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

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

Pretty Stuff

I dream of a garden filled with flowers and trees and swaying branches :) dappled sunlight and cookies on a plate near a gorgeous garden bench. Food is always involved hehehehe. So since I don't even have one tree in my yard, I will settle with flowers instead :) so I am starting to fill the garden sloooowly with flowers. I bought three terracotta pots and about ten different flowers and two bags of soil and it cost me $80, not too bad. I have tried to grow flowers from seed, but it has been so dry here lately that they didn't grow :(. I will try again now that it has rained just a little.

Here are the gorgeous flower pots....

Had this one already, this has daisy's and petunia's that are having trouble growing due to the lack of water :) My yard is bare :) will try and plant a tree.

Now for some quilting stuff :) I am nearly finished with my next one called My Heart! and am loving it.

In her hand will be pieces of her heart that I have sewn onto the wash away and there will be shattered pieces on the floor. Poor girl :) It gets better for her :)

I'm really loving her hair in this one, it isn't flying around the place as she is down and sad.... Also she has boring flat shoes with no bows to show that she doesn't care right now :)

I finally bought the most amazing fabric paint that I have wanted for so long!! I have a few colours already and have used all the gold and it is the best paint I have ever used. I am so excited to get these paints. Have a look if you need some fabric paint :) soooo gorgeous, and I am very curious to see what the gold black looks like :) I bought some more wash away from Kraftkolour as well as it was half the price as any other place I have found it. And I got some thinner as paint gets thicker over time and I can just add some thinner and wohooo I can use the paint again. Getting so excited about the most mundane stuff :)

Made some choc chip biscuits for the first time in moooonths!!! I have decided I am going to have to relax the diet just a little and up the exercise. I have been obessing over food this week and don't want to get too bad. Choc chip biscuits are a good start :) Next is choc chip hot cross buns hehehehe I am going to do my interval training twice in the morning and then throughout the day go for a killer bike ride up a huge hill in my area :) here comes a better body by my birthday :) dreams are good right??:)

Jane

Progress

In between eating myself a couple of kilo's heavier and all the school holiday arguments, I actually got some sewing done!!

Christmas day was at our home and I forgot to take any photos. Bummer. We had a great day though and so much yummy food. I made a huge trifle and forgot to put it out for dessert!! I got worried thinking I was going to have to eat it all myself. Oh no!! :) but no fear, my family side Christmas was boxing day so I took it along to that and it all went. Sigh, I really didn't mind just taking a spoon and eating it right out of the bowl. I could have done it and then entered Guinness book of records for the most trifle eaten at Christmas.

Instead I sat down with a bowl of chips and some leftover cheesecake shop baked cheesecake and watched two episodes of Person Of Interest. That was a great night. Definitely had a sugar hangover the next morning. Still worth it.

Only two weeks of school holidays has passed and it feels like sooo much longer. It has been good but just looong days. I want them to do lots of different things throughout the day, not just computers. I don't know how teachers do it. They are awesome. I am enjoying spending the time with the kids and it has been fun too, so will keep that in mind when they are going off at each other.

So here's a pic of the quilt, and now I am going to sew all these cute hearts onto the tree and floating though the air and in her basket. I have already done the two hearts for the next idea I have so I am excited to start on that even though I haven't even finished this one :).


Ok, so this is what happens when you leave the room and the kids get the camera, gross :)
His eyes are nearly popping out of his head hahahaha and I do not know what he is eating.

Gorgeous moon...

I made some yummy cinnamon rolls at Christmas and they were alot of work but worth it. A few of them didn't have enough filling in them and were a bit dry, but otherwise mmmmm
dough rising..... so cool

I stuck them in the garage to rise, and what a great idea, our garage is so hot and so they rose really well :)

Pretty Christmas present...

hearts ready to sew on the quilt

 It took me so long to sew this little pile of hearts!! it should have been double at least.

 Metallic thread still breaks!! So annoying.

 Looks really appetizing in the bag doesn't it :) I would make a great food photographer. If I took it out I would have eaten it and I have to control myself :). So it stayed in the bag. I ate the corner just so I could tell you it was good.
This one is especially yummy... crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside. Full of fatty goodness.

Now I am off to buy lots vegetables and fruit to conterbalance the sugar flowing through my body right now. I also made the most yummiest fudge too. Wow that really is a sugar rush. I am still exercising hehhehe which helps with the first mouthful of the cinnamon rolls. Addicted to Kitchen Cousins on HGTV at the moment, they are 20 minutes which is all I sit down at one time for. So fun to see gorgeous kitchens being built. Weird really, but fun.
Jane

More on the kids painting

Okay, so I decided I would go ahead with the kids painting :) I have all these ideas like I said for other ones and I am so excited for them. It is such a pity that what is in our heads  doesn't always translate onto paper :)

So I have done the hair and a bit of the dress. 

The eye lash and mouth are not touching, it just looks like it :)

It is school holidays, day two and the kids were already banned from the computer yesterday hehehehe good start. Today they are hanging with friends so it is a good day. So all I have to do is have friends over for the next 6 weeks and we will avoid the fighting. Good plan. 

Still exercising and putting myself through pain, but it is worth it since someone said I was skinny!!! Holy cow, I was so excited it was like I had won an award :) fist pumping ensued :) 

Discovered Miss Marple movies on netflix wohooo, so have been watching them while folding and cooking dinners, so cool. I like the real old ones with Joan Hickson :) the real Miss Marple.

So if anyone has any strength that they want to give me for Christmas, I would love that as  a gift, then I can get through the next six weeks :)

Jane

A New One

I have that same problem as always, I think my latest piece looks like a child drew it :) I am very hesitant to even post a picture... I am using the wash away to make love hearts to be the leaves on the tree and floating on the breeze and will be in her basket. So at least that will look okay :)

These are the hearts with the wash away, love this stuff, very cool.

Ok, here is the undecided item, am I going to continue or not??? I have all these other drawings tied in with her and her heart, but if this one sucks, no go. I am hesitating whether it sucks too much or is on the border and I can do my machine work and transform it :) yeah that's what's going to happen. I am thinking of putting words into the sky, sound good? It is deliberately not a close up :)

Did a killer interval training workout today, did plank jumps and mountain climbers, both kill and tonight my legs are sooo sore!! I also did breakdance push ups, ouch ouch ouch. I collapse after the 8th one on each set, I did three sets this morning, and don''t forget the situps, but I don't mind them :) Off to bed to rest my legs :) then to get up and do it all again....
School holidays are one week away, I will remain positive and firm and convince the kids that there is no fighting in this home :) Leave me in my dream world for a while please.
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

So Much!!

Just came back from the optometrist so much poorer!! Wow, I shouldn't be shocked by how much everything costs and how every child costs me a fortune. Silly me I still get shocked.

My daughter needed some special focusing lenses, which I am very happy to know that it will help her. Her comment was "Wow everything has stopped moving around and I can read it so much better". So it is all worth it of course.

So I have finished the client order for a pillow/quilt. They look very cute :)

I finally listed the swirls with the inktense pencil, I ended up calling it Happiness With Colour. Trying to be more indepth and creative with my titles. It is a bit tricky sometimes :)

So I am really happy with this and love the colour that I get from the inktense pencils, just so vibrant.

Another big storm a while ago and can you see what I see ....:)

See the nose and the mouth and the eyebrow and it even looks like there is hair streaming back :)

And I have also finished my other piece, I did all the machine work first on this piece and then used the inktense pencils to colour in and shade. Love this one too, just need to bind it and this will be going on etsy too. 

You can see the S before I coloured it...

Now coloured, so fun!!

All Done :)

So now the bigges challenge is what next? Need an idea I think.
About to start the new Louise Penny book, so I could just disappear for a while, mmmm that sounds good :).
Jane