Christmas Stars finally finished!

 

For those of you who happen to visit in search of some crafty news, I have finally finished my version of the Audrey & Maude Christmas Baubles quilt! This has been a work in progress for nearly two years and has been my handwork project for the past 18 months. The largest quilt I've made yet, it's entirely handquilted in perle cotton in a wavy pattern that I happily made up as I went along.

The quilt hung on the wall last Christmas (where the myriad safety pins looked like extra decoration) and will again grace the walls but this time finished! (And you know it's not long till Christmas when the department stores start setting up the Santa photo stands!) Thanks again to Helen, who gifted me the pattern a couple of years ago - I got there in the end!

I have really enjoyed seeing Christmas Stars evolve over time and am so pleased I stuck with it although at times all that handquilting seemed tedious and never-ending. Of course now I need a new project to keep my knees warm at night...and it's ready and waiting all sandwiched and basted. I'll show you a sneak peek in my next post.

Hopefully it won't be two months between now and the next post - I am counting down the weeks until I change jobs, which will happen in mid-December (all going to plan) - and I hope to be doing a little more crafty goodness than I've managed over the past two years.

Merry Christmas for 2011

Merry Christmas to all the crafty cats out there in Blogland. One week to go, two days of work, and two very excited children. Our Christmas tree is up and so is my WIP wallhanging called 'Christmas Baubles' - I haven't quite finished it, but came close! You might remember this quilt from earlier this year. It's from a pattern by Audrey & Maude. You can see I changed the borders a bit. Thanks Helen for the pattern - I can't believe it's taken me so long to make it!

It's now about two thirds quilted (all done by hand) with perle thread. I've done all the borders and the baubles and started the outline quilting around the tree. You can see all the pins are still in - kind of post-modern Christmas decorations!

I wish you all a very happy and safe Christmas and all the best for a wonderful 2012.

A new finish for the New Year

Happy New Year!


We farewelled Carl's Dad last Thursday - we all really enjoyed his visit - Romily in particular, but after 11 days he was very keen to get home and we were of course happy to have the house back to 'normal'. Don't get me wrong - he's an absolute pleasure to have come and stay, but there's nothing like being able to walk around your own house in your knickers, if you know what I mean!


Thanks for your comments on my last post - I guess when you put them all together like that it looks like a lot! I think a lot of us are probably more ambitious about the number of projects we'd like to complete than we can actually manage :)

Anyway, I did finish a project I started last year - some baby shoes and matching appliquéd onesies for a friend in my mother's group who had her bub just before Christmas. I was anxious to finish the present, as she makes big babies and this one was no exception! Over 10 pounds (5 kg) - yeeouch! I wanted to get the gift to her before Liam outgrew it all :)

(Click to enlarge)

Both ideas are from Stardust Shoes patterns - freebies available here and here. You could make endless numbers of appliquéd onesies - they're actually pretty easy, you can customise them any way you like and they look great! Let's just hope they all still fit!

We had a very quiet New Year's Eve and Day - I spent most of it sewing! I've also finished the second of three table runners, as well as finished off the teapot table mat. I'll post some pictures over the weekend.

I was back at work Wednesday through Friday this week and have all next week to get through before we're finally off on holidays! I can't wait - I really need the break. Work has been very busy these past nine months, and while I achieved a lot, I need some downtime with my family. Not long to go now!

Cheers to the end of a busy year

I did try to post this yesterday, but Blogger wouldn't play nice with my photos!


Merry Christmas! It was very merry here. We had a lovely Christmas Day - our first at home and Romily's first Christmas where she almost understood what was going on.

We were treated to a bit of a sleep-in, with Romily not waking until 8am. We then asked her if she wanted to go upstairs and see if Santa had been. She definitely did and then was thrilled to see that a) he had and b) he'd left some jelly beans scattered around too! She then went into the upstairs bedroom to wake up Granddad.

What followed was a lovely half an hour or so of her very carefully peeling her presents and loving every one of them. Once she'd opened all of the presents from Santa, and we'd opened our gifts to each other, it was time for the grand finale - a rocking horse made by Granddad! She, who is usually a little cautious around new things, jumped straight on and started rocking. It brought a big smile to all our faces - especially clever Granddad's!


We took a trip down to the local playground after breakfast and tired Romily out enough for her to have a sleep. When she woke up we sat down to a yummy lunch of cold seafood (oysters and prawns), followed by roast meats and salad. No room for pudding - fortunately we'd eaten that the night before!


It was so nice to have our Christmas celebration at home for a change - I love heading south to spend Christmas with my family, but it's a very long way, and always stressful, as we have to split our time between Melbourne (800kms from Canberra) and Bendigo (two hours from Melbourne), which makes Christmas Day not fun for anyone! It was also great that Granddad could spend some time with Romily at such a gorgeous age. He's with us until Friday, when he flies home.

Today was spent in recovery mode, Romily playing with her new toys, and Carl and his dad watching the start of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race on television. In the afternoon Romily and I hit the shops for the post-Christmas sales. Didn't end up buying much as most of it was junk! Did grab a couple of tops and a CD, plus some earrings to wear to work. Not bad!


The table runner I made for my FIL was well received. I still haven't finished the teapot, but hope to finish it tomorrow, in time for him to take back to Bendigo with him. Now I just have to finish the other ones before we head south in three weeks' time!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas too.

Some progress; something quilty!

We've had a lovely weekend. Some friends of ours popped around yesterday for some afternoon tea. I even got busy and baked a tea cake. Voila.

Afternoon tea anyone?

This morning another friend dropped around so our girls (both just turned two) could have a play date. I baked again, but mucked it up and forgot to add the flour to a fairly dry biscuit mix (Anzac Biscuits), so instead of nice crunchy biscuits, I ended up with what looked awfully like Brandy Snaps! (And no, I didn't photograph my failures!) My very polite guest ate a couple of flat biscuits anyway, god bless her! Her daughter, Lena, has two older sisters, so is much more confident and talkative than Romily. She did teach her a thing or two about cooking! Romily spent the rest of the day talking about her morning with Lena. Very cute seeing the two of them together.

Carl kindly offered to vacate the house with Romily this afternoon so I could catch a few hours of much-needed 'me time'. I put those few hours to good use and put in a cracking effort to get one of the tops of my Christmas Stars project finished (there are three in all).

Here's a blow-by-blow look at how my afternoon was spent (Mum, look away if you're watching):

Framed and looking good!

Topped and tailed.

Ready to be joined.

All stitched up (apologies for the flash - it got suddenly overcast).

With a cream border.

In hindsight, I wish I'd framed the green star with cream fabric. But I wasn't going to rip out all the seams and start over. It's my table runner and I'll cry if I want to! I think it's worked out nicely. Now that's one down, two to go! Then the quilting...!

---------------

I'll be missing in action for the first part of this week - crazy busy at work. I fly out tomorrow night to Adelaide, overnight there, set up a display at an event for work, fly to Sydney in the afternoon for the Eureka Prizes gala awards dinner, overnight Sydney, fly back to Canberra on Wednesday morning, work all day, head home to kiss husband and daughter and then head out to my local Neighbourhood Watch committee meeting (I'm the newsletter editor). Phew. Am tired just thinking about it! Have a good week everyone!

Quilty inspiration

Best of Show: Screeching Cockatoo by Helen Godden

Ah, it's that time of year again when Canberra's best quilters display their wares and so it was that Carl, Romily and I were out of the house by 9.30am today, heading off to the Canberra Craft Fair.

While possibly not up to last year's standard - where we were privileged to see some of Japan's best contemporary quilts - we still had a very enjoyable morning browsing the quilt show, as well as an interested wander through the 'Peaced with Love' exhibit - a bunch of quilts made by partners of Australian war veterans. Some of them were pretty terrible, some great, but all told a story about how war service had affected their lives.

We also had a bit of a browse through the stalls and checked out all the wares on sale. I only bought a couple of bits and pieces - some 'quilter cots' (kind of like the tip of a condom that you wear on your finger/s to help pull a loaded needle through when hand quilting), some tear-away stabiliser for embroidery, some photo-printing fabric (haven't tried this technique yet, so thought I'd give it a go) and a couple of half-metres of Christmas fabric for my Christmas Stars project, as I didn't have quite enough green.

Mekong Gold by Helen Godden

Here are some pictures of some of what I thought were the best quilts on show. Enjoy!

Mallee Topsoil by Beth & Trevor Reid

Tango in the Wind by Liuxin Newman (otherwise known as The Thimblelady) - each of those incredibly tiny leaves on this miniature quilt are needle-turned appliqué. Incredible craftsmanship...

Boabab Series II by Susan Mathews

Apologies for some blurriness - I was shooting without flash to get as accurate a colour reading as possible. Part two next post!

----------------------

Thanks also to everyone for your lovely comments on Romily's birthday post. It's nice to know she has so many 'aunties' out there in the Land of Blog!

Here's Princess Romily, wearing her lovely tiara on her birthday! Enjoy your weekends.

Some serious eye candy!

Oooh how exciting, my order from equilter arrived! Thanks OzCountry Tracey for the tip-off :) I am planning to make a 'big girl's' quilt for Romily for when she moves into a single bed next year some time.

As you can see from my wild, fresh and funky fabrics, I may have to buy a couple of more subtle background fabrics, as I don't want the effect to be too riotous!

And, as you can also see, Bashka has adopted the fabric as his own - as many quilting cats seem to across Blogland!

We are all well and truly on the road to recovery, which is a huge relief! Fortunately Carl wasn't as sick as Romily and I were, so we are all feeling much better, with residual coughs and runny noses the only remaining 'issues'. We hope that by the time the weekend is out we are all back to 100%. I have Monday as a holiday (just because), so it's a lovely long weekend for us. I hope to get some more work done on my Starry Night project and get all this lovely new fabric washed and pressed ready to go. I have drawn up my own pattern, based on some simple Japanese blocks that Fairybread Jenni posted a photo of some time ago. This is going to be my 'long-term' project, which I'll work on over the next 12 months or so.

Starry starry night

No, not Van Gogh (although I have seen the original (copy above) in the Musee D'Orsay in Paris and it is a stunning piece), and not Don McLean (although I do like that song - and even more now that I know it was written about/for Van Gogh), but Christmas stars!

Following Anne's stars pattern (which she so kindly sent me), I've been making nine of these lovely little stars over the last couple of days. I won't tell you exactly how I'm going to use them, as at least two of the recipients read this blog! But I'll be sure to post photos on Flickr so you can see the projects before Christmas! (And my family can not look if they don't want to spoil the surprise!)

My little helper

I described the stars as 'little' for a good reason - despite Anne's pattern saying the unfinished size for each star would be 9.5", mine are only 8" unfinished! I wasn't quite sure what I had done wrong, until I worked out that I had sewn the bits together lining up the edges pre-stitching instead of working out how the even edge would be formed after stitching, so that when pressed and opened out, the edge wasn't even, it was a quarter inch short. So I ended up losing quite a bit of star when trying to match up seams, etc.


A beginner's mistake, but one I'm not too fussed about, as for this project, 8" unfinished is just fine - a half inch border will be added to each star (1" unfinished) to frame it, so the finished size with the frame will actually be 8", which is pretty much spot on for what I've got planned. I like the stars as they are, so there won't be any remaking. :)

Scrutinising mum's work

Another silly mistake - when cutting the bits for the star, I got a bit carried away and sliced straight through a piece. I didn't realise until too late and I had cut through all nine layers! A bit of stabiliser on the back and some micro-zigzag stitches and I made a pretty good fix. One that will hardly be noticeable by the time the whole project is stitched and quilted. I hope!

Am still feeling awful and so is Romily, although she seemed to be a little improved today. Poor Carl has a 'tickly' throat, so we are hoping that he's not getting it too. Very hopeful anyway.