Mail Boxes

The Kids made their own mail boxes this morning and gave each other mail :) I think it is really cute. So we gave them mail while they were at school so they could have a nice surprise when they came home.

So cute, now I get to put them to bed. The oldest is in love with playing the recorder at the moment, and amazingly she is pretty good at it and I don't mind!!! Can you believe that. At the moment she has the music to Live by Shannon Noll playing and she is playing along with it. I am impressed.
Jane

Dyeing

I bought some dye when I went to the quilt and craft show. I have been waiting for some sun to be able to dye and yesterday was the day. Here are some of the results. This is something I have been experimenting with, it's called shibori and I am loving it. It is an ancient Japanese way of dyeing and it involves the wrapping of fabric around the pipe like I have done here and also clamping, tying and stitching. I am going to try clamping next. I have reserved some books out of the library to help me along.

So here I wrap the fabric around the pole, then push it down to one end to crease it. Then I pour the dye over it and let it soak and dry out for 24 hours. Next time I am going to try two colours, one on each end and see how that goes.

This is the results once I have wound it off the pole.

It looks even better in person. The colours are amazing. So this is my next project, to make more of these. I also bought some ink pencils at the craft fair and they are specifically for fabric so that will be what I draw with now. I just have to learn how to use them :)
Off to eat choc mint biscuits.
Jane

Too Many Green Leaves

Well, on my tree quilt I have finished my light green leaves. I still need to do dark green leaves oh and yellow and red leaves too. Hmmmm I think I might be over my tree obsession for a while after this.

Take a look

And here is the big picture

It has probably taken me two weeks to finish the green leaves. Everything else will feel alot quicker :)


I love these branches coming off the tree.

Going to the Brisbane Craft Fair tomorrow. My quilts are displayed but with no awards :( Oh well, keep trying I suppose. I will make myself feel better with buying something :)
Jane

Weekend Away

This past weekend was our weekend away, doesn't happen very often. Every couple of years in fact. And of course when we go away the storms go with us :).

View from our room

Gorgeous isn't it!

From our living room

It stopped raining for about an hour on Saturday morning so I went for a walk on the beach. IT was fantastic and exhilarating. Then it started to rain so I ran the rest of my walk. Felt great :)

After that it did not stop, it just got harder and harder. We were supposed to stay till monday but we came home early on Sunday night as it was raining so hard and the news said it was going to flood and get worse. I am so glad we did as the highway flooded and the traffic was insane. Plus the kids didn't go to school today either so that would have been a pain for Grandma and Granddad :) We still had a great relaxing time and feel rested.
Hoping it stops raining
Jane

Time Is Now My Own :)

What a school holidays!! It rained most of the time, so it made it real difficult to get out and about. But I made sure we were doing something nearly every day. Which meant that I was absolutely stuffed :) Monday they went back to school. I went visiting teaching in the morning and then cleaned the house for the rest of the day. Every day when I pick my son up asks me what did you do today mum?? (how gorgeous) and I told him I cleaned the house. What else?? he asks ha I wish there was time for something else :).
Anyway, over the holidays I dropped my quilts off to be judged - whooo!! here's dreaming that I place, I don't even care that I come first, 2nd or 3rd would be unreal. Prize money is $500 for 1st $200 2nd and $100 for 3rd. Not bad at all. I read a blog of another quilter quite regularly and in her blog today she mentions that she is judging the qld quilt show, hmmm she is very very good, so that means her standards are really really high, hopefully mine reach hers. :) They judge and let the winners know tomorrow... won't be going anywhere tomorrow. Oh and while I was driving to drop off the quilts, middle child tells me that she feels sick, two seconds later she is throwing up out the window hehehehe. I told her good girl for chucking out the window :) poor thing.

Look at this

My wonderful father in law made this for me. I have been searching the net for months and months to find one of these - extendable table- and they are a quarter of this size and at least $120 - $150. They are perspex instead of wood. Dad looked at making it out of perspex but he said it was insane the price they wanted. I love the look of wood anyway. It is 70 cm long and wide!!! Any others that I looked at were only 30cm w/l.
I covered it in clear contact to make it nice and slippery for the fabric and put gromets on the legs so it wouldn't slip on my glass table and it is the most perfect thing EVER :) I love it. It makes sewing 1000 times easier. As they say, I don't know how I managed before :)
Here is some of the tree in progress. I have done minimal stitching on the tree trunk as I wanted the paint to be seen still and all the different colours on the tree. Have a look.

Here's some of the leaves. I debated whether or not to stitch a whole leaf design over the organza in case I lost the sparkle of the fabric, but I did some with lots of stitching and some with outline only and it looked so much better with the whole leaf design. So here's to weeks of stitching thousands of leaves, and that's only in light green :). I am really enjoying though.

Well, on other matters, we watched Knight and Day - so much fun! It was definitely worth watching. Then we watched Robin Hood and that was brilliant. The acting was amazing. I think Cate Blanchet was fantastic. I am waiting to see The Sorcerers' Apprentice as that looks fantastic too. AND Survivor started and wow, I absolutely love love love this show. The first two episodes and I am laughing, holding my breathe and covering my eyes in shame for what they do. SO much fun.
Jane