Beautiful Sunday

I spent a lovely afternoon stitching a parasol for my next Block 12 while watching the entire three hours of DVD from my nephew's wedding.  Last September when Russell married Amanda, we were overseas in the UK and couldn't go which was a huge disappointment but our trip was booked before their wedding was!!  Anyway today was another hot day 38 degrees celsius again so I sat under the air-conditioner and sewed on my hand-drawn parasol and watched Russell and Amanda tie the knot, I even cried when Amanda walked down the aisle of our childhood church just like I would have if I had been there.  Weddings do that to me, especially when the young people are as totally in love as this couple is - it truly is a match made in Heaven. Congratulations all over again, you two!!!! It wasn't until I blogged the photo that I realised that my inspiration for a parasol was right there in front of me...duh!!!

Tone on Tone RR block for Southern Cross Crazies




This is block which will be used for the Tone on Tone Round Robin

 The latest Round Robin for SCC has a Tone-on-Tone theme.  Seeing as I am busy with my cream on cream blocks for my quilt so I thought I would make two red/hot pink blocks and make a tote bag for a Chinese workmate who loves bright colours.  One block will stay with me while the other one will travel around Australia and New Zealand being worked on.  When the block comes home in five months, I'll make up the bag for my friend Debbie.  The Red/Hot pink colour scheme is waaaay out of my comfort zone which makes it more of a challenge for me.  I am now into the fun stuff of finding suitable coloured threads, braids, charms, buttons and beads with which to decorate it.

Block 11 Cream on Cream FANS

This is the second Fan block for the Victorian Symbolism Challenge because the first block only included fan charms.  I set myself a challenge to see how many types of fans I could include on one block and came up with these five plus a bouquet of roses in the centre.......suitable for any Victorian bride as she flutters her fan.  I used silk thread for the needle woven fan with a very fine tatted edging (I can't take credit for the edging or I would still be tatting away and not blogging VBG),  It was part of a length of vintage tatting which I'd unpicked off an old garment just in case I would want to use it some day, while the others include antique lace and the beaded crocheted fan utilises beads unpicked from a purse bought at a thrift shop.

Block 10 Cream on Cream Finished - Beneath the Sea block

I had a lot of fun with this block, in fact it was hard to take it seriously.  The fish in the centre of the block looked very pale at first so I unpicked it, put a piece of darker cream fabric underneath and stitched it back again. The fabric underneath is actually a lot more subtle than the photo suggests - the colour is not as orange.  The two Coral/Seaweed motifs which are either side of the fish were centres of a rather clunky lace edging so I cut them out, turned them upside down and appliqued them to the block.  On the top section is a wavy line of ribbon.  This was originally the centre of the braid pictured left. The backing for the braid is netting so I carefully unpicked a length of the gold and cream edging from both sides because it also caught the ribbon at the widest parts. After that I unpicked the copper coloured sequins (which show up in the photo as multi-coloured). I then cut the wavy ribbon from the middle, taking care to leave the original stitching which held the ribbon to the netting background on a netting strip about 1/2 inch wide. It was easy to then simply slip-stitch the netting to the block and run a small running stitch along the centre of the gathered ribbon and catch  down the loops at the outer edges .

Valentine's Day Fabric Postcard Swap

 I have spent the last three hours holed up in my studio finishing off these seven Valentine's Day Fabric postcards for a swap with my SouthernCrossCrazies group.  I really only needed to make five, four to swap and one to keep for myself but I know a couple of people who could do with a cheer-up so I made two extra.  I really enjoyed this challenge as it gave me a chance to use up all my little red bits and pieces which I would never use otherwise.  I rarely use red in crazy quilting as it is not one of my favourite colours.  I decided to stay with traditional crazy quilting this time seeing as last time with the Autumn leaves I went waaaaaay out of my comfort zone.
These cards are all "romantic" based on the printed images which I got from Flights of Fancy Boutique. I've been waiting for an opportunity to use them. I made four vertical postcards and three horizontal postcards and the one I have chosen to keep for myself is vertical one at the top right-hand corner with the two small images.

So, Faye, Maureen, Natascha and Alison jump in and choose the one you want to receive and the two left over can go to my friends who need the cheer-ups.  Email me with your choice and I'll address it to you.....