I've been framed

The Phebe quilt is based on a central medallion surrounded by a number of frames. While I have been appliqueing I have also been constructing some of these frames. Three of them are attached now.


I love watching the progress of quilts. The way each addition changes the look of the piece is amazing. I am well into the second applique frame, but it will be some time before it is all finished. In the meantime I will be working on the stars which make up the next two frames.

There is a definite chill in the air in Melbourne so of course I went to my wardrobe to pull out some woollies - and to be honest - some were looking a bit shabby. You know - that place "can't quite wear this to work but it's still OK for home"? So I felt the need to get out the old knitting needles. Decided on some glorious Noro Kureyon yarn. This took only a few hours,


but I have to say my hands ache after a night of knitting. Phooey to the aging process, I say!

We had an "almost" fabulous day yesterday - SSS day and it was Di's turn to be invaded by the group. It is always so wonderful to go to Di's place in the hills. She has a beautiful property, she's an amazing cook and hostess and of course I don't need to tell you about her sewing. But just after we arrived, poor Di developed a terrible migraine - and went to lie down, leaving her fabulous partner Brian to attend to us - and of course we helped ourselves to the delicious lunch that she had made. We hoped that she would reappear, but alas she didn't. Still it was great to catch up wth her for a few minutes, and the rest of the gang. Meghan looking fabulous after her trip to Europe which I'm sure she will tell you about over at SSS.

The bell is beeping on my oven so I must dash. I'll finish with some more photos from AQC as promised. A couple of traditional quilts, lovely workwomanship


and a couple of contemporary ones

the second one is by Sue Cody who teaches in Sydney - I loved this quilt.

Hope all is well in you world,

Kisses, Deb

Another quilt show (PART 1)

Good morning dear friends. I have been trying to get some photos of the AQC up since last weekend but alas have had no time. By now you will have probably seen many of these quilts at other sites, oh well, hopefully something new will appear here.

If you are not from Melbourne, the show is held at the old Exhibition buildings - truly beautiful building surrounded by lovely gardens. I didn't think to take a photo, but luckily Sue -Anne did - go have a look here.

I will post the photos in installments - otherwise the post will be huge. So today a few of my favourites.

My absolute favourite was a version of the Wickersham quilt. When I first saw the pattern, I didn't really like it but this version is fab! I think the sashing makes all the difference, don't you agree?

I absolutely love the clear colours in this quilt - and of course the geometry appeals to my maths brain.
Here are a couple of close ups.




The white dots are wool felt blanket stitched on - genius!



These two close ups are of quilts that were featured in Quiltmania a few months ago. I really like them - one reminds me of Christmas decorations.


I didn't think to take bigger photos sonce I already had them in the mag - sorry - thoughtless of me.

This one is a very nice reproduction of a quilt in Anette Gero's book The Fabric of Society.

A close second favourite was this one

Not your traditional quilt - quite medeaval - the background is like a brick arch. I took a close up of the machine quilting because it was like a mosaic.


So much talent out there!

Not the best photos - but the lighting was bad at the show with lots of natural light coming through the windows behind the quilts - made it hard to photograph.

I will have some more photos to show soon.

In the meantime I'm working on the second applique border for Phebe (and nothing else). A photo of the first one over at SSS.

I hope you enjoy some of the work that our talented Aussies are producing. Have a lovely weekend.

Deb

Quilt show photos

Well hi everyone - I hope you're all well and getting some quality stitching time. After thinking about starting an MM block - I had a change of heart and decided to get going on Phebe's applique borders. Nearly finished number one so I will show you next post. In the meantime I have some photos from Essendon quilter's show for you. For our non Aussie friends - we don't have too many antique quilts, so our shows are mostly new quilts.

This is Kerry's quilt - and here is a close up

I took a photo of her tag

so you could see that this is the first SSS quilt we made.

I think this quilt (below) won a prize at the show

Some of you will recognise it as Homage to Sallie Anne - a Primarily Patchwork design.

A lovely simple quilt in Pennsylvania Dutch colours



Some nice thirties style quilts on show. I like the fresh colours of these.


This is a small oak leaf and reel


A couple of quilts designed by Robyn Falloon



I liked these repro quilts

And these ones just looked good to me


The AQC is coming up this weekend. This is one of the big Melbourne annual quilt shows - I'll try to get some photos of that one too.

Back to Phebe................take care.

Deb

Phebe Ta-Dah!

Got there quicker than expected. How often does that ever happen! Hope you like her.

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