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

Fabric

Okay, I forgot to let you know that when my daughter won her category, she won $200 worth of fabric from a shop called Voodoo Rabbit. I think that is a generous prize and I love this fabric!!! I mounted some of the fabric on canvas and made pillows and will make her a backpack out of it. With the leftovers :) I will make a quilt mmmmmmmmm cannot wait :). Have a look at the delectable goodies.....

The girls are done by J Wecker Fisch and they are called Handmaids for Quilting treasures. Just gorgeous. The day of the dead fabric is byBaile de calaveras, which I think is the month ofmay and the date of the actual day of the dead which I can't remember :) De Leon design group for Alexander Henry, just stunning too, they have pictures of Frida on them as well. The butterfly design is by Tim Holtz! It is called Eclectic elements and butterflight, that is yummy edible fabric!!

Canvas Wall hanging

Gorgeous pillow, same ladies as above

Another gorgeous wall hanging

Day of the dead fabric

This is part of the Handmaids collection, so original!

Same collection,

Cute pillow

Decided to make a ipad case for my daughter with the day of the dead skulls and inside with the TIm  Holtz butterflight fabric

I need to get some clips for the flap

Can you see Frida?

Each part is so cool!

The handmaids again, so cool

Matching... yum

Day of the dead skulls, haven't even used this fabric yet!

Handmaids again, this is so unique

Close up

Funky skulls

Tim Holtz Butterflight

Well that was fun :) I convince myself that I have enough fabric and I don't need to buy any more :) then I see wonderful fabric like this and well, you want it allllll. The shop Voodoo Rabbit is amazing and I could have spent my savings in there :) and totally worth it too! :) I will be happy to play with the bundle for a while and make something cool out of it all.

In the meantime, went up to Mount Cootha tonight and it was so gorgeous up there. I am a quilters pleasure on instgram where i posted a photo. You just want to live up there :)

I have been reading a series of books on an English village written by Rebecca Shaw and they are cute and a good storyline. It's nice to read something without a lot of violence. When I read Lee Child, it is confronting and in your face. That is what is good about it, but it's nice to have a break from that :).

Loving The 100 Still, great show and can't wait for each new episode. What are you enjoying watching?
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