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.....

Block 9 Completed

I have finished block 9 which started out with no particular theme and finished up being one of the main blocks in the quilt.  When I'd finished adding an elephant, a heart, a butterfly and a bouquet of Roses plus embroidery, the block was suffering an identity crisis but then my husband suggested that I turn the heart into a "cartouche".  A what?  "A Cartouche!" says he again.  He loves watching Antique Roadshow on TV and often in the jewellery section, Victorian watches, lockets, trinket boxes, serviette rings and cuff-links have a shape such as a heart, circle, oval etc in the gold or silver where people could get initials or names engraved.  So, I added my own initials VMG and the year 2011 in the blank section of the heart shape, in my own cartouche. I'm a bit disappointed that the heart edging has a "bulge" in it, it isn't straight. I tried to fix it but it's the way the motif was stitched originally and I can't do much about it. Suddenly though, the block felt complete, it looks happy again........I keep saying and it's true, these blocks develop a personality after awhile!!

Yesterday was actually a horrible day for doing anything, including stitching.  The temperature reached 40 degrees celsius which is 104 degrees farenheit and the humidity was revolting.  Everything felt hot and sticky until about 3.30pm when I decided that I really would have to brave the yucky weather and go shopping. The Heavens opened and heavy rain bucketed down accompanied by rolling thunder then just as suddenly, it stopped and it was still as hot and stickier than ever.  Today we were supposed to be hit by Cyclone Bianca but thankfully it has now been down-graded to just a heavy storm which hopefully will cool things down a bit. 

Autumn Postcard Swap

Last year the Southern Cross Crazies on-line crazy quilting group for Australians and New Zealanders hosted a postcard swap.  I chose "Autumn" as my subject and made six, one for me to keep and five to send away to my fellow-swappers.  The background for the postcards was a sandwich of Autumn/Fall coloured threads, glitter, copper coloured foil paper, copper coloured chopped Angel Fibre and powdered glue which was ironed flat between two pieces of black organdie.  At the local Op-Shop (the Salvos), I bought a bunch of artificial autumn leaves for $4 which were really ugly, came home and pulled all the leaves off the plastic stems which netted me a sizeable bag of brown, light orange and reddish orange leaves. I then pulled all the leaves off two stems of brown and beige velvet leaves and added them to the bag along with several autumn coloured leaf skeletons. The skeletal leaves and the velvet leaves were then sewn onto the background using Blanket Stitch and the artifical leaves were heat set with powdered glue and a hot iron.  Finally trims were added which included brown leaf trim from Flights of Fancy, cording, copper wire, wooden buttons and tiny gold charms.

Block 8 "Spinning" Block completed.

I call this a spinning block because I started off with spiders for Good Luck - I finished up with two.  However, that made me think of spiders spinning and I remembered the lace motif I had of a lady sitting at her spinning wheel, spinning.  I think she was a tourist souvenir from Belgium because I saw a lot of lace motifs framed in gold frames when we were in Bruges but they were so expensive that I didn't but any, I just admired them.  When we returned to UK I went to the charity shops in Anlaby near Hull and found the lady, squashed between a piece of dark green velvet and a piece of glass in the mandatory gold frame.  Unfortunately the green dye from the velvet had bled into the lady's dress but with gentle washes in Sard and Napisan stain removers and then a diluted bleach solution, I managed to get most of it out.  There was still a slight green tinge to the back of her dress so I covered it as best I could with cream leaves and flowers. I also found the length of lace braid which looked a bit like a row of spinning wheels. This was also a good opportunity to use some of my antique mother-of-pearl buttons. Now on to block 9!!

Spiders from Block 8

The January theme for the Victorian Symbolism Challenge with crazyquiltinternational on-line group is SPIDERS.  I made two spiders, one a pearl bead spider and the other a cream Stumpwork spider. Spiders in Crazy Quilting mean Good Luck, so hopefully there is a double dose on this block.

Block Seven completed

This was a difficult block for me to do as I didn't particularly like the naked block. The only starting point I had was the remnant of linen doily with the tatted edge and motif. By taking one seam at a time the block gradually took on a life of it's own and now that it is done, I like it. My favourite element of this block is the three antique ribbon flowers on the right hand side although the lace with the beaded edging at the lower left side is a piece from my Wedding dress so I guess that is a favourite too.

Block 6 Fan Block

Block 6 is called a Fan block for obvious reasons.......the lace motif at the bottom set the tone for the whole block with fan shaped stitches and other fan charms added.  The beige satin patch in the centre shone like a beacon, overshadowing everything else so I Kantha quilted it to give it more texture and less shine.  I didn't realise when I did this that February's Victorian Symbolism challenge with the on-line crazy quilt group is Fans so I'm out of sequence.  Not to worry, on to block 7.

Fan Block 6 Autocorrected

Fan Earring and Fans on the Fan Block

The fan charms on the Fan block came from an earring.  My friend Mary Lewis and I were on a joint cq charity shop crawl when we spotted these earrings.  We shared them, one each, as you do and I thought they'd be perfect for my block.  

Block 5 Cottage Garden block

I didn't realise just how pale this block was. It certainly doesn't look this pale in the flesh!! However, I made use of an antique bird motif which my husband says is on it's way to sh*t on the head of the lady busy in her garden......NOT TRUE! My antique bird would not do a thing like that. The lady is a lace motif which I bought when I was on holiday with my lovely friend Mary Lewis, I think I got her in a haberdashery shop in Milton or Ulladulla in NSW which has since closed down....shame that, it was a delightful old-fashioned habby shop. The flower beads are clear with a slight irridescent look, they are not all the pastel colours that show up in the photo. So block 5 finished, block 6 will get started in the train to work tomorrow.

Cottage Garden Block 5 Autocorrected

Today the temperature was over 100 degrees farenheit or 38 degrees celsius AGAIN....day after day of shocking heat. It's too hot to do anything other than sit in the studio or in the familyroom, under air-conditioner and stitch. This block has taken me all of yesterday and today to do but it's finished and I can start a new block tomorrow on the train.

Right! The stars come off!!

Having seen the photos of block 4 on the blog, those stars are definitely coming off. They are horrible to the max!!

Cream Crazy Quilt Block Four finished....

New Year's Day and I've spent two wonderfully relaxing hours working on block four of my cream on cream crazy quilt. This block contains two of my favourite pieces of lace. The large motif on the right hand side was bought for me by my lovely friend Jill Taylor in an antique textiles shop in Somerset, UK and has very fine organdie leaves which are over-embroidered with veins and in the centre is a 3-dimensional rose which is just over 1 inch across. I also love the very fine netting lace at the top left hand corner with the sprays of circles on stems.

While I am not a fan of sequin stars, the centre needed "lifting" and because there were already stars woven into the brocade, I added some more. I'm not sure about them though so they may come off at some stage in the future. The Angel button was given to me on an international crazy quilt block exchange and I loved it so much, I poached it for my quilt.

Cream on Cream crazy quilt block 3

This block contains some double frilled really antique lace which I hope doesn't disintegrate in a hurry plus a small circle of linen which came as part of a sheet of twenty circles, all hem-stitched around ready for crocheting an edge . I stitched an edging of vintage tatting and added the ribbon roses to cover the join in the tatting. This is the block which gave my husband and me such a puzzle when we came into the bedroom at night to see a row of tiny bright lights glowing on the bed. We turned on the lights and all that was on the bed was this unfinished block and some threads where I had been sewing earlier in the day. Turned out the lights again and there were the little shining lights again. I put my hand on the lights and discovered that I had embroidered a row of stitching on the block in GLOW-in-the-DARK Kreinik thread. What a laugh!! We cracked up laughing because it was so funny to think we had actually wondered what on earth the lights were....duh!! The Glow-in-the-DARK stitches are the Pistil stitches and French knots between the Chain stitched scallops above the two rows of frilled lace.

Cream on Cream block 3 auto-corrected

Funny how these blocks develop a mind of their own sometimes. I dithered about where to put a gold fan charm, the bottom left corner or the top right corner??? The block told me to scrap the fan, it was too heavy, too gold........so I finished up putting an organdie flower and old gold fern leaves at the bottom and God forbid - sea horses and seaweed at the top. I had no intention of putting seaweed and sea horses anywhere at all on the block and yet, I'm happy with the result.

Lola's Quillow finished on Christmas Eve

Thank God for Carols by Candlelight from the Myer Music Bowl as it is one of my favourite programs and also it kept me awake long enough to finish Lola's quillow in time for Christmas today. Lola is nearly five so I made her quilt from my scrap bag, using animal prints and colourful matching fabrics. Only one more to go now but Taylia is eleven and will understand that I am not Wonderwoman and hers will come in due course - besides she ordered an iPad Touch which Santa got - that girl knows her Nanna is a soft touch!!!