Been a While....

Well, not sure if anyone reads the blog, so I have stopped for a while :) Thought I might start up again and show my work in progress.

I entered two quilts into the Queensland Quilt show and my daughter entered one too. I didn't win but my daughter won for secondary student category with her own designed quilt...

And I got an email from the owner of  a big craft store here in OZ and she wanted to put one of my quilts on her blog!! Have a look here. It helped me feel better about no sales on my etsy store :) and not placing at the show. I love this art quilt and I am real happy with the quality of my machine work on this one.

I have made a pieced quilt for the first time in years!!:) and I loved it and it isn't perfect but I am proud of how well I did :). Now I am doing the free motion and loving it. I would loooove a long arm still, especially when it takes me weeks and weeks to do the quilt when I know it would take a few days on a long arm. But that's life :).

Have a look...

I love the difference between the plain quilt and then the machine quilted part. You can see how much impact the machine quilting has and how it makes the quilt look so much better.

Went to the craft fair and got a few things, it was so fun to shop for thread instead of just viewing it on the internet :) I wanted to see if I could find something new (to me) and see if it would work. And I did :) I went to one stall and found this...
It is a sewslip mat and it is tacky on the underside so it sticks to the board and the top side is all slippery. It is fantastic... except that it is already curling at the edges and when that tacky underside hits the quilt it sticks and I am stuck!! It is real annoying. I have tried blue tack but that doesn't work too well. I don't want to sticky tape it down as when you go to sew normally it won't move. So I need to remove the mat at some point :).

 

This is the annoying curl where it should be flat.


And this

Now the ring is made by Sharon Schamber and is amazing!! I no longer have to pull the quilt through the machine, I can just use this metal ring to manoeuvre the quilt around. It is fantastic and I am glad I paid $30 for it. The only thing I would have liked is for it to be a larger circle, so that you don't have to stop so often to move the circle and then have that stop start point in the quilt. Otherwise, it is great.



Houston quilt festival was just on and I love trawling the internet reading everyone's posts about the show and the quilts. I will go one day and spend a fortune :) and it will be so fun. I love seeing the photos of some of the quilts and just staring at them trying to work out how they did them!! That is cool. This was one that got me...

Hurricane by Jancke De Vries Bodinga

And this one, love this one...  Margaret Solomon-Gunn
It won judges choice.

I think all the quilts entered are amazing, and they all look so much better in person. All the machine work that has gone into the above quilt just can't be seen properly in this photo. I need to go :)

I am having huge struggles with my machine!! the thread is breaking and it is skipping stitches. I have spent hours cleaning and changing needles and checking tension and threading on the machine. Now I have found a checklist and am going through that. I didn't pay very much for it, so it isn't worth servicing. I think a new sewing machine for christmas might be a great present :). Anyone got any great ideas on how to fix these problems ?:).

Just tried some coconut and mango ice cream.... soooooooo good!! my fav flavour at the moment :)
Jane

New Ideas

Ok, so I remembered that since I missed the quilt show, I no longer need to keep this gorgeous thing off etsy, I put the Dream Tree on.

I also put on the two I finished yesterday, so here's hoping someone likes them :).

I have had an idea!! I made sure I noted that my brain actually worked :) I have pages filled in my sketch book with a whole theme of a cute girl and her heart and its all about love. I am so excited to start!!! Bit busy to start today, but tomorrow let's go!!.

Off to a thanksgiving dinner at our American's friends tonight, will take photo's of the huge amount of food :) everything is done large for American's isn't it ?:) It's finally raining here and yesterday the temp was 34, today it's quite cool. Nice.

 I am loving the Gamache book already!! Louise Penny is amazing!! Unfortunately, locking myself away isn't going to happen. I am bringing some of the mash potato for the thanksgiving dinner so I am off to peel 6 kilo's of potatoes. Fun :) I will be watching Netflix to get me through it. Love Netflix, and Hulu.  

Jane

Sore

Wow!!! Did a workout this morning, and it hurt!! And it hurts every time I get up :) I know I am losing weight when that happens. I have even done this workout before but that didn't help :) My butt better look great that's all I think of when that pain kicks in:)

On other news, I went to sign up to be a member of QLD quilters again, only so I can enter the show, you need to be a member, and went on the website and found that the entries had closed to the show this year and I had missed the deadline by 5 days! :) So on the bright side I saved myself $100 in joining and quilt entry fees. So now I am uploading those quilts onto etsy  so I can sell them and feel even better than if I had won a prize, and that is a big IF :).

So now I need to work on taking a better photo than this.........

Hehehhehe straight would be good :) And some cooking classes too would be good, I have lost the ability to make a decent meal!! Last night I made a really yummy chicken casserole in the slow cooker and I used a chicken curry recipe base and it didn't seem that hot. But then we sat down for dinner and wow, it must have fermented while in the slow cooker hehehe it was spicy! Yum But spicy. but too spicy to eat with enjoyment. I just don't cook like I used to. I totally think it is because I have cooked every night for the last.... well 30 years as I cooked most meals when I was at home, even as a kid. So the consensus is - I am over it. :) Wish it was that easy hey.

Anyway, for a break I am going away with a friend for a few days soon so I am really looking forward to that, No cooking there!! no way!!:)

That cool author I mentioned last post, Dorothea Benton Frank, well I read another book and loved loved loved it. Now I am about to try a Jim Butcher novel, it sounds great.

Oh and I made some deeeeeelicious choc chips biscuits, quick come over and get some before we eat them all and then I get up too early in the morning and work them off :) all that pain for a choc chip biscuit mmmmmmmmmm
Jane

Stuff!!

This week has been a bit full on. A few things happened this week...... I have worked out why I am so tired, found out that my daughters eyesight is rapidly deteriorating and that my son got bullied so bad at school.

So.... tiredness. My eyes have been streaming lately, at first it just started with them watering but this last week they were just watering constantly. So we were booked in to see the optometrist for my daughter and that is where we found out her eyesight is deteriorating too quickly, but thankfully there is a great solution of wearing contacts at night and then you don't need glasses during the day. A bit expensive but so worth it to saver her eyes. I would love to do it too. Hopefully this will work in slowing down the myopia. So I asked the optometrist quickly if she could have a look at my eyes and she said I had a virus and from that a severe allergic reaction. Gave me two names of drops to put in my eyes and they are getting so much better and that sheer exhaustion is gone :) wohoo. So good news there.

My son is tiny, much smaller than other children, my genetic fault sad to say :) and this week he got tackled by some kid and then it got worse the next day, he strangled him and hurt his neck a lot. The school was fantastic and dealt with it straight away and I was satisfied with the outcome. So he is much better and isn't bothered by it at all. Good. :)

So a full on week but with a great outcome, very happy with that.

I have finished this........

Bound it in a gorgeous gold fabric that I have run out of and have decided that it is gorgeous for bindings so will have to go find some more. I am really happy with this and now just have to find some wall space to hang it :)

So the next quilt will be a whole cloth quilt on raw silk mmmmm gorgeous  and a swirl pattern with all sorts of designs all over it. You'll love it and want to buy it from my etsy store :).

Read a great book by Dorothea Benton Frank and will be getting some more of hers, just a great read.

Jane

Flower

Ok, so I did this......

Different angle...
I tried to get the petals to glow with the gold metallic paint.....

So now I thought since the paint is all out and on my desk that I might as well start on my next idea which is a mix of italian countryside with rolling hills and farm land in a valley. There will be an attempt at a villa and big old shed :) will see how it all turns out.

Middle child had another tick today!!!! Went to school when they called me and I disposed of a tick in her back!! That definitely wasn't there a day ago as we are checking them. Gross. Had a great magnifying glass and these awesome tweezers from school that I will purchase myself. Got the tick out in one swift move. Ughhhhhh.
Jane

New Stuff and Ticks :)

Well we all had a Saturday free so off for some family time together geocaching, so we headed to a local park and went off the beaten track, found the best geocache, it was so much fun, then moved onto the next one. Didn't find that one which is always a bummer but oh well, came home had home made chips and chilled out. The next day middle daughter says my ear is itchy, well yuck she had three ticks, tiny tiny tiny ones behind her ears. We were in church hehehehe so out we go to the first aid kit and find the tweezers and pull them out, ughhhh so gross.

When we get home we check ourselves thoroughly, we had done this the day before but because they were so small we missed them but by now the ticks were irrating the skin so there was a red patch around them so it was a bit easier to spot :), and poor middle child had 8!!! Poor thing. It is soooo hard to get ticks out with a screaming moving thrashing child :) but champion me did it while hubby held her down :). Then the other kids had one and three. Then we had to check ourselves and we had one each ughhhh but we got them all out except for some gross pincher left in middle child's back and I didn't want to dig so I took her to the doctors and he got it out. Yuck. So we are debating whether we ever go off the beaten track again :) Middle child fell over in the bush so we think she fell into a big nest of them. shiver just thinking about it.

The other down side was because we found so many we washed everything we had touched and I had at last count 9 loads of washing that I did and folded in the last two days, along with mega cleaning the floors in case they were lurking :) Hubby cleaned the car and vacuumed like a trooper. It looks great :) one benefit there :) So now to rest :)

Went to French and Mor for morning tea with friends mmmmmmmmm the pastries are works of art.

I did this before the tick infestation :) it is for my daughters youth group for their notice board, I wanted to do something to make it look a bit prettier :) hope it works hehehehe


I absolutely loved blending the paints and think it turned out better than I hoped for which is so cool :)

Finished product, now to free motion all over :)

A couple of weekends ago I went a saw a local production of Phantom of the Opera and wow!! It was fantastic and I loved it so much. It was captivating and mesmerizing and I will be going to more of their productions. They are called the Savoyards and they are so professional.
Off to paint a flower with the blending method I am in love with, never painted a flower before so something new for me :) if it is any good I will show you, if it sucks, maybe not :)
Jane

Stuff

So I have finished the tree quilt. Going to have to come up with other ideas besides trees :). It looks so much better in person of course :) Will take a better photo too :) obviously I need photography lessons :)

These leaves are a deeper green so that they give the impression of the foreground leaves

Flowers at the bottom of the quilt, and again the green grass is darker than that

The feathers do look like they are falling down from the tree :) yay

And I am working on this....

I am getting through it faster than I thought, once again that dream of owning a long arm would come in real handy right now :) but since my craft area shares with the dining area and if you sit in the dining chair behind my chair at my desk you wont be able to get out of your chair :), there isn't really anywhere to fit a long arm. Talking about space, I helped a friend move and her new house is so gorgeous that I got a little house envy :) there is so much room!! and now she has her own craft room, it looks so lovely. I had to go home and get over the urge to move in with her and her family :) well just my craft stuff anyway :)

Watching Continuum still, just got the latest episode, very cool. Give it a go and tell me what you think.
Also am reading another Michael Connelly book, his Harry Bosch series and am enjoying that. What are you reading?

Jane

Finished!!!

I finished the Flowers art quilt, and it's now on Etsy too.

 

Here's hoping it sells :)

Working on another baby quilt for a client, I did animals for this one and they look so cute :). Now to put it all together. Last time I made one I forgot to put one of the strips with the nine patch!! duh. I was ironing them when I noticed. Must have been tired. So will be much more aware this time :).

I am thinking of purchasing a lesson on a website called Craftsy, it seems really good value and the lessons last forever. Anyone every purchased one?

Jane