Christmas Top finished

I finished assembling the blocks today. There are 10 of them, so I could either make a 9 block top and leave one out, or make 2 more for a 12 block top. No prizes for guessing my decision!

I decided to leave out my own block from the assembly, but I will applique it to the back after the whole thing is sandwiched and quilted. I thought about piecing it into the backing, but I always seem to have troubles keeping everything straight. The backing is printed with lines of text, so that will be challenge enough.

This is a very bad photo of the finished top.

Show and Tell

It was Sewing Club day today so I took along the zebra bag, minus the computer. Another girl who did the same workshop had two cushions using the designs we developed. Her designs were quite different to mine, though we started from the same bitmapped image.



A couple of people asked about the designs I made for the handles. That was easy - after using the Design Wizard to select and digitise the outlined zebras I used the endless hoop and just kept on repeating the designs till I had a length that was useable.


I have started on my Christmas obligations. Every member of the friendship group I belong to makes a Christmas block each year, using a common fabric. We put them in a bag and pull one out. The maker of that block takes them all, then supplies a 30cm square of fabric for the following year.

Tonight I started to assemble the Christmas blocks I won in 2005 to make a wall hanging. I was inspired (?) by the issue of the fabric for this year's blocks. What happened to 2006??

More catch up on the week past

Glenys Mann stayed with us from Sunday midday to Tuesday evening last week.

We went to the textile exhibition at Heathcote on Sunday afternoon. I had been the week before and had loved the work, but particularly the pieces by Christine Atkins (who is a member of Designing Women - boast, boast). Glenys was also impressed. Then we went to Midland to Gomboc Gallery to see the exhibition of paintings by Margaret Woodward. This painter is a favourite of Glenys's and she had really wanted to see the exhibition. I have a friend with the same name, but she is not a painter who can ask for (and get!) $45000 for a painting. I also took Glenys to see the Railway Workshops sculptures and the Coal Dam while we were in Midland.

Monday we went to Fremantle and hit the bookshops, new and secondhand, then went to the Fremantle Arts Centre. Great exhibitions on at the moment: Olga Cironis has wrapped a tree in blankets, Susan Flavell has built heroic size figures from cardboard strips, Ruth Parker has made fabulous curtains from rusted bottle tops and Nicole Andrijevic and Tanya Schultz have used sugar crystals and icing on motorised mirrors to make a magical fairy land.



Tuesday evening we went to the WAFTA meeting. I have been a member for a few years, but rarely manage to go to the meetings since I don't like driving at night. After the meeting we went to the airport so Glenys could get the red eye special. She has since told me that she lucked out and had 3 seats to herself, so could sleep. Wouldn't happen to me!!

Wednesday morning we got a call from Esperance where Kevin's sister and niece live. His sister had had an accident with boiling oil and was being sent to Perth for evaluation by the Burns Unit at Royal Perth Hospital.

A description of the rest of the week can be found on the family blog.

Today we have been prawning. We bought a 10kg box of "soft and broken" king prawns from a fishery company in Fremantle on the recommendation of a friend. It works out to $11 a kilo and despite the name the prawns look great. We are sharing them with Graham, Kevin's brother, and Helen so we weighed them into 1.5kg bags. Then we had to find freezer space.

There was a 1.5kg package I had bought earlier in the year that obviously needed eating first so they have been defrosted, peeled and half of them cooked tonight. The rest will be cooked tomorrow. When you remove heads and shells, 1.5kg is reduced to 750g. Still a lot of prawns for 2 people to consume. And the processing is dangerous. I have so many cuts and puncture wounds from the shells that I wonder if I should get a tetanus injection!

Catching up with events

Last Saturday (November 10) Designing Women did a paper fabric workshop with Pam Annesley. Everyone really enjoyed it and there were some great pieces produced. Now we have to make something out of it! Pam supplied a few ideas, including a book for storing ATCs.

Here are some pics of a couple of the girls at work. I intentionally focussed on Margaret's piece rather than her - it's not my lack of skill that has left her out of the picture.

It was a hot day and as Iris and I were locking up at the end of the afternoon we took care to stay out of the way of this visitor.

Back to blogging

I haven't blogged for a fortnight and am now getting back to it I hope.

This is one of the huge Moreton Bay fig trees that grow opposite the golf course part of Bibra Lake Reserve. There are three of them and I think they must be at least 100 years old. Similar trees in Perth CBD are unpopular because of the mess they make when the inedible fruit drops and the way the roots destroy pavements and neighbouring walls. No such problems here.

Getting to the nitty-gritty

The Melville Community Textile Project is approaching its end. "All" that is left to do is sewing the pieces together . . . .

There are 130 of them. The project is planned to have 5 panels: each 1 metre by 2.2 metres. Each panel has two layers, so effectively there are 10 panels to construct.

The planned design is lovely; the construction is yet to begin. Because it is using sheer fabrics, the construction details will be very obvious - hence the decision to use "pojagi" type seams. Juliet and Iris investigated a number of alternatives and have settled on a stitched down French seam.

I went to a workshop today for people who have volunteered to help assemble the panels. The intention was to develop consistent seams across a range of sewers and, more importantly, sewing machines. We used several different organzas and tried various threads, ending up with the invisible thread that will be used in the final assembly.

The first assembly session is next Thursday. I am able to attend, so I will report back.

Fabric Hunting

I went out with a friend today on a quest to buy synthetic organza which was not too shiny and wasn't crystal organza. Juliet wanted matte organza to use for the construction of the fabric panels for the Melville Community Textile Art Project.

She had scoured fabric stores south of the river and decided to venture north. I volunteered to go with her and we had a pleasant day. We bought quite a few pieces, but found that almost all that was available was too shiny for what she wanted. We both remember that a couple of years ago there was plenty of the matte - why it has changed is hard to work out.

We went to a fabric store in Subiaco, then to a wholesalers - Parkinson and Mann in Osborne Park . Their organza was not suitable but we got a great buy on Olfa rotary cutter blades - a bit less than $7 each by buying 6. Juliet bought some for the project. I bought some for myself.

After a fruitless visit to Fabulous Fabrics in Balcatta we decided to call in to Collins Craft. Juliet had not been there before - I hadn't been for a couple of years. We both bought some metal shim and some other bits and pieces. A visit to Textile Traders yielded a couple of bits of organza and provided some temptation in the form of printed silk chiffon. I resisted, however.

Then we went to West Leederville where we discovered the outlet was for wholesale curtain fabrics, so we consoled ourselves with a coffee. What next? We could have gone home, but we went to East Fremantle to a textile exhibition at the Old George which was still open. Fabulous stuff. Textile pieces by Jennie Abbott, silk painting and shibori dyeing by Marlene Page and delightful jewellery by Debbie Dieckmann. I am planning another visit before it closes next Sunday.

Reading Addiction

I have not done any sewing for nearly a week. I have stitched out all the zebras and have pulled some black and white fabrics from the stash to use for sashing and/or lining of the the proposed bag. But I am not feeling inspired enough to actually complete the project.

Instead I have been indulging myself in my other favourite pastime: reading fiction. While I read a lot I usually read fantasy and science fiction, with occasional sorties into crime fiction.

This week I haven't read a single SF/Fantasy book. Instead I have ventured into chicklit: Liane Moriarty's "The Last Anniversary" (most enjoyable), Sophie Kinsella's "The Undomestic Goddess" (so-so); Regency romance: Stephanie Laurens' "Beyond Seduction" (I skipped the sex scenes - boring - but the story line was quite engaging) and thrillers: James Patterson's Alex Cross series (most enjoyable).

There are 13 of them to date. I read the first three before I went to New Zealand, and have now read the next six in sequence this last week. I have been visiting secondhand bookshops to buy them. I have never done this before - with SF/Fantasy I usually buy when one of the authors I favour comes out with a new book, then have to wait until the next volume appears. It has been a luxury to read one book after the other without pause. But I have had to stop - I need to visit a secondhand bookshop again to get the rest of them.

I will probably stop this compulsive reading as soon as I recover from the flu. I may even start exercising again - gentle walks first before venturing back to the gym.

A GOOD timewaster

Both of us are still unwell and we have been wandering about the house at a loss for something to do that does not require much physical or intellectual effort.

I have just rejoined a number of lists for the first time since the middle of July and I read about this website on one of them.

It is called FreeRice and it is totally addictive. It is a vocabulary quiz - for every word you can define correctly 10 grains of rice are purchased for distribution to needy people. It is sponsored by some very wellknown organisations. It started on October 7th and the totals are growing astronomically - from 870 on the first day to a total of 263,565,050 today.

There are 50 levels of vocabulary - the FAQ says that most people will not get beyond level 48. Well, I have a competitive streak. I managed to donate over 4000 grains of rice and I reached level 50 a couple of times. The program drops you back a level if you make a mistake and you need to make 3 correct responses to regain the previous level.

Ten grains of rice doesn't sound very much. However someone on one of my lists calculated that a thousand grains would be the equivalent of 100 grams, so I have supplied at least a couple of days of rice to a person who needs it. And I had fun doing it - I love word games.

Stitching Disaster

Not once, but twice! I have decided what I am going to do with the zebra designs I developed on Wednesday. I will make a carry bag for the iBook with pockets for the charger and other bits.

I calculated that I needed 8 designs. OK - two already done, one in black and one in white, so I stitched out three more in black on white fabric. Then I began stitching on the black. Of course I chose the design with the most stitches. After a thousand or so I realised that the bobbin thread was pulling to the top - disaster #1. So I stopped it, reseated the bobbin thread and continued. When the design had finished I set to work to unpick the faulty portion. It took ages, even using my trusty tweezers with attached magnifying glass, and the fabric was a bit floppy in the hoop. However I decided to see if I could repair the missing section, and it worked!

Then disaster #2. The machine stopped because the bobbin was empty and I realised that I had not straightened out the fabric properly when I replaced the hoop and the repair had stitched out, not only on the design it belonged to, but also on top of the previously stitched design.

I have given up on these. Wasted time, wasted fabric, wasted thread. Tomorrow I will try again.