More Hello's (hellos, helloes, hello-s???)

Hello to Medford, Massachusetts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida and... Sydney.  I'm hoping the Medford, Massachusetts, and West Roxbury, Massachusetts people know each other and are excitedly ringing each other up going "she's posted again, quick quick", but somehow I doubt it, even if they are only 30 minutes & 15 miles apart.  


Yes, Gentle Readers, I looked at Google Maps to find out where they are.  Geography has never been my strong point, I must confess.  When we first came out to Australia 357 years ago, we changed from the migrant hostel school to a 'real' school just in time for the mid-year exams they have here in June - exams, I hear you say, in the middle of Summer break?  Well, Northern Hemisphere Gentle Readers, in Australia, June is right at the beginning of Winter and holidays are not generally taken until later in the year, when we can all go skiing (when it gets down to, oooh, 15C!).  Luxury.


However, back to my story - I managed to get the map of Australia upside down, because I was eight and a half years old and had no idea what shape Australia was, and got all the State capitals wrong.  I don't think I even knew that Australia had States, because that's not a concept England has, and I didn't really know anything about the US, in those days, except that it's where Pete Seeger came from.  Bit like these people, really... but at least I had a reasonable excuse!


Anyway, it scarred me, geographically speaking, for life, and to this day, the only two geographical things I know is that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and that the two landlocked countries in South America are Bolivia and Paraguay, and I used that in a crossword just last week.


The migrant hostel school, I hear you say?  Yes, Gentle Readers, we came out here as Assisted Passage Migrants.  We were Ten Pound Poms.  We flew with Qantas, and it was the first time on a plane of any kind for all of us except Dad, who'd been to various exotic locations with the RAF, in the 1960's.  The plane broke down in Iran, which wasn't as terrifying as it sounds, although going through immigration & being confronted by a man with a sub-machine gun was pretty scary - the airline put us up in a nice hotel, they showed us round the city and fed us, but it meant we were a day late, and the man who was supposed to meet us at the airport to drive us to the Hostel had long gone.  


My mother still talks about the exchange rate rip-off and the taxi rip-off - pounds sterling were worth about $3.00 but for some reason the airport currency exchange gave them almost parity.  Imagine that, an airport currency exchange ripping you off!  Anyway, they had to get a taxi from Sydney Airport to the migrant hostel, 77kms, or about 50 miles, or an hour & 15 minutes.  Apparently the taxi driver charged them $200, and they had no idea this was a huge rip-off.  The fare would only be about $220 today!


Anyway, here's what I looked like in 1970 - this was taken by Dad  in our one bedroomed flat, which we had moved to after escaping the clutches of the hostel (trust me, one bedroom was better than the nightmare of the hostel!  One day I will write a post - why I am slightly weird, and how Unanderra Migrant Hostel is all to blame):

Look at the hem on that dress.  So thrifty, and I'm still wearing cardigans.  I think my mother knitted that for me, it was Aran, with leather buttons.  Just the thing for the Australian Winter, a sleeveless cotton dress and an Aran cardigan.  You can tell we had no idea what was coming...


Here's a slightly later one when we'd bought more suitable clothing... kind of.  This was a pants suit made from a nasty kind of scratchy polyester.  It had patch pockets on the pants made out of the same stuff as the top.  I loved those shoes, though.  They were mustard-y brown, with three straps across the top, a square toe and a little heel.  Perfect for a ten year old.

I think this is where my love of natural fibres came from, an Australian summer spent in scratchy polyester!  Ow!

Hello out there

Hello Kellyville!  Hello West Roxbury, Massachusetts!  Greetings from Sunny Newport.

I made this little guy on Saturday.  One of the advantages of not working is that I don't have to rush around on the weekend doing loads of washing - but, I hear you say, why don't you wash in the week?  You have all that beautiful sunshine and all those long days!  Well, Gentle Readers, the washing machine '12' cycle takes 45 minutes.  If I get home at 7.30, it's 8.15pm before it goes out, and you know what?  It's dark then and I don't fancy going out in the dark to fight off the mosquitos and spiders to hang out the washing!  Poor Mr Golightly left work at 5.20pm yesterday, and arrived home 'early', at 7.00pm.  That's 1 hour and 40 minutes to get home, on a good day.  See why I don't want to work in the city any more?

Anyway, back to the little guy.  I made him from this book, but the pattern was so fiddly at 100% that I took it to the nice man in Mona Vale and had it enlarged to 150% - still fiddly as hell, but slightly more manageable.  That's a terrible photo, isn't it?  Must try again...

Anyway, it's for MBF's son, H, who was the Dux of Year 7 at his school.  What a fantastic achievement, which deserved some form of squishy recognition.  Hope he likes them both - he already has the smaller, slightly not so well made version, and he can have this one as the parent.  I love the vintage button for his/her nose, it's a great touch.  Ideas for names?  Apply below.

The eagle-eyed amongst you may recognise the fabric.  I love that sock monkey stuff.  Should have bought two metres whilst in Perth...

What else?  I feel slightly under the weather today, my right eye has been producing all sorts of green crusty stuff & it's a bit puffy, and I'm delightfully wearing a t-shirt & shorts which are both waaaaaaaaaaaaay too big for me - you know how the drawstring on your shorts can only go so far before it starts grabbing at the material in the waist?  Yep, it's there.  Hooray for me - but I look like I'm wearing bombay bloomers!  

What else?  It's 1.02, so time for lunch and a quick check of the mailbox.  I ordered a pattern from an Etsy shop some time in November & it hasn't arrived yet... and I found my birthday present from Mr G at Palm Beach Markets on Sunday - isn't the way?  I used to take him into Victoria Buckley Jewellery in the Strand Arcade & he would pay for whatever I pointed at, so I guess it's the same principle.  I can't show you a picture because these lovely people don't have a website, but I will drop the 'E' word at them when I go to pick it up this week...

That's it for now.  I would love some of you to try the Journal tutorial & let me know how it works for you, so I can improve it.  And now, I'm off to ham & cheese sandwiches for lunch & the rest of Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince, which I started yesterday & had to stop when Mr G came home & wanted NCIS.  Accio!

Ciao!

Journal Cover Tutorial

This will work for any size journal - be careful with your measurements and write them down!!  Caveat - if your journal is less than 6"/15.25cm wide, you will need to adjust the size of your flaps!


Measuring:
Measure your journal from the front cover, moving left round the spine to the back cover.  Do not include the pages at the front.  This measurement is the width.
Measure your journal from top to bottom.  This measurement is the height.


Fabric cutting:
For your focus fabric, add 6"/15.25 cm to the width and 1"/2.54cm to the height.  If your journal is 12" X 6", cut your focus fabric 18"/45.75cm X 7"/17.80cm.


For your lining fabric, add 1"/2.54cm to the width, and 1"/2.54cm to the height.  If your journal is 12" X 6", cut your lining fabric 13" X 7".


For the batting, I used iron-on pellon to make it less bulky, and also easier to work with.  I try to cut the pellon 1/2" or 1/4" smaller all round than the width and height of the journal so you don't have bulky seams.  I ironed the pellon on to the lining fabric.  Using slightly smaller sized iron-on pellon also makes it easier to find and align the centres of the focus and lining fabrics when you are constructing.

Put 1/4"/6mm (1/2"/12mm total) double seams on the flap ends, and 1/4"/6mm single seams on the lining ends.  If you want to have double seams on the lining ends, it's your call but it's not really necessary (unless you're the Peppermint Penguin, who will probably turn the cover inside out to see how it was done!).


If you want to decorate the cover, do it before you sew anything.  Make sure you mark the dimensions of the cover with washout pen, so you don't lose any of the decoration into the spine or the flaps:

The first two of these I made required additional stitching at the bottom as I was over-careful and left too much room - the fit should be snug.  If it's so tight once it's finished that it lifts the cover, put an elastic band round the cover for a couple of days until the fabric stretches to fit (which it will).  


Making up:


Wrap the focus fabric round the journal, and mark at the top (with washout pen) where the flaps sit.  Make sure the flaps are evenly distributed around the book, you don't want one to be huge & the other one tiny.  

Find and mark the centre of the focus fabric.  Pin the flaps into place, RS together.  Find & mark the centre of the lining, then place your lining fabric RS down on top of the (WS up) flaps, aligning the centre marks.  You will have three layers - lining, flaps, focus.  Pin all into place, and sew with a generous 1/4"/6mm seam allowance, all the way across the top.  

If you want to add a ribbon bookmark, do it before you sew it up.  I recommend putting it on the back (the RHS of the cover), but again, it's your call.  Make sure it's long enough to come out the bottom, otherwise there's no point.

Turn the cover out, and check for fit.  Poke your flap corners out with a point turner or knitting needle, taking care not to stick holes in your cover.  Your flaps should now be RS out, your lining & focus should be WS together, with the bottom seam open.

Insert the journal, pin for fit, then take it out.  If you want, you can mark the entire stitching line in wash-out marker.  Stitch the bottom seam:

Be careful not to catch your bookmark in the bottom seam, unless you are using elastic (hey!  Great idea!) and you want it caught!  You should now have a tube.  

As you can see here, the lining is ever so slightly larger than the cover.  Not sure why this happened, but you can cheat like I did; just pink off the ends (very annoying if you've made the effort to double-seam them!) to make them the same size.  The lining should be either exactly the same finished size as your cover (without the flaps), or just smaller.  


Turn it all out, through the opening in the tube.  Insert your journal again, taking care not to bend its covers, and check for fit.  This journal is a bit tricky in that it has rounded corners, but it didn't affect the overall fit.

Remove journal again (d'oh), press carefully, re-insert journal, wrap beautifully and hand to lucky recipient.


Questions?  Comments?  More info?  Less info?  Tell all, Gentle Readers.  I'd love to see your finished items... 


Ciao!

OK, so maybe I lied?

The very lovely Katie, from Katiecrackernuts issued me a challenge to reuse one of my collected embroidery frames as a Christmas Wreath, thereby denying Lincraft the opportunity to perpetuate the wasteful production of polystyrene, a material which will not break down or decompose for 1,000 millenia. Or so I'm told. 


The story right here: katiecrackernuts: IT'S A WRAP ... AND A WREATH (WELL, DER)

So I took the challenge, and here's the end result.  I like to think of it as the minimalist's christmas wreath:

And the text, for the visually impaired amongst you, Gentle Readers:

Ho Ho Ho.


Now, about that journal...

Oh Canada!

Do you remember, Gentle Readers, how dubious I was when I first put that Feedjit thingy on the bottom of my blog, yes, yes, it's still there, tracking how many times I go & re-read my own stuff to make sure I haven't put 'decorted' in there again (prize available for first person to spot it & report back when I did it...), but it also tracks other people who come to visit!  And (sentence starts with preposition, must be important), Gentle Readers, it does!  I've had some visitors from Canada!  And America!  And London!  And Sydney!  


Hello!  Welcome!  Come in, sit down, no, not there, no, that's my chair, sorry, that's actually my chair, would you mind not sitting in my chair, get out of my chair, fuck off, go on, get out, go home.  Ooops.


Hello!  I don't know who you are but you're very welcome.  No, really.  I don't care where you sit.  If you're lucky, you'll find a seat not covered in magazines, or fabric, or 3-day old cereal bowls, or old newspapers.  Some days.  Good thing we don't have a cat, isn't it?


Anyway, I've been reading some new blogs, and leaving comments, as you do, and I suspect these lovely visitors, who aren't sitting in my chair, are from there.  It's a nice incestuous world, the blog world.  Everybody seems to know everybody else.  I went from Gerald Gee, who puts the most fantastic 1930's music & fashion on his blog, to Tooting Squared, to Mr London Street, to Whoopee, to Meetzorp.  I feel like I've made a whole new bunch of friends.  Which is not, of course, to say that you lot are on notice, oh no, not really.  The people who let you into their lives via their blogs are the best kind of friends, because, for the most part, you never meet them in the flesh, so they can't find out really how uninteresting you are  I am.  


Anyway, in keeping with the vain attempt to link this blog to some crafty stuff, which was one of the reasons for its existence, here's some pics of how I've spent most of Tuesday & Wednesday:

The journal cover was custom made to fit the journal I bought from this absolutely fantastic new shop in Mona Vale, Little Paper Lane.  I also bought beautiful wrapping paper, ribbon and card, for Miss Nelly's birthday, which was Tuesday, but which I won't be celebrating with her until Friday - she's the lucky recipient of the Quilt, but I also made her the bird, which is stuffed full of lavender... here's the birthday pile:

Beautiful, huh?  I love how LIttle Paper Lane's signature colour (almost duck-egg blue, almost turquoise) is the same as Miss Nelly's.  


And, Gentle Readers, I promise the next post will be the tutorial on how to make the journal cover to fit any size journal... and now, it's raining, so I'm hopeful of having Miss Nelly's mother, My Best Friend, round for coffee because she doesn't work in the rain, and you know what?  I'll even clear off my chair for her.  


Ciao!

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!

I am too late?

To stop what I'm doing and do something completely different?  Do people get to have two sea-changes in a lifetime?  When I was 37 I was working in IT, but without any qualifications, so off I went & did a IT Diploma (Analyst/Programmer, if anybody cares) - it was useful, and  the skills I learnt are just as valid now as then, but what's changed is the job focus - in the '90's I worked in what's known as 'Production Support', but is now known as 'Business as usual' - keeping the lights on & making sure that people can get their money out of the ATM's when they want it (snigger snigger NAB)...


Now you get to 'analyse' people's requirements, write process flows & talk to idiots who don't know how their products work but need you to work it out for them so they can tell you  how to change it.  It's more like hand-holding than analysis.


Gentle Readers, I've had enough of this.  I've seen an ad looking for an Upholstery apprentice.  I know it says "suits school leaver".  I am a school leaver.  It was just a while ago.  I'm reliable, I'm keen, I won't take sickies, I'll work hard.  Just because I'm 30 years older than the school leaver you were thinking of, doesn't mean I can't do a good job, right?  


Mr Golightly is somewhat dubious, because this will be my second sea-change, and he doesn't do upheaval very well, but really, I'm not working now, so what have I got to lose?  The August Institution I work for pays really well, there are great benefits and it's so secure it's like they've shackled you to your desk, but my heart just isn't in it anymore.  


I want to do something creative.  I want to spend 30 minutes driving to work instead of 90 minutes on a bus.  I want to leave home at 7.00 & be home by 4.30 instead of 7.30pm.  I want to be able to go for a walk after work.  I want to learn how to do this.  Do I want too much?