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

My bad Carma continues

I won't fill you in on all the gory details, the short version is whilst taking my car to prepare for trade in, it broke, big time. So I've been carless for nearly three weeks now and it's really starting to bug me. To make things worse, the car I was about to buy turned out to be not a good deal so I'm back to square minus one. Lucky I have my sewing group to look forward to - borrowed the MOTH's car to get to our group on Saturday - it broke on the way home. Now some would call that an unfortunate coincidence - the MOTH wasn't one of them. Luckily he managed to read every Peugot manual in existence and by the end of the weekend it appears to be working. I'm staying far away.

Now on to the real reason I'm here, before getting ready for work. I often think of old style battles before I go to work at this time of the year. You know the kind - when the troops woke up, had a cup of tea, and then started charging at an appointed time. It's a bit like that at work - every morning I need to brace for the coming onslaught. But again I digress.

Had a fabulous day at sewing Saturday - very rowdy - funny - creative - absolutely enjoyable in every way. It really lifted my spirits (until the car thing) thanks girls - you are all angels.

Phebe is coming along, but the little bits don't appear as much progress


I really love this quilt with a passion. My stash is very old and the oldest pieces were bought at Di's shop so I'm sticking to her fabric choices when I can. I know that's copying, but hey - why tamper with perfection. Besides I'm all decisioned out by the end of the day and I don't want to stuff it up. Darling girl even gave me some of her favourite pink fabric for the main flowers. It's a really stunning colour. Thanks Di, I'm ready to chop into it. Also the beautiful red in the central flower. I'm leaving the urn out for now and I'm on the hunt for just the right piece. It doesn't impede progress since I can work around it completely.

My other progress was finishing my CC&C top

I really like it and I'm no longer looking for the mistakes or the mismatched corners. Thought about basting it for quilting and then realised I didn't have any backing - der - it can wait.

Why are both my pictures crooked? I really am losing it.

That's me done - better get ready to charge. I hope your week is peaceful, enjoyable and without vehicular mishap.

Breath deeply,

Deb

Only time for quick posts right now

since work is so busy. I come home at night too exhausted to think let alone sew.

But I did have a minute today to get most of my CC&C quilt together.


I cheated a bit.....the rows aren't sewn together yet but you get the overall picture. I'm such a dill - I can't even figure out if my colour placement is OK. Even though I was careful I still think I got it wrong...Lori HELP!!! Or any of you who have also made this - does it look right to you?

Either way - too late now and I do like it. I hope to get it put together and basted over the next couple of weeks. I've already ordered the red binding (he he).

That's it - minute's over. Hope you're all having a blast....I'll be joining you shortly........I have a couple of celebrations to catch up on and some R&R.

Take care,

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

The girls are here

and the group blog is up and off with a bang! The Secret Sewing Sisterhood is the group's name. Eleven of us in total so hopefully there will always be something interesting there to see. Merri and Meghan already have their first posts up. I'm sure I've said many times how lucky I am to have this group - well when you see what they're up to I'm sure you will agree.

Most of the things I've been up to are not postable - preparing a quilt to send to the quilters, setting up the blog, thinking.........nothing that you can photo. But I have finished my next MM block.

I like this one quite a bit. Also starting to prepare the background for Phebe. Here is my choice

It's from the Valley Forge line.

I've also been trying to create a mosaic. Here's my first attempt. Not perfect - but OK.

Thanks so much to Andi for the info about how to do it. Check out her photos. They're much more pro than mine.

Oh and if you are in the market for a Doll's quilt Lori has a great one that she is posting the pattern for.

Not sure yet how I'm going to split my posts between here and the SSS blog.........I'll have to sew twice as fast!

Stay cool,

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

I've been thinking

quite a bit about what my NY's resolutions should be. Two words sprang to mind - FOCUSSED and EFFICIENT. I tend to spend too much time faffing around and not getting anything done. And I don't have time to waste. So the F word and the E word are going to be my 2010 words.

Before I tell you more let me show you the dessert I was cooking on Christmas Eve.


Rosewater meringue - good to eat, hard to cut. We had a very pleasant Christmas Day. How about you? I hope yours was wonderful too.

Now yesterday when I was thinking - staring at my Frida Kahlo calendar - my NOS sauntered in and reminded me that it was actually from 2008 not 2009 - quite right - I didn't get around to buying a new one so I reused it. Well the paintings are beautiful so why not? But I was thinking that I couldn't use it again for 2010 could I? So today the doorbell rang - guess who - yes the postie with a package (Merri stop laughing)......and it was truly unexpected. My friend Kathie sent me a wonderful calendar with a picture of her quilt on the front! Look - isn't it fabulous!

Thank you so much Kathie, you made my day - I'll be making a version of this for sure.

Now behind the calendar you can see a cabinet - this is part of the F and E mantra - I bought it from IKEA my sometimes favourite store. It now houses my on the go projects as well as my favourite books and magazines of the moment. These things usually live on the floor which means things get messy and out of control. Not very F or E.

A couple of GTASB blocks to show you today. First one from last month set into a background square (mainly for Kim since she loves these fabrics)


I think this one is called Daylily, and the first one from this month


called Baby carriage. Still one to go. And I've lost track of which month I'm up to.

Looking forward to hearing your new year's resolutions too,

Happiness to all,

Deb