I did finish it in plenty of time (shut up Judy) but only got the label put on today, and I didn’t want to post pics until they’d seen it. Now they have, so here it is:
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Hiding in the quilting are a couple of crabs (he’s a Cancer) & a couple of other critters, lots of leaves & a tree or two, som bamboo & grass & a hut on stilts, and some lyrics from one of the most awesome songs ever.
a few detail pics:
giraffe
hefalunk
forggle
toitle
label
I’ve been busy and nonbloggy lately at least partly because this morning’s grand events were looming on the horizon - I’m a gramma!
Carter James was born 11:19am on June 26 weighing 3125 gram (6 pound 14 ounces) at 52cm (20.5″) long. He has very dark hair with a shock of surfie blonde top left side of his head (it’s so cute, can’t wait to see if it stays). He’s even more placid and unflappable than Boofhead was, took being passed around to everybody with perfect equanimity and surprising alertness - I’ve never seen a baby who focuses on faces & follows movement & voices at a couple of hours old. He’s just beautiful.
Carter:
proud daddy boofhead:
auntie pook, gramma me and daddyboof:
eeeeeee. Seriously, eeee, right? EEEEEE:
check the blonde streak!
now I just need to figure out how to quilt it …
and these guys at least have a watery home, even if I haven’t decided what’s happening next:
the girls were over today for our Saturday gig, all but me (and Loz,who wasn’t well so just enjoyed the company) working on a Ricky Tims convergence top. Wendy took off before I could take a pic, but here are the other three:
Judy (auditioning frame fabric):
Rosemary (more subtle and moody IRL):
Mum:
I finally got a bit of a spurt on with the baby quilt - I’ve been stalled on it for various reasons, so I spent the last few days fiddling with strips of fabric on the design wall while I listened to the river roar until things started to click. I now have many many strips of many many fabrics which I’ll have to come up with an alternative use for heh. There’s still applique to go in the two empty panels, not to mention quilting etc, but it’s looking orright, yay & whew.
heading over to mum’s now for dad’s birthday dinner and whatever … an exciting evening of TV, no doubt :)
I rather fell off the blogging wagon there, didn’t I? Seems to have been one thing after another for nearly two months now, and I sit down in front of the computer with about enough brainpower to play a mindless facebook game or two. Birthdays, visits, two shows, I woke up one morning to my laptop giving a very good impersonation of an expensive doorstop and while it’s come good I expect it to be cactus any day now, my usual panicky rush re deadlineblah blah blah, and then to top it all off mumble suddenly started giving a distressingly convincing impersonation of a cat dying of old age and I had to butch up & take her to the vet. I buried her next to Black Cat over at mum & dad’s place. She was super old and was definitely OLD for the last couple of months so it wasn’t unexpected, but it’s definitely a bit sad and it’s very weird having no critters at all. Anywhere. Aaron & Stacey took birdiegirl back, and even Boris is off with Ross & Lisa, so there’s not even a stupid nephewdog to pat. It feels wrong - I can’t think of the last time I didn’t own a pet, even if my accommodations meant it was temporarily housed elsewhere.The idea of getting another critter so soon after mumble’s departure also feels wrong though, so I guess I’m putting up with wrong for a while.
Anyway, so, bah. Miss E is sick, and we’re having weather of biblical proportions AGAIN, and my house looks like a special kind of bomb - maybe the opposite of those smart bombs that only take out people? - hit it, so I’ve been cheering myself up a little with some lairy fishes. No idea what I’m going to do with them - the main idea was to showcase our fabric for shows - but there’ll probably be patterns/kits for sale once I figure it out. I’m not sure whether it’s ok to post a pic of the challenge entry, so I won’t for now.
my baby girl turned six yesterday. She woke me up over the moon with excitement, opened presents, had breakfast, opened more presents, I finished the skirt I’d drafted wrong ~6 months ago so she could wear it to lunch, where she got more presents. We went shopping and socialising after lunch, then home for a few more gifts from her dad, dinner, and a few hours of playing with her new books. Very cool day, all in all.
Sorry I’m being boring and/or absent lately. I’ve been spending heaps of time at kindy, absolutely fascinated by all those little minds fairly VACUUMING up all the knowledge you can throw at them. Bugger the sponge analogy; these kids are veritable Dysons! Really awesome to watch; seems to be the intellectual equivalent of a the physical development fast track babies are on. I guess there have been a few stages like that, but you don’t usually get to see a whole bunch of them doing it at once and inspiring each other to new heights. Unless you’re a teacher, I guess. Which I’m not interested in being, since I’m absolutely knackered by lunchtime and besides I have a really hard time not saying shit (or worse) in front of the whole class and then there’s all those weird snippy notes the more peculiar parents send in …
anyhow, lest you think there’s no textiley sort of stuff at all going on, I would like to enter these into evidence:
These being 1) some very inexpert hand quilting/embroidery I’m doing on a piece of fabric whose colour hasn’t got the zing its pattern does, which E has dibsed for a cushion cover, and 2) some felt in need of fulling, made at the end of a demo by Dianne at the guild last Tuesday. Tres fun. Tres hard work, the fulling part; works a set of muscles in my forearms that I obviously don’t use for anything else. Not sure I’ll do very much of it (apart from anything else, wool makes me crazy itchy), but if it’s fun to stitch on I could be tempted.
Right now it’s just going to sit there waiting for Easter, two birthdays, 3 separate sets of houseguests and one 6 yr old’s birthday party to be over.
Today we got to give one of these a test run:
Stupid name, fairly nifty gadget. Took a bit of getting used to, that’s for sure - it would probably be easier to get the hang of it if you’re a freemotion novice, I think. I had to keep shaking myself out of stuff that’s become second nature, and I don’t do nearly as much quilting as some! I did quite a lot of swearing at first, mostly because I kept jamming up against the limit of the opening (eventually I figured out how easy it is to move it along to the next section. Duh. It’s really easy) or was putting too much pressure on and it was obediently skating away. Once I figured out what you’re supposed to do (um yeah no, I did not RTFM, which actually is not like me, so yes it does serve me right) it was fun. I decided to give some twirly vines a la Patsy Thompson a whirl, and sacrificed a semi-ugly piece of fabric and a buttload of thread to the experiment.
Far from perfect, but it looks pretty good (better than these pics would indicate, actually). I think I’ll turn it into a cushion.
not that I don’t enjoy occasionally reading about the minutiae of other people’s lives, including what they eat, but this rather tickled my funnybone.
Glenny is having a 600th-post giveaway and she wants more entries, so please go visit and leave a comment on this post or this one. The bags look pretty groovy to me!
Ol’ Warty (I do wish you’d give yourself a nick that resonated more with your personality, girl!) has dinged me with this:
The rules are as follow:
1. Put the logo on your blog or post
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to the person from whom you received your award.
I’m kind of going to cheat by saying that she’s on my list, and by also totally not caring whether somebody has already been gonged before. I’m also going to say that I don’t expect the people I ding to follow the above rules, since they’re all busy doing awesome things. So, I’m going to put down the immediately-springs-to-mind names for now (these are also, probably not coincidentally, people whose work I would - in some cases do, even if only by way of an exhibition postcard - totally hang/display/wear) … there are actually more who deserve a gong, but I need to get off my bum & move some furniture.
Grandma was a real doer. Bit of all sorts of very cool stuff; carpentry, lapidary, rockhunting, travelling, stone carving, embroidery (OMG the embroidery), sewing, etc & so on. I keep saying I need to do less yabbering & thinking and just MAKE more work - ie do more making, as against make more (house)work that I will then whine about & avoid, which appears to be the chief skill both my daughter and I possess - so i won’t say it again.
I’ll just think it. And envy those people to whom the just-do-it seems to come naturally, or who at least figured out how to make a habit of it.
oh, sod it, one more. Just because she is the funniest blogger I’ve ever read, and rude in the exactly proper way to make me absolutely roar, and I can’t really share her most hilarious posts with anyone I know in real life because they’re all a bit too old to have peed themselves listening to Derek & Clive. She probably thinks these award things are totally dicky but tough titties: I give you Antonia.
After dropping E off at school and coming home to rinse the sweltering ick off from swapping out the home readers (OMG with the muggy today, bleargh), I made my way down to the showgrounds for the senior cits … whatever it is, show thingy. Expo or something I think they’re calling it, mostly an informational thing but with some stuff for sale. U3A and various oldefarte activity displays as well as a show of art by various locals (seniors, one assumes), people from the council & the library & centrelink, a security systems guy and a woman who vanished before I got around to seeing what she was selling (hrm, maybe that’s where ma got the scooter infobag?). Oh, and quilties, of course, which is why we were there. A bunch of the girls were putting together charity quilts, and they had some stuff for sale and an assortment of quilts on display.
Mudder figured it would be dead, so we took a bunch of sewing stuff down with us (it wasn’t bad at all really, esp given that the stall was free! heh). She made her first postcard with her first freemotion quilting the other day (and I forgot to get a pic, dammit) and wanted to make some more, so that’s what she did. Despite having left her darning foot at home and nobody else having one that fitted :/ You can do a fairly convincing landscapey-wriggley-lines thing with an ordinary foot though, esp if you lessen the foot pressure, so that’s what she did. I ironed a bunch of scraps to batting, and when she went off to talk I had a crack at the machine and made the centre of this. It was going to be an abstract, just colour exercise really, but it kind of turned into a tree. Well, a bit of one. So then I decided I didn’t want to cut it down so I’d make it up to journal size, which I did, but then I trimmed chunks off because the wide frame was overpowering the centre a bit. I used a lot of holy fabric scraps in this one, and I’m pretty pleased with the result. I may add a little more quilting, but the binding’s on so I guess it’s at least temporarily finished …
Finished drawing the giraffe at the club meeting today. Isn’t he cute?
After the meeting we went to Connie’s, where I played with some babies, chose the new binding fabric for the club’s member quilt blocks, and bought most of these to (maybe) add to the grandbaby quilt stash:
The star and the odd-nifty mosaic print I grabbed at Big W the other day, the rest from Connie’s today. Not sure how I missed them before, but the oversight’s been remedied now.
thought I’d share the pieces from the other day’s dyeing that I nabbed for myself. The browns lost a lot of colour; that peculiar yellow really isn’t satisfying at all. The last time we used it & it went all washed out I assumed it was because of the absolutely horrible water at sis’s place, but it’s obviously just that dye. I need to make a note of the code so we never buy it again - and if Batik Oetoro ever send it by mistake again they can bloodywell take it back, & on their own dime too! lol Anyway … so I’m going to have to do some browns research using the other yellows and try again, because it was truly droolworthy. The technique itself worked beautifully, and the piece of fabric is lovely, it’s just not as deep and dark and marvellous as it would have been if that yellow didn’t suck. Here are a couple of fat quarters showing back & front because I was experimenting with stripes. I like (not sure why I didn’t grab the rhubarb pink & green one), think I’ll do some more experimenting along these lines.
I totally love that last one. Much brighter green than I’d originally intended, but it looks magical. I need to do some more forests this way, I think - what do you reckon?
There are also a couple of our usual dyepainted FQ which mum did, but one of them is too dark to photograph successfully (I’ll try again in daylight) so I can only show you this really awesome piece:
and then there’s the giant rockemsockem bright I did (1.5m x 1.1m), which also hasn’t photographed very well - there’s a lot more subtle green, and no visible banding IRL - but the pic at least gives an idea. I might have to try it again in daylight conditions:
ok, I’m off to bed.
I always forget how much I love the dyeing when I haven’t done any for a while. Absolute heaven, if you discount the stupid mozzies and sweltering and occasional bastard bloody march fly. Yesterday I rediscovered, with the help of a very peculiar yellow that Batik Oetoro sent us by mistake last year, an absolutely stunning range of rich, warm browns. Toffee, butterscotch, burnt sienna, burnt umber, rust, mahogany; those sort of colours. So yum, especially with hints of greens and golds and magenta/violet. I was just going ooh brown, brown, brown, let’s have some more brown! I didn’t get any pics of those or the bits I experimented on using paintbrushes, but I thought I’d share a couple I took while I was still clean enough to handle electronics. They’re cropped to detail level because despite being overcast good grief it was a BRIGHT day and the camera just could not cope with the shadows & lights, not even with the flash on. I toyed with the idea of taking a supplemental pic of the really groovy fake varicose veins I somehow gave myself, but decided to spare you the sight of my ungroomed extremities. Since they didn’t get dry enough to bring home with me, Mum finished up the washing & ironing (how unusual … not) and I gather now I might have to fight her for my favourite piece. I obviously need to make more so we can bear to part with some (Judy said today “you know you are supposed to actually sell it, right?” heh).
in other news, how lucky am I? I’ve been geeking out a bit lately trying to set up Ken’s new computer and wipe the laptop so he can pass it on to the next NSAA secretary, and they bought me Jane Davila & Elin Waterston’s Art Quilts At Play. So stoked. I rarely buy books, but I had decided I was going to get that particular one, so how cool is that?
(PS Matt, I emailed you, so if it disappears into the spamfilter abyss let me know)
How do grandparents avoid going completely bankrupt? Every time I go to the shops there’s something else so damn adorable I find myself squeeing. Actual out loud squeaking “oh my god how cute it that!” and I’m not actually a squealy kind of person. Sorta the opposite of a squealy kind of person actually. It’s lucky they’re not expecting a girl, or I’d be in even more trouble. It’s also lucky I’ve completely forgotten how big babies’ feet are and stuff, or I wouldn’t have been able to resist the little camo baby tennies or checkerboard pseudo-vans. So much deadly cute stuff now that wasn’t available in oz even 5 years ago. So far I’ve resisted the fake fur vests and stuff because I realise that my particular weird for fur is not everybody’s, but I REALLY had to struggle not to buy the teeny tiny little lumberjacket because OMG. Teeny little lumberjackets, and teeny little flannies. I actually went “eeee!” And then kind of hid around the corner from the deadly cute in case anyone heard me, how embarrassment (BTW, I can actually speak the Queen’s properly, we just play sillybuggers with words in my family. I ain’t that particular kind of stoopit, sorry if it irritates anyone). Anyway, so I resisted mightily and just grabbed a few cuties that were on sale –> I don’t know why I have a thing about camo, but I do. Also about overalls, and stripes. How cute are those overalls going to be over the striped T?
since I haven’t done anything exciting, I’ll leave you with a couple of examples of my daughter’s drawings on this week’s homework. I love the glimpses into her noggin … salad and (making a nutella) sandwich for S are a long way from easy subjects, and the candle-blowing profile blew me away. Seems like only yesterday she was still drawing stick-figures with lollipop heads, you know?
we had a mad, mad thunderstorm here tonight. It was a while after sunset, but the sky was so full of clouds that it was white from reflected light instead of dark. I was sitting here watching the lightning and flinching at the thunder and an eagle flew past my window! Awesome. You see them around a bit, but usually so far away I can’t even get a recognisable photo even at full zoom on one of the good cameras. Seeing one about 10 metres away, dead on eye-level, was pretty damn cool.
I did a bit of work while my shows (House & Life) were on tonight, after the storm blew over. Tortoise is ready to plonk on his block, giraffe’s got a bit to go - I need a couple of new pens, which hopefully Connie has in stock.
I’ve been struggling this week with the whatever-it-is that wipes me out semi-regularly, so not a great deal accomplished. I’ve had a headache for over a week now, really giving me the pip. I think it’s my old friend the sinus boogeyman, and given the occasional stabbing possibly his friend the inner ear greeblie, and I’m waiting to see if it resolves on its own. I’m pretty over that feeling of having been punched in the eye from inside, I tellya. Anyway, so this week’s kind of been a bust so far … Monday I spent at Judy’s fiddling with computers and eating barbecued roast, yesterday was quilters and I actually made it along (I get a bit hesitant about going if I’ve got a cold or anything, given the number of antique attendees - I’d hate to be responsible for killing off our old dears!). The gang from Quilters World was there doing a talk & selling some stuff, which turned out to be as entertaining as it was expensive. Pauline & Sue both bought some of our fabric - Mum was uncharacteristically disorganised and in a dither about it, so I hope they were impressed enough by what they bought to overlook the lapse in professionalism *G* - and then we spent a bit more than we made on an assortment of products (12″ nonslip ruler, 1/4″ seam ruler, gloves, ceramic marker, glue, special paper, a new teflon mat, and I can’t remember what else). Pauline did say she’d know where to send people now for beautiful hand-dyes, so let’s hope, hey!
Mother got her convergence top done, so you can have a photo of that:
Scuse wonkiness; it’s in the camera, not the quilt top. She’s not sure what she’s going to do sashing/border-wise yet, but I think it’s going to look awesome. She’s making noises like she’s going to quilt it herself, too - usually she tells me I have to quilt things when she’s finished, but she bought those fawncy quilting gloves and mumbled something about Judy telling her she has to do some quilting …
we had our second gathering at my place today, and it went swimmingly. Rosemary got most of a top done, which boggled my tiny mind - I think it was for the bushfire drives. Wendy got a big pile of gorgeous fan blocks organised (with Miss E’s opinionated help) and stitched together, and I roughed an alternate gingko leaf for her to sashiko into the corners. Laurel spent most of the day sewing away on one of the many quilts she’s wading into, Judy was doing something I missed down in the corner (as well as a bit of teaching/helping, which nobody was surprised by heh), Trish spent most of the morning discussing & planning a new project, Margaret sewed umpty bazillion fleece squares together for yet another camp quality quilt, and Mum got a convergence top more than halfway done. Plus we had fun! I only took a few pics unfortunately, when ma had reached a cool point in her top, but I’ll try to do better next time.
In amongst putzing around on the computer (showing people interesting quilts etc, looking for a wholesale source for vliesofix, looking at Vic Textiles’ batting options, finding an open gingko leaf pic, blah blah etc) and dealing with her highness (who was actually being pretty charming and wonderful, which was great given what a total monster she’s been all week) I was working on the giraffe.
By “working” I mostly mean agonising over fabric choices. This or that, wish this was bigger, wish that was stronger, not sure about the other, etc. In the end I went back to one of the fabrics I’d been drawn to from the word go and decided to just deal with the difficulties of using a fat quarter when what you need is a 30cm full-width strip. I’m pretty damn happy at how it’s looking so far, so I’m glad I decided to just bite the bullet and cut into this long-hoarded piece of holy fabric.
Then tonight sis gave me a turtle necklace she brought home from Costa Rica, which made me want to do the turtle tonight. Luckily I’d brought the cartoon and an assortment of fabrics over with me, so I did:
Yes, I know what it looks like the fabric tortoise and the sketch are doing. No, it wasn’t intentional.
My apologies if any of the above is gobbledegook; I am asleep in my chair. A sane person would wait til tomorrow to post, but I’m living dangerously, doods …
this is very cool. If I can get my hands on some of that golden digital medium everybody’s talking about, I’m going to have a lot of fun with this toy.
Powered by WordPress
