Homeward Bound

When I showed my sister my baby quilt-in-progress, she reminded me that her friends had expressed a preference for the colour red. Mmm, I really quite like the colour red, not that you would know it from looking in my stash where it is strangely limited in appearance.

In a flash of inspiration (my sisters are very smart), Amy also wrote: “Perhaps (and not trying to get in the way of your creativity!) some red patches, or red binding could give it a pohutukawa feel? And save you having to start another…”

And of course, she was exactly right. The top really did need a certain something to break up all those similar value greens and blues. So here is how it is looking now:

The palette is very similar to the pohutukawa platter that I showed you back at Christmas time, albeit with a touch more lime. What’s more, to continue the New Zealand flavour, I happen to have the perfect pukeko backing fabric:

Although we also have purple swamp hens in Australia, including right here at the lagoon in Copacabana, New Zealanders have really embraced the quirky, awkward bird.

Amy’s friends currently live in London but will be returning home after the baby is born. In the meantime, the baby will be wrapped in some kiwiana.

Playing with Colours

I thoroughly enjoyed my dyeing workshop yesterday. In addition to reinforcing some techniques I was familiar with, I tried some new exercises. Here are some indicative results - gradient of greens; transition from blue to fuschia; and a triadic set:
      
And here are some resist/shibori pieces. The first is folded fabric and the second was wrapped around PVC piping:
   
Back to my piecing project…

Way over in WA

I’m off to a dyeing workshop today and hope to post some photos later. In the meantime, I have been enjoying the “Visitor in Your Home Town” meme that is making the rounds. Vicarious travel is fun but I will soon be making a very real journey across the continent to Western Australia. I have to attend a quilting-related function in Perth as one of the representatives of The Quilters’ Guild of NSW Inc but David and I are tagging on a few days exploring time - probably in the Margaret River area. If you have a blog and live in WA, why not do the meme and send me the link? And if you don’t have a blog but know some must see/must do things about WA, do leave a comment.

Finding my rhythm

Whenever it feels like I am starting to get bogged down in a project, or it has been a while since I have had a decent stretch at the sewing machine, I find it refreshing and rewarding to make a simple cot quilt that doesn’t require much concentration. Accordingly, today’s project is made up of free-cut quarter circles in green and blue fabrics from my scrap stash:

It will probably go to one of my sister’s friends who I have promised to make a quilt for. However, even if it finds a different home, it has served its purpose as I find my rhythm again.

A New Dawn

I won’t give you a blow-by-blow analysis of my time-keeping results to date. Suffice to say that, quite predictably, actual quilting time has been minimal and then not especially productive. For example, believe it or not, this is all I have to show for 7+hours of quilting on Sunrise-Sunset:

Whereas for Unplugged! I quilted the lines with a free-motion quilting foot with the feed dogs UP, for this quilt I am using the walking foot as I am looking for straighter lines. It has worked well in the centre where there are longer lines of quilting, although I could have perhaps saved myself the bother and just used corduroy for the piecing:

The hatching in the background is less successfully executed. As Lisa Call points out, stopping and turning corners is a painstaking process. It would be easier if my machine had a better “backwards” mode. However, the stitch formation when going “backwards” is not as tidy and I can’t see where I am going as the bulk of the walking foot attachment gets in the way:

As an aside, when I was considering buying a new sewing machine a few years ago, I took the time to try out several top-end models across a range of brands including: Janome, Bernina, Husqvarna and Pfaff. “Backwards” sewing was an exercise I sampled on all of the machines and none of the models did this well. In the end, I kept going with my Bernina 150QE. If you have better success with “backwards” stitching on your machine, I would be interested to know your secret.

A hive of industry

Whoops, Maggie’s Mum was meant to be much too busy to be reading my blog and seeing what we are up to. To preserve the surprise element, yesterday was decreed to be a no-blog day. Besides, Maggie and I have been very busy. Together we have made 15 small quilts in less than two days! Here are the completed placemats:

Maggie seemed right at home in my studio (note Patches supervising in the background there) as we sang along to She Will Have Her Way, a compilation album featuring New Zealand and Australian female artists singing classic songs by Split Enz and Crowded House:
       
I was very impressed at how Maggie managed to keep focused on the task at hand but we didn’t work all the time. Here’s Maggie reading up on fishes that live in our local waterways:

The weather also cleared sufficiently for us to make an excursion to the Australian Reptile Park where kangaroos wander freely:

And we caught an excellent hour long reptile show complete with audience participation:

And they let you pat the creatures too:

I forgot to ask Maggie about my aunt rating before she headed off this morning but I think she had a good time…

Making things with Maggie

This is for my sister Amy who, perhaps with an eye to monitoring my aunt potential, sent me this e-mail: “I keep looking at your blog to see what you and Maggie have been up to - but there are no more updates yet!”

Yesterday Maggie went to riding school and got to hang out with horses and other 10 year olds. Today was a designated beach day except that we awoke to rain and thunderstorms. Just the perfect kind of weather for hanging out in the studio. Maggie is making personalised placemats for much of her large, extended and blended family. The first image shows some of Maggie’s art work using fabric markers and fabric pastels. Behind each placement top, you will see the fabric that Maggie has chosen for the back of the placemats:

The second image shows a placemat nearing completion. For expediency, I am sewing on the backings, wadding and pillow case finish but Maggie will do some quilting, or at least a line of decorative stitching around the border to hold all the layers together and to try out some of my variegated threads. More pictures later.

Supermarket trolley rage

Let me preface this post with a disclaimer or at least some weasel words. In my INTJ/ISTJ (system building/over-developed sense of responsibility) way, I am normally punctilious about returning my supermarket trolley to the official designated trolley collection area. Furthermore, occasionally I have been known to glare meaningfully if not actually say something to those with a more cavalier approach. But never have I been driven to be a complete jerk. Well, you can probably see where this is going…

Yesterday was a very long day for a would-be aunt. Out the door soon after 6am to catch a train into the city to meet the delightful Miss Maggie from Nu Zild with her [toy] dog Patches. As this would be their only time in the city, we hiked all over to see the sights: the stained glass windows and tiles of the Queen Victoria Building; the Opera House; the Harbour Bridge; the grandeur of old sandstone buildings and so on. Our train ride home came to an abrupt stop for several hours at Hornsby as both the train line and the roads out of the city were closed by bushfires. We spent some time window shopping (nothing like a 10 year old with holiday money burning a hole in her pocket) and then escaped to airconditioned comfort of the movies to see Night at the Museum. Eventually we made it back to my car at Gosford station but then we had to do some shopping. We had left the city before noon and it was now 6.30pm

Maggie, who had been up since before 2am Sydney time, was fading fast and we still had to get home and cook dinner. Naturally, we had managed to nab the trolley with the dodgy wheels and the trolley return area was 50 metres and three speed bumps away. Against this background, I took the easy way out and nudged my trolley into another errant trolley that was occupying a vacant car space immediately opposite the car. Within seconds I received an ear bashing from not one but two 20-something surfer dudes - since when did they become so self-righteous? aren’t they meant to chill out? I hopped into my car, looked into my rear view mirror to back out and saw one of the guys deliberately moving the trolley up to my boot so I couldn’t move. What a jerk!

OK - now I’ve got that off my chest, I promise to revert to shorter posts…

Aunt Practice

I always thought I had the makings of a fun and crazy aunt. However, since none of my five siblings has yet created any nieces or nephews for me, this theory is largely untested but today my 10 year old friend Maggie is coming over from New Zealand to stay for a short while. We have made plans to hang out at the beach and go boogie boarding; do some horse riding; cook a little; do some fabric painting and make things. Both Maggie’s Mum and grandmother are enthusiastic quilters so hopefully it runs in the family…

Cosmic Dust

After the anti-climax that was Haley’s comet, I didn’t take much notice of this week’s news that Comet McNaught would be visible on Australia’s southwestern horizons. But, lo and behold, last night I saw it and it looked exactly like a comet should - a bright ball of fire with a long tail lit up against the night sky:

This photo is courtesy of the Timaru Herald. You can see other images here. I’ll be looking again tonight before it vanishes into the universe.