Echino Bike Quilt

One of the beautiful fabrics my son brought back from Japan was some Echino bike fabric. It is so special, I have been a bit scared to cut  into it. I chose a few fabrics that highlighted the colours of it.

 I cut them into 7.5" squares and made 9 sets of 9 patches.

Cut each 9 patch into quarters,

 rearranged them, and sewed them back together.

It's a bit random but I finished it in an afternoon. I really needed to get something done because last weekend was almost a right off for sewing and I was pining all week.

In between all the grocery shopping last weekend I snuck off to Patchwork on Central . 

"It was on the way home"

They were having a sale.

I had been searching for a backing fabric for my diamond quilt for a few months now and I think I did well.

It's the green one in the middle. $32 a metre reduced to $10 a metre.

Should go well with this:

I bought these too. Not sure what for.

Fabric is getting cheaper to buy in Australia, but I do love a bargain.

It Works Upside Down

I am going back to work on Monday. I'm so sad because I love holidays. In a frenzy of, 'I must make more before I go back,' I started working on a quilt. I wanted it to be quick and I wanted to use up some of my old fabric and combine it with some beautiful stripy fabric I bought on sale.

In about four hours I had it all pieced together but it ended up being totally warped! (Excuse the concrete background). I know in photos the base always looks wider but this base really is wider, about 8 inches on each side. I have never made this style of quilt before so I am not sure if it was the stripy fabric, which is not standard cotton and a bit stretchy, or the style of the quilt that has made it sag in the middle.

I took a photo of it upside down and the shape is perfect - no distortion despite the angle.

My sons think it's awful. "Sorry Mum, but it's not one of my favourite ones."

It feels really soft and cuddly and I used up some really lovely linen fabric.

I am going through a phase of not trying to be so exact in my work and enjoying the liberty. 

New Fabric and Finished Star

This week brought me a new stash of fabric from Contemporary Cloth . I really didn't want to do it but they were having a sale and I loved the colours and before I knew it, I hit the pay button.

Yesterday was the start of the weekend. I just had to get the star quilt moving because I have all this new fabric to think about. Mini star number four was quickly finished. On an impulse, I pulled out some old Kaffe fabric that had been waiting (about 2 years) for just this moment.

All finished. I am quite pleased because I really haven't enjoyed making this quilt. Too much pink and orange and the grey was very somber but I think the purple ikat really helps.

Stars and Stripes

It was a good weekend for the sewing machine. Two more stars have been made.

One more to go! 

It's actually nearly finished but my friend Rivka came over on Sunday with another quilt to make. She had been planning for months to make her brother a quilt but apart from buying the fabric it just never got off the ground. 

We spent a happy Sunday afternoon cutting, ironing and sewing up these stripy squares. I just kept going, even after she went home and used up as much of the fabric as I could. The best bit was that I didn't pin a thing until I put the final squares together. Rivka will have to put a border on it to get the size a bit bigger. It will be sent to the quilter and hopefully I will get to see it again to add the binding. 

Zigzags or Stars?

I bought some Denyse Schmidt fabric and then decided I didn't like it so much. I started making a zigzag quilt and used  grey that just made the colours die. My fault - bad choice.

Anyway the triangles have sat in a box for 4 months.

This weekend they came out. After playing for a little while with all sorts of patterns I decided to make a giant star out of the triangles.

I still don't like the grey but liked the star idea as a new project.

After sewing it up I realised that the giant corners were going to need filling.

Four mini stars are on the way. The squares are just over an inch so the star is so bumpy! I am still not sure what I will fill in the rest of the gant star with but I like the purple shot cotton I used on the little star.

Not bad for a 19 year old

My son just returned from Japan and look what he bought home for me!

The prices were pretty similar to what you can get online. I thought he would have been able to do better but it seems the online price is the list price or pretty close. I loved the Echino and Lecien fabric the best.

Cleaning does Pay.

We have a cabinet maker making cupboards in a few rooms of the house. He is a bit like that guy O'Reilly from Fawlty Towers. He is totally unreliable and disorganised and inclined to make mistakes. He has a very strong Irish accent and half the time I don't understand a word he is saying. So a job that should have been finished before Christmas is dragging on and my house is like a jumble sale with cupboards waiting to be filled and rooms piled with mess.
In the meantime my eldest son has moved to Sydney to do a short course at NIDA for 6 months. His room is not part of the cupboard tragedy but it probably was in a worse state than the rest of the house. So with no ability to control the house mess I decided to fumigate his bedroom. Hours of cleaning, washing, throwing out and dusting has been well worth the while and his room is spick and span and looking fabulous.
So what has this got to do with patchwork? Well I found, packed away in a box, an old dress of mine that I bought about 30 years ago. It was from an African Shop in Surfers Paradise. I hardly ever wore it but I couldn't bare to give it away.
It yielded metres of fabric, once it had been pulled apart, and it put my stripy log cabins together very nicely.

So apart from the satisfaction of having one clean room in my house, I also managed to make this almost entirely from recycled clothing and scraps.

PS I am sorry about the quality of my photos lately. I miss my little Sony. It's touring Japan with my middle son and won't be home till March.

Just Before School Starts

Last weekend was my last weekend of freedom before I went back to school for the start of the new year. I knew I would be wrecked by the end of the week and I was not disappointed. I can still barely move. That's what 25 darling seven year olds can do to a grown woman who has spent the last 5 weeks indulging in personal pleasures. I need to toughen up.
So last week, knowing what lay ahead, I decided to make a quick project with some of my scrap fabrics and I put together 12 autumn colour blocks.

I am so glad I did this because I don't think I will be playing with my sewing machine today.

Kimono No More

I am a bit excited because my son has just gone to Japan and with him is a printout of lots of fabrics I love and some cash. I really am hoping that he will bring me back something new to create from.
Meanwhile, a few months ago I went to Kazari and bought an old blue kimono and a roll of blue fabric swatches.

I forgot to photograph them first, but in the space of 4 hours I had unpicked the kimono and pieced the fabric pieces into strips and then a quilt top.

There were about 10 colours and I had a few blues that I added in to make the top.

Most of the quilt back was from the front and back of the kimono. The collar and sleeves, once unpicked, were stitched into some of the quilt top and along the sides of this piece to make it larger.

I just fell in love with the bold lines on this kimono and it was only $20!

At least now some of my guilt has been assuaged as I have made more room for my new incoming Japanese treasures.

Fabric Shack to the Rescue

40 days ago I ordered some fabric from a very well know internet retailer of quilting fabric. Unfortunately the fabric did not arrive in the usual swift manner. I emailed the seller and although several emails were exchanged, it seemed that the seller was not prepared to resend the fabric and simply advised me to sit tight!
Normally, I think I could have been patient but the fabric was required for a commission and my time was running out as I am going overseas in 10 days.
The seller-who-must-not-be-named was getting less and less inclined to believe me or offer a satisfactory outcome so I decided to reorder the fabric from The Fabric Shack. 11 days later my new order arrived.

Today the quilt was finished. I didn't even use all the fabric. The Urban Circus is really lovely and soft too.
Meanwhile.... my other parcel is still lost and the seller-who-must-not-be-named is not being nice to me. It's not my fault the parcel is missing.
Whilst I was fretting and worrying, I just had to order more fabric because it makes me happy and I ordered some from Fabricworm
Their parcel arrived in 5 days on a Sunday!
I made this with it but that was the day before the Urban Circus fabric arrived so I had to leave it.

So this is the finished quilt. Ready to be shipped overseas to a new baby boy.

Its not much but at least its something

Last weekend was a sad attempt to sell some of my cot quilts. I had a stall at a school market but despite lots of advertising the event was really down on numbers. Melbourne has had ridiculous amounts of rain and that Sunday was really cold and really wet. The few that came were not my kind of customers. I did sell a few toys though.

Good bye Super Boy

I also had some fun starting a little embroidery project because I need something to take overseas with me that is not too bulky but keeps the fingers busy.

This is 'Staring Girl'

She is a creation of Tim Burton.

I love his drawings and his poetry is hilarious and brilliant.

There are a few drawings of Staring Girl in his book and I hope to make a series of them.

So last week was rain, rain,rain and this weekend its boiling!

GJ's advertised a 25% off sale. They are a good hour's drive from home and I was cursing the heat and time in the car but it was great once I got there. They had stacks of fabric I had not been able to buy in Melbourne and although I am trying to be really frugal with my fabric buying, I picked up these bits and pieces.

 Love, love love!

Blogger's Quilt Festival

The life of this quilt all began in May this year. I bought a large collection of blue/green Kaffe Fassett fabric and had no idea what to make with it. This is a normal thing for me. Fabric needs to be looked at on the shelf prior to cutting.

Meanwhile, amongst other things, I made a yellow quilt for my niece as a wedding present.

As much as I wanted to get started I could not think of a way to use the blues. On one of my 'reading other people's blogs days' I found a fun block on Be*mused that stuck in my mind.

With that as inspiration and a whole lot of scrap yellows from the wedding quilt, the new quilt began. I put yellows and blues together - something I would never do. I decided that this quilt could be as mismatched as I liked.  For me, it was a big step away from safety. In the past, picking fabric from the same theme always saved me from thinking whether colours would match or not. Although I only used Kaffe fabric for the quilt, they were opposites in colours.

Here are some of my first blocks. Yuk!

During the same time I found a Facbook page that had Kaffe Fassett comment on your quilts. When the quilt top was finished I posted it to the page and waited for a comment from Kaffe. He did, at last, post a comment. "There is more contrast in this quilt than I usually like but I like the cool pallet and the setting is stunning, best wishes Kaffe." I was so excited that he wrote to me but I think he liked my back yard trees better than the quilt!

Anyway, with many projects happening at the same time, the quilt was basted but lay folded in my lounge, awaiting the final touches for 5 months.

When I saw that Amy's Creative Side was running her Bloggers Quilt Festival I decided that now was the time to quilt and bind my experiment together.

The garden has grown so much in 5 months with all the rain we have had recently.

I call it my Yuk Yum Quilt.

One block was not made correctly but I kept it as it was. Surprises are fun if you don't think of them as mistakes!

New Fabric

I was trawling around other people's blogs a few weeks ago and stumbled upon a new supplier of fabric on the web called Wondrous Woven Fabrics.
On their site I found a lovely fat quarter set that captured my imagination and I promptly tried to order it. They had never had an order from Australia before and so I emailed them to see if they could help me. I had a response within a very short time and a new button for international shipping was set up. The service was amazing!
So less than a week later these Robert Kaufman fat quarters arrived.

In the bag I found an extra half yard that was thrown in as a gift.

They don't have a huge range of fabric on offer but they do have prompt, accommodating service. 

Thank you Wondrous Woven Fabric.

Markets and other things

Markets were the order of the day on Saturday and I visited Magnolia Square and a mini market in the City Library. Magnolia Square was it's usual high quality experience. Although it's petite, it always has very clever, creative products with the friendliest stall holders. I just had to buy this little lavender heat pack from Memi Designs. She prints all her own fabric designs on linen.

The City Library was a little disappointing. There were only about 12 stall holders and the products were varied. One person had made some great little quilts out of op shop hankies but overall it took about 5 minutes to go through! In one of the other rooms they had a fun exhibition on the history of shopping in Melbourne. They had some great old photos and paraphernalia from days gone by. Worth a 'look in' if you are a little bit old like me and actually remember some of the places.

Sunday was for sewing. A mum of one of the teachers at school came over and we did a swap. She tried to show me how to follow a crochet pattern and I gave her the start on how to make a quilt block. My crocheting is pretty pathetic - so much so, that there are no pictures! Her block is off to a better start than me. 

Later there was a little bit of free motion quilting happening which I was really happy with because the triangles can make quilting very stretchy and hard to sit flat but the free motion made everything much more accommodating.

And some more coasters were made using some of the fabric I bought last week.

Go Magpies!

Firstly I have to say I am in a very good mood. Yesterday my footy team won their 15th premiership. It's been 20 years since the last premiership and the team certainly deserved to win. Last week was a drawn Grand Final so both teams had to come back to play a second time with a week's break. Lots of people hate the Magpies. Maybe they are jealous, maybe they just can't help it. It's almost a thing that Melbournites are born with. You either hate them or love them. I ask them, "Why do you hate us so much?" and the reply is, "I don't know, I just do!"
When my Grandfather immigrated here over 60 years ago, he was very ill and a family, hearing of his plight, took him under their wing. They basically adopted my parents when they followed to Australia and we were part of their family when we were eventually born.
They barracked for Collingwood and took my oldest brother to the game every week. When my next brother was old enough to know, he announced that he was going to barrack for Melbourne, to which the eldest replied that he had better follow the Magpies or he would bash him up. He was big on bossing  us young ones around!
One of my earliest memories of childhood was brother number two saying to me that I had better follow Collingwood or I would be 'in for it!' So the decision was made for me to preserve family harmony and I happily stuck by it.
I sat with my younger sister two inches from the TV and hooted with delight as our team romped through the final. My husband and boys were watching either at home or with friends but they all barrack for Melbourne so they just can't really be in the zone. I am not sure what the neighbours must have thought with all our screaming and crying out but I just need to say one more time till next year, " Go Pies!"

Later that night I actually did some sewing and stitched up the striped tablecloth. Looking very cool but so much smaller than anticipated.

So it was back to the drawing board this morning to add on a row and a column.

This time I let my son lay out the triangles before I stitch them up. He was really annoyed with me last time when I rushed ahead without him but I didn't want it to end up too planned.