A short progress report

Battling off a nasty virus for the last week or so - everyone on Melbourne seems to have had it - means that my energy levels haven't been great. I'm *almost* ready to start complaining about the cold weather and rain, but hey, you gotta love the fact that the drought seems to have broken.

And besides - I'm leaving on a jet plane next Friday to the sunny side of the world. Barcelona here I come, oh and La Manga ......oh and yes a weekend in Paris on the way. Now don't feel sorry for me - I know it's tough - but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.

If you have any addresses for your favourite patchwork or needlework shop in any of these places - do tell! I will have time to visit. And I should say - this is all WORK not holiday (at least that's my story).

So - what have you been up to? Fabulous projects I have seen while dropping in silently to your blogs. Fantastic creativity and inspiring work - I'm itching to start something new. But I'm still showing discipline!

We have another machine quilter (other than Helen) who we send work from our group to - Katrina. Merri had a quilt booked in but then realised that she didn't have a backing! So being an opportunist - I jumped straight in - Merri was kind enough to offer her spot to me and we delivered Pennsylvania to Katrina last week. Of course I hadn't quite finished it when the offer came up so a few candles were burned getting it ready. Of course that means I ran out of the house without taking a photo! Sorry........ hopeless I know. Here are the last photos of it I have.

A close up of the centre.


The backing fabric is called Washington's Legacy. Looks good together I think.


Apart from that I'm just pottering around. Trying to attach the binding to DNQTTT - it's big and heavy so this is a big job. And I've gone back to GTASB to piece together the blocks. Here are the final blocks for the project.

I think this is called Lily - but I could be wrong!


Some pinwheels,


and the beginnings of putting it all together.


Some filler blocks need to be attached to make the whole thing go together. It's quite fun - I'm hand piecing the whole thing.

By the time I return it will be almost time for the show! If you are interested there is an article about our group in the current issue of Patchwork and Stitching magazine. It gives the dates of Quilts in the Barn, but I will also post them before I leave next Friday.

Until then, stay well!

Remember me?

Well hello everyone, I hope you haven't forgotten me. I am missing you heaps - so I thought I'd drop by just to tell you what's been happening. I won't say "I've been so busy" because by now you know I always am - and so many of you are the same. Trying to juggle so many things; work, family and various different interests. If only we had more time - I wish I could survive on less sleep!

It certainly has been a very busy semester one way or another. But my exam is now done and a team of markers is busy doing what a marking team does! I've also had a rather hectic out of hours life - social functions, school responsibilities, performances (my darling NOD in Alice in Wonderland - she had various roles including tweedledum. The tweedley pair were show stoppers, so funny), photo shoots for Quilts in the barn, presentations.........so all enjoyable but not much time for sewing left over. And the next couple of weeks is also busy. I will be giving some talks (I recently won a teaching award so I get to be a guest speaker as a reward - I'd prefer cash - what's going on there?) I fly to Malaysia next week for a ridiculously short amount of time, then I fly to Sydney for a couple of days at the National curriculum forum. Better pack some sewing. And I will miss my SSS meeting - DISASTER!!! Darling sisters if you're around my area or Parkville - do come for coffee - I miss you, large sob.

OK - enough of that - I suppose you want to see some pictures, do you? I'm just going to tootle around in my room and see what I can find - must be something in here to photo for you. Well I have some things - but not much of my work. I'm about half way through Phebe's third border - looks the same as the other two which you have seen. But I have also been pootling around with the twinkly little stars, which will be the next frames. I have completed 24/80 and have half completed 8 more. Lots of cutting done, so that should speed things up. Whilst cutting the 75 zillion fabrics I'm using, I noticed how many of them are Judie Rothermel fabrics. Isn't she great? How much do we owe her for her great fabric designs? Here's a photo


I have done a bit of knitting and have nearly finished my Noro jumper - a bit more of a sleeve to go is all. The yarn is quite coarse and I'm a sensitive flower so I hope I can wear it! Love the colours though.


The last delivery of GTASB arrived about a month ago - and I haven't touched it.


In fact I haven't touched the months before either. So I was in it right to the last hurdle! But I'm so intent on getting Phebe done for the show, I have dropped everything else. But soon as the applique is done I will be back in there!

And just because you've waited sooooo patiently - here are the last of my AQC photos - the Kim MacLean ones. I'm sure you've seen most of these already though. That's OK - you might like to see them again.

This is a beautiful quilt. I think Kim made another version all in Kaffe's fabrics - but I prefer this one.

A lovely floral basket quilt.

Another of my favourites and I was so gald to be able to see it in the flesh. I have a version in process (lots cut, nothing sewn) on a chocolate brown background.

This one was a surprise - I love the layout and the fabrics were gorgeous. Love the freshness of the blue and white.

I had a great time at the AQC - meeting up with Lizzie and Nat and.........I have met Lizzie on a couple of occasions now and she seems like an old friend. So enthusiastic and generous with her time. It occurred to me at the time (and again now) what a great group of women quilters are. I have e-met so many wonderful women through this blog and really met some others through quilting, it is truly amazing.

I hope to have some more progress to show you soon. I'm certainly enjoying peeking at yours. Happy days,
Deb

Post Easter Post

Hello everyone - whether or not you celebrate Easter, I hope you had a fabulous break with plenty of time to spend with family and your favourite sewing project.

Easter is the holiday I love the most - no, not because of the chocolate - but because the weather in Melbourne is so glorious at this time of the year. And also because it is a long enough break to do something without being too long. The Uni shuts Friday through Tuesday and the kids are on holidays from school. I took an extra days leave on Thursday - and made the road trip to sewing at Clare's accompanied by my darling daughter and two of her friends. It was a lively ride! We had a great day - thanks Clare, I really needed you all.

NOS took off camping with his mates - the rest of us plus another of NOD's friends took off to Apollo Bay for a few days. A lovely seaside town - very relaxing. Of course I always pack plenty of sewing when I go away - and actually do - none. When will I learn?

Nevertheless, here is a little progress to show


these are the last of the GTASB for March. The April pack arrived


and very exciting, has the making up instructions, so when I have finished these blocks I will start putting together the top and then I guess the borders will come in May. Although I have thoroughly enjoyed this project, I will be glad to finish it since I have many jobs to do before the exhibition.

I am putting the last couple of pieces on my Phebe centre - finally found the last bits of fabric to do the job - believe me I auditioned many! In the meantime I have been getting some of the other frames done - like this one

I love the pink in this. It's from Windham - called New Nation.

After this is all together I will start the applique borders. But to tell you the truth - I'm missing my MM project, so I think I will do a block of that first.

And since I haven't talked flowers for some time - here are some snaps


a new hibiscus I just planted


a rose I put in a year ago - it's a beauty - repeat flowering - very prolific -called Many Happy Returns.

Another new plant - a Delbard rose, gorgeous old fashioned shape and yellow colour.


And finally a book I bought. I love bulbs and this is a major reference on the subject - superb photos. It is written for the USA but I can deal with not having an Australian climate map in there - I have plenty already - so it shouldn't be a problem.

I hope you enjoy the lovely weather if you are in Melbourne. I promise to have Phebe up on the weekend.

Take care and happy gardening,

Deb

Still no phebe

Isn't it frustrating when you can't find just the right piece of material to finish off your applique? Well that's where I'm at. First off I tried to find a lovely print for the central urn - auditioned many but couldn't find one I liked. Eventually I gave up and used the same as Di did. I have already confessed to wholesale copying of Di's Phebe wherever possible, but I thought if I cold find a different urn it might not be so obvious. Now I'm looking for the top and bottom of the urn, and then I'm done, so it's not far off.

On Thursday I had to have two MRI's with a three hour delay in the middle. So since I had the day off I decided to head out to Needles and Pins in Warrandyte. Hadn't been there for years and was pleasantly surprised to see that they had a large stock of repro fabrics. Of course I had to get just a few pieces. Including this piece which will make beautiful backing for Ann Dagg.

Isn't it glorious?

I do have a little bit of Phebe to show you.

It's the second frame. Love that vine fabric. It's from the Pink and Chocolate range.

And I have done a little more on the GTASB -these two out of the last three blocks for March.

The one on the left looks smaller because the background has been pieced already.

Yesterday the family piled in the car and we headed off to Ballan for the fair and quilt show. They put on a good party for such a little town - we thoroughly enjoyed the event and the opportunity to get out of town. The quilt show was great - the organisers had designed around a circus theme - well done Lizzie and the team. So much creativity. I'm sure Lizzie will have many photos to show you. It was great to catch up with Lizzie there too.

Reviews:

Restaurant : Hellenic Republic. Those of you who live in Oz may know of George Kaloumbaris??? Well HR is one of his restaurants. We had a lovely night - a very busy, noisy place with great food. A little disappointed at the relatively limited selection though.

Movie: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Extremely faithful adaptation of the book. Main characters (Blomkvist and Salander) were excellently cast. For those of you who know the story, it is quite violent and the movie doesn't shy away from it - in fact it is very confronting, not for the squeamish.

Music: Had a hot date with my favourite toy boy ( ahem...my son) - went off to see the Branford Marsalis Quartet - what a knockout, the drummer was a maniac (I mean that in a good way). So if you're looking for a new Jazz CD, it's well worth a listen.

Still trying to catch up on my backlog of email and blog reading - I think this will be my Easter project. In the meantime, happy sewing.

Deb

Something exciting has happened!

I have a quilt almost finished - just the binding to go. It's exciting because it's the first time I have had anything machine quilted and I couldn't be more happy with it.

Here are some close ups

beautiful backgrounds - love the stacked pebbles

beautiful details on the pots

each one quilted individually to suit.

Aren't they just gorgeous. The machine quilt artist is Helen Hayes of Noah's quilting. Thank you so much Helen, I just adore it. Everywhere you look on this quilt you find another beautiful piece of work by Helen. And of course the pattern is also glorious. It's from Maggie Walker designs - called the Blue Collection.

I'll take a photo of the whole quilt when it's bound and hanging on my wall. So exciting - did I already say that?

On the GTASB project, I finished my last Feb block


and the first March block.

This one looks a bit empty to me - but that leaves plenty of space for someone to be artistic with quilting!

Three small blocks remain for March, which I will probably get done next week.

Still not finished Phebe (sigh) so I'm not posting a photo - but just have the urn to do so shouldn't be too long.

We had a lovely day today - SSS day - more on that over the next few days over at the SSS blog.

Hope you're all doing well and getting through the weird weather events that have been occurring almost all over the world.

I hope you have many happy sewing moments this week,

Deb

Well it's all about the Green tea

today. When this months package arrived and I realised I hadn't started last months or even finished the month 's before that I thought I should get a wriggle on. I have to admit, of all the sewing activities involved in patchwork, I like curved piecing the least, so these blocks got buried in the too hard basket. Glad they're finished, and they look quite pretty. What's your least favourite sewing activity?


Once they were out of the way I moved on to last months blocks.

One down


one to go - finishing this is my job for tonight.

I have been using Karen Kay Buckley's Perfect Circle templates for my circles and I just love them. I have a set of the small circles and I'm just about to buy the large ones as well. Give them a go!

And here is this months package .

There's lots of green in this one - I like it. But there seems to be a bit of curved piecing too - I think I'm going to applique those rings on instead.


Review: The third book in the Millenium trilogy is *dragging* really tedious, no action, oh well two out of three ain't bad!

Movie: Alice in Wonderland - I loved it and so did NOD - she saw it twice in a week. But beware - not the Alice story that you may be expecting, though the old story is wound through it. If you can't get to a 3D cinema - don't worry, I don't think it really adds much and the glasses are annoying.

Phebe: Just starting on the humans - but I don't think I'm going to show you any more progress until the centre is finished - just so you get a bit of impact factor.

That's it for me - I hope all is well where you are. I'm looking forward to work getting back to manageable chaos next week....and being able to spend some time catching up with your activities. I've noticed that there are a lot of spools out there, hmm I wonder what that's all about. Hope it's not contagious.

Adios,

Deb

So good to have a few minutes

to drop by and say hi. Busy time at work getting all our new students (and returning ones) into classes, sorting out staffing issues and so on. By the time I hit home at night and catch up with the family it's just about bedtime.

Still I have some small progress to show. Hope these projects are not getting too ho hum for you.

GTASB - still trying to catch up with last months blocks. The second igloo block is done

and I have three flower blocks to do.


But of course, this months installment is here and I want to jump in.



Phebe is coming along too


Over the last 12 months or so my main project was DNQTTT - which did not have many different fabrics in it, and all of them were batik. As a consequence, I didn't buy too much repro fabric and missed some really beautiful collections. Of course with Phebe - I need quite a bit of variety of the repro kind so I have been replenishing my stocks with glee! Now my cupboards are overflowing and I have lots of options for Phebe. I even managed to get a piece of the lovely dirty teal that Di used for the grassy mound. Still haven't picked an urn though. I'll have to do some farcheological excavation (that's digging through old buried fabric - real word - true) to see if I can find a suitable piece.

I've also been tinkering with Lori's cheddar cheese and crackers - it's fun and the only machining I'm doing atm.


Everyone agrees that this should have red binding it seems - great - one decision made.

Haven't had much time to work on my baskets - but a package arrived from a dear friend last week.

You may not be able to see how many squares there are here - but I tell you - it looks like there is enough for a whole quilt. It was extremely generous of her to send me these and I'm keen to get going.

So that's me done. Because I've been so busy I haven't had time to leave many comments on your blogs or answer emails- but believe me - I've been stalking you and am always amazed and inspired by how much beautiful work you do. And I'm also amazed at how cold it gets in some parts of the US - and the snow! Makes for stunning pictures even if your toes are freezing!

Ciao for now,

Deb

Back to work

already. How did that happen? Just feels like yesterday that I was trying to organise Christmas. Does it feel like that way to you too, or have I lost all perspective?

Just a few things to show you today, finished one GTASB block for the month and started to pin another. Not going to get the other three done by months end but that's OK.



I have been concentrating on Phebe. Here she is



more details over here at SSS if you're interested. Need to take a little rest from Phebe while I'm waiting for some fabrics. And besides, I feel the need to think about the next MM block.

The other project that has been keeping me busy is Lori's cheddar cheese and crackers.



It's a little quilt - I have never made one before and I'm enjoying this one. I'm on to stage three now, so it won't take too long to finish the top. It's screaming "RED BINDING" to me. What do you think?

Now, summer movies and books. The Lovely Bones (movie) - hated everything about it -gruesome and sent all the wrong messages in mho. Sherlock Holmes - a ripping yarn, loved it. And besides, you could do a lot worse than eyeballing Robert Downie Jnr for 2 hours. My kids saw Fantastic Mr Fox and really liked it.

Reading the Millenium Trilogy (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc.) First one OK - second one terrific, just bought number 3.

Magazines: Quiltmania - love, love, love it.

Take care,

Deb

Milestones are achieved by inches

or in this case - fractions of inches! Remember way back in November I showed you this picture? Well I finally finished it and now it looks like this.

I'm really happy with the outcome - but boy was I slow. Sometimes I don't mind that - it's the process that I like. But other times (like now when I'm in a "finish me" state of mind) I like fast results. Hope the next one doesn't take so long.

Mind you - if I ever worked on one thing (or at most five things) at a time I'm sure I would make more progress (I think there's another maths equation in there somewhere).

My main preoccupation the last few days has been starting Phebe. Here she is so far.

It's so much fun picking fabrics for this - I'm rediscovering fabrics I'd forgotten I had - but because the pieces are little - I'm not even making a dint in the stash. I'll write some more about Phebe over at the SSS soonish.

I've also been neglecting the GTASB BOM, so I thought I'd better get going for the month.

I have to admit, my mojo has been a bit distant over these couple of holiday weeks - everyone here is a bit lethargic due to the weather and the Christmas anticlimax. So I have been enjoying passively clicking around your blogs looking at all the wonderful work you are all doing and wishing I was snowed in too! I hope you all are getting some sewing in - especially you girls in the north trying to stay warm!

Finally - some family shots if you're interested. NOS turned 18 earlier this week. It was 43.7 that day so we decided to head to a restaurant near water. His party is yet to come (I can hardly wait). Here's birthday boy
and with his gorgeous sister
Isn't it amazing how quickly they grow up?

Deb

Happy 2010

to all. I hope it's going to be a wonderful year for you. I'm looking forward to a year that's a little less stressful than 2009, a little less work and a lot more pleasure. We'll see if it happens. First thing I need to do is practice saying the word NO at work. Wish me luck!

I haven't got any grand plans for 2010 - I'm happy to continue with my current projects until the mood strikes me take on something new. Well actually, I am going to start Phebe but I'm counting this as a 2009 plan rather than 2010.

I managed to get my GTASB block finished last night.


Next months pack arrived during the week - it looks delish.


Have no more new work to show you - it's been too hot to sew much. But I will show you this quilt because 2010 is the year it gets on the wall. And it fits in with the posts Cathy and Joan have submitted recently. Hope you gals like my blue and white china collection.


I love it more than any I have made but it's been sitting in a cupboard waiting to be quilted for years! So I need to do it don't you agree? Here's a detail.


It started out as a BOM - but I ditched most of the fabrics they sent with it. Mainly kept the backgrounds and substituted the applique fabrics as I found them. It was fun to choose just the right pieces for each pot. Took a couple of years but I was in no hurry. Here's another bit.


And of course the new banner is another detail.

I'm sure I had more things to tell you - but my head is surprisingly empty. Must be all the R & R I'm getting over the Christmas - NY down period.

Looking forward to seeing all your wonderful 2010 projects,

Deb