I'm becoming obsessive!

I find that all I want to do is sew at the moment. I don't want to cook, in fact I've got to the point where I work out how many clean pots and pans I have left and cook something that will go in them. I'm only scrubbing pots and pans once a week, I see this as an exercise in water saving and everyone's got to do their bit. My daughter was nearly late for school this morning as I just had to "sew this little seam" and of course one seam led to another and another......

OK, enough waffling, I've done another four blocks (each one 20 inches square) want to see?

My darling hubby took one look at these and told me (thoughtfully) that I'd sewn the Japanese writing upside down. "That's art!" I told him. Then I thumped him.

Only another 30 to go...........I'm thinking "takeaways" for the next month or so.

Another day and a bit more craft.

What a great time it was on Sunday, I went into Melbourne for another guild meeting. Lots of laughs, lots of tea (a few trips to the loo,) a good bit of sewing and oodles of fabric fondling! 

Someone had brought along her stash of beautiful wools from the Waverley Woollen Mills.....dreamy and so soft, all in shades of blue, purple, green and cream. Then, as if that wasn't enough, she pulled out of her basket handfuls of Echino, Kristen Doran, Ink and Spindle.....oh the name dropping was intense! 

Having a complete fit of fabric envy, Rachal and I wisely decided the only option left to us was to nobble the fabric queen. We quickly worked out a devastatingly clever plan to knock her on the head and nick her fabric...... unfortunately we weren't overly quiet when planning our assault and as she was sitting right next to us she quickly got wind of our plans and escaped. Sigh! 

Anyway, today I had craft group and this is what I came up with. Not sure I like the skin outline in black, but it's a couple of years since I did any embroidery so I was just messing about trying to decide if I still like doing it.

Harder than I thought...!

So, I spent a whole day with my seven year old drawing up and colouring in a pattern to end up chucking it out. It wasn't a complete waste as we both enjoyed the colouring in bit, but as soon as I started sewing it together I realised that I had to loosen up a bit.




So now I'm working on, what I like to call, "storyboards".



I got the idea from cartoon comics, see if you get what I mean....

Never, never, never.....

....... try to do an inset seam when it's late at night and you're tired. This is a piece of wisdom that I wish I'd known last night.

Most of the blocks I'm doing for this animé quilt have stretchy weird angles but easy ones none the less. Last night I was faced with sewing a nasty inset seam.

"No problem," I thought. I mean I know the principles involved in sewing these angles.......just had  never found the need to actually DO one.

Four attempts later and "inset" became the rude word of the night! I tried steaming it flat, but the fabric just bobbled up. I tried inking the offending visible stitches, (yes, idiot that I am I lazily didn't bother changing the thread to a darker colour and white does tend to show up against a black background.) I snipped and tugged and in the end said "that'll do" and went to bed.

This morning I looked at it and thought it just looked crappy. So I unpicked, (again!) trimmed it back a bit, got out my lovely quarter inch ruler (free gift from The Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild) and did it properly.

Now I'm happy!

Ask and you shall receive.

Do you find that as soon as you say "Has anyone got a .........." (you can fill in the blank with anything) usually someone will pipe up and say, "Oh! I wish I'd known....I just threw one out last week."

Well, I'm here to assure you that miracles really do happen.

The other day I just happened to mention that I'd be making toys with the kids at school next term and one of my tennis team mates looked up and offered "a big bag of wadding." Apparently her husband uses a poly-fibre wadding for some sort of insulating and has loads of clean, unused off cuts, ideal for toy making.

She and her husband arrived today with the "big bag" in the back of their ute. The bag is SO big I couldn't have got it into my car! I reckon there's about one and a half cubic metres of the stuff, it took two of us to carry it into the house.

I am overwhelmed!

Seeing as I'm on a "ask" and "receive" roll, what shall I ask for next.......? 

I know, a trip to Amitie!

You thought I was going to ask for good looks and an endless supply of chocolate, didn't you!

.......maybe next time.

Leaving you with a picture of some lovely fabric I got from the Amitie stall at the last Stitches show.

Fondling fabric.....mmmm!

Look what the postie brought the other day..........I'm in lurve with Alexander Henry and Michael Miller at the moment, luckily I have a very understanding hubby! 

Some of the bigger prints will probably end up in the animé quilt but I'll make badges with a lot of the smaller prints. 

Have you ever had a go with a badge making machine? I can recommend it, they're great fun, I got one for last Christmas because......... well, just because!

So, I'm still churning out the animé blocks..... want to see my latest favourite?

I think it's going to be really hard to part with this quilt, maybe my daughter will have to bribe me!

What's this...?

"What's this?" asked my seven year old

"Hmmmm...." mentally rifling through the books she's read recently."Ah! It's a brilliant leafy sea dragon!"

"No it's not........ it's a hermaphrodite monster."

 !

.....well, that was going to be my second guess!