Southern Cross Crazies Christmas postcards finished

Today I took a sickie from work and made four dozen Spring Rolls for a Chinese themed dinner party we are having on Saturday, cleaned the kitchen, pulled up some weeds from between my bulbs and then finished these seven Christmas themed fabric postcards.   One of the two vertical ones I will keep for myself but I'm not sure which one I like the best yet.  There were seven participants in this swap so I hope the other girls like what I have done for them. Here are the photos.......and before anyone tells me, I KNOW that the reflection of Santa and his reindeers are going the wrong way to the actual silver charm ones, LOL.

Rebecca's cq bibs in the CQI FFT18 Swap

I have joined the Fabulous First Timers 18 round robin, (FFT18 RR) and for the last month I have been sewing on Bec's bibs.  Bec made two bib shaped blocks, one cream and the other BLINDINGLY bright.  They will go on the front of singlet tops when she gets them back.

I chose the bright one to work on but had trouble getting going because of the large floral patch of bright stylised flowers.  First of all I chose to sew in one strand of DMC cotton with 2 strands of Kreinik Blending Filament but it was too heavy.  I unpicked the flower and did it again but by half way through I could see that one strand of Rajmahal Art Silk with two strands of the Kreinik was still too heavy.  Finally, I stitched the whole thing in just the two strands of Kreinik Blending Filament and it was fine.

Bec had used a huge piece of floral fabric which swallowed up the embroidered flower so I took the liberty of adding another piece of fabric in the same orange colour as another flower which had also become lost.  The two together blended well so then I put some metallic gold lace along the two seams and added little irridesent blue flower beads.

I didn't take Bec's fabric from under the orange piece because I thought that if she had particular ideas for the large floral piece then she could unpick the orange piece and get back to what she wanted.  I remembered the Golden Rule of Round Robins - never do anything to someone else's block which can't be undone by the owner later.  Fortunately Bec loved the orange bit so I was lucky and it will stay now.  Here are the photos of the block - naked and dressed, LOL.

The two photos at the top are of the naked and dressed block and below is a close-up of the embroidery (long and short stitch and blanket stitch) with the Kreinik thread plus Kreinik very fine braid for the outlines.

Finally Finished Taylia's quillow

Last Christmas I made quillows for three grandchildren - Trucks and Construction Vehicles for Jesse, Dinasaurs for Beau and Baby Animals for Lola. I ran out of time to finish Taylia's but she has been very patient and I have finished it in time for her 12th birthday next week.  

Here are photos of the front and the back of the cushion.  The front (right) shows Taylia with the Janome sewing machine that we gave her for her 10th birthday.  While the machine is hers and she uses it whenever she comes to sleep-over, it lives in my studio.  

The back shows her on the new bike that she got for her 11th birthday from her parents. She was one very happy little Vegemite when she got that bike to replace her old one which was too small.  

Here is the quilt itself with the twelve photos which are in no particular order, I stitched them together so that the colours blended together well and added a coloured button on each corner to anchor the front of the quilt to the back. Several of the blocks have scraps of fabric from dresses that I have made for her over the years, including a smocked romper when she was 6 months old and a flowergirl's dress when she was 3.  I made sure that I included photos of two very big happenings in her life, the births of her little brother with she was 6 and her little sister when she was 10.

1956 Fabric Stash from Aunty Amy

I met my cousin Jackie for lunch this week and she gave me another box of treasures from Aunty Ame's stash. For those who haven't read my previous blogs, Aunty Ame died in March 1970 and her boxes of fabrics, trims and laces ended up with my cousin who has kept them all these years just as they were 40 years ago.  Aunty Ame was my Mum's eldest sister and made dolls' clothes for Pedigree and Roddy dolls for a man who owned several toy shops around Perth and Fremantle in the 1950s and 1960s.

The contents of this box of tricks also included patterns for dolls' clothes cut from newspaper - dated 26th September 1956!!! I didn't know that before she made the dolls' clothes, she obviously did alterations for people so included in the box was the complete circular bottom 6 inches of a wedding dress with the hem on one edge. It had been shortened for someone and was a beautiful ivory satin fabric with a tiny rib pattern, perfect for crazy quilting.

Perhaps the greatest treasure as far as I was concerned were several cut-out bodices for Pedigree Walky-Talky doll size dolls where my aunt had probably cut out eight at a time and only needed seven.  There were lots of taffetas, satins, crepes, georgettes, voiles and unknown rayon type fabrics among the scraps and never having seen the light of day in 40-50 years, they were as bright and crisp as the day they were put in the box.  The only casualty was a gorgeous piece of grey voile fabric with a floral design in black flocking. The flocking had disintegrated into fine black "sooty" powder in some parts and landed all over my table, my clothes and the other materials in the box........rather than breathe in a lung-full of black flocking, I reluctantly threw that out.

It is so nice to meet Jackie and reminisce over our Aunty Ame, her boxes of iron-on transfers, cupboards of fabrics and drawers of laces and braids.  She was also a talented pianist with a dance band and was a wonderful cook. I can't believe it is 41 years since she brightened our lives with her lively personality and interesting stories which may or may not have been true.  Perhaps the best part was the smell - that fantastic smell of material from 1950s when the lid was taken off the box.  Sadly, now that the material has been ironed and allowed to breathe the fresh air again, the smell has gone - but it was Heaven while it lasted!!!

My blank block for FFT18 with CQIA

I have decided to bite the bullet and join in a Fabulous-First-Timers Round Robin with CQI.  I can't join in any of the other swaps until I've done a FFT - this groups is FFT18.  I chose a vintage image of a girl asleep with fairies and goblins flying around her.  The words below the image are:

HALLOWE'EN  TIME

Tonight, upon your pillow,

Close your eyes and hide your head,

For the fairies and the goblins

Will be hovering round your bed.

I have tried to choose fabrics with the same colours as those in the picture.  Even though I ironed each patch after I sewed it on, the light reflected from the satin fabrics has made them look puffy.  Believe me, they are flat.  I can hardly wait to see what the other girls in this swap do to my block.  I'm hoping for all the glitter  and magic of fairies, goblins, beautiful dreams and the mysteries of Hallowe'en.

Inheritance from Aunty Ame

Click on each photo to see the contents clearly.

Mum's oldest sister Amy (my Aunty Ame) died in March 1970.  Her house and everything in it was left to my four cousins including a large box of laces, braids, ribbons and scraps of fabric. Aunty Ame was a professional doll's clothes maker during the 1950s and 1960s so every month or so, a man would leave dozens of naked Pedigree and Roddy dolls in their boxes at her house and he would pick up the previous lot, fully dressed in knickers, petticoats, dresses and bonnets. Some were dressed as brides and Bo-Peep while others were dressed as little girls in their Sunday best but all of them were absolutely gorgeous in their taffeta and flocked nylon frocks. I am not sure if this bloke owned a chain of toyshops or whether he was a toy wholesaler but this business transaction went on for several years that I know of.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, my sister and I met several cousins for lunch on Sunday and I shall always be indebted to my cousin Jackie who has hung on to the box of bits for over forty years. They have not been touched........until today, when we met for lunch and she gave me the box.  I think I have died and woken up in Crazy Quilter's Heaven!!! I have just been going through the box and I actually remember some of the braids but the part that really spun me out was several little bundles of short length of laces and braids (obviously scraps) tied in bundles with ribbon.  I REMEMBER doing that when I was about ten or eleven and I was staying with my aunt and uncle during the school holidays.  She was sewing and I was bored, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck when I found them.....just as I had left them over half a century ago.

Right now, I am so delighted and stunned by all these treasures, some will undoubtedly find their way onto crazy quilt blocks.  I can never repay Jackie for her generosity nor can I repay my aunty for stashing all this stuff in the boxes and winding a lot of laces and braids onto cut pieces of cardboard from old Pedigree Doll boxes. Here are some photos of the stash which has not seen the light of day in over forty years.

Spring in Valley block, Mark 2

After Gerry's suggestions on how to improve block seventeen, I changed the tiny sun for a much larger one and outlined the flower in the corner with a fine gold thread.  I didn't have another butterfly so I added the roses and leaves to the right of the gold grape charms.  Gerry, you were spot on once again, it looks much better now.

Spring in the Valley - Block 17

I live on the edge of the Swan River Valley, the main grape growing/wine producing area of Perth in Western Australia and every year we have a "Spring in the Valley Festival" to celebrate the produce of the valley.  All the wineries have wine tastings and sales, the Cheese Factory has cheese samples and sales, the Margaret River Chocolate Company has chocolate tastings and sales of chocolates, chocolate products, pickles and jams, the boutique breweries have beer tastings and sales and all of these places serve meals. Some of the wineries have live music and Art exhibitions - it's a big weekend and people arrive by the busload and by car - but you definitely need to have a designated non-drinking skipper to make sure that everybody arrives home again safely, LOL......

I had this piece of "grape-vine" lace edging which so far has not fitted in to any of my block themes so I figured that I would create a block around the lace instead and use it that way. My obvious theme then had to be "Spring in the Valley" - the original Swan Valley vineyards were set up by Italian migrants in late 1800s and early 1900s so there is an annual "Blessing of the Vintage" ceremony which still carries on the Italian tradition, hence my Angel blessing the grape charms below her with a smiling sun to spread sunshine. Spring means flowers and butterflies so they are there as well and that spider's web was a piece of damask that had the web woven into the fabric, I merely stitched over the existing web.

I had a lot of fun stitching this block although someone on the train one evening after work asked me if I was sewing a "Communion piece". I am finding that lots of people on the trains who have seen me beavering away for months are becoming interested in my sewing.  One lady actually asked to see my block because she thought I had been working on the same little piece of fabric the whole time. That made me chuckle!!  I'm not sure that I particularly like this block as it is getting a long way from my original warm Victorian/Edwardian cream blocks - is my style changing?  I think so but I hope not.

Stripes block 16 completed

Well, this was a quick and easy block, started and finished in three days.  Once that central piece with the striped ivory satin and fawn velvet was embroidered in both stitches in cream which I had never done before and fawn stitches which were my favourites, the rest came easily. I wanted to get rid of some of the angles of the striped patch so covered some of the seams with heavy lace motifs, the bottom edges though were left straight.  The block was easy until I got to the last seam - the one at the bottom left. DH and I tried about a dozen braids and laces but nothing seemed to be right so in the end, I stitched the braid, embroidered some of it to match the striped block and added cream ribbon roses.  Not perfect but better than a lot of the others.  I am beginning to realise that this quilt is a reflection of my life.  Every stitch, lace, button, braid, trim is something that I have learnt, collected or gleaned along the way. From now on, each block will have a theme, albeit a mental one - people in my family, childhood holidays by the beach, picnics in the forests with my parents and younger sister, picking wildflowers, school friends and favourite teachers, piano lessons, my Grandma and her Scottish heritage, my children and grandchildren, my sister's children and grandchildren, my lovely Mum and her love of sewing......so many influences that have shaped me into the person that I am today.  At first, the blocks in this quilt were merely that, blocks worked in cream laces and threads on cream fabrics but as they have grown in number they are taking on personalities and identities of their own. Anyway, this is number 16 or the block that completes 1/6 of the quilt.  I laid them out on the table in no particular order to see how they are going to look when sewn together.  I was surprised at how many darker creams I have used to form the contrast in colour without even realising that I was doing it.

Christmas Block number 15

I finished the Christmas block this morning and would like to thank Colleen from CQInternational because if she hadn't suggested "Chains" as the April mini-challenge, I never would have thought of doing a Christmas block.  When it was finished but "missing something", I asked DH what he thought it needed.......he suggested the gold star above the Christmas tree with the lines running from it and a gold charm of some sort in the bottom left hand corner (I found a bell, candy canes, a ginger bread man and a snowman) and the bell seemed to fit the best. I included the strip of broderie anglaise with the ribbon threaded through it because it represents a child in a nightgown anxiously waiting for Santa Claus.
So, moving on to block 16 with the May mini-challenge of Stripes.

Birds a'flying Cream Block completed

Two of the Victorian Symbolism Challenges with the CQInternational group were Birds a'flying (April) and Friendship Rings (May).  I managed to put both of these symbols on the one Cream on Cream block while at the same time working on the Christmas block which has the mini-monthly challenge of "Chains" on the Christmas Tree.  So while I haven't blogged any blocks for a while, I have been working on them both and am about to start the May mini-challenge of "Stripes".  This block is number fourteen - only 82 to go now and so far, I'm not getting bored, touch wood!!!

My Work on Florence's Tone on Tone block and Kiko Flowers

The Tone on Tone Round Robin was organised by the Australian and New Zealand Southern Cross Crazies group. This block was a difficult colour for me to work with, especially keeping within the limits of the tone on tone.  For the first time I tried out Kiko flowers and I'm hooked on them.  From now on, there will be Kiko Flowers everywhere. I covered four seams, one with an embroidered motif which I got from Flights of Fancy ages ago and thought that I would never have a use for those muted tones and when Florence's block arrived, I knew I had found the perfect place for that motif. On another seam I used a piece of hand-dyed sparkly ric-rac braid with additional stitching on either side and I tizzied up Florence's scalloped lace with chain stitch, sequins, beads and detached chains.  My favourite seam was the Kiko Flowers and lazy daisy leaves which were darker than I would have done but I felt that I had to balance up with Sue's embroidery which was already on the right hand side of the block.

Step-By-Step How-to for the Butterfly seam

1.  Work a single fly stitch about 3/8inch on either side of the anchoring thread in the centre. Take the anchoring thread down just on the other side of the thread.

2. Work a second smaller fly stitch about 1/8 inch down from the first with each side being about 1/4 inch.

3. Work an upside-down fly stitch coming up to join the other two and take the anchoring stitch up over all three fly stitches.

4. Join the ends of the fly stitches with straight stitches to form wings.

5. With a thicker thread or a bullion stitch make the body in the centre of the wings.

6. With a fine thread sew two straight stitch antennai and work five small blanket stitches down the side of each wing.

7. Leave a gap of about 1/2 inch between the wings - ignore the body - and repeat the butterflies along the length of the seam.

Cream on Cream Block 13 finished

The apples in the centre of this block reminded me of high Summer, which means butterflies, dragonflies, bees and flowers. This was a quick and easy block to do probably because of the Summer theme and once the butterflies were stitched in place, it was just a matter of covering the seams.  One seam treatment was a row of tiny butterflies in cream thread with gold bodies and gold antennai and wing tips.  I made the stitch combination up as I went along then I thought maybe other people might like to use it as well so my next blog entry will be a step-by-step how-to on the butterfly seam......I don't know how it will look in colour but it looks fine in cream and gold.

Sendai Block is Really Finished

This is the block after I have worked some more Bamboo on the left hand side, thanks to Gerry's wonderful suggestion and the gold work on the Crane completed.  It will be winging it's way to Leslie in America before the day is done, (the block, not the Crane, LOL).

Hearts and Hands for Sendai Block Completed

This afternoon I finished my Hearts and Hands for Sendai block.  I'm happy with it (I think) although DH suggested I should put something in the corner with the crane.  As far as I am concerned, the Crane is so big and so glitzy that it doesn't need anything else in that corner. I will now post this block off so that it can be included in the fund-raising quilts for Sendai.  What shall I do next?  I guess I should finish off the "Found Objects" cream on cream quilt block while I wait for the next block in the Tone on Tone Round Robin to turn up......plus every time I get one of those blocks on which to work my 1/5 of the embroidery, I also do 1/5 of the hot pink/red block for Debbie's tote bag.

I have also been out in the garden today and picked aother sixteen mushrooms from underneath the grapefruit tree, which is where I picked a dozen or so last week.  I have scoured the rest of the back yard but there are no more in the other places where I found them last week.

Doing the Happy Dance !! Japanese Koi finished!!

After yet another four hour stint stitching, the Stumpwork Japanese Koi are finished.  They are not perfect but I've had enough of them, I want to move on with other seams and pieces for the Hearts and Hands for Sendai block. I have managed to shut up that whinging, whining Mrs Perfect who lives inside of me and wants everything to be just so.  Well, I have a message for her, the Koi are going to stay just the way they are because I want to get on with pond plants, Bamboo, Fans and everything else Japanese.  I set myself a challenge to do the Koi but I had no idea just how long Stumpwork takes.........ages!!!! Not to worry, I can move on now.

Stumpwork Koi fish on Japanese block

I have been thinking, drawing and finally stitching three Koi fish for the pond in the centre of my Hearts and Hands for Sendai block.  Here is the first fish and the five steps I had to take before I got there.  I am not particularly happy with the tail end which looks a bit thick and fat but that is due to the fact that I padded it with orange felt first.......maybe I shouldn't have done that???  Nevertheless, the other two will have to be done the same way as the first, I can't unpick him now!!  I stitched the fish in ONE strand of stranded cotton which had been dyed bright orange and bright golden yellow and used Blanket stitch, each row stitched into the one before.  The high-lights were sewn with one strand of Kreinik orange blending filament while his eyes are two black glass antique beads.

 Steps 1 and 2 in the top photo and steps 3, 4 and 5 in the bottom photo.

Naked Block for the Japanese Fundraising Quilt

I came home from work today and went straight out to the studio for three hours to sort through my fabric stash for some suitable jewel coloured fabrics for my block.  I even found two Japanese storks which I didn't know that I had and attached one to the block with fusible web to keep it in place until I can stitch around it.  Anyway, I think this naked block will give me lots of scope for incorporating Japanese icons such as Cherry Blossoms, bamboo, maple leaves, pagodas, fish, fans - I am looking forward to starting the embroidery on it now. Here's my naked block with only the pink bird iron in place.  The middle piece looks like water to me so I might start with a bright orange Koi.  There is not a lot we can do to help the people of Japan at this time apart from offering our prayers of support so hopefully when we have finished the quilts, the money raised will go a long way towards making life just a little bit more bearable for some.

2011 Tone on Tone RR

Yesterday I received Susan's naked block in the Southern Cross Crazies Tone on Tone Round Robin. I had no idea just how much stuff in the teal/purple/pink colour range I had in my stash until I started looking. Wow, it was like Christmas come early. Anyway I sat up last night sewing and again this morning and here is the end result. My only problem was remembering that there are four other people besides me that will work on this block and to make sure I only did 1/5th of the area.  I hope Susan likes what I have done because before I started, the block looking oriental now it looks floral.