Wakfu Done

This quilt is Done! nice and fast :) Now on his bed and he is real happy :)

Now I can keep going on my next project, tree mosaic thingy :) lots of colour and lots of blending hopefully :) If it all works out.

Bought another ebook! I was such a staunch real book person, but it is so cool to have a book on my ipad and I don't have to wait for it to come out in Australia :) It's a Ben Elton book called Time and Time again. It's about.... time travel :) and I am totally absorbed :) Need to get audio books so I can listen AND paint, bliss :)

It's rained here, which is great for the drought, but not great for our plans to go to Kondalilla Falls, oh well another time. It is so gorgeous up there. More time to paint at least.

Jane

Finished, but....

Well I finally finished the quilt for my husband's cousin :) felt like it took me forever. But it always feels like it never is truly finished. :). Once I finished the binding, I then spent two episodes of Warehouse 13 cutting off the threads of the back :) it was fun watching the episodes :).

Have a look

My son wants a quilt now with Wack Foo written on it :) It is a tv show the kids have discovered. I am not even sure if that is the right spelling :) will have to work on that :) So I know what I am doing next.

Just had a big storm here and got a huge amount of rain in a real short time. It was so nice and now it is cool. It was so humid today, so the cool change is so nice. The only problem with the deluge is that is has flooded all the trains leaving the city and no one can get home. Bummer. 

Watching Life Below Zero at the moment, such a cool show. It would be fun to live in the wilds of alaska for a few weeks, but after that I would miss so much :) I would get a lot of quilting done :).

Jane

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

Anyone????

I have started another Felicity quilt, well I started and finished a bed quilt for my daughter. So hard to put a big bed quilt through the domestic machine. Why can't I have $15,000 lying around doing nothing so I can buy a longarm????:)

So I drew out my design for my next Felicity story and then realised I had jumped ahead in the story :) so I drew up the story before the one I started and am now painting them simultaneously :)

It's been slow on Etsy and here..... not sure if anyone reads this thing :) I have started to get myself out there on instagram - aquilterspleasure, and I figured that maybe I might get more reads that way :).

We also got a new member to our family......

A mini schnauzer, we love him and he is soooooo gorgeous!!

Just discovered a new show, well new to me :) Longmire, it is i it's third season and I am only at season one episode one, and I am totally addicted already!!
Got some trashy books out from the library :) I am sure I will enjoy reading deep literature.
Jane

Felicity

So I have finished another of the Felicity series and I still think that it looks like a kid did it but.... oh well all that work I might as well put it up on Etsy :)


Here's a random photo of my bobbin filled with dust :) Gee I wonder why it doesn't sound so good :)

Felicity and Introducing Frederick, Freddy to his friends... :)

Had a real yucky week last week, think it might have been a bit hormonal! Wonderful things happen when you turn 40 :) I got pimples on my chin and greasy hair and serious mood swings!!. mmmmmmmmm Nice! I feel better this week thank goodness at least :) Still have greasy hair! What's the go with that?? Haven't changed my good shampoo so got no idea what's going on there.

Well off to get the kids from school and take the oldest one to violin then come home and cook dinner. I am feeling really relaxed just thinking about it :).

Jane

Anzac Day

We went to our local Anzac day march this morning and the kids marched with their schools. I love watching the march and love the feeling of Anzac day and how it helps us remember the men that gave their lives for us. My father has medals from his father and grandfather and it is wonderful to hear the stories that he tells passed down through the family. I am so proud of our children for getting up early and marching to support this day. Now we are relaxing and I am coming off a sugar splurge from eating the leftover cheesecake from my birthday :) so now I can feel the detox from the sugar already.
Cravings are high and I want to eat anything!. It never ends. But I have lost weight so this is an incentive :).

Went bushwalking last weekend, it didn't rain!! Amazing. It was so gorgeous up in the mountains and it makes me want to live up there, don't worry about the massive hours of commute to work or school or church hehehehe. The view was just incredible. At one point you can see the city!!!

The sun shining through the trees, it looked amazing...

I love the pockets of sun shining through the gaps in the trees

Plane flying over the Anzac march, was too busy clapping to take photo's :)

Very cool

Now I am still working on my mosaic piece, school's back so now I have a couple more hours spare, so I have been trying to get as much done as possible.

This one is just full of feathers, love doing them and there is allll this free space :) perfect

So off to read my fantastic book, it's the Maisie Dobbs series by Jaqueline Winspear and is the third in the series, trying to get them in order. Really enjoying the setting, 1920's and the strong, smart woman as the main character going it alone.
Jane

Want Rain ?

Every time we have planned to go for a bush walk to a gorgeous mountain near us it rains!. So if you want rain, I will plan to go bush walking :) I am thinking positive thoughts that it will stop raining in about ten minutes, the sun will come out and it will all dry out till Tuesday morning :) Then it can rain. Alas, this does not look likely. Instead I will go shopping, bummer.

We have school holidays at the moment and we were going to take the kids to the great barrier reef, but then we decided we want to go to the U.S so we are saving our money for that. So we have planned something for each day of the holidays. We have gone to the museum and the science centre, hmmm won't be doing the science centre again,

Funny shots at the science centre :)

 then the beach

 - it even clouded over for us then!,

animal show,

Bearded dragon

Python

Squirrel glider

Sugar glider

Barking owl and it really does bark like a dog :)

Shopping with their allowance and bowling. We went to a helicopter show that was a bit of a fizzer but still cool to see the helicopters.

So going for a bushwalk tomorrow is about the only day we can do it. You watch, it won't rain for the rest of the week :). Some farmer really needs this rain and I am whining :)

I found a fantastic looking vintage shop the other day and so I am really looking forward to going back and having a look at the gorgeous goodies.

I have done the painting on the Leaf.... not sure what to call it, maybe something with Mosaic in it.....

Okay, so I went and made dinner in between, scrumptious enchiladas and potato bake mmmm and we were discussing cosplay and dressing up and I said that if I was hot I would be wonder woman and my son says " but mum wonder woman is skinny!" hahahahahahahahaha he just kept on playing on his computer :) soooooo funny :)

Found a good author that I am enjoying, Hester Browne and have found some fun shows on Hulu. Rehab Addict is fun, it would be great to be able to use all sorts of tools and be gorgeous and skinny as well as do up houses to look amazing :) that is what I will be when I grow up.
Tired, had sick kids and have been up all sorts of hours and times looking after them. Sleep.
Jane