Category Archives: Knitting

Chris goes back to work tomorrow so I’m taking the opportunity to try and finish this little jacket… Only the sleeves and closures are left to do 🙂 I’m following a pattern (!) called Seamless Infant Kimono by Carina Spencer. … Continue reading →

A finished shot of the summer quilt, lounging on our overgrown lawn 🙂

I sewed this binding entirely by machine, knowing that it would probably take me forever to get around to sewing it up by hand.  This was better to be finished than perfectly executed.  I’ve been using it and enjoying it for a week or so now :-) 

Here is a shot of the backing.

I think Riscy likes this side better than the front :-)  you can see the quilting a bit better here, I stitched aorund all the pieces about 5mm from the seam on either side of the seam, and then sewed around some invisible rectangles within some of the larger pieces. 

Anyway, we have been trying to get prepared for the big move.  Last weekend we purchased a little dining table and chairs from Ikea and worked out what we need to buy to make a long and low bench/bookshelf/storage cabinet. We’ll need to pop down to Melbourne again to get them in the next couple of weeks.

We also bought one of those flat LCD TV’s which we can hopefully mount on the wall.  It is rather large, but wil be more space efficient than our old TV.

Lucy spent the night with our friends Wendy and Kim.  A trial run.  There was a reasonable amount of hissing and whining between Mocha (Wendy’s cat) and Lucy, but then Mocha retreated to the bedroom and Lucy found a spot under the couch.  Obviously, we don’t want to make Mocha’s life unbearable by foisting Lucy into his territory, but if they can work something out between themselves then I think Wendy and Kim will take her on.  It is very difficult for me to ask such a big favour of friends.

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Because of all the fabric ripping for this quilt, I have lots of skinny strips of fabric and tread nests hanging around my workroom.  I love the colours.  So I chucked a pile onto the scanner.   The yellows and blues are the leavings of the pieced backing.

Tonight I’m quilting.  Simply, like I said I would 🙂

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On a whim. I sewed up this patchwork quilt top today. A ‘no cut’ quilt. I just ripped the fabric to size and merrily sewed away

I’m now officialy run out of orangey fabrics and really need to put in a dye order soon because I’m out of yellow (I go through yellow way faster than other colours). This quilt also made a slight dint in my pinks/burgandys, that fuchsia dye can be a real bitch sometimes.

This will be a nice couch sized quilt, good for reading under and possibly a decent picnic rug in time.

What else did I do today? Hmmm, Oh thats right. I printed some more fabrics, one of which went straight into the quilt. Here’s another look

I’m planning to quilt this very SIMPLY. I might even dust off the old walking foot.

I came across an interesting artist today Stephanie Levy who is an american living in Germany. She does beautiful little collages. I wish I made quilts that looked like this. Blocks of colour combined with line.

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Well. That was quicker than I thought it would be. These quilts were based on some drawings I did last week in a little moleskine book. Suprisingly, I really enjoy drawing over the grid and combining the grid into the drawings.

These little white quilts have been very fun to do, fast… they suit the limited time I have for creativity at the moment (things will slow down soon… wont they?), my desire to develop my quilting skills and break out of the little applique box I had put myself into and to focus more on ‘line’.

 

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White Diptych 1

Melbourne was good. Too much to reflect on here, but the ballet made me cry (New Romantics) and the theatre was spellbinding/hilarious/titilating (The Burlesque Hour, More!!). I caught up with my good friends Carol, Lynne, Nathan and Roger, it is good to be geographically close again 🙂

I’ve been back home now for a couple of weeks, but rarely feel the need to venture into my work/computer room and I have to admit I have been taken in by the Tour de France again. Even though I swore off it last year…

I read some… Margret Attwood’s The Blind Assassin took up a fair chunk of time, but I aslo read two novella; Fly Away Peter by David Malouf (made me cry), Without Blood by Allesandro Barricco (I realised when I finished it, that I had read it before… It’s Ocean Sea on my shelf that I have been meaning to read LOL) as well as Janet Evanovich’s latest novel and two books by Rachael Treasure (both made me cry, though both books seemed to have the same plot!?!… and have influenced me to do something which may turn out to be totaly foolish… perhaps more on that later).

And I have done a little bit of quilting… and a little bit of painting (which I’m rather excited about).

I’ve probably lost a lot of readers due to my absence. But, I have enjoyed my break from the computer. I almost decided to ditch it completely, but I do love reading and inspired by blogs and I also love to share my work… so here I am. Hello.

White Diptych 2

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What have we here??

I’m back, and I’m quilting. I just went through a little creative dry patch. They happen occasionally, I’ve blogged about it here before.

It is a strange phenomenon, where a couple of times a year I lose all interest in making stuff and can’t even imagine making anything ever again. It is mildly stressful. But,I am learning to recognise the signs and reassure myself that after a little break, I’ll be back to it.

My blog has also be undergoing some maintenance. Nothing much that you will notice (I hope) but it was touch and go there for a while, I almost had to go with a different layout design… which was a bit sad, as I really like this one 🙂

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However, a weekend frame of mind sorted me out and within about 30 minutes of sitting down to work on it today, it came together.  I’m going to sit back and do some hand quilting on it now and see what happens from there.  I have a little basket of DMC embroidery cotton which I am raiding for
this project.  I bought them many years ago for cross stitch project which I lost interest in after a few months.

And, in work related news: We had a big deadline at work yesterday and I’m happy that we achieved everything we wanted to do.  Now we move into the next phase which can be very intense as we are managing double the number of projects than normal while we prepare to hand a batch of projects on to the people who manage the next phase, as we take the freshly submitted projects through the approvals phase and with planning for and generating new projects.  My job is fun (except when it isn’t…LOL).  The best bit is driving around the place and nearly everywhere I go in the region now, I can see projects, that I developed, being constructed or finished.  It gives me a thrill every time.

I have one link to share today, and I want to tell you what a thrill it was to find it.  Last year at the Geelong Textile Fibre Forum one of the tutors was Nalda Searles from Western Australia.  I had never heard of Nalda before, but she made a big impression on me.  And of course I couldn’t track down much info on the net.  Then, totally by accident, when rummaging around on Clog, I noticed a comment made by Nalda then followed her link through to her blog … BLOG!! Yay!

Fodder:  The blog of Nalda Searles and Kevin Murray.  Nalda is a textile artist/weaver who works with natural materials.  The talk she gave at GTFF was largely about her works which utilise the bits of dead grass trees.  On the night when the tutors could set up tables to sell their creations, Nalda had a table but she was working on her journal… I wanted to sit down with her and introduce myself and talk with her, but I didn’t.  I wish I did. 

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