Gone to...

Sunbury, Victoria and Doonan, Queensland, that's where.  The second lot of lavender bags sold in about 2 hours, which is really nice, and today, Gentle Readers, I will be whipping them up & sending off via Australia Post.  And I may even put another lot in the Disaster Relief Shop.


In other news, a few days of stinky humid weather has left me feeling tired, but the ceiling fan is doing its work at night, except last night, when I was clammy and restless - but I think that's more to do with the ear thingy - did I mention the ear thingy, Gentle Readers?  Yes, I did.  Yesterday, finally, after much procrastination, I got to the doctor. 


After exclaiming over the sand-fly bite scars on my arms and legs (worst she's seen, apparently), she told me I have a Eustachian Tube dysfunction, which is an infection not in the ear itself, but in the Eustachian Tube, and what I've been hearing is the movement of air in the Tube, trying to equalise itself.  Sounds terrible, doesn't it?  No pun intended.  


Anyway, antibiotics for the ear, antibiotic eye drops for the impacted eye and no flying for a week or so.  Simon, cancel the jet for Tahiti*.


In crafty news, I went to Cottage Quiltworks yesterday & chose backing fabric & binding for Miss Nelly's quilt, spending an inordinate amount of money, but it will look fantastic when it's done.  The quilting turnaround takes about six weeks, but is, apparently, usually quicker - I've left it to the discretion of the quilting lady, but with the caveat that the quilt owner is 11 years old & definitely not too girlie - so hopefully it will come back a masterpiece.  Pictures, I promise.


I also bought a nice maroon & green (no, really!) fat quarter to make up for the lady from Victoria who bought one of the sets of lavender bags, she was very happy to oblige with a suggestion, and the Queensland lady wanted earthy tones, so that was pretty easy.  I also slashed the second quilt (being extremely careful to line up the seams) again, and here 'tis, just waiting to be sashed:

which I'm hoping to do today, after I return from my outing to Town (Aussie readers may remember that ad for Spray Fresh, where the farming family goes to town about twice a year and they all have a shower or bath before going?  It was called "Don't waste a wash" - but the key part was the whole family going "Town?  Town!"... sorry.  Seniors moment there...) with My Best Friend and the Kidlets - and so, Gentle Readers, I must away to the bathroom, make myself respectable and find suitable clothing.  


It's going to be 25°C today, and the sky is grey, but I'm sure it's going to be hotter than that once the sun warms up and burns all the clouds off - so... shorts, t-shirt?  Linen 3/4 pants & shirt?  Pants & shirt?  Oh, decisions, decisions.  Maybe I'll just go naked.  Easy.


Ciao!








*Another ad from the '70's, for Imperial Leather soap.  Try YouTube.

OMG, I've finished it!

The top, that is.  Not the quilting or the binding, just the top.  Needless to say there were a number of hiccups along the way, one of which was to discover I had inadvertently left off an entire set of 6 blocks, so I had to make individual sashing, slice them up some & reattach them to the sashing - it does look a teeny bit odd that one of the horizontal sets of sashing is a single piece, rather than the sliced up bits the rest of them are, but hey, will Miss 11-today* care?  I doubt it.


I have sewn on the borders, and on Saturday I will take it to the lovely ladies at Cottage Quiltworks, and they will send it onwards to the 'quilter lady', and she will turn it into a masterpiece.  Then I will get it back, stitch the binding on & it can go to its new home* looking like a quilt, instead of piles of fabric.  


So, Gentle Readers, were there any Lessons learnt?  As MBF used to say, "you bet your sweet bippy" there were.  No, I don't know what a bippy is either.  Don't ask, don't tell.

1. Don't try to cut the sashing by eye.  Use a ruler!
2. Don't try to cut the sashing in batches - find a big space & cut it in one go, even if it means paying to use a table at the quilting fabric shop for 3 hours.
3. Measure everything.  The biggest mistake was not checking that all the blocks were the same size, so I ended up having to insert another row of sashing to make it fit, because I'd left 1/2" on the end of a block.
4. Learn to count.  If I'd been able to count past 6 I could have saved myself lots of work this morning.
5. Check your bobbin periodically.  Nothing more frustrating than sewing on the sashing for the third time only to find the bobbin ran out 1" after you started (suggestion:  buy a machine that beeps when the bobbin is almost empty?)
6. Don't sew when you're tired.  It never works.

Oh, you want a picture?  OK.

This is what we started with:

And this is how it came out:

Of course you can see where it's wonky, and if you count up to the fourth row on the left, you can see where I had to insert another piece of sashing to get it to meet - the culprit was the previous row of blocks, which were all 1/2" longer than they really should have been.  Measure, measure, measure.  "Measure thrice, cut once".  Nag nag nag.  Blah blah blah.

Anyway, once it's been quilted, I will give you an update.  Apart from the wonky sashing, I'd quite like to do it again with different colours - remember these?

They're still sitting in my sewing room, dustbound... hmm.  Maybe after Christmas?  And, for those of you who just hang on my every word of domestic wonderfulness, I swept the floor in the sewing room.  Again.  Yes, I know.  Sickening, isn't it?  Here's the proof:

And now, Gentle Readers, my beautician has invited me to meet Dr Ho, who is going to talk about Chemical Peels.  I am off to enjoy a glass of champagne and good company, and come home with my original skin.  Some clever soul could come up with a pun based entirely around the concept of original skin, but today, it is not I.  

Ciao!

*PS Happy Birthday Nelly!

Slice and dice

This is a gift for somebody, but I'm not telling who it is until a bit closer to the day.  Also, I don't want to reveal the type of gift, because that would just completely give it away. 


This is the second First Quilt I have made, I'm still working on the Sydney Pies quilt, but it's sooooo boring sewing round all those circles and I promised myself a little light entertainment after the tree adventure (being delivered today, any suggestions on pricing would be welcome, MGF Kaz had very firm ideas and I must admit she was probably right, there was a fair amount of manual labour involved in sewing on all those beads, buttons and bells... not to mention the stuffing!)... so this is where I'm at:

I love these colours, they're feminine without being too girly, young enough for a small-ish person without being childlike, and fresh enough to stand a few seasons worth of fabric in & out of fashion-ness (you know what I mean, some fabrics on the market are instantly date-able by their very design, and so become outdated very quickly).  


I note here, Gentle Readers, that we are having a parenthetical and hypen kind of day, today.  If your brain isn't coping too well with the grammatical strictures, come back later. It isn't going away.


Anyway, after much anguish about ways to ensure nothing was repeated (failed) and nothing was next to the same pattern in a different colourway (failed), I threw the whole lot in the air and just put them together as they fell.  Kind of like divining using chicken entrails, but a whole lot less messy.


The progress:

The pattern calls for the quilt top to be 'slashed' (and just to clarify for some of our readers from other lands, I know that "going for a slash" has a whole 'nother meaning, but here we're talking about cutting out chunks of fabric), then you resew it together with the sashing (blue strips) in exactly the same positions it was in before.  I thought that was a bit boring, so I took the opportunity to fiddle with the pieces, and moved some of them around to make it a bit more interesting.  


Then, when it's all back together, you do the slashing thing again, except on the vertical, but in exactly the same places (2 1/2" either side of seams 1, 3 & 5, working from the left).  This is what it looks like now:

A big pile of strips.  I was going to rotate some of the colours again, but I've discovered that 2 1/2" can be bigger on one side than on the other, probably due to the fact that I was trying to cut it out on Mr Golightly's Über-precious Jarrah kitchen bench, the largest surface in the house (apart from the floor), and having to keep moving it to do so (plus I was cheating & doing it by eye, rather than using my ruler, and my eye is not as accurate as I had hoped.  Unsurprisingly.) - I'm pretty sure the recipient won't have her ruler out checking.


So, I think it will probably stay as it is, but with the additional vertical sashing.  I think it's going to be quite nice.  Now all I have to is work out how to assemble it.  See, this is where I need my mother, to help out - she's made a zillion patchwork quilts over the years & can probably do this in her sleep, but the downside is, she definitely will have her ruler out.  Ouch.  I can feel it on my knuckles now.

Ciao!

It's all over now, Baby Blue

Yes, the lovely Ms Scurvy was correct!  I ran into her at lunchtime, me looking variously bedraggled and smart, (bedraggled because it rained pretty much all day and I popped out at lunchtime with no umbrella, and smart, because I delivered my first training today, a whole 15 minute chat to some new starters, all about the wonders of what we're doing on our Project. Wanted to look professional, even though I've felt completely frelled all day, but anyway, it seemed to go well, they laughed at my joke [singular, didn't want to go overboard], answered my questions and asked one or two of their own, so that's all good...


Anyway, there she was, with the very lovely Goodnight Irene in tow, and so we had to stop & chat - and I told her that unless she commented, I wasn't going to give out the prize!


So, she did, and I will.  3 lovely pinkish lavender bags for her mother, on their way.


More news on the quilt:


I have matched up pairs & quarters for the pies, and with only a couple of changes, this is what I think I'm going with.  These will form the four corner quarter pies:

These are the whole pies:

These are the half-pies:

  And there is still one to be photographed; I wasn't very happy with the final combination of one pie:

so it's gone completely & I've substituted some nice oranges - but it's not pressed, so I'm not sharing.  


I've only sewn one whole pie together so far, but it didn't take very long, and the next big choice is what the backing fabric is going to be - My Lovely Ma has suggested a very light grey, which could be good, or I'm thinking a very small blue spot?  Suggestions welcome!


And now, dinner.  I'm having a toasted sandwich - we know how to live it up here in Golightly-land!


Ciao!

Busy, busy

Today I swept the floor in the Small But Perfectly Formed Room.  Not a common occurrence, as it's only only me who goes in there (or more importantly, cares what it's like), and this is what I turned up:

Disgraceful.


Oh well.  I didn't even bother salvaging the pins or that peg.  Straight into the dustpan & into the bin.


Then, I made a doorstop, from this nice book:

Interestingly, it's huge.  I don't what where Emma Hardy lives, but maybe the doors in her house are ginormous?  

It's about the size of four house bricks stacked two on two, and her recommended filling is doll-stuffing, then dried beans.  Hmm.  I quite like the fabric combo:

and clever use of accenting ric-rak, but I don't need something that big.  You can tell that I got bored with trying to fill it up with wadding about 1/3 of the way through.  Shame on me.  Seemed a bit wasteful, I thought.  I made a calico bag & filled it with washed sand for the weight, then realised that I'd only left a turning hole, so I had to unpick the whole seam to shove the f****ing thing in there.  Much swearing ensued.  Anyway, it was an interesting experience, trying to hold up the weight, line up the sewing machine & stitch all at the same time.  Where is my other arm, anyway?

Remember how I said I wanted a challenge?  Some weeks I was in Cottage Quiltworks, trawling, as you do, for fabric, and  they had a finished version of an amazing quilt hanging up in the store, but the pattern wasn't available unless you were doing the class.  You know, those really accessible classes that run Monday to Friday?  

Bah, humbug.  Anyway, when I was back in there on Saturday, trawling for fabric, as you still do, I saw the pattern for sale.    I have decided to make this my first patchwork quilt.  OMG.  Be careful what you wish for, young Luke.  Hmmm.  This is the pattern:

And of course, I've decided to make 72 different quarter-pies, rather than do it simply & cut out a whole square, then but it into four, then cut off the curly bit.  This way, though, I get to use 72 of my favourite fabrics, and here's some combos (by no means finalised, so don't be falling over with shock!):

Anyway, there's a common theme, and there's a prize of 3 lavender bags for the first person to correctly comment what it is... although having a quick review of these photos makes me realise it might be hard to get.  However, perseverance is rewarded, so have a bash!

And that, for me, is it for now. I have to go & listen to the hypocrisy of politicians now on the news.  Hah!