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

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

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