Getting to know you - me

I saw this a few weeks ago on Sarah's blog at Sara in Le Petit Village and I think it's a fun idea. It also doesn't require tagging other people. If you want to join in please do.
I don't usually share much about other stuff in my life so some of the newer visitors to my blog, (hello new readers and thanks for stopping by) will probably be interested bored stiff, to find out some incredibly exciting facts about me.

So here goes,

Age: old, but I don't feel old, I get a fright sometimes when I look in the mirror as I expect a twenty something to be looking back at me!
Bedsize: queen
Chores You Hate: vacuuming
Dog or Cat: both, 1 dog, 2 cats and Arnold the Siamese Fighter Fish oops, Arnold passed away last week
Essential Start to Your Day: waking up
Favourite Colour: this week, aqua
Gold or Silver: I love gold, but I wear a lot of silver these days.
Height: short 5' 2 3/4" that 3/4 of an inch really counts
Instruments You Play: piano, very badly
Job Title: slacker, mother of teenager,  once upon a time, long long ago in a land far far away - Credit Controller
Kids: 1
Live: Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Mother's Name: my sister and I call her John, not her real name,  long story.
Nickname: none
Overnight Hospital Stays: a few including tonsils, appendix and DVT
Pet Peeves: rude people, especially those that don't say thank you
Quote from a Movie or Show: I can't remember what I did five minutes ago, so no chance of remembering a line from a movie. Hmm how about - Go ahead, make my day!
Right or Left: right
Siblings: yes, 1
Time You Wake Up: too early
Underwear: yes
Vegetable You Hate: snow pea sprouts
What Makes You Run Late: the internet
X-Rays You've Had: too many
Yummy Food You Make: lots of things, Prawn (shrimp) and lemongrass risotto, I make a pretty good omelette too (most of the time), guacamole
Zoo Animals: penguins

Seam Ripper Sunday

After weeks of no sewing, today was THE day to get back into it.
I decided to start with the backing for the HST quilt, which needs a name but I think it's destined to be the HST quilt. Or that F^@#!^% quilt.
I had already made one strip with the left over HST's and decided to make two more for the backing.  Three strips of HST's later and some 2 1/2 inch sashing sewn between them, I put it on the floor to bask in the glory of my fabulous sewing. WTF, I had taken six straight strips of fabric and sewn them into a very curved piece that would have probably worked really well on a lampshade. Unfortunately no photos because I was so annoyed, I picked it up straight away and pulled out the seam ripper.
It looks like this now.

Not too bad but that was a total waste of an hour of my time. After that little setback it was time to try something else.

I shouldn't have bothered.

I want to make a quilt for some friends. The colours they like are grey/browns and orange. I used some Design Seed colour swatches as inspiration. I thought this would help because these are really not my go to colours.  This one below was one of the colour swatches I used.

Design Seeds

For the design I decided on another raw edge circle quilt as I really enjoyed making the last one.

I raided my stash and found some fabrics. I wanted to try popping a few batiks in there as I quite like the odd batik in amongst other fabrics. 

These are the background fabrics I chose. I liked the batiks but didn't like many of the other prints. The lighter browns are especially blech, way too light and shouldn't be in there at all. One teeny tiny problem I don't have enough fabric in the good colours to make the quilt and I really don't want to buy any more in these colours. 

Added in lots of oranges and then added the creams to help with more contrast for the foreground. By this stage I was thinking, either I'm a genius and this is going to be so freaking good, or I've totally lost my mind and I'm going to make the world's ugliest quilt. 

Time to make a test block. I could have picked all the nicest fabrics to make the first block to see how nice it could be or I could have picked the worst fabrics to see how bad it could be.  Which did I choose?  A sensible person would have said let's see how nice it could look. 

I'm not sensible. 

I really dislike it.

This was after I had measured to make sure one of the circles was dead centre of the square, sewed it up, took one look at it and pulled out the seam ripper again and promptly pulled it apart. Sorry no photos of my disasters. I really need to be more prepared with my camera to prove that I'm really crap at sewing sometimes a lot of the time. 

I wonder whether they would like a nice pink and aqua quilt instead.

That was my day, my sewing mojo returned but was missing some vital parts, common sense and accuracy.  I'm hoping they will turn up soon.

The only bright part of my day was that I wasn't the only one with a seam ripper as a constant companion.  Shay and I complained all day by email about our disastrous sewing attempts! It was nice to be able to swear (a lot) and know that Shay knew exactly how I felt.  I think we may have broken our own unofficial swear count today. We may have also invented some extra words too. It's amazing what spell checker will let through! Auto correct is not my best friend either, at one point, apparently I called her something very rude and very politically incorrect when I didn't check my email before I sent it. Fortunately, Shay is still talking to me. At least I think she is, hmm, I haven't heard from her in the last couple of hours!

Pyjama Party Sunday

This post could probably be called - Should have..........

A month or so ago I had the opportunity to buy reserved seating tickets for the Australia v New Zealand rugby match that was on in Brisbane last night. I had brilliant seats lined up, 7 rows from the front and near the try line. Instead of buying a ticket for me, I organised tickets for friends. They had a fabulous night, said the seats were in a fabulous position, and the game was excellent.
I stayed home and wished I had bought a ticket, sigh.

During the week I was invited today to a BBQ lunch on the Gold Coast. The weather forecast was for crappy weather so I declined and stayed home.
The weather was beautiful today.

Despite my really bad judgement calls, I made the most of today, and stayed in my pj's until way after lunch time and finished a couple of crafty things. So as I stayed in my pj's I'm hosting Pyjama Party Sunday. I don't know why, as I wouldn't exactly say it was a party around here today, more like a pity fest. See above ⬆ and below⬇.

Firstly the block for Kat. Kat asked for a scrappy log cabin and bright colours. I'm pretty sure I got the bright colours, but oh dear I  really have a hard time with scrappy. This took me ages to make, because I kept on changing my mind on the colours/fabrics. This will probably be the first and last time you ever see a scrappy block from me. I kind of enjoyed making it, because it was interesting to see how far I could go out of my comfort zone, BUT, I will never make a scrappy quilt for me.
I've finished it a bit bigger than the 15 inches Kat asked for so that it can be cut down to size.

I also finished the Tiggly Winks quilt top. It almost ended up an art installation. When sewing the last three panels together I managed to sew the first one where the third one should have been. I was mildly pissed off, but persevered and started to use my trusty seam ripper, after a few choice swear words echoed around the house.  I was resigned to undoing it and sewing it back in the right order, then I realised I had started undoing the wrong seam.  It did get tossed on the floor at that stage, but I didn't quite get around to setting it on fire. After swearing A LOT more and walking off to take a break, common sense prevailed and I sat down and unpicked the correct seam and then sewed it all together in the correct order.

Don't look too closely at it, there are a couple of seams that leave a lot to be desired. I'm not pointing them out, because it annoys me enough and I took this pic from far enough away you can't really see them. It's not very good lighting, the colours are a bit off, and I just whacked it onto the design wall without flattening it out, as I wanted to quickly try and take a pic before I went out.
Despite the not so relaxing finish on this, I kind of sort of don't mind it now.

Now for the fun bit of my weekend.  Because I didn't go to the Gold Coast today, I was able to go out for late afternoon drinks with a girlfriend who I haven't seen for weeks.  We had a lovely relaxing time and a drink or maybe two.

Hastings St, Noosa Heads

It was quite busy on Hastings St (even though it doesn't look it from the photo) the sun was out, it's still winter and the temperature was about 22 C (72F) at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. So despite the pity fest earlier, I had a very nice end to the weekend.