Finished the last block!

I finished the last block today.

I laid them out on the floor for arrangement, fussed around for a bit then went into paroxysms of fear....how the hell do I quilt this!

It's too big to get a complete photo of.........I no longer know what compelled me to make this.

Controlled sympathy

I have a "sickie" at home today. Cough, cough....."Muu...uum", that's what I've heard all day. It's not that I'm unsympathetic, I gave her the day off of school, and made her lots of hot chocolate. 

I have been, sporadically, a "good" mum, so I know what I'm supposed to do.....except, I have a sneaky suspicion that if I make "home" too warm and cosy a place I'll never get her to go back to school. With that in mind (nothing to do with me being a completely selfish pig) I have left her to her Lego and I've had a good old sit and sew.

I'm nearly at "Whoo-Hoo" stage, just knocked out blocks 21 and 22 today. It's getting so close to being finished, well....the top at least, that I'm getting excited! 

Just another block!

My youngest daughter has informed me that the title to my last post is "inappropriate"! She's only seven, but she rules me. So in her honour I'm going to be really good and NEVER mention the "v" word again on this blog.

She isn't yet aware that I know other words for it but I'll save her blushes (actually more like hoots and giggles) for another day.

I'm very proud of myself, I've broken the "twenty" barrier and have only five more full blocks to go in Hollie's quilt. Like it?

Vagina pink or Barney purple?

This week's been pretty busy, firstly I got a call from a teacher at school to help with a sewing class....making softies for a charity. As my brain is not the fastest thing in the world I scanned all my favourite blogs and came up with these simple freebies for the kids to make. Many thanks to Jenny at Allsorts for the Scotty dog....I love making these,

 and to Nina from ninana for leaving a cool tute on craftster for her crazy cat,

and I can't quite remember where I got the pattern for the teddy but he's fun to tart up.

Then I spent a bit of time yelping with a torn thingie in my shoulder, and finally I had a trip out (makes me sound like I was on day release from prison!) to the Craft and Quilt fair in Melbourne.

If I'm brutally honest, the fair was....ok, but the company was fabulous! I met up with a couple of nutters, Andi and Rachal, from the guild and (luckily) we all had similar tastes so all gravitated to the same kind of stalls, you know....Amitie, Ballarat patchwork, Kelani.... that sort of place. But it was while we sitting eating lunch that the subject of colour came up and it's been on my mind ever since. It just amazes me how differently we perceive colour, I was telling the girls about when my eldest children moved out and how after a couple of years we re-painted their bedrooms and I slowly took them over for fabric and craft storage. Cutting a long story short, my eldest son returned one day, looked at the new colour on his old bedroom walls and declared that "it would be like sleeping inside of a vagina!" Hmmmm....... funny how you never forget some of the strange things your children say. Anyway, back to lunch at the show and  I pointed to Rachal's bag and said "look, it's the same colour as your handles. She Andi looked down at them and declared that it was the same colour they'd painted in their house but she insisted it was "Barney purple."

 Hmmm, "vagina pink" or "Barney purple", what would you call it?

Of course I can't leave you with such crassness so here's a couple more blocks for Hollie's quilt.....getting there!

Lolly-popish and darker, more erotic!!!

I've had many things said about my sewing, usually I hear the words, "lovely, sweet, pretty, funny" you know what I mean. But the other day I sent my eldest daughter over to my flickr page to see her quilt progressing hoping that she'd like it and she said some of the blocks "are lolly-popish, others are darker, more erotic." !!!!!!!

Never, never before has anything I've made been described like that. I am ...... thrilled! 

I can see a whole new profession awaiting me in the erotic quilt making business. Yes, it will be my new niche market, I will corner it and slowly take over the world....opps....didn't mean that last bit, just got carried away! You know how it is when the word "erotic" gets bandied around people my age.....we get all silly and giggly.....well, I do anyway.

But to bring a bit of sense and decorum back to this extremely serious blog (!)....

I went to another of the MMQG (see sidebar) meetings last week and we did our badge swap. I got a great badge from ...blast it, I can't remember her name, but she's a lovely American lady.... anyway, I love it, especially the little red balls hanging down. Thank you.

I must admit, making one for Miranda was fun, even though I got frustrated a few times. And yes....I guess I'd do it all again, creating something small can make you inventive. This is what I ended up making....and I bet that bell drives her nuts soon!

And lastly, this is why I've hardly sewn a stitch this week......

Two more to go in the series, then I'll be back to normal......hopefully!

Swapping shame

I've got a guild meeting on Sunday and a couple of weeks ago I signed up for a name badge swap. "That's nice" I hear you say, infortunately I think I'm about to be bannished from the swap......and possibly from all future swaps!

The trouble started when I read the rules......they stated something like "the badge must not be larger that 9cm's in any direction", well....I'm an "inches" kind of girl! I grew up with feet and inches (showing my age here) and have a natural affinity with imperial measurements. This new fangled "metric system" is strange and unnatural to me....and if I'm honest I think it's just a fad and wont last. But anyway I pressed on with the badge making a decent guess at the size.

The first hurdle came when I'd finished it. You know how you look at something and it annoys you......well I'd done a bit of a bodge job of joining two bits of ricrac and had tried to hide the mess. No one else spotted it but to me it stuck out like a sore thumb. So I undid it all, replaced the messy bits with a correctly fitting piece and put it all back together and smiled.

Till today.....when I measured it with a metric ruler.....Agh! It's over a centimeter too big in all directions! And that's when I squish it up small!

Well, I'm not taking it apart again! It'll have to do.......I'm hoping that the swap organiser wont have a ruler to hand. Or if she does, hopefully it'll just have "inches" on it!

Still pressing on with the aminé quilt....though slowly as it's the holidays and "someone" needs my attention a lot!

Reading, sewing and sulking...!

So, where have I been? Not far....right here in fact. But I've been having a sulk. "Sulk!?" I hear you say, yes, I'm not too proud to admit I've been having a sooky sulk.

You see, I have this problem........I really, really, really hate housework and am the first to admit I'm not that good at it. You know those old cartoons where they sweep all the mess under the rug.....well I think it's a brilliant idea! 

Anyway, I have found that there are only two ways to get me to do the housework....

1. Bribery

2. Trickery

We all understand how bribery works, I clean up and then can go and buy umpteen metres of scrummy fabric. See, I've "bribed" myself. And it works....or at least it did till my beloved husband found out that buying me fabric makes me happy, and a happy me is a happy he, as they say. Only now I have no incentive to clean up.

This leaves "trickery", and it's much harder to implement. 

But I did it the other day and I've been sulking about it ever since.

I'd got to the point where even I couldn't shove any more stuff under the rug, things had gone beyond an "artistic" mess, my place was a tip.....there's no other way to describe it. So I tricked myself....I invited friends round for dinner. I invited them ten days in advance, so I let the chaos build for another ten whole mess filled days (as we all know there's no point in clearing up early as more clutter will miraculously appear as soon as your back is turned) and then .....two hours before they arrived I realised the mamoth task could no longer be put off and tidied up.......shoved everything into a room that I wouldn't take them in!

The dinner was great, but I still have all that mess as it oozed out from the hidden room and is back, spread in all it's glory across every inch of my floor.

So now I'm sulking cos I'm back where I started, *sigh* maybe I should just knuckle under and do it.................but wouldn't it be nicer if I baked a cake instead!

But I can't leave you with a tale of woe, I'll leave you instead with the knowledge that even when sulking I can sew and am up to block 16....not bad, eh! 

btw, it's not as wonky as the picture shows, that's just my bad photography!