HELLO THERE!!.....

Yes I am being brave and showing you my good self in a snap taken by my daughter. I was quite proud of this pinny type dress as I had drafted it from an old dress that had seen better days. I quite liked that dress so I took it apart and used it as a pattern to make another.
The fabric is a Denyse Schmidt feedsack type. Unfortunately it has not photographed well in the bright winter sun. I kid you not we do get bright winter sun at times. I also dont think it the most flattering on me as I do actually have a shape! These floaty dresses do well when you have thin arms and legs....but I love it because behind a desk in my office its damn compfy....yes compfy!...i just made that word up and I like it.

 Hahhahaha this is me trying to look serious model like...and that is not my hair but a concrete lion framed just behind my head...sigh you just cannot get good paparazzi these days.

 So I called a stop to all this madness and stomped off.... to complain to my agent....

 These were some recent purchases from a market called "Finders Keepers" that my daughter persuaded me to accompany her to. Luck we got there early, it was way more crowded that a regular craft show, full of hipsters and fashionable young folk, and I must say I was impressed by some of the stalls there. Needless to say I gravitated to the vintage stalls and these precious pieces just had to come home. My daughter was a little surprised that I paid over the odds for them. But sometimes you know you will be hard pushed to source these things yourself so you pay premium to someone who works hard to pick these things out. 

 They look so good together dont they?

 And in the interests of keeping it real.....this is a behind the scenes look at how I set up my backdrop.....ahhh the glamorous world I live in.

And some more little op shop treasures just to show you I too can source little imexpensive vintage too.

This is my latest tiny crochet that I am working on, following on from the previous scarf I had just finished.
It uses DMC 8 perle cotton and a ripple stitch pattern. 
I am loving how this is turning out.

1.5 mm hook

This monster project is one I have set my daughter to continue. She was always nagging coaxing me to make her a granny square blanket, and well my concentration waxes and wanes a lot so I wasnt going to get it done anytime soon. So I saw and purchased this kit from Better Homes and Gardens, its acrylic yarn, inexpensive and might colourful. I sat down one evening and taught her the basics and AWAY SHE WENT!!!!!!

She has her own basket of colourful yarn and she is loving it. We have been watching the Commonwealth Games most evenings and she is storming along with the project. I will assist when and if she needs me, but I think she will be so proud if she sticks it out and completes it all by herself. She always was a girl who would stick it out until she could master a skill. I think I may be assisting with all those sewing in of ends though......I personally dont think she has left enough of a tail to sew in but she thinks otherwise......time will tell and like a good mum I will resist the retort..."I told you so"...(wont stop me thinking it but I wont say it )

I am finishing this, just appliqueing on the last hexagons. Its from Rosalie Quinlan and her book "A stitch in Time"

Made this up from a kit from the latest Mollie Makes...wearing it now..love it.

Got heaps more to tell you but I will stop it there so you can go make a cuppa tea and have a rest. And I can go and join the family to watch Australia trounce New Zealand in the Netball final at the Commonwealth Games....because New Zealand always beat us in the rugby.

Talk soon dear blog friends

LIFE ..........can be so overwhelming at times.

Well, events in ones life can seem to be too much, but quilting and creating has taught me so much about coping when it gets a bit crazy out there.

hehe,  couple of crazy cats.

Its all good folks, I am doing great,  just in case those of you with sensitive souls get worried.....

I am soooooo blessed to have such a supportive spouse and time to create, because I do think that without the creativity I would be swamped. Everyone needs a hobby, that thing that gets them out of bed and looking forward to the day ahead.

I spent the time cutting up fabric when I was feeling stressed after dealing with a stubborn elderly parent. It helped me calm down and not lash out in my frustration and their fear.

This corner of the table was my haven, piles of fabric reduced to tiny hexagons that one day will make another purse. I am looking forward to that!

More hexagons that will come together in another project.

And that is what my creative pursuit has taught me, at first it may seem overwhelming." I cannot do that", I have said , and I have heard others say.
If you look at the finished quilt it can seem too much, but if we sit a while and break it down into small pieces, it doesn't seem too bad after all.

We add the little tasks together and before we know it, a larger piece appears. We are progressing forward.

I have recently had to step up at work to cover for a collegue, sadly for them life has been too overwhelming. I too was nervous, would I cope with the extra in my life? I mean I had just got everything so well balanced, I didn't want to upset my apple cart.

But I did as I would do in my creative world, I stopped , took a deep breath and broke it down into small pieces. Slowly I picked up the pace and things progressed forward.

Things got done at work, projects will be finished at home.

This project waits quietly, it too will be a slow and steady creative escape.

A pleasant interlude when I want to sit and stitch with little thought.

And that is what quilting has taught me about life.

SPRING.......has definitely sprung when.....

But not when these appear but when this happens.......

( caution dont enlarge these pictures, could be ugly haha)

See even the puppy boy is a little bemused...what is that!!!!

Ahhhh, pedicure, sandals and bare legs in the sun by the pool!
Now we are talking!

Now to work on Mr Sartorial.......

Lol, the camera at certain angles can distort sometimes, the Mr actually has very long legs........but mine are that short in real life.

Have sewn all the hexagons into a panel, to make a bag. I am meeting a friend in Texas....yes thats right, Texas for the Quilt Show. Can I tell you I am getting very excited about this trip of a lifetime. I decided when I reached the big 50 to treat myself for once. My friend set down the challenge, she said dont say your gunna.....say you are going to DO that thing. 

It has been a year of thinking, saving and booking and now it looks like it may actually happen.......fingers crossed.

So as I said the bag is a gift.

I am in the process of machine quilting the hexagons, check out the cute fabric from Spotlight that I have used for the top panel. It will also be used in the handles too.

Again from Spotlight, it will be the lining, because we are in TEXAS, ( did I mention I was going to Texas)...

But almost as exciting is this dear blog friends, a big TAA DAAAH
and a reveal

Here it is!!!!!!!

I know a much better reveal than my feet.

I first saw this lovely in a Better Homes and Garden mag back in 1993, and now it finally lives.
I struggled, as you know, it was fiddly and time consuming but like most things worthwhile, it is satisfying to conquer and get to the end.
Compared to the construction the quilting will be a delight, I am currently searching for a design to feature in the yellow blocks, the original had a spider web type of design. My fellow stitchers at the Stitching Post think I need something with a strong linear feel rather than a feather circle. Does anyone else have a suggestion? Please dont be shy I really love to know.

Now I will leave you with some more spring images that you may actually enjoy....

Pardon my absence I've been sick.....

Nothing serious but enough to sap my energy and make me lie on the couch and in bed, coughing and spluttering.

Boy and when mum goes down, the whole house sorta misfires a bit, well it does in that it doesnt go according to my schedule. 

Methinks I need to stop micro managing and take my own advise and let it be.

Lessons life teaches you when you have time to think......you need to know how sick I was when I was aching from lying in bed too much so I got up and watched MORNING TV.....yes completely brain dead....numb to all feeling from the neck up.......but I am better now.

I felt I needed a new and slow project to get me through that period, and I am NOT saying english paper piecing is for slow people but is was a beautiful and gentle way to just sit and sew.

So this is what I got done before the coughing started.

It is the base of a purse designed by Brigitte Giblin, 1/2 in hexagons, and I am learning heaps about what to do and not to do. I am glad this is the base of the purse so my mistakes will not be on public display.

Then I stopped all activity for a while but prepared hexagons for this project.

This is going to be a tote bag made from a charm pack and they are 2 inch hexagons. Completely different skills learned again, but the few wobbles will not be so visible over the whole project.

I you tubed quite a few tutorials when I was sitting quietly, and I have put together my own method using hints from many sources.

Everyone has their own way of doing some things and we must go with what makes sense to us. I personally am not folding my pieces together but butting them together keeping them flat and catching the stitches behind. 
I have found this keeps my stitches more invisible from the front.

I should take a photo and show you shouldnt I, stay there a second I will be back.

Thanks for waiting!

I am adding the dark hexagon, so I line up the points and stitch them together, then I hold them a bit like this and sew whip stitches with the hexies butted up together.

As I am not changing my style, I do not find this difficult, and I just take small neat stitches, catching the yellow then across to the dark, and so on down to the next intersection, a few stitches in the joining point and across the next line etc etc.

This works for me, and I dont think its foolproof or better but just another style of sewing.

The photos are being taken at my craft  kitchen table, where all good projects end up at some stage.

Luckily it seats 8, and we are a family of 4 most nights, and when guests join us I move the pile current project to the very end of the table and we eat.

This was another slow project that inhabits the table

Quilting the borders, sorry about the blurry closeup.

This is the stencil

Now you may notice some nibbles on this stencil, not me but my puppy boys.

They being small and quick often run into rooms and seek trouble, I was very lucky that my husband came home and as he passed the lounge room wondered what the dogs were playing with.

Its all good I can still use the stencil, ( lucky cos they are not cheap) and lucky the dogs are small because I could well imagine our previous fur child who was a Bull Mastiff would have swallowed half of it in the first ten seconds.

I must pull out some old photos to show you all some day, he was a brilliant boy. Boris was his name and we loved him a lot.
Now I must go before I get all soppy and nostalgic about my pets.

Thanks for the chat, stay away from coughs.

   

I need some bloggy encouragement, at this point I feel a little overwhelmed and distracted by the vast number of projects that I have taken on in my creative life.

It is all my own fault, I blame no one but myself, but now I need to at least complete something before I move on to yet another.

 It takes me an hour to go from this to.......

As well as a lot of pressing and easing and trying to make the block sit flat. Luckily I am not a perfectionist and I know the quilting will take care of some of the wobbles.

It is just that I have 20 of these to complete and I am running out of steam, I want to finish them I really really do, but then I want to do this as well

Really I just need to stop fretting and just do, so I have set myself a goal of one a night, and at that rate I should finish this week, cos as we speak I have whittled it down to 8.

I have a project in every room of the house, sewing machine work, hand work, day work and tv work.....I know I am not alone in this.

Maybe this blog will keep me honest, or maybe it will make me try to overachieve, really  I should get off the computer and get cracking but I do like a little chat to distract me.......aaaaarrrrgghhh.......alright, alright I will get back to that block.

Really just chatting has helped, Thank you.