Magazines, books and other hard copies

I tidied up the living area today and put some magazines into new boxes, which meant that there was not enough space in the bookshelf there.

So some of them had to go out to the storeroom to join the serried ranks of previously saved issues. The bookcase there is nearly full and I am beginning to wonder why I have saved so many. Perhaps I should start an eBay shop - I believe that some may be worth money.

I have read suggestions that one should just pull articles of interest from the magazines, then junk them. I HAVE done that - but that just means more paper to add to the printouts from the Internet and the photocopies from books which are piling up and should be filed . . . . where? Besides, when I do go through old magazines I find stuff that I didn't consider interesting or useful the first time round.

I need help! How do other book and magazine addicts deal with this problem?

Contemporary Quilt Group

It was the last meeting for the year so we all took along yummy food. We were asked to bring examples of textiles that had meaning for us as well, so I took along the 1930's quilt that I rescued from Martin's car some years ago. He was using it to wrap his guitars and was quite happy to exchange it for a blanket.

Cherry spoke about ways to get started on making a contemporary quilt. Coincidentally, I received in the mail this morning this book which had been highly spoken of by several people on one of the internet mailing lists I subscribe to, so I took that along too.


I am resisting the urge to just flip through this one. I intend to at least attempt to work through the exercises. We will see.

After the meeting I went to visit my 95 year old friend Jean. I hadn't seen her for a couple of months, since we were in NZ in October and I was still full of cold in November and didn't want to risk passing it on. She is well, but more and more frustrated with her poor vision. Even large print books and a magnifying glass are now difficult and she is down to a book a week, sometimes less. For a previously avid reader this is disappointing.

Fighting with Forms

I have spent most of the day wrestling with forms, both on the internet and in hard copy. We have decided to sell off all the small shareholdings which we have acquired by legacy. 100 shares divided by 3 amounts to a very small holding.

If you don't have a broker you can sell on the internet, but it isn't really easy. Plus the costs can be prohibitive. We have one shareholding that is worth about $300 and the fee to sell it from one internet broker who advertises "easy and cheap sales" would be $50. Guess for whom the trade is most profitable? We enquired about real world fees as well - even higher.

So we decided to go with the well known subsidiary of a bank. It was easy to set up a trading account on the internet, but to get the best financial deal we had to open a separate bank account. Not so easy! I downloaded a 25 page document. All the document had to be sent back to them - not just the applicable pages. I could see the postage being very expensive. And I initially read it wrong and thought we had to go through the 100 point bit (driver's license or passport + a piece of mail addressed to your domicile plus identification by bank staff as well as a statutory declaration from someone who has known you for more than 12 months who fits into a list of approved occupations). We have had a joint account at this bank for more than 40 years so I was cranky - to put it mildly!

I charged off to the local branch and spoke to a lady who was very kind to me (obviously has to deal with seniors often) and pointed out that I had not noticed that having an already established account exempted us from all this. I came home and filled in all the relevant pages then noticed that it was to be sent to a postage paid address, so I couldn't even feel hard done by that!

I am not sure how long it will take before we can actually sell the shares we want to get rid of. I am also belatedly feeling some sympathy for students who misread exam questions!

Christmas Party

I thoroughly enjoyed today's gathering of the Secret Drawer group. The quilt blocks went to our newest member, and we will probably stop making them now. Cynthia is the only one who hasn't received them, and she begged off last year too.

We did a bit of reminiscing and have decided that we will have to make 2008 a year to remember, because it is 20 years since the group formed. I cannot believe it, but I know it's fact!!

I didn't take the quilt - I didn't want to endure the pitying looks. I woke up this morning with a new plan in mind. I will cut up the quilt into its individual blocks again, quilt each of them more extensively, and either bind or satin stitch the edges, so each is a mini quilt. Then I will collect them into a 5 x2 arrangement, join them together with faggoting and have a Christmas table runner/cloth. Hope it works.

Christmas Quilt

I finished quilting this - and I hate it. It is probably a candidate for Ami Simms' "World's Worst Quilts"



I may take it tomorrow just to apologise. The blocks need more quilting and the sashing needs less. I am NOT putting binding on at this stage. In fact, I am considering chopping it up and reassembling it as a QAYG.

Worn out

I feel absolutely knackered.

We got up very early so we could beat the traffic. Kevin had to be in Perth by 8.15 am for jury duty so we decided we needed to allow lots of time. We beat the traffic all right - we were in Perth in 25 minutes which was an hour earlier than we needed to be. So we did a bit of driving around in Kings Park. Very pleasant. I dropped him off and came home. I noticed that the northbound freeway traffic was hardly moving - we could have been caught if we had left after 7.30.

When I got home I resumed work on the Christmas block assembly. I haven't machine quilted anything larger than 50cm square for so long that I have lost all the skills I think I once had. I am NOT happy with the quilting, but it is almost finished except for some freemotion stars in the border which I hope to do tomorrow afternoon. Trim to size, whack on a binding and I might be able to take it to the Christmas gathering for the group that supplied the blocks back in 2005 on Wednesday afternoon. I have finished my swap block and bought a gift. Just need to defrost some crab and lime quiches which I made last week to take along as my contribution to the food.

I tried to remember to take lots of breaks, but my shoulders are aching. Early night tonight. At least Kevin doesn't have to go back tomorrow - he managed to get a discharge on the basis of his age.

Fabric Paper

At Alcira's yesterday part of the Show and Tell were two examples of the fabric paper made in the workshop with Pam Annesley.


Margaret's piece is ready to be constructed into the book that Pam had as a workshop sample.



Alcira has already made hers into a concertina book with beads. Wonderful stuff.

I have been trying to quilt my Christmas blocks today. An hour's sewing, two hours unpicking. Tomorrow I will try the walking foot.

Inchie Challenge

Today was the December gathering of Designing Women. We met at Alcira's house for lots of socialising and a brief meeting, followed by lunch. The food was yummy and we all had a great time.

There was some wonderful Show and Tell, including some of the inchies that were swapped at the Retreat in September.

Helen made hers into a cuff - an idea that had everyone wanting to copy.


Delys mounted hers on the six sides of a cube. There were only 13, so she made others, using the fabric paper from Pam's workshop for some of them.


Loraine used hers to decorate a needlecase.


And I did the obvious and boring thing and put them into a frame.

More work on the assembly

There were four of us this morning, so Pam and Iris devoted themselves to the orange panel while Juliet and I focussed on getting the blue ones finished. All panels will be assembled in two parts to allow for some tweaking of length when they are all ready to be hung.

There were three units to be joined together to make a row which would then be joined with the last completed row. The units were fiddly since they had to match up with their partners on the other panel. Two units successfully joined. Then we realised that the middle unit was going to be too short to allow for future tweaking, so another piece had to be inserted. This was not easy.


Each "pojagi" style seam has 3 rows of stitching so there was quite a bit of unpicking to be done before another piece could be added and all the lines of stitching replaced. However it was done. Picture above is from an early sample.

One more unit to be attached. A seam was carefully matched and I stitched together the two pieces. The seam allowance was trimmed to .5cm. Then we realised that the final piece had been reversed and the bits had been sewn wrong side to right side instead of both wrong sides together. More unpicking and fiddly sewing, but it was finished before I had to leave for an appointment.

Juliet had finished attaching the bottom hem pieces and said she would get the last seam done before she packed up. I hope she did - I don't want to see those blue panels again till the very end!

This was the last assembly session till after Christmas. The big launch is in March. I think there will be a few full-on days before then.

Melville Textile Project

I trotted off this morning expecting to see huge progress having been made in the two days I couldn't go last week. Unfortunately the blue panels are still proving hard to finish.

However Juliet and Iris decided to make a start on the orange panels and by the end of the afternoon we had made visible progress with about a third of one orange panel assembled.

No photos again. Sorry.

We were able to leave everything set up because the hall wasn't being used this evening. That's a huge bonus because it takes so long to set up and then take down.