I'm back...at least I hope I am

Yay, finally unpacked (sort of, I still have eleventy hundred boxes in the garage that need to be opened and places found for everything that is in them), but at least the rest of the house is pretty much unpacked, except...............

My sewing room is a total disaster zone.  I'm trying to bribe people with a holiday in paradise so that they can come and organise my sewing room for me.

The day we officially moved in I was greeted by this-

Furry cute cuddly (well kind of cuddly, at least they look cuddly even if they don't particularly like being cuddled) wildlife for a change, instead of great big huge scary spiders, humungous pythons, bats, ticks, and all the other icky creatures that used to be found in and around the old Chez Sunshine.  Contrary to what some people think, yes Shay, I did not cut and paste the koala on to the palm tree.
I lived at the last house out in the country for 13 years and never saw a koala, ever. I move to suburbia, and on the first day, lo and behold, a koala in a palm tree in my garden. I think that must be a very auspicious sign.


Even though my sewing room is a total disaster, I've set up the sewing machine and searched through boxes to find some of my stash so that I could work on the Mouthy Stitches Swap. I've really enjoyed stalking my partner and I hope this reflects both her mosaic and her brief. If not, I'm in trouble.

I still have to embroider the centre and cut out the pieces for the tote but at least I'm on my way to getting it finished.  I spent today trying to find some hardware to make the key fob that is to go with it.  This evening I'm hoping to work on the embroidery or the key fob. Unfortunately this house has no power points in the living area, so all my lamps that I had in the last house are useless. It also makes it difficult to sit and watch tv and hand sew.  I'm crossing my fingers that somehow there will be a solution.

Hopefully I'll be back to regular blogging now that I have the computer set up, internet, and about 5 mins a day where I'm not unpacking or cleaning so that I can take photos and start blogging regularly again. It would be nice too, to be able to sit and enjoy the new view.

PS  I'm really sorry that I haven't been able to catch up on blog posts and leave comments. I tried to at least read a few in between the mayhem of moving but I still have over 1000 posts in google reader. I think it may be time to hit delete, but  yikes, what am I going to miss though?

Organising, bats and geese

Im going to get on my soap box and whinge. I know it's wet season here, and in the last few years, March has been notorious for a lot of rain, but I'm over it. Well and truly over it.  In the last couple of days we've had another 110+ mm of rain, yep that's another 6 inches. That takes it to over 400mm (almost 16 inches) in 13 days. Sunshine? Paradise? my @ɹ$€, no sunshine and it's definitely not paradise when everything is damp and going mouldy.

OK off my soap box now.

I've been de-cluttering, and will be for the foreseeable future, as it's slow going.  More photos to come eventually.
My sewing room.

A partial tidy up. So far, my yarn stuffed in the shelves, fat quarters in Samla boxes and yardage jammed carefully placed in shelves, and Karma, surprised that there is carpet in this room, not just fabric and crap all over the floor.
It's going to look crap again very soon, as this room is going to be painted this week, so I have to move everything to the centre of the room and cover it with drop cloths and then move it all back again, yuck!

During the week I had a visitor. I had one of these last year too, lucky aren't I. I'm glad I'm not the type to freak out at having a bat flying around my house.

Sorry the photos aren't great, I may not have been screaming like a girl when the bat came in, but I wasn't about to get up close and personal with it either.  This time the cats and dog didn't notice it, so I shut them in the bedroom, opened all the outside doors and crossed my fingers that it would find it's own way out. It did, phew! You may remember that last year I woke up in the middle of the night to the gentle noise of a bat flying into the rotating ceiling fan above my bed and being flung across the room into the wall. No harm was caused to the bat. This time it was because I forgot to shut the screen doors before dark.

On the sewing/crafty front, I worked on another block for Foundation Paper Piecing For The Terrified. Katy has posted some fab tutorials and I can genuinely say I'm no longer terrified of paper piecing. I'm still not sure whether I love it enough to make a whole paper pieced quilt but I'll certainly feel confident to give it a go to make smaller things like potholders or pincushions. On the other hand I've wanted to try a pickle dish or New York Beauty quilt for awhile now. Maybe just a mini quilt later this year.

The Circle of Geese is my latest attempt. It was not without problems, like forgetting to check that the piece I am about to sew is sitting in the right place and not folded over so that I sew it all wrong. That happened twice. Also not checking to make sure I haven't picked up the next couple of pieces along with the piece I am sewing, because they were sitting too close to the machine and as I sewed, they came along for the ride.

That would be the two white strips hanging from the bottom of the block, after being sewn in to the seam of the white piece pinned diagonally across the block. This may have happened more than once. 

Yes, I'm a slow learner.

Anywho, despite a couple of setbacks and seams unpicked, I'm very happy with the result.

I used some scraps of Amy Butler Soul Blossoms, the fabric I'm using for the Starflower quilt. Amazingly, some of the geese even worked with fussy cutting. Now that's a minor miracle!

Tuesday Tidbits (and tails)

A few photos of my garden this week, the weather has been superb, we finally have proper summer weather and now it's autumn :), warm not too hot, lots of sunshine, and it's not too humid either, it's just perfect!

The studio in the background and the pavilion.

Same view different angle. Love the palms against the blue sky.

Looking up the driveway from the verandah

 Finally some flowers in the garden

Pink hibiscus

Frangipani

Spathiphyllum

An orchid that has self seeded in moss on the side of a palm.

The next door neighbours in their wisdom have decided it's great to have a rooster.  I don't think many people in the street are too happy about being woken up at 4am.

It's a very nice looking rooster, but I would prefer he and his harem stayed next door.

This ugly looking thing was brought inside by my wild child - Bailey, a couple of nights ago, as soon as we saw it we I threw it back outside, it's hideous and huge, it was about 13cm (5inches) from head to tail.  Photo by torchlight, I wasn't going to let it stay inside long enough to get a photo. I have no idea what it is, I don't think it's poisonous just really really ugly and HUGE.



On Sunday we drove down to Brisbane for the day.  We always buy these when we are there.

It's called Pearl Milk Tea, it originates from Korea.  It's basically very milky strong English Breakfast Tea with lots of sugar, (sometimes too much, but you don't get a say in how much you want), ice, and the black balls are tapioca, it's very refreshing, filling and extremely yummy! You are given big fat straws with this drink so that you can suck up the tapioca pearls. Just don't suck too hard or they hit the back of your throat and then you spray milk tea over anyone in front of you, not that I've done that.


I bought some new shoes too.

I did buy a pair of these not just one, (they only had a photo of one shoe on the online store.) I could have taken photos of my shoes but I'm feeling lazy so a photo of one shoe will just have to do.

My Pfaff is in having brain surgery, apparently the "thingamy jig" is basically stuffed and needs to be replaced. It's the bit that works out how to do all the stitches, what size, shape etc, so now I have to wait for the part to be sent from overseas as apparently the people at Pfaff think it's a waste of money to have spare parts sitting in Australia.  I'm so glad I have my little Janome Jem as I can still sew and quilt, although I can't tackle quilting anything large (not that I was going to anyway, lol).
I checked with the Janome store and they have suggested I should be able to quilt up to a single bed quilt, I really don't think so but I should be able to quilt Strawberries and Champagne on it, so now I had better get started on making the backing.

Karma's fur is a constant source of amusement in our house. We don't do anything to it, he just turns up looking strange.  I'm sure the cats do things to his hair at night while he is sleeping. Yesterday morning he had this lovely top knot. I tried really hard to get a better shot, but he will not stand still.

Not the most flattering shot!

and neither is this one!

Tuesday Tidbits (and tails)

Design Seeds

I found this site after my usual net surfing instead of doing anything like housework or crafty stuff. It's a great colour tool. Design Seeds, have a look at the lovely colour combinations that appear each day, they are great if you need some colour inspration.

I was planning to sew on the weekend but it was very hot, too hot to sit and sew even with the aircon on.
Saturday morning I went to a rotary cutting class at Patchwork Angel hoping to learn something extra as sometimes my rotary cutting is a bit hit and miss. It was quite a good class and there were some lovely ladies there. I learnt a couple of things and it reinforced that a lot of what I already do is correct. I'm really glad that I'm on the right track and by just adjusting a couple of things I should be able to cut more accurately on a consistent basis.
I was supposed to go to a FMQ class Monday morning, but I woke up feeling quite unwell and missed out on the class. I was disappointed not to go but I think I accomplished quite a bit of FMQing at home, I practiced on a fat quarter that I made into a quilt sandwich just getting used to the whole free motion thing, then I tried the pieces that I had prepared for the class.
I was very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was and I'm going to have a go at quilting the raw edge circle quilt.

My first attempt on Monday - I just outlined around some bold flowers on a fat quarter, once I felt a little more confident I tried picking out details in the flowers and the leaves.

 The first photo I had just started trying to outline.

 Second photo, outline and detailing.

 Third photo, trying to stay on the line, hmm.

Trying to sew inside the line, hmmmm again.

This was a great exercise which I really enjoyed. I think I could spend hours outlining fabrics to practice. After I had filled in most of the details, I practiced stippling the background which I found not too stressful.

Later in the day I tried FMQ on some more traditional patterns that I had traced on to calico, I didn't find that as interesting and it was more stressful as every teensy tiny mistake showed up. I'm not showing photos of that as frankly it was rubbish! Great experience though and now I know to never use a plain fabric with contrasting thread if I'm going to quilt it, at least until I am a superstar quilter!

I think I'm really going to enjoy thread drawing, I'm still not sure whether I'm going to love stippling an entire quilt. I might have to try a few more mug rugs and doll quilts first.

My Keeper of the Quilts has been hard at work again, he takes special care of my rolls of binding.

A Wedge Tailed Eagle that visited on the weekend, the two birds at the top of the photo are crows that were harassing him/her as it was in their territory, one even landed on it's wing whilst in flight.

 The view on Sunday, just look at that beautiful blue summer sky.

Getting jiggy

So cute!

Finally...

Hand sewing binding is working it's way up the list of my least favourite things, along with basting and quilting. Maybe I need to change crafts.

Do you remember this? I started this quilt back in early August.

It took me most of last week to finish it.  I wanted to finish the binding in the evenings, the idea was to watch tv while hand sewing to keep my mind occupied and make it feel like it wasn't taking for.ever.

The first night I was attacked by these.

Even though I had all the screens shut, these flying ants swarmed inside, straight for the light that was over my head. There were lots more I just don't want to gross you out with pics. Please excuse the cat fur, who buys a white sofa when they have a black fur baby!!!! 

Despite this set back, hand sewing the binding continued, and went on and on and on, until, finally.....

it's finished!

The binding is in Kona charcoal and I added a strip of  Kona Artichoke and a strip of Hope Valley for a bit of interest. I pieced the back which included one more owl block.

Oh and look it matches my cushion on the outdoor sofa, a very happy coincidence.

A couple of valuable lessons

Firstly, I learned last week I can't sew half square triangles using a 1/4 inch foot. Well, I can but they look like crap if I do.

I need to use the ordinary (is that the technical term?) foot. They aren't too bad in the above photo, but the "little miss perfect" side of me would have liked them to be more accurate than that.  However, the "I can't be bothered doing it again" side of me won out and this is how they're going to stay.

Do NOT click on the photo to enlarge, as you will probably find some more glaringly obvious spots where the seams didn't meet, but overall I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. The colour is a little too pastel/soft for me, but it was a good exercise to try half square triangles, and it will be a nice size baby quilt when it's all finished.
You did click on it, didn't you!

The second thing I learned last week is,  if you want to feed a kookaburra on the verandah don't leave the door open.

If you feed the kookaburra, and if you leave the sliding door open after you have gone inside, the kookaburra will follow you inside to see what else you have for it. This will cause the fur baby that is the most quiet easy going of all your fur babies, Karma (Mr Innocent), to turn into a crazed, I want to kill a Kookaburra maniac. He was worse than the cats.

Mr Innocent, he does look slightly possessed doesn't he, (or possibly spaced out).

Try wrangling two cats that are still finding it hard to believe that all their Christmases have come at once in the shape of a large feathered three course meal, a dog that has gone absolutely berserk, whilst running around the house opening as many doors as possible so that the kookaburra can find it's way out, hoping that you won't frighten it even more.

The good news, the kookaburra found it's way out of the house, intact and without leaving any deposits behind, phew, in fact double phew, as it flew over the dining table covered by all my fabric a number of times. It didn't seem to be too traumatised by the whole adventure, as it came back the next day for some more food.