it, but a bit worried at the same time. Not about the class itself, but about how I'll cope with having to focus on something for 2 days. We're taking the wheelchair over with us and Murray will push me round in that while we look at the quilt show and the vendor's stalls so I can save energy for the class. Whatever parts of the brain that deal with speaking and language have been affected by MS, and I find being around people where I have to concentrate on words and participate in discussion or conversation is exhausting. Not just mentally but physically to the point where my balance is affected and I start to stumble, my left arm shakes more than usual and my speech starts to slur. I'll warn the tutor before the class starts in case she thinks I've got vodka in my water bottle LOL. The venue isn't air conditioned either, but I'm taking an electric fan and an extension cord with me. Only 10 more sleeps before we go.

quilts for Australian bushfire survivors

2009-02-14T22:57:00.002+11:00

The quilt group that I am a member of here in Devonport have decided to make some quilts for survivors of the bushfires in Victoria. We are making quilt-as-you-go blocks that will be joined to make single and queen size quilts.

I went through my stash on Thursday and found a stack of fabrics to use. I want to concentrate on quilts for teenage boys and men. There will be heaps of quilts made for girls and little kids but boys and men seem to miss out. My Mum came over yesterday afternoon and ironed all the fabric for me then I started cutting strips to do string piecing. After a couple of hours I had to stop and have a nap LOL. (The fatigue associated with having MS is a real bugga sometimes.) Poor Mum kept ironing till all the fabric was done. After tea I went back out to the studio and started sewing the blocks. I had 24 squares of batting and backing fabric cut so I'm piecing them all in a big production line. I got quite a bit done today and should be able to finish those 24 blocks tomorrow. I took a couple of photos today but won't post them here till tomorrow as it is just after 11pm now.

Just a thought if anyone outside of Australia wants to help. A couple of wonderful quilters have offered to send fabric which is very much appreciated. If anyone is interested, you could contact our local quilt shop and order a gift voucher instead of paying postage to post fabric over. If you email Selina, the owner, she will be able to tell you how to go about it. Her website has a contact email address http://www.picturepatchwork.com.au/ also phone and fax number. If you do want to do that, please make the voucher out to Devonport Patchwork and Quilters, not to me.

Thanks to those who have already offered to help. Goodnight for now - I'm off to bed.

ever seen a double rainbow?

2009-01-29T16:51:00.002+11:00

I just found this photo again. I took it just before Christmas, I think. It's taken just outside our house. The colours in the inside rainbow were so bright - you really can't see it well in the photo. The outer rainbow was quite pale and indistinct. Neither of us had ever seen anything quite like it.

fabric cover for hardback book

2009-01-29T16:31:00.003+11:00

My sister Rose asked if I could make a cover for a hardback A4 diary. She wanted to be able to replace the diary next year and use the same cover. I'd never done this before but I didn't see why I couldn't. It wasn't much different to making the journals I posted photos of last year.

This is the final result. The base of the cover is a heavy fusible interfacing. The one I used is called heavy badge backing. There are many other with various names but I can't get them here. I had some charm squares of Aboriginal fabrics so used some of them on a plain background.

I just noticed that I stood the diary upside down to take the photo. Oh well...

This is the outside of the cover laid out flat.

This is the inside with a pocket on each side to slip the diary covers into.

I'm pleased with the way it turned out. The worst thing about it was satin stitching around the edge - not because it's difficult, just because it is so tedious! (But worth it...)

scrap bags and sun prints

2009-01-29T16:02:00.002+11:00

At our state guild meeting in December, one of the members was selling grocery bags full of scrap pieces. I got in early LOL, and bought this bag of batik scraps.

What a treasure trove it turned out to be! Many of the pieces were smallish but most were between 10" and 12" square-ish plus quite a few bigger than that. A lot looked as if they were originally shirts or pieces left over from making clothing. They were all cotton though. I'm very happy I bought it.

I tried sun printing for the first time just before Christmas. In the first photo I used Pebeo paints and love the way it turned out. Of course I poured too much out of the bottles so I watered it down a bit and used it to paint some small bits of white homespun. I chopped the ends of some fern fronds to use.

I used cheap acrylic paint for the fabric in the next photo. I thinned it down a bit and the colours are not so bright, but I still like it. I'll definitely be trying some more of this.

If you want to find out a bit about the process, here's some links:

http://www.dharmatrading.com/info/sun_paint.html

http://andrusgardensquilts.vox.com/library/post/indoor-sunprinting-mini-tutorial.html

http://www.andrusgardensquilts.com/view.php?cat=Sunprint%20Mini

It's been a while...

2009-01-26T19:18:00.003+11:00

... since I last posted anything here. Thanks for your comment, Melinda. It's about time I put something else on this blog. My MS is behaving fairly well at the moment. I haven't used my walking stick for a few months now which is great! My memory has been behaving in an 'interesting' way recently. One day last week I went into the kitchen and couldn't remember how to open the cupboard doors - how strange is that? One time I was putting on my sneakers, the first one was fine but when I went to do up the second one I couldn't figure out how to do it. Another time I went into our local pharmacy to drop off a prescription, and I couldn't remember where the door was to get back out. In the first 2 examples the delay was only about 15 seconds or so, but I never did find the front door of the pharmacy - I found a door that connected it to the doctors surgery and from there out to the street. Sure makes life interesting!

I've still been playing in the studio though. I even got out the dyes that have been hidden away in the cupboard for a few years now. The first photo is where I was trying to make brown from blue, red and yellow. I put a heap of small scraps of calico and homespun in, and this is what came out. The actual fabric is a bit darker than it looks in this photo.

The next group was done using the principles of colour wheel dyeing but instead of blue and red and yellow, I used pink, green and black. I really like the way they turned out. The photo below shows some fabrics that I put in some of the dye pots when the dye was almost exhausted, resulting in lovely pale shades.

I made two pieces using the leftover green, black and brown dyes. They came out lighter than I hoped but still very nice. It's inspired me to do some more.

I have quite a few more photos to load and should get to that over the next week.

cheers, cat

long term UFO finished at last!

2008-09-10T16:35:00.003+10:00

I can't quite remember when I started this quilt, but it must be 5-6 years or more. The top was finished and it was just waiting to be quilted. This week I finally bit the bullet and decided to finish it. Now it just needs the binding. I kept all the fabrics with the top so I think I will join strips of the different bright fabrics for the binding.

quilt hanging system

2008-09-10T16:22:00.002+10:00

I have a new addition to my studio now. I wanted to be able to hang quilts up so that I could take photos of them. This is very simple and works very well.

Murray got a piece of 2" x 1" timber and gave it a couple of coats of polyurethane to seal it. He bought nine bulldog clips and spaced them evenly across the timber then screwed them on. Then he screwed in two eye-hooks (is that what they are called?) at the one-third and two-third measurements. He attached two pulleys to the ceiling, and threaded cord through them and tied it to the eye-hooks, then attached the other end of the cords to a cleat on the wall.

So now I can let the quilt hanger down to attach the quilt, then pull it back up to take photos or when it's not being used.

Feel free to copy if you think it would be useful.

Carpenter's Wheel variation

2008-09-10T16:07:00.002+10:00

I finished this quilt at the weekend. The longarm machine was being a pain - it was moving in a straight line when it was supposed to be doing nice curves, and I was fighting with it to do what I wanted. When I had a good look at the wheels and the tracks I discovered that the coating on one of the tracks was starting to flake off. This made the surface slightly uneven, and when the wheel hit that part it didn't respond properly. After doing a bit of research on the internet, I got Murray to rub over the track with a bit of fine sandpaper, and now it's back to its easy-going self again!

I didn't take any photos of the back. It's a plain fabric and you can see where all the funny little blips are from when the machine was playing up.

the 'marshmallow' quilt

2008-09-10T15:52:00.002+10:00

There's a bit of a story behind this quilt. On one of the art groups I belong to on the internet is a dear lady called Camille. She has a wonderfully experimental artisitc streak and does the most amazing things. The first photo below is one of Camille's experiments with marshmallows. She arranged them on a plate, took a photo and then manipulated it on the computer. I mentioned that it looked like something I could make a quilt out of, so she said to go for it! So I did...

I drafted a pattern on paper, which was an interesting exercise.

I decided to use some of my hand dyed fabrics for the quilt. The colours are totally different from the original photos, but these are the colours that jumped out at me.

Now I just have to think of a name for it. I can't really keep calling it 'the marshmallow quilt'.

Any suggestions?

camera doodling

2008-08-11T20:26:00.004+10:00

The discussion on one online group I'm in has been 'camera doodling', which is taking photos while deliberately moving the camera. Some of the photos taken have been absolutely amazing so I thought I'd give it a try (I was procrastinating about quilting on the big quilt I just finished). It's not as easy as you would think! Most of the photos I took were still clear. These are the best of a bad lot - or should that be the worst of a good lot? It was fun, though I'm glad no one else was there to see me jumping up and down and whirling around in circles, trying to take bad photos LOL. AND they're still not as bad as I'd like them to be...

A fun one!

2008-08-11T20:17:00.002+10:00

This little quilt was heaps of fun to make. There are so many signs warning us not to do this or do that - is it a free country still? Yes!!

HUGE quilt finished on Saturday

2008-08-11T19:58:00.004+10:00

About a month ago I started making a simple quilt using fabrics from the stash. They were all 'pretty' fabrics - a change from the bright stuff I usually use. I made 12" blocks with big pieces as I wanted to use it to try feather quilting on the longarm. Now it's done except for the binding.

Have you ever been doing something and it's just worked out the way you hoped? Well, this quilt is hanging over the rails on the longarm and when I walk past it, I still can't believe I actually quited it! It's not perfect by any means (the backtracking is pretty woeful) but I'm so pleased with the overall effect. It's encouraging me to practice, practice, practice some more...

I couldn't get a full shot of the quilt as it is 108" x 96", so these will have to do.

It's been a while...

2008-08-02T21:24:00.004+10:00

... but I'm finally back here. While I've been away, a few things have been happening. We went to northern Europe for 4 weeks which was just fantastic. We flew to Oslo and had 4 days there by ourselves, then picked up a tour. The tour was 10 days around southern Norway then another 10 days cruising around the Baltic region. I even managed to find some quilt shops. I'll write some more about our trip later.

I got sick the day after we got back, which wasn't much fun, but it only lasted a day or two. I also found out that I had won four prizes at the Tasmanian Quilting Guild's annual exhibition. What a wonderful surprise that was! I only entered two quilts and they won two prizes each. That will be a hard act to follow nest year.

Here's just a couple of photos from our trip. We accidently left my camera in the back of our friend's car when they took us to the airport on the first day of our trip (duh!) so we didn't get as many photos as we would have liked. Luckily Murray had his little camera with him, which is the only reason we got any at all!

more journal fun

2008-05-04T13:49:00.004+10:00

Making quilts seems to have taken a step back since I started the online journal class. I've been having so much fun with them. Here's some photos of some more of them.

This one makes me laugh every time I look at it. The challenge for my Chooseday Chaleenge group this month was 'bird' so I decided to combine that with a journal. It look like a very startled quail. The design was originally taken from 1000 year old North American Indian pottery, but I think it lost something in the translation...

The next one was made from a bit of brown wrapping paper, some tea dyed string and a wooden toggle that came with a jar of buttons from a thrift shop. I think this is one of my favourites.

This colurful journal is actually a sketch book. It has binder rings that open if you need to add more paper to it. The cord is made on the sewing machine from 4 different yarns that I had little bits of.

This one I made just for myself.

This one I made for my sister Keryn. It was fun to do. Actually I think the most fun part was making tags, and finding quotes and other bits and pieces to put in it.

I'm going to a 4 day quilt retreat starting on the 15th May so I might make up some journal 'kits' to take with me. If I precut everything that I'll need, that will save time. It also means that I will only need to take half the amount of stuff. I want to make some atc's while I'm there too, and just maybe I should also take something that is actually quilt-related?

online journal class

2008-04-29T18:03:00.004+10:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been doing a journal making class with Sue Bleiweiss from Fibre and Stitch http://webpages.charter.net/sbleiweiss/workshops.htm . It's been a wonderful class, probably the best online class I've done. This is the journal I made in Lesson 1. It's now living with my sister Rose.

I've made a few more as well, but haven't orgainised photos of them yet. We got the 5th (and last) lesson yesterday. I don't want this class to end! Sue also has other classes starting later in the year which I will sign up for as well.

playing with a photo

2008-03-30T14:09:00.002+11:00

I'm doing two challenges this month. One is to make an abstract representation of a photo, and the other challenge topic is 'fractured'. I tried to combine the two so here's what I've done so far.

The first photo is a waratah flower from the shrub in our back yard.

I played with the photo using the filters in Photoshop Elements and this is what I came up with.

Then I went through all the scrappy bits of hand dyed fabrics to try to find some that would
match. After a few hours of head scratching, I had a selection of scraps that I could live with. I backed them with fusible webbing then cut out the pattern pieces and stuck them to a background of quilter's muslin.

I then 'fractured' it into 12 tiles. Here is where I wish I had thought about the size a bit more. I wanted this to be journal quilt sized, which meant I had to fit the pieces back together with only about 1/8" gap between them. I may as well have left it in one piece! Oh well, you live and learn.

It was then sandwiched together with batting and backing and quilted very simply. I used a red variegated perle cotton and stem stitched between the tiles. Now I'm doing some seed stitching and a few french knots over the top. I hadn't actually planned to do that, but I wanted something to do by hand at night and didn't have anything else prepared.

It's been interesting and I've learned a few things - things to try again, and things not to do again.

rust dyeing experiment

2008-03-30T14:01:00.002+11:00

I've recently tried rust dyeing for the first time. The results were sort of okay, but it's encouraged me to try some more in the future. Here's some photos of the bits of fabric I did.

We moved house last year so Murray cleaned out all the stuff from his shed including anything that was rusty. We managed to find a few nails and screws, and a couple of old drill bits. The first two photos used those.

Next I bought some cheap steel wool pads, and they really worked well because they rust so quickly. I'll definitely use those again. The second photo is most like the actual colour. Don't quite know what I'll do with them yet, but I had some fun experimenting.

atc's again

2008-03-11T18:46:00.003+11:00

Another experiment from a couple of years ago. Some of my hand dyed fabric stuck onto a fabric base with fusible webbing. I machine stitched over the joins using a normal straight stitch so that when I turned the work over I could see where the joins were. The fancy stitching was done by winding perle cotton onto my bobbin by hand and using an ordinary cotton/poly blend thread in the top. It was stitched up-side-down. My machine has a drop-in bobbin, and I just bypassed all the tension guides. I have no idea how you would do this on any other machine. I did a tiny figure of eight stitch (I don't know how else to describe it). The colours are brighter than this in real life.

Below, the perle cotton came out looking like a braid.

Below, the back of the work. This is what was on top as I was sewing.

At the weekend, I decided to cut it up into atc's and do some stitching on them. I got 15 atc's, I think.

atc's and thanks

2008-03-11T18:21:00.004+11:00

First of all, a BIG thank you to everyone who commented on my black/red/white bargello quilt! I really appreciate every comment that anyone leaves. I have decided to call it 'High Voltage' (thanks Margaret) although some of the other suggestions made me think "I really like that name - if I did this and this and quilted it like that, I'd have the perfect quilt to fit that name". Does anyone actually start with the name, then make a quilt to fit it?

I'm in a few atc swaps at the moment. It's been a good excuse to try out some new things. I tried using angelina fibres for the first time. Ooh, what fun that is! I used 3 different colours for these atc's, and put some little snippets of tinsel in between the layers. It's very hard to take a good photo of angelina because of the shine - this is the best I could get. Lots more experimentation to comem I can tell. The background fabric came about accidentally. I bought some Lumiere paints while at AQC in Melbourne and was doing some playing with those. I had some scraps of quilter's muslin which I used to wipe splatters and leftovers with, and the scraps turned out to be lovely soft sunrise colours when I finished. So my mopping-up cloth is now the background of these atc's.

The background to the next atc was also an accident/experiment. I had a cheap children's art set for a few years and never used it. I thought I'd check to see if the felt tip pens would write on fabric. Some of them had gone dry but some were okay. I scribbled on some more scraps of quilter's muslin with a few different colours and then, for some unknown reason, decided to dip them in water. It worked beautifully - the colours all blended together into a lovely colourwash effect. Now I definitely want to try some more!

finished a quilt started in about 2000

2008-02-17T21:19:00.002+11:00

This quilt was started in about 2000, I think. I saw a photo of a quilt by Mary E Fox, and it inspired me to try something similar. It turned out very dramatic. I'm still trying to think of a name for it. Anyone have any ideas?

Tomorrow I'll be back to making some more atc's. I should have some photos to share later in the week. I also bought some fabric paints to play with, and have my first batch of rust dyeing brewing now. It's been a creative week!

two challenges in one

2008-02-17T21:10:00.002+11:00

This little quilt is a combination of this month's chooseday challenge and the journal quilt for another group I am in. It was great fun to make. the chooseday challenge this month was 'acid' so I thought of using 'acid trip'. It evolved into more of a 60's love fest than an acid trip, but that's okay. The journal quilt topic was graffiti or colour - this is definitely colourful!

little boxes

2008-02-17T10:01:00.003+11:00

Just as a break from making quilts, I've been making little boxes. The instructions came from the Fiber & Stitch website and they were very easy to make. I'm thinking about doing some more using the squares of African fabric that I have hidden away in my stash.

Bathing the cat

2008-01-31T17:43:00.000+11:00

Wil and Tine have asked why we gave Trev a bath. Trev was very pleased to know that someone felt sorry for him. He did look very sad and pathetic in the photos, didn't he?

We've given him regular baths ever since we've had him. He was a stray cat that adopted us about 12 years ago. The vet at the time said he thought Trev was about 5 years old which makes him abut 17 years old now. When he first moved in he was all dirty and his fur was matted together so we trimmed his fur as much as we could then bathed him in the laundry sink. We thought he'd go beserk but he just stood there. We use special anti-flea shampoo for cats, and bath him every 3 to 4 weeks.

This web site details a couple of ways to bathe a cat, but you'll be happy to know we don't use either of these methods. Trev is REALLY happy we don't use these methods!
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/van/238094636.html

Not Happy! (a note from Trev)

2008-01-24T13:52:00.000+11:00

A picture tells a thousand words - no more are necessary...

this month's piece for the chooseday challenge

2008-01-24T13:41:00.000+11:00

January's challenge topic was 'mask'. Here's a few photos of my piece. Since taking these photos, I added some colour to his nose, as in the photos it looks like he doesn't have one. I'm debating whether to add some more embellishment yet.

machine wrapped cords

2008-01-24T13:29:00.000+11:00

I've just done a two part online workshop called Machine Wrapped Cords. It was a free workshop through this website: http://edu.creative-textile-and-quilting-arts.com/
I had made some a couple of years ago in a workshop with Faye Twining. Here's some photos of both lots. It was great fun, and makes a change from making quilts. There were a few other techniques covered in the free class that I haven't tried yet. It was definitely worth doing!

colour wheel cookies

2008-01-21T13:15:00.000+11:00

I've just started doing an online workshop with Susan Sorrell. It's called 'Fear No Colour'. In the first lesson, we are exploring colour mixing using food dyes. Here's what I ended up with. The colours are not quite right because the red food colouring didn't turn red no matter how much I added, but the theory is the same. I've dyed lots of fabric colour wheels, but didn't get to eat them!

I'll include the recipe for the butter cookies if anyone wants it, but please don't ask how to do the frosting - you'll have to sign up for the class for that .

Butter Cookies

4oz butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

2 cups self raising flour

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla until fluffy. Add egg and beat well. Stir in sugar.

Roll out on floured surface and cut out with cookie cutter. Bake at 180degC (350degF) for 8-10 minutes.

You can also roll out into a sausage shape, wrap in foil and chill for an hour (or up to a couple of days) before cutting into slices and baking. You could just roll spoonfuls of dough into balls, flatten a bit then bake. They will probably take a few extra minutes to cook. Try adding chopped glace cherries or ginger, slivered almonds, coconut, choc bits or whatever else takes your fancy!

atc's

2008-01-11T13:11:00.000+11:00

I have discovered atc's (artist trading cards). Why didn't anyone tell me they were such fun? I have heaps of ideas for more but need to do something with the ones I've got first. Here's a preview. I have to put the eyelets in the ones in the bottom photo. What do you think?

Now I'm off back to the studio to find my rubber stamps and the foil off some chokkies we got for Christmas.

I'm back

2008-01-11T12:57:00.000+11:00

It's been a while since I updated my blog. Warm weather and having MS - not a good mix at all. When does the weather start to get cool again? I'm so glad I live in Tassie, and not on the mainland anywhere. It gets too hot here for me.

I have been playing around with a few bits and pieces. I made a chenille bag for my mother for
christmas. It was easier than I thought and I was happy with the way it turned out, and plan on making a few more.

I made this little quilt which is about the size of an A4 sheet of paper (journal quilt size). the middle piece of fabric is a manipulated hand dyed piece that I've had for a year or two. The borders are polycotton pieces that I threw in with some cotton I was dyeing, again a couple of years old. I added some pale seed beads down through the centre. They sort of remind me of water.

I also had a go at Xmas postcards. It's the first time I've made any postcards so they are not very adventurous, but they were fun to make!

another reason to try out my shiva painsticks

2007-12-09T14:01:00.000+11:00

I bought these wooden shapes at our guild meeting last weekend. Murray coated them with a layer of polyurethane as there was a little bit of black coming off the sides of the shapes. The leaf shapes I want to stitch onto a little textile piece, but I think I'll use the other shapes to do rubbings with shiva paintsticks. They should work very well, don't you think?

Trev the Wondercat is not allowed on the beds. He never has been, and he knows this perfectly well. but for some reason he's decided he likes this quilt and tiptoes into the spare bedroom at eveery opportunity. He was so-o-o comfortable when I took this photo. He said "Mum, why don't you just make a trev-coloured quilt, then no one will notice if there is cat fur all over it!" Logical, I suppose.

using meander quilting design as applique

2007-12-09T13:48:00.000+11:00

I've been working on my chooseday challenge this weekend. I had a heap of ideas but decided to play with this one. First I drew a meander pattern on a piece of A4 paper then coloured in part of it to make sure my idea would work.

Went over the lines with a fine black marker so I could see the line to trace it on the paper side of some fusible webbing that was also A4 size. I ironed the fusible webbing onto some plain black cotton fabric. Then the fun bit (not!) I cut out on the meander line - took ages to do. I wanted the background and the cut out bit to be whole pieces so I couldn't just cut in from the side to make it easier. Next step was to get two pieces of white homespun, also A4 size, and iron the cut-out piece of black onto one and the background piece of black onto the other.

Now I'm going to spend a day or two just looking at them while I decide what to do with them next. I really want to do heaps of embellishment, but I'm not sure what kind of embellishments I have that are black or white. I may have to introduce another colour to it.

2007-12-04T13:45:00.001+11:00

I've been looking at some of the books on my bookshelf, and there are a few that I plan to read through again with new eyes. I'm becoming more motivated to actually choose a book and work through it (as opposed to just looking at the pictures ha ha). Here are some of them.

There are some more but I haven't taken photos of them yet. Do any of you find that you buy the most amazing books, and they just sort of languish on the shelf? Well, I think you should pick one and do something with it! (Miss Bossy Boots making an appearance there.) Maybe then I might do the same thing.

Chooseday Challenge topic for this month is...

2007-12-04T09:15:00.000+11:00

>> OPPOSITE<<

There are many possibilities with this topic: hot and cold, big and little, happy and sad, opposite colours on the colour wheel, mirror images - the list goes on and on. I'm sure that every person who does this challenge will come up with a different interpretation of the theme. I'm looking forward to seeing what every one does with it!

chooseday challenge - part 2

2007-11-25T14:33:00.001+11:00

Okay, here 'tis. I've made a few adjustments since I took the photo, so it hangs a bit straighter now. The pieces are connected by safety pins and silver chain at the moment, but that may change if/when I think of something else. Making this was so much fun, and has also given me a few ideas for some more pieces in the future.

Sorry some of the photos are a bit on the dark side. It's not that dark in real life!

chooseday challenge done - part 1

2007-11-25T14:05:00.001+11:00

When I first thought about connections, I thought of people being connected to each other. Then, in that rambling way the mind has of jumping from subject to subject, I started to think about ways in which things are connected. First thought was needle and thread (obvious to a quilter lol), then hammer and nails, screws and nuts and bolts. That was when I got the idea to go shopping at the hardware shop. What an eye opener! It was full of wonderful quilt embellishment stuff, and I came home with 5 or 6 little packets of treasure. I got a couple of sizes of washers, hexagonal nuts, split pins and something Murray calls waffle nails.

Next step was to start making my quilt. I gathered some black, white and grey fabrics and cut strips from each one, 2" or 3" wide. Then trimmed them again so they were uneven. I ended up with siz of these wonky blocks. Six? That's not quite what I had in mind when I started, but I decided to run with it anyway.

Next step was to add a bit of colour. I had a heap of bias left over from a celtic table runner I made for my sister last Christmas so I stitched a bit of that on each block.

I quilted each block, but forgot to take a photo of that step. Then I added the beads and embroidery and found all sorts of ways to stitch on the stuff from the hardware shop. I left all the knots from doing that stitching on the back of the quilt sandwich, because I was going to put another back on the six little quilts. I did that using the pillowcase method. I cut the new back into two pieces and stitched them together leaving a gap of about 5-6" to turn the quilt through. In the photo, the gap between the pins is left unstitched. I made the join between the two pieces near the top of the little quilt so that I could cover some of them with a hanging sleeve.

Then I put the little quilt on top, right sides together, and stitched all the way around the quilt. Next, trim the edges of the back level with the quilt and cut a bit off the corners to get rid of some of the bulk.

Turn the quilt through the gap you left in the back. Carefully press the edges, then handstitch the gap closed. This is what you get! A little quilt with no binding. there are probably other ways to do this, but this is the method I use.

Part 2 will have photos of the finished piece.

yahoo group wins over blog ring

2007-11-20T09:17:00.000+11:00

With the trouble we've been having with the blog ring, I've decided to create a yahoo group for the Choose-day challenge instead. The people I've talked to have never had a problem being a member of a group. I've set it so that attachments are not allowed. That way no viruses can be passed on. I'll set up a folder each month to post our photos, so there will be just one central place that we can see them.

The link to join is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/choosedaychallenge/

I invite anyone reading this to join the group, and join the fun!

By the way, did you know how much great embellishment stuff is available at your local hardware store? When you really look, it's like a treasure trove of art quilt stuff LOL.

apologies.....

2007-11-19T09:16:00.000+11:00

to those who are having trouble joining the blog ring. I know it's worked well for some of you, but I can't figure out why it's not working for others. The help section for Ringsurf seems to go around in circles, with quite a few dead links. Now I'm wondering if it would be easier to set up a group on Yahoo. At least then we would have one central place we could all post photos.

I let you all know as soon as I decide. Thanks for your patience.

new blog ring created

2007-11-16T14:05:00.000+11:00

...or at least I hope so. I've just been trying to create a blog ring for the Choose-day Challenge, and the link is on the side-bar on the right hand side of this page. It takes me a while to figure things out sometimes, so I'm not sure if I did it right or not. Would someone like to try joining and tell me if it works?

I'm working on my challenge today and it seems to want to go in a different direction to the one I originally had planned. I really want to post some photos, but I will restrain myself until it's finished. How is everyone else going? Looking forward to photos at the end of the month.

it's quilted

2007-11-13T16:03:00.000+11:00

Yay, I've finished this quilt. I coined a new phrase - 'stream of consciousness' quilting. I just quilted whatever came into my head, so there are about 5000 different things on this quilt LOL. It was fun to do. The back is plain white even though it doesn't look like it in the photo. The thread is a brightish pink variegated by YLI, which was very nice to quilt with.

The only problem is the flowers don't work on the quilt with so much quilting on it. Now I'll have to make aother quilt so I can use the flowers. Oh well...

thank you!

2007-11-10T08:38:00.000+11:00

A big thank you to all who have responded about the choose-day challenge! So far, participants from Australia, United States, England and South Africa. How wonderful is that? I'm chuffed.

I have thought of and rejected 2 different ideas so far. Now fleshing out the third idea which I think will be 'the one' LOL.

I've done a bit more work on the quilt using tea dyed and procion dyed fabrics. As I said, just a very simple top. Now trying to work out how to do some 3D flowers to add to it. I think the flowers need some beads to brighten them up a bit, don't you? Playing around with this gives me a chance to let my mind roam and let the ideas for the 'connection' challenge to percolate a bit more in the background.

more stuff on choose-day challenge

2007-11-07T08:45:00.000+11:00

Just responding to a few questions. If I forget one, please let me know.

How do you join the challenge? It's a very informal challenge. There are no lists of participants, or application process. If you decide you would like to do the challenge, just go right ahead. At this stage there are a few friendly folks who have said they would like to join the fun, and it seems most have blogs so they can post photos at the end of the month.

How did I come up with a list of words? Some are from other challenge groups, some are from drawing challenges, some are words that have some meaning for me, some are words that I just like the sound of LOL. Some might prove difficult to interpret, and some will be much more straightforward. Some will be really easy. So far there are about 130 words in the 'choose-day box' and I've thought of quite a few more since.

Am I aware of the fast friday fabric challenge group? Yes, and some of the work produced is amazing! The problem I have (and this is purely a personal thing) is just having a week to produce a quilt. You may have read in my blog that I have multiple sclerosis. In my case, it affects information processing and problem solving. This meant that I had only just thought of an idea when the week allowed was almost over. I never had time to finish anything. So having almost a month instead of a week will take the pressure off.

Now a question for you guys. If quite a few people want to join in, would it be better to start a formal group (like a yahoo group)? Or maybe a blog where everyone can post their photos (like the fffc group). I'd like to hear what you think about this. Thanks for any comments.

Now I'm off to work on my 'connection' quilt. I'm actually planning on doing some hand quilting on it, which I haven't done since I took a machine quilting class in February 2000.

First Choose-day Challenge

2007-11-06T08:36:00.001+11:00

Okay, I reached my hand into the magic 'First Choose-day box' and drew out the word connection. What can I do with that? A telephone connection? Connection between two people? Making a connection between two ideas? Hmm, all kinds of possibilities with this one.

The guidelines are very loose. Small format, any technique, finished by the end of the month...and that's about it.

I'm excited about this challenge idea. Anyone want to join me? If so, please leave a comment so that I know you're out there.

1st Choose-day challenge

2007-11-05T08:41:00.000+11:00

I've been thinking of ways to stretch myself quilt-wise. I like making quilts based on traditional patterns, but I also like making quilts of a more contemporary nature. Lately I seem to be going through a bit of a creative block. I'm having trouble coming up with any ideas at all.

Now I've decided to 'think small'! Since journal quilts are becoming more popular, and their size is much more forgiving than a larger format, I'm going to make some. The size is roughly the same as an A4 piece of paper (7.5" x 11") which sounds quite achievable. You might choose to do 8" squares, or 6" square or 10" x 15" or whatever you feel like at the time. There might be some months when you can't make one at all. That's okay! There's really no pressure - that's not the point of the challenge at all. I still want it to be fun.

So.....I am publicly committing to making (or trying to) one each month. To make it interesting, I've made up a long list of topics which will be written on slips of paper, put in a box and one will be drawn out on the first Tuesday (Choose-day) of each month.

I would love it if anyone else wants to join in. You can use any technique you like. A photo of my little quilt will be posted here at the end of the month. I'd love to hear what you think of this idea.

more on dyeing (that's with an 'e')

2007-11-04T17:48:00.000+11:00

I signed up for a tea dyeing class through Quilt University, and it's been very interesting. The teas I have tried so far have been :
Twinings Earl Grey - nice pale tan
Dilmah extra strength - very strong tan, nice
Twinings Blackcurrant - light tan, later read that it's only blackcurrant 'flavoured'
Lipton Orange - lovely pale pink
Twinings Raspberry and Peach - deeper pink
Twinings Pure Peppermint - pale cream
Twinings Lemon and Ginger - not much change
Lipton Cinnamon and Apple - pale tan

I used white homespun fabric. When I rinsed them in water and vinegar, a lot of the colour disappeared, but they are still quite use-able (is that a word?).

They were only smallish pieces, so I rummaged around in my plastic tubs of dyed fabrics and found these. They have all been hanging around for a few years waiting to be used, so now's the time!

The biggest square I could get out of the tea dyed pieces was 8" so I cut *8 squares out of all of them and just made some half square triangle blocks. I had originally planned to do something a bit more involved, but got a bit discouraged after rinsing out most of the colour.

They turned out to be very 'spring' looking - quite pretty. Maybe I'll add some flowers or something to play up the light spring feel a bit. Haven't got that far yet.

well that didn't work...

2007-11-04T17:38:00.000+11:00

I have been doing some tea dyeing with all kinds of ordinary tea and fruit tea. I kept all the foil sochets that the fruit teas come in coz they are really bright beautiful colours. I thought being foil I would be able to stitch them in with fabric. They stitched very well BUT when I pressed the first one, it shrivelled up. Damn. Who knew they had a lining of plastic inside the foil? It looked just like thick foil. I only tried with the lovely green ones that the peppermint teabags came in. So I ironed all the remaining green sachets to shrivel them too. Don't know what I'll do with them yet. Maybe when I find them again in a couple of years I'll just throw them out LOL.

Learning to use the close-up facility on my camera

2007-10-28T14:35:00.000+11:00

Last weekend I had a bit of a wander around the garden with my camera. It has a macro facility for taking closeups but I hadn't really used it before. Here's some of the results. The first photo is my favourite. It looks like an insect with its wings folded but it's actually new leaves. I don't know what the tree is - I've never seen one like it before.

first quilt for someone else! (and saturday skies)

2007-10-28T14:18:00.000+11:00

My friend Prue asked me to quilt a top she'd made out of fabrics she bought in New Zealand. I've been looking at it for a while and no brilliant ideas came. Hmm... I read somewhere that if you keep an art journal you should just write something (anything) on the first page because a blank white page can be so intimidating that some people are scared to start. I decided to translate that idea to quilting. I loaded the quilt and just did a bit of a squiggly line in the small inner border, then I got another idea then another one, and ended up finishing the quilt in 2 days. Good grief...it worked! It turned out okay, but of course I thought of some different ideas after I finished that I didn't think of before I started.

Here's a couple of photos.

The sky on Saturday was grey all day. A couple of showers but not much. Murray was playing bowls and they were able to finish the game. Some friends of ours came over for a couple of hours after tea and we played cards. Murray and I normally play crib but they wanted to play 500's, which I have never played in my life. It was a bit of fun though.

another scrap quilt!

2007-10-20T14:54:00.000+11:00

The main part of this quilt top was made quite a few years ago, using scraps saved since I started quilting in 1983. Murray issued a challenge for me to pick something out of the ufo box and finish it all the way to the binding, so this is what I chose to finish. I put the borders on last weekend and quilted it during the week. The binding has been machine stitched on, so now all that is left is to hand stitch it down on the back. It may even get a label! The quilting is a pantograph called 'Fay Feathers' which I really like. My panto'ing is still wobbly but I think this is as good as it's going to get. I think the tremor in my left arm is permanent and my right arm spasms, causing the first 2 fingers to twitch. (This is most annoying when mucking about on the computer coz I keep right-clicking on the mouse when I don't want to...grrr.) Anyway, here's some photos.

healing hearts (and flowers)

2007-10-20T14:45:00.001+11:00

All the hearts and flowers are beautiful, but I couldn't post photos of all of them.

healing hearts

2007-10-20T14:26:00.000+11:00

A wonderful tradition has developed among quilters in recent years - if someone is going through a bad time in their lives, other quilters make a 'healing heart' block and send it to them. Last year at the state guild's annual retreat I was unwell. I'd just had a bit of a flare up of my MS which resulted in a 3-day course of intravenous steroids at the local hospital. On the Saturday afternoon I went back to my room for a few hours sleep. During that time the other retreatees (is that a word?) appliqued a heart block each, put borders on each block and stitched them together into a quilt top! Aren't quilters lovely people?!!

My quilt group back home wanted to contribute as well, so they made flower blocks for the border. All I had to do was quilt it. This quilt is a very special one. Here are some photos so you can share it with me. I'll put some more photos in a separate post.

saturday skies

2007-10-20T14:18:00.000+11:00

Today is a perfect spring day - sunshine and no wind. Yesterday the wind would have blown the milk out your tea! Tomorrow it's supposed to be showery I think, but today there is hardly a cloud in the sky. As you can see, Trev is making the most of it...

Saturday skies, and flowers

2007-10-13T12:54:00.000+11:00

Cold today, and threatening to rain. We've had a few showery days recently, interspersed with some sunny days so the garden is thriving. We're still discovering things in the garden, which is always fun. There are lots of native plants and conifers, and daffodils seemed to pop up everywhere in July/August. Isn't having a new garden fun?

We have three boronias - 1 yellow, 1 pink and 1 brown. I love the smell of boronia! We picked some and put in a little vase so we can smell it inside. The vase is one of two hand blown glass ones that we got in New Zealand. It was a little glass blowing factory with a shop attached, and I think it was outside Taupo. We carried them back wrapped carefully in quilt fabric! I knew there was a reason I bought all that fabric!

We've got some lovely azaleas in flower at the moment. Also some rhododendrons but I forgot to take photos of them.

We were really happy to find a gorgeous waratah near one of the studio windows! It has quite a lot of flowers right now and I look at it every day. It's probably about 7ft tall at the moment, and quite beautiful.

PS Murray's head is healing up very nicely. He said getting the staples out was the worst part!

featuring...Trev the Wondercat

2007-10-13T12:36:00.000+11:00

Friday was bath day for Trev the Wondercat. (Doesn't everyone bath their cats?) We've done it eveer since he adopted us 11 years ago. He's such a tolerant cat - he just stands in the wash trough while Murray pours water over him then lathers him up with cat shampoo and rinses him off. We tried it with one of our other cats once. Whoa, big mistake! Poor thing chucked such a tantrum we didn't try it again. He was a short haired cat though and didn't seem to get as messy as Trev does.

I didn't think to get a photo of him having his bath. Afterwards he went out into the warm sun and dried off a bit. Murray took Trev's brush out and gave him a good brushing, which Trev just loves.

There is only one piece of carpet in our house and that is under my longarm machine. Every chance he gets, Trev runs out to the studio and lays down on the carpet. Ah, bliss!

One time last month we caught him on the desk with the computer. He said he'd just been playing games, but this is what he was really up to. He was printing some paper to wrap around a block of Rum and Raisin chocolate for Murray. Clever boy, huh? Darn, the photo is sideways. Oh well...

hand dyed homespun

2007-10-11T15:30:00.000+11:00

Some photos of some of my fabric - pastels and brights. The 6 pastel fat quarters are the only ones I have left. Most of what I have is bright or earthy type colours. I have some fat eighths as well but none in pastels. The fabric is homespun. I might take some more photos of some of the others and put them up here too. Not today though coz the batteries in my camera just died, darn it...

what do use your spare bed for?

2007-10-11T15:20:00.000+11:00

We've just bought a single bed for the third bedroom. I could say that is for guests to sleep in, but the truth is that it is now covered in quilts - about 10 deep! Most are wall hanging sized but there are a couple of bigger ones and some journal quilts. It was nice to re-visit them when I got them out of all their little hidey-holes. I'm trying to figure out which ones to hang up on the walls here, but keep putting it off. At least our three beds here have all got a quilt on them now.

I took these photos, then put a bed sized quilt over the top so that the light wouldn't fade them. The one on top is a quickie I made out of older fabric and I don't mind if that fades. Didn't take a photo of that one though.

saturday afternoon

2007-10-09T14:46:00.000+11:00

I was reading a couple of blogs on saturday, and one blogger takes photos of 'saturday skies' so I thought I'd go outside and take one of the sky here. That led me to wander around some of the garden and take photos of some of the plants that are flowering at the moment. A couple of them I don't know the name of. Anyway, here they are. The first one has the prettiest little flower, and has the most putrid smell! There's a story here that I'll put in after the photos.

We had two of the shrubs with the little flowers on them in our courtyard outside the back door. The previous owners of the house put an extendable clothesline in the courtyard and one of the shrubs had grown up under it to a height of about 5ft, which meant we could only use half the clothesline. We decided to get rid of the shrub, which also opened up the courtyard visually. Murray had a bow saw, secaturs and various other tools and got rid of most of it. The thick trunk had to be attacked with an axe though. He was doing well until he hit the clothesline on the up-swing of the axe, knocked the clothesline of it's bracket and the end of it hit him on top of the head. Thank God he was wearing a hat! There was blood everywhere. I drove him to the hospital (which was an adventure - I don't drive any more except in the case of emergency) and we sat there for about 3 hours. When we were finally seen, the doctor thought it was just a graze at first. After they cleaned it and shaved off some hair, we could see it was a cut almost 2 inches long but not very deep. Poor Murray came home with 6 staples in his head. He said he didn't even get a headache from it AND he went back out the next day and finished cutting out the shrub!

scrap quilt finished

2007-10-09T14:40:00.000+11:00

I have finally finished my scrap quilt. I took a photo of it on our spare bed, then noticed that there are still 2 pins marking some ends that need darning in. I suppose I should say it's almost finished then.

tagged!

2007-09-22T17:39:00.000+10:00

I've been tagged by Ami of Enchanting Quilts. You're supposed to list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. I could say that's easy coz I don't have a middle name. That wouldn't be cheating would it? No, I can't get out of it that easy. Ami also said that if I don't have a middle name, then I should choose one that I like. Hmm...maybe I'll just use my first name.

C - creative. I can't remember a time when I didn't make things. For the past 24 years it's been quilts.
A - Australian and glad to be one.
T - teacher. I used to teach all kinds of quilt classes - machine quilting, fabric dyeing, foundation piecing plus many others. I loved it but unfortunately can no longer do this because of the MS.
H - happily married to the most wonderful husband.
R - reader. We have shelves and shelves and shelves of books. Murray and I are both avid readers.
Y - yellow clothes make me look like I'm three days dead LOL. I'll have to save yellow for my quilts.
N - not enough hours to make all my quilty ideas into actual quilts. I have lots of original patterns and ideas that have yet to appear in fabric. If anyone's figured out how to sleep faster, can you share the secret?

Okay, that's it. Definitely harder than I thought it would be.

scrap quilt progress

2007-09-20T14:59:00.000+10:00

My scrap quilt is progressing very nicely. Just one seam left to sew and the quilt centre will be done, then the borders. I'm going to quilt it with a pantograph called 'waterworld'. I haven't used that one yet and want to know what it looks like quilted up. Here's some photos.

First: the blocks after I had used up most of the scraps from the red/yellow/orange/brown tub of scraps. They ended up somewhere between 7" and 8.5". As they were all different sizes, I decided to cut them down to a uniform size.

I did this by using my 6.5" square ruler, and putting the ruler on the blocks at an angle. I forgot to take a photo of this step so used the ruler with a square of fabric so I could show what I meant. As the blocks were different sizes, the angle I could place the ruler (and still have all of it on the block) was different for each one too.

Nola suggested that the blocks needed a colour from the opposite side of the colour wheel, and I agreed so put a 1" border around each block.

Next decision was what colour to use for sashing. I tried several but this light one looked best.

What do you think? I'm hoping to finish it at the weekend, and get it loaded on the longarm to quilt next week.

excited!

2007-08-29T17:43:00.000+10:00

The issue of Down Under Quilts with the article about me and my quilts arrived today!! Since this is probably the only time I will ever make it into print, I'm stoked! A strange feeling to see the quilts I've made on nice glossy magazine pages.

I finished quilting another 'stash-buster' quilt today so here's some photos. All the reds were fat eighths or quarters that I'd had for a while and not done anything with, and there are quite a few different creams there as well. This is the first time I've tried quilting in the ditch on the longarm and by the end I was ready to declare this a 'ditch-free zone'! I found it very difficult to do. Maybe it will get easier with more practice?

The first photo is almost true colour but I had to take the second one without the flash so the quilting would show up.

The middle of the next photo shows a 'shocker' of a feather. The red quilting thread was the same colour as the fabric and I couldn't see where I was going. Luckily this quilt will be staying with me LOL.

My visit to the neurologist went okay. The results from the nerve conduction tests in my legs were a bit worse than last time, but on the whole things are relatively stable. I'm having more trouble tolerating noise, and finding it harder to join in conversations because of the block between thinking the words I want to say and the words actually being spoken. Bl**dy frustrating and often distressing. I'm talking less than I used to, and didn't talk much then. But it could be worse...I've had MS since at least 1984 so I'm really doing very well. Just ignore me while I throw myself a little 'pity party' There was some good news though. I'm starting a new medication that should help alleviate the muscle spasms during the night - yippee!

That's it for today. Tomorrow I'd better tidy up the studio a bit in preparation for my quilt group meeting here tomorrow night. Even baked some Oatmeal Raisin Cookies in honour of the event. See ya.

thanks guys, 'crazy' photos, semi-decent feather

2007-08-26T17:43:00.000+10:00

Thanks to everyone who sent me ideas for using up some of my scraps of fabric. I will definitely be using some of your suggestions. Quilters are a great bunch of people, don't you think?

A couple of people suggested doing some crazy patchwork by machine. Sounds like a good idea to me. I've done some a few years ago after going to a class with Judith Baker Montano so I thought I'd show you some photos. The embroidery and embellishment is all done by hand. I really love the look of it, but it takes so long to do LOL. I don't do much handwork nowadays. The first piece is about 18" square.

The next two pieces are to make a pincushion and a needle book. They've been UFO's for a few years so I might even finish them soon (maybe - don't want to do anything too rash).

This last photo is of some quilting I did today. It's a poor feather, but they are at least getting rounder. I did a lot of stitch-in-the-ditch (near the ditch, anyway) on this red and cream quilt and I can hardly see it! I think I may have to have a ditch-less studio. Haven't decided what to do in the cream bits yet, I'll think about it tomorrow...

note to AJ

2007-08-25T20:47:00.000+10:00

You asked if I would consider selling some of the hand dyes. Yes, if I have what you're after. If you send me your email addy in a new comment, I can then delete your comment when I've got your email, instead of accepting and publishing the comment. Otherwise reply to my post on scquilters? Thanks, cat

scrap blocks

2007-08-25T14:12:00.000+10:00

Making slow progress on my 78 scrap blocks as mentioned in last post. They are now between 6" and 8" in size. Next time remind me to cut the strips wider! Still not sure what to do with them next. I could add a wide strip around each side to frame them then cut the frame down so that the blocks are all the same size. The frame would be a different width for each block. Would that look a bit odd? Maybe someone out there has some other suggestions (she says hopefully...)

This little pile doesn't look like it has 78 blocks in it, does it? I figured out that if I make two quilts, one set 6 blocks by 8 blocks and one set 6 blocks by 5 blocks, that would use 78 blocks. Or I could make another 2 blocks and make one quilt 8 blocks by 10 blocks. Still thinking about that.

My Thursday night quilt group will be meeting at my place this week. We normally meet at the library but the room isn't available this Thursday night. I'll have to make sure there is a practice piece loaded onto the longarm for them to have a try. Someone asked if I was going to hire it out time for other quilters to use, but I'm reluctant to do that as there is no one in Tasmania that fixes them if something goes wrong. Our insurance probably wouldn't cover it either. Besides that, it would mean that I would have to set up as a business, and I don't plan on doing that. I think that's enough to talk myself out of the idea .

This afternoon I'm going to load another quilt and try some straight line quilting (stitch in the ditch). I haven't been game to try it yet but this quilt seems to be asking for it. It will be interesting to see how I go. I also want to try doing some feathers again. I tried when I first got the longarm and they were truly awful! Hopefully they have improved a little, but I'll use a matching thread so it won't stand out as much.

On Tuesday I have an appointment with my neurologist in Launceston. Just a six monthly checkup to keep him informed of the changes in my MS and to see if the medication needs changing. I've got to ask him what can be done for the muscles spasms that I have every night when I go to bed. They're driving me crazy because I'm just not getting enough sleep. I know there's a couple of different things that can be used to treat them. Will let you know how I get on.

That's it for now - have a good weekend.

scraps, scraps and more scraps...

2007-08-22T16:43:00.001+10:00

Do any of you quilters ever get the feeling that your scraps breed if you leave them alone in the dark? I'm sure mine do. I bought 6 plastic tubs quite a few years ago and use them to store my scraps, loosely sorted into colour groups. Blues, greens, yellows/oranges/red/browns, creams, blacks/whites, novelties. They are all full to overflowing so I also have a small rubbish bin that is stuffed with the scraps that won't fit in the plastic tubs. (Does this sound familiar?)

Last week I emptied out the yellow/orange/red/brown tub, put the larger pieces back in (plastic tub is half full again) and ironed the rest. I cut all the ironed pieces into strips, squares or rectangles depending on size and shape and decided to sew them into blocks. I'm just stitching 2 small bits together, then a bigger bit and then another bit, etc. I didn't count the blocks as I started them. When I'd sewn about 4 pieces together on each block I counted them and found there were 78 blocks! AND enough pieces to make them at least 12" each. I'll be able to carpet the house with them...and this is only one tub of scraps out of the six...

I haven't taken any photos yet, but I will tomorrow. I have taken some photos of some of the hand dyed fabric I have left from when I used to dye and sell it. I also have heaps of dye and a full roll of white pfd fabric so might have to dye some more this summer. I haven't decided what to make out of this fabric yet. There are fat quarters, eighths, little rolls of four 8" squares and 3.5" charm packs. (Also, another BIG plastic tub full of scraps!) Any ideas, anyone?

I can see!

2007-08-18T18:06:00.000+10:00

Monday morning 8.25am the doorbell rings. I'm in my pyjamas cutting up a banana onto our breakfast cereal. It's the electricians arriving without notice to wire in some new lights out in my studio. Aaaargh! Mad rush to shut myself in the office (with my breakfast) till they've walked through the house out to the studio. Just as well Murray had already showered and dressed, coz I wasn't answering the door ha ha.

Now it's like daylight out there - 4 new light fittings, each with two 4ft daylight tubes. It's wonderful. I can actually go out there after 5pm and still be able to see.

Got some more photos to show you. I made up a simple nine patch quilt from scraps left over from the charity quilts. I drew the feather wreaths on but freehanded the rest, which is why the continuous curves are all different sizes. Er...hopefully they'll get better with practice... I am satisfied with my stippling, and now want to try a variety of other background fillers.

I also tried another pantograph, but with tremors in my hands it came out a bit wonky. Oh well, another good excuse to play...um I mean practice... more!

further adventures on the longarm

2007-08-12T17:34:00.000+10:00

I've been having more fun on my new toy this past week. I've now done 5 lap quilts for Appin Hall - very basic stuff but that okay. I tried a pantograph but it didn't turn out as well as I hoped because of the tremor in my hands and arms. Luckily that little problem has eased off a bit so I might try another one tomorrow. Isn't learning new stuff fun?

I got my quilts back from Down Under Quilts magazine on Wednesday. The next issue will have an article about me and my quilts. It's nice to have them home again. Now I just have to figure out where to hang some of them. I've been quilting for a quarter of a century and don't have a single quilt hanging up. Can you believe that?

I took a couple of photos of the last quilt I did on my Husqvarna. What do you think? I'll be glad when I can quilt on the longarm and have it turn out like this!

Here's some more photos - this time of a couple of the charity quilts. Not very good but I guess they're only the first ones I've done.

Last night while Murray was watching the football on telly, I quilted a large double bed quilt. It only took about 3 hours. The quilting is just a free hand leafy meander. Anything else would have taken much longer. It's a Turning Twenty quilt using older fabrics from my stash, some of the fabrics have been around at least 10 years! Practice quilts were a good excuse to use some of them up.

I just have to machine stitch the binding on then give them to my binding fairy (aka my mum) to do the hand stitching. I already have the backing loaded onto the longarm for the next quilt so I'll be ready to go tomorrow.

By the way, I don't spend ALL my time quilting. I actually made some Ginger Coconut Biscuits (cookies for non-australians) this morning. Not bad either LOL

busy playing in studio

2007-08-01T09:04:00.000+10:00

I've been having fun playing on the longarm. Done lots of practice on that practice piece, just rolling it back and forward using different colour thread each time. I've also managed to do three charity quilts which will go to Appin Hall. Two of them have been taken by friends to put the binding on and the other one is still here so I will take a photo of it later. Been a bit MS-y the last couple of weeks with muscle spasms and twitches during the night, so not getting much sleep. Consequently not getting as much done during the day as I would like. Oh well.

Thought I'd tell you what my wonderful husband did on Sunday. I went back to bed after lunch on Sunday, and Murray said he'd wake me up in time for afternoon tea. I jokingly said "a bikkie with a cup of tea would be nice. You can make some if you like, there's a recipe under one of the magnets on the front of the fridge." When I got up, there was the lovely smell of home made biscuits wafting up the hallway. Yum! (In case you noticed in the photo, he is a West Coast Eagles supporter. He was living in Perth when the team was formed and has followed them ever since.)

Here's the recipe. When we were in Canada lots of the coffee shops sold Oatmeal Raisin Cookies and I developed quite a liking for them. When we got home I had a look on the internet for a recipe and found one that we adapted a bit, and we really like.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

6oz butter

1/2 cup sugar

3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarb soda

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

2 3/4 cups rolled oats

1 cup raisins

Cream butter and sugars until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla until fluffy. Sift dry ingredients and gradually beat into butter mixture. Stir in oats and raisins. Drop by spoonfuls on biscuit trays. Bake 8-10 minutes at 190deg. The cookies will still be slightly soft, but nicely browned. Cool slightly on trays, then remove to wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

slow progress on new quilt

2007-07-25T18:20:00.000+10:00

I got all the little blocks cut and stitched for the quilt I started a couple of weeks ago. I had to...after the longarm arrived I no longer had a nice big design 'floor'. Since my new toy arrived I've been playing on that so haven't made any further progress on the quilt. I'll get back to it soon...er...soon-ish?

To finish up, a photo of our vicious guard cat on duty.

new toy has arrived!

2007-07-25T17:56:00.000+10:00

I have been a bit stressed and a bit MS-y over the last few weeks. Stressed because the delivery of the longarm machine didn't go as smoothly as hoped, which was totally out of the control of the company and the dealer who was just wonderful. All is well with it now, and it works beautifully. I love it! Just need to get used to the movement which is totally different to quilting on the domestic machine. Lots of PPP (practice, patience and perseverance).

Here's a photo of my new baby and some of my practice quilting. It feels strange to be a quilting beginner again. My first efforts are pretty woeful - it can only get better from here, right? The photos didn't come out very well. Hmm, that could be a good thing.

On the MS front, the muscle spasms in my arms seem to be finished, thank God. Unfortunately they are moving to my face. Only on the right hand side, though. Can you imagine what muscle spasms in your nose and lips feel like? Of course, they probably feel much worse than they are (doesn't everything?). It's not very pronounced and I can usually cover it up. Hopefully no one notices. It feels like I'm doing an impersonation of Billy Idol's sneer. If you can remember what that looks like, you obviously were into music in the 80's, ha ha. I've watched in the mirror and it does look a bit weird. With MS there's never a dull moment.....

longarm and suggestions wanted for photos

2007-07-02T09:07:00.000+10:00

Having a quiet time this morning so decided to post again.

Helen, to answer your question, I'm getting an A1 Elite longarm machine. It's not as heavy as some of the others and apparently moves very easily because of the way the wheels are made. It has a 23" throat space which will be fantastic. Supposed to be here by the end of the week but we don't know exactly when.

I'm including some photos that I took in an attempt to capture texture in nature, and to try out my camera which I haven't spent much time with yet. I don't quite know what I'll use them for, but I'm thinking something connected with free form quilting and/or embroidery. I shall have to ponder this for a while longer (possibly even a year or two?) Any ideas for me?

what I'm working on now

2007-07-01T18:18:00.000+10:00

I've started a new quilt top this week. I have a bag that was made in India out of cut up pieces of embroidered silks and I wanted to match the colours of the quilt to the bag. I just love the richness of the colours! The photos made the bag look a bit pink. The pink areas are actually red in real life.

I got fairly close, or at least as close as I could considering all the fabric came out of my stash. I chose a pattern that looked fairly easy to construct if you don't consider the number of 1.75" squares that I had to cut - 1056 of them. Then I had to draw a diagonal line on the back of all of them (aaarrgh). I used to just sort of finger press them and stitch on the fold, but I can't see the fold well enough now. I have started stitching today so I feel as if I'm making progress. I hope to have the bulk of it together by the end of the week because that's when the longarm machine is due to arrive. I would still be stitching now if it wasn't so c-c-cold in the studio. There's a guy coming tomorrow to look at the heater out there. He thinks it just needs re-gassing so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

My MS is playing up at the moment. Muscle spasms in my arms (mainly in the middle of the night)and tremors in my arms during the day. What fun. The surface of my legs and lower back is going numb as well, and the good old 'MS hug' has lasted all day for the last week or so instead of just an hour when I get up. I know I'm having a flare up but I'm trying to out last it if I can. Oh well, things could be worse. I can still make quilts .

see ya

cat

new studio

2007-06-29T08:48:00.000+10:00

I've been doing some organising in my new studio and have almost got it in working order. I've been making a heap of lap size quilt tops so that I'll have something to practice on when my longarm quilting machine arrives in about 2 weeks. I dug around in the 'archives' and found some tops that have been around for a long time. You can see them all in the photo - about 20 quilt tops laid over the quilt rack my brother made me. Don't know the exact date my machine gets here but it's getting close. Yay!

It's winter here but the last week has been the most beautiful weather. Cold frosty mornings but lovely sunny days. Murray has been fishing a couple of times but unfortunately we haven't had fish for dinner yet. He caught 5 fish on Tuesday but they were all little fellas, so he put them back to grow a bit more. Trev the wondercat follows the sunbeams around the loungeroom most of the day - every time we go in there he's asleep in a different place. Smart cat. He's 16 years old now so doesn't do much else but sleep and eat. Eating is his hobby, and he indulges in it quite a number of times a day LOL.

I'm posting some photos of my studio in case anyone is interested. The cupboards are huge, and the mirror doors are to reflect light back to the rest of the room (and because they were cheaper). There is lots of natural light with windows and sliding glass doors on both sides and 2 long narrow windows on the back wall. The L-shaped work table has enough room for my computer but I haven't moved it out there yet. I worked out how much leg room I would need when sewing and had the builders make shelves underneath in the rest of the space. I even have a bar, which is funny because I don't drink!

Still need to get extra lighting and heating, but I am very happy with it.

cheers

cat

cat on glacier (?)

2007-06-13T16:12:00.000+10:00

I was going to write a bit more about our trip, but my mother has borrowed my journal. I wrote in my journal each day, and stuck postcards, photos, brochures and tickets, etc in it so I could remember everything when we got home. My memory is..um...bad to say the least so I'll have to wait till I get the journal back.

Thought I'd put in a photo my husband took when we were on top of Athabasca Glacier in Canada. You probably still won't be able to see what I look like though. It was -12deg C, and I was wearing extra clothes, gloves, scarf and hat - actually a fairly good disguise! The second photo is Murray and I at Lake Louise (beautiful place!) The third is a bald eagle that was eating the leftover bait fish when Murray went fishing in Ketchikan, Alaska. The last one is a little grey squirrel eating a piece of apple. I didn't realise squirrels were quite as small as they are.

Back in Australia with some free time

2007-06-03T08:52:00.000+10:00

We got back to Australia on May 21. Finally caught up on sleep and laundry, put most of the stuff away in my new studio (the builders came while we were away) and now have a little time to write some stuff. I think we were in Toronto the last time I wrote anything. Once we started on the guided tour part of our holiday we didn't seem to have much free time.

The day we went to Niagara falls was Murray's birthday and our wedding anniversary so we hired a limo (not a stretch one) and driver - sounds extravagant but it was only a little bit more expensive than the bus tour and 4 hours shorter. The falls were amazing! A lot of water from melting ice and snow was starting to come down the river but it's still a bit early in the season, so most of the spring melt is yet to come. The water looks very green - there's no tannin in the water so it doesn't have the brownish tinge that many of the rivers at home have. There is still too much ice for the boat 'Maid of the Mist' to be running yet so we had to be content with looking over the side. The power of the water is hard to describe. You'll have to see it for yourselves!

We also went to the Butterfly Conservatory which is about 6 miles away. Took lots of photos, everyone there was snap-happy. Thousands of butterflies, all different colours and sizes. The most beautiful one was called blue morpho and is hard to photograph. The upper side of its wings in a gorgeous irridescent blue and the lower side is a mottled brown with a large darker brown patch that looks like a big eye. Only problem was when it landed it closed its wings together so all you could see was the bottom of its wings. We had a laugh at one young couple there - she was taking a photo of him when he jumped up in the air waving his arms around. She asked "what on earth is wrong with you?" "Aaargh, one was flying at my face!" he shouted. It was a butterfly - not a man-eating monster. Wimp.

The next day we caught the Trans-Canada train to Edmonton. The train station was very conveniently placed across the street from the hotel so we conned one of the hotel staff into taking our luggage across. We booked a double bedroom cabin on the train. Sounds good, right? It was about 5' x 8'. There are 2 chairs that fold down flat to the floor at night so the baunks can be set up, and when the bunks are set up there is about 18" left of the cabin. Very cosy! We did have our own loo though - most important LOL.

First half of the day we passed many lakes with cabins around them. Someone told us it is known as 'cottage country'. Many people from the nearby cities have cabins there and visit on the weekends. Very pretty area but hard to take photos from a moving train. As we travelled further west, a bit of snow started to appear. We saw lots of beaver lodges and a few beaver dams. Didn't see any beavers though. Not a heck of a lot to do on a train - luckily we took a pack of cards and a crib board. There was a session of mini golf but we missed it. Darn, I would have liked to know how you play golf on a train.

Second day on the train and the landscape is changing again. Much colder and most of the lakes are still frozen. Mist rising from the ice is thick and seeing it through the trees makes the scene look quite eerie in places. After lunch it all changed again as we headed into wheat growing country, very flat and open. After dinner I don't know what it was like outside as we had a few games of 4 handed crib with Shirley and Bud, an elderly couple from Sacramento, California. They were in their eighties but seemed younger. Bud had been in the navy and fought in World War 2 and the Korean war. By the way, the girls beat the boys, 3 games to one.

Next day, May 23, I discovered it's not easy to have a shower on a train going full speed! Yesterday the train had stopped so it was much easier. Off the train at Edmonton then straight to the airport to catch a plane to Vancouver. Someone from APT Tours met us at the airport in Vancouver and had organised a car to take us to the hotel. We got outside to find a huge grey stretch limousine! Bit hard to talk to the driver though, as he's so far away. Interesting experience that will probably never happen again.

Think I'll finish here and do some more later. Thanks for reading.

hello from toronto

2007-04-20T07:56:00.000+10:00

nine days into our trip already! The flight, although a good one, was VERY LONG! got up at 3.45am in Melbourne and went to bed at 8pm in Los Angeles - 33 hours later. Flew Cathay Pacific and they treat you very well. Didn't see anything of LA except the airport and the hotel. From there we flew to Chicago with American Airlines. Our flight was delayed 2 hours because the plane had a flat nose cone tire. I suppose if anything was to go wrong with the plane you're about to fly on, it's better when it's still on the ground! All passengers had been seated for over an hour when we were told that the first 20 rows of passengers had to get off. There was too much weight in the front of the plane and they couldn't get the jack under it. So we all trooped off, stood around for a while so they could jack the plane up and change the tire, then we all trooped back on. After we finally left the flight was fairly uneventful.

Arriving at Chicago airport and getting luggage etc was fairly quick. We got a taxi from the airport to the hotel and THAT was interesting. Our driver was a little 'disturbed' and definitely in full 'mutter mode' about everything. We stopped at an intersection as there was a red light, and the lights wouldn't change to green. Starting off quietly, his "son of a b*tch" got louder and louder until he was shouting, at which point he jumped out of the taxi in the middle of the street leaving his door wide open, and started pounding on the pedestrian crossing button (or whatever you call it). Got back in the taxi, but the lights still didn't change so he went through the red light with more S.O.B.'s . He then missed the turnoff to the hotel and had to do a U turn in the middle of a four lane road. But we finally made it in one piece.

The International Quilt Festival was an anti climax after the taxi ride. No, not really. It was fantastic. There were 475 vendors there and I left a donation at quite a few. Bought too much stuff to carry around, so we posted it home. Many traditional quilt stalls, many arty ones, plus beads, jewellery, books, sewing machines, longarms, embellishments and lots of other stuff that I can't remember. We took heaps of photos of quilts, but some parts of the quilt show were "no photography". Definitely worth going to, even if I didn't find the dvd's I wanted. Thousands of people but organisation for entry to the show was excellent. It was quicker to get into than the shows in Tassie. I hired a 'pope-mobile' (also known as an electric scooter) to get around. I wouldn't have been able to walk around for three days so it was worth every cent. Met up with a few people I knew from the Quiltart list, which was great. So many people there but they were extremely friendly and polite.

We had a free day in Chicago on Monday so took a taxi to Navy Pier. This was developed in the 1920's as a family entertainment and amusement area. It was taken over during the second world war by the Navy, the returned to its original purpose after the war. It has a ferris wheel and carousel and various family-type restaurants like Macca's and Dunkin' Donuts plus asian, seafood etc. It also has a Museum of Stained Glass Windows, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Grand Ballroom, 6 storey IMAX theatre, 3D Maze,Crystal Gardens, huge convention centre and heps of boats offering rides on Lake Michigan. Lots of renovating being done in preparation for the summer season and many of the boats being painted etc. We went up on the 150ft ferris wheel to get a view of the city and lake. Also took a half hour cruise on the lake, which was interesting but the wind was FREEZING! Still managed to get sunburnt though.

We left Chicago on tuesday to fly to Toronto. Chicago airport experience was interesting. We lined up to have our luggage weighed and boarding passes issued. We then took our luggage to another queue so our checked luggage could go through xray. Then we lined up in another queue so our cabin baggage could be scanned and we could go through the metal detectors. Then, lucky us, we got selected for secondary screening! So we waited in another area so they could pat us down and open the cabin baggage looking for contraband or whatever. As you know, we look bit suspicious! They weren't very thorough as they didn't even open the bag that my betaferon syringes were in.

Toronto airport was a nightmare, and that's being kind. There were quite a few planes in at the same time and passengers from each of them had asked for wheelchair assistance (including me). They'd run out of wheelchairs and people to push them. Airport staff had to push them so at one stage there were 25 people in wheelchairs lined up waiting for processing through immigration. It took an hour and a half from when we got off the plane until we got through immigration. The rest of the process only took about 30 minutes.

Today we went to the Textile Museum of Canada. It was a fair walk from the hotel so we decided to take the subway. The subway was easy to work out. Sure saved a lot of time walking, or a lot of money of taxi fares. There was a special exhibition of embroidery from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It was amazing how much work went into even tiny children's clothing. Bright colours, beads, sequins, shisha mirrors - beautiful work. There was also a mini exhibition of clothing made of fish skin! It was made by a woman from north eastern China. I've heard of fish leather before but had never seen it. There was also a gift shop there, and I left a little money with them too.

Tomorrow we are going down to Niagara Falls to have a look. Then Saturday we are on the Trans Canada train for 3 days to Edmonton. More after that...

Exciting times!

2007-04-01T07:36:00.000+10:00

First: The Tasmanian Quilting Guild's annual exhibition was held in Hobart over the last 4 days. On Tuesday morning I got a call from the president of the exhibition committee to tell me I had won a prize for one of my quilts. She wouldn't tell me over the phone which prize I had won so I had to wait until I could get down to Hobart on Wednesday. I won first prize in the Art,Professional category. I was stunned! Originally I wasn't going to enter the quilt, and then I entered it in another category. The organisers rang me when they got my entry form and asked if they could move it to the art category. I still don't really see it as a prize winning quilt, but I suppose you never know what is going to appeal to the judges on the day, do you? The quilt is Citrus Swirl pictured in the post from March 13.

Second: We leave on our holiday in 9 days! We fly to Melbourne on April 10, then on to Los Angeles on April 11. The flight leaves at 7.30am so we have to be at the airport at 5.30am. That means that I'll have to get up at about...umm..4.30 if I want to have time for a shower? That's gonna hurt! We have one night in Los Angeles then it's on to Chicago for the Interantional Quilt Festival. Yay! I am SO looking forward to that. Might meet up with some people off the Quiltart list which would be great. After that we have 5 or 6 days in Toronto then catch the Trans Canada train to Edmonton, then down to Vancouver for a week or so before picking up a guided tour. That will take us up around the Rockies then back to Vancouver before joining a cruise up to Alaska. We'll be away 6 weeks altogether.

Third: While we're away the building fairies are going to visit my studio and build all the cupboards, bookshelves and computer/sewing station. When I get back I'll just have put all the fabric, books and other stuff out of the forty or so assorted plastic tubs and boxes into their new home. Just doing that will be fun, I think. I'm adding some photos of the studio as it is now. Behind all the plastic tubs is a bar where Murray has put some of his assorted 'alcoholic beverages'. I don't drink alcohol and Murray rarely does, so some of the bottles have been around for a few years now. One day they will get used - don't know whether it will be to drink or to cook with ha ha. Also added the view out of one set of the glass sliding doors.

I've also added a photo of Trev the wondercat making a fuss of Alison, the daughter of one of my closest friends. He's a very sociable beastie, will say hello to anyone. If you come to visit, be prepared to leave with cat fur attached.