One UFO finished

Using up a little more of my stash of Martinique and a fat quarter of ???(sorry I have no idea what it is),  my second christmas present is now finished.  I started this cushion months ago,  it was a WIP and turned into a UFO and languished in a box until yesterday.

I could have ironed the centre panel a little better, I'm hoping that with the insert inside it will settle all the creases out. The back is envelope style and I used the same fabric that I used in the sashing on this coin quilt.

I really need to start working on bright colours again, I'm starting to get withdrawal symptoms.

Social butterflies

I have survived a whirl of social activities in paradise this last weekend.

The social outings began on Saturday. Bitchypoo and I had a very nice lunch with my mum and dad at the Boathouse Restaurant in Noosaville,  the view from the restaurant was just beautiful.  Look at that sky, I love spring, beautiful weather and not too warm or humid.

In the afternoon we went to see the new Lexus LFA. It was invitation only and guess who scored an invitation!!!

Now apparently this is a  REALLY REALLY REALLY BIG DEAL, just ask any testosterone filled car enthusiast.  It is THE latest Supercar.  There are currently only 6 LFA's in the world. This one is on it's way to Sydney for the Motor Show then off to Dubai to it's new owner. We weren't allowed to touch it, only look at it. Bitchypoo is a bit of a car enthusiast and thought it was "pimp", I assume that is good, she took lots of photos on my phone as we left the camera at home....again. It's worth, from memory, roughly $750,000 Aus dollars which is about the same $US  or approx 450,000 British Pounds.  I can think of lots of better ways to spend that much money. As you can guess, it didn't really float my boat, but now I can tell everyone I've been this close to an LFA!!! Ha!

On Saturday night it was a girlfriend's birthday get together. We had a really lovely evening with a great bunch of people.

Sunday we drove to Brisbane to go to the Brisbane Food and Wine Festival. You might remember I won tickets to the Cupcake Class and entrance to the festival. Of course as usual, I left my camera at home so only had my phone to take photos, and they are not very good. As it was I nearly forgot to take any photos at all.

 Cupcakes in progress. Neither of us were feeling particularly creative.

We spent the rest of the time at the show taste testing and sampling an awful lot of the products, entering competitions to win cars and all sorts of things I can't remember.  It was a fabulous day out and I'm going to make sure I go next year.

Sunday night we went to Ahmet's Restaurant at Southbank. It's a Turkish restaurant, the same one I went to a few months ago.

A couple more of these were consumed by me, (not bitchypoo). Turkish Delight Martini.

Monday morning we went to the GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane) to see the Valentino Retrospective.  A fabulous display of Valentino gowns from 1959 onwards. There were some amazing creations in the display and some not so fabulous too!

All in all another great weekend, and I'm going to need the week to recover!

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.

Favourite Things Friday

It's time for FTF again,  the week goes so fast doesn't it, I especially look forward to everyone's favourites each Friday.

One of my favourite things in my house is an oil burner. There are so many oils to choose from, which can be mixed and matched to suit your mood or need.  They don't just make the house smell lovely, they are great to use for calming, motivating, refreshing, relaxing or soothing.

Hmm motivating, I really should burn the Motivating blend a bit lot more often! I also have blends, Productivity and Focus, I should be burning them 24/7.

Some oils can be expensive initially but as only a couple of drops are needed,  they last a long time,  much better value for money than flowers (for scent, unless they come from your garden) or scented candles.

My favourite floral scented oil is Rose Geranium, followed closely by Jasmine, or sometimes I like to mix citrus oils, like lemongrass and grapefruit.  In my burner today is Tranquil and Calm which is a blend of Lavender, Rose Geranium, Bergamot and Rosewood.  Christmas is coming soon (sorry for the reminder) and there are some lovely Christmasy oils scented with cinnamon and cloves.

A bonus to burning oils are the absolutely beautiful burners that are available, the one above at the top of the post and this one are my favourites.

Ahh there are actually two bonuses to using my oil burner, the other one is, it helps me use more of the 800 (I'm not joking) Ikea tea lights that I have in my cupboard. Don't ask, and no I didn't steal them.

So take a look at Mrs P at Quilting In My Pyjamas to see what everyone is posting about this week.

One Christmas present finished

Last week Mrs P and I were discussing Christmas presents, and what tutorials were out in blog land that would be quick to finish and easy to understand.  We found quite a few but the stand out one was this journal cover from Bloom and Blossom.

I left it to Mrs P to try out first, because I'm lazy pathetic at trying out new things and I wanted someone else to try it before I did. If something doesn't work for me I usually throw it in the corner and forget about it forever.  After seeing Mrs P's absolutely gorgeous creation I was pretty sure I could make one too. I'm so glad I did, it was relatively easy, just a bit of a  huh? moment in one part of the tutorial, but I soon figured it out. So here it is

I used some left over pieces from the Japanese jelly roll quilt, and I bought the lovely red fabric from my LQS.

I'm so happy with it, I'm going to make some more, .............................................eventually. 

My baby (who is nice at the moment so I won't call her bitchypoo today) has been sewing too. She is making either Hooty or Tweet,  not sure which one, from Melly and Me.

Bloggers Quilt Festival - Fall 2010

Amy from Amy's Creative Side is hosting the Bloggers Quilt Festival,  and this is the first time I've joined in. I have really enjoyed looking at the beautiful quilts that people have chosen for this festival, there are so many creative and amazing people in the world, and we are so lucky to be able to see their work.

This is the first quilt in which I used pre-cut strips, in fact it's the only quilt I've used pre-cut strips. I have a love hate relationship with jelly rolls. They always looks so inviting and beautiful until they are opened and then they slump into a mass of floppy strips.  I have a few more rolls in my stash, waiting to be used.
When I returned to quilting from a very long break, this was the first  roll I bought,  Japanese indigo fabric from my local quilt shop.  I separated the strips into two piles, indigo and cream/off white and indigo/multi coloured.

The indigo/off-white strips were used on the front and the muti coloured ones were incorporated in the pieced back.  I used a template from the book "East Quilts West" by Kumiko Sudo for the applique flowers.

This quilt  has been very frustrating to photograph as it changes colour in practically every shot, sometimes looking, grey often purple and occasionally indigo The reds can change from orange to a deep red. Thanks to my blog friends I persevered and finished it.  I learnt that basting is an essential part of quilting and you can never have enough pins ( I should have used more)  and I should have quilted each line from the alternate side to stop buckling and ripples. It's not perfect, but I'm very happy with it.

The back, the indigo/multi coloured strips were pieced into the middle strip.

Every quilt has to have the final stamp of approval.

Tuesday tidbits (and tails)

I'm still having a few issues with my sewing machine, it doesn't like sewing HST's (half square triangles) and is putting up a fight,  and eating my fabric, grrrrr which means the seams are not staying where they were pinned. Going slow on this quilt top.

I've compiled a short long list of names for my Pfaff
Fanny
Felicity
Faith
Farrah
Fillida suggested by Mrs P
Frieda, also suggested by P, thank you P
Francesca
Philomena
Cynthia also suggested Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde, I like that, the machine is a bit shizophrenic at the moment, but then if it lives up to it's name it might not be a good outcome for me.

Now that it's spring the eucalyptus is shedding it's bark - messy. 

Hibiscus flowers from the garden yesterday.

When I've spat the dummy with sewing I've been crocheting and trying out the african flower pattern.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them, but I love the colours. It was a coincidence that they match the hibiscus. Don't they look pretty.

Last but not least, Lulu.

Fabric trimmings + black cat = a very bad case of dandruff