Matching Pegs

Welcome 2011.

Dorothea Mackellar knew what she was writing about when she described Australia as a land of Droughts and Flooding Rains.  After experiencing more than a decade of drought, I never thought I would be hoping that the rain would be finished for a while.

As the world surely knows, Australia is in the grip of a La Nina Weather Pattern, which has lead to huge amounts of rain being dumped right along the east coast of Australia.  Our fellow Aussies in Queensland, far to our North, are living in the most amazing flood zone – I have read several times, that an area bigger than Germany and France combined is underwater.   The death toll stands at 15 so far, but “more than 15,000 residential and commercial properties have been affected by significant flooding”.  Many thousands of people are displaced, and it will be months before many families can move back into their homes.  There have been incredible acts of bravery, like the one that cost this 13 year old his life.  If you want to donate money to the Premier’s Disaster relief appeal (administered by the Queensland Government) you can do so here.

It seems trivial to talk about what I have been making, while all this is going on.  Ironically, I recently finished my first quilt of the year, and posted it to our niece in Brisbane.  Who knows when, (or even if) it will get there.

I will return again another day, with creative news to share.  I hope everyone you love is safe – I am extremely grateful that all of the people we love, are.

Well I am down to 1.5m left of binding to sew down – that counts as blog finished to me.  It was actually pretty tricky to photograph this quilt – it is huge.  The finished size is 84″ x 112″.

It fits on a Queen sized bed with the sides almost touching the floor.  It is a Disappearing Nine Patch quilt, which Mum and I made, starting with 12 nine patches, made with 108 x 10″ squares.  More details below.

Mum and I had lots of fun choosing fabrics for the quilt – it features many fabrics that we could image her wearing – lots of batiks and tie-dye fabrics.  Unfortunately we could not find any frog fabric that was suitable (Alison is mad about frogs), which is why I made my own frog for the label.

Anita has quilted it beautifully with a “splash” pattern, which complements the quilt perfectly.  She had just the right kind of variegated cotton to use, made up of blues, aquas and purples.

Additional Details

• There are lots of tutorials on how to make this block.
• Our starting squares were 10″ big.
• We started with 30cms cuts, of 27 different fabrics, which each yielded 4 x 10″ squares.
• This meant we started with 108 squares
• which makes 12 lots of Nine patches.
• We made sure our centre squares were dark, (these get cut into four little squares).
• We positioned our large scale prints in the outer corners of the Nine patches, because these don’t get cut at all.
• Once these 12 Nine patches are cut, they yield 48 blocks.
• We reassembled these blocks as 6 blocks x 8 blocks so the quilt measured 84″ x 112″ (2.13m x 2.84m)
• We needed 3.1m (3.4 yards) of the double wide backing, to back the quilt; and 90cm (1 yard) of normal width fabric for the binding (I made binding cut from 3″ widths, rather than the traditional 2.5″)

Apart from being the largest quilt I have made, it is also one of the easiest, why don’t you try making one?

My little sister is more than a little obsessed with frogs, in all shapes and sizes.  This week, Alison (The Frog Princess in question) turned 30, and my family needed to honour that obsession with her present.  My Mother and I have made a beautiful quilt, which I will show you in another post, when Melbourne turns the sunshine back on.  The frog adorns the quilt label.

Dad has written a suitably froggy sentiment to mark the occasion, and I have been tracing it onto the label which I will stitch onto the back of the quilt.  The divine peacock feather fabric is what I am using to bind the quilt, which is a symphony of blues, purples, aquas and greens, in mainly batik fabrics.

We gave Alison a photo of the quilt top on Wednesday (her actual birthday) as it was with my friend Anita, being quilted.  We will give her the quilt tomorrow afternoon, at her birthday party, but I anticipate I will still have some binding left to stitch down – it is the biggest quilt either Mum or I have ever made.

I am extremely pleased with my little froggy.  I found a picture of a frog on the Internet, and drew a simplified version up in Illustrator.  I broke it up into 7 different pieces, and flipped them for tracing onto fusible.  The applique is finished with machine stitching, just straight stitch, which leaves the applique with a raw-edge.  Lastly I hand embroidered the eye and nostril with satin stitch.  The beautiful batik fabric is just perfectly froggy.

Are you fond of frogs?  Any other creature obsessions in your household?

…….something that you know you will need to alter, before you wear it?  I did today.

This dress looks even more lovely, vibrant, floaty and summery in real life.  It almost fitted perfectly.  It attracted me with it’s interesting palette and unique look.  The weather today was adding to the dress’ appeal – Spring is well and truly here in Melbourne, and it was quite warm (and I was quite overdressed).

The fly in the ointment was how high the yoke was sitting, and how high the dress sat, up under my armpits.  The obvious, and perfectly achievable solution is to add some length to the straps at the shoulder seam.  I already have several fabric candidates in my stash, and next I just need to take up the quick-un-picker.

I have started my sewing-for-Christmas-regime with these lovely faces, on a present for Amelia’s teacher.

This is a stitchery that I designed last year, that features both my school aged children – only problem is that neither of them are wearing glasses in the design, as they both are now in real life.

Rory’s hair is also quite different now.  It is a little too late to change it – I actually started stitching this up 6 months ago, and gave no thought at all to the specs, or the hair-dos.

Have you started thinking of your presents for the teachers at the end of the year?

Much of the sewing-blog world is abuzz with preparations for International Quilt Market in Houston.  One day, I plan to get there, but in the meantime, I will have to live vicariously through others.

My friend Melly has gone there for the last few years. This year she has a collection of her fabric debuting there with Windham Fabrics; “Little Menagerie” By Melanie Hurlston of Melly and Me.

Due to the production schedule, shipping times and our location in Australia, Melly only received advance yardage of her fabric a few days ago, giving her very little time to whip up some samples for her booth, and the Windham booth.

I happily volunteered to make up some of my aprons (which I can almost make in my sleep) that can show off her fabric in the Windham booth, using my pattern that was just published in the current, “Kid’s Issue” of Australian Homespun.

I am really pleased with how they turned out (very cute, in my opinion) – and it was pretty cool to be sewing with fabric that is not yet available.

I used fabric that features Melly’s bees (and co-ordinates)

and some that features her Phoebe elephants (and co-ordinates).  We also had a little sewing bee on Friday and made curtains out of the white, confetti print you see above, to line the walls of her booth.  I am looking forward to seeing the photos of it, all set up – I know it will look amazing, bright and fun.  One day I will get to Houston, and taste the experience for myself!

So I think I have aprons out of my system for a while – I have to make something different next.

What would you make with Melly’s extremely cute fabric?

Mr. Monster Chef loves cooking in the great outdoors, in fact, he is a pretty outdoorsy kind of monster. When he is not cooking up gourmet Monster dishes, he loves camping, fishing and most of all, driving (as you can see by his choice of apron motif).

He even manages to entice Ms. Monster Chef outside occasionally, to join him in a rustic cook-fest.

I still have not managed to find out either Mr. or Ms. Monster Chef’s names, they just get so wrapped up in their cooking that they don’t talk much to me.

Here are the guesses we have made so far…Monty, Harvey, Hudson, Marvin or Morton, and Millie, Matilda, Marsha, Maddie, Petunia or Melly.  Which two names do you think are the most likely?

Meanwhile, sticking with the MMMMM alliteration,…….behold our new “Wall of Malm”!

We have been busy assembling IKEA furniture after a weekend visit in which the store was the busiest I have ever seen it.  Amazingly, they had everything we were after, in stock, and there was only about an hour wait to get it from the warehouse and get a spot on the loading dock to put it in the car.  At last count, IKEA products that the Family room contains include: a wall of Billy bookcases, a Lack sofa table, 2 Malm chests of 6 drawers and soon a new tabletop on our “lego table” all in Birch – we must be practically Swedish.  If only we could find a way to use the trusty allen (hex) key, to close up theat pesky gap between the two Malm units – it is driving Luke and I crazy!

Monster Chef’s loves to bake cakes, slices and desserts, usually while listening to the soundtrack from Monsters Inc.  Hmmmmm, chocolate and big band jazz, what could be better.

When dancing, Monster Chef prefers the “eight step” to the “two step”.  Since I have had Monster Chef with me, all my cooking endeavors have been extremely successful – must be all that happy dancing around the kitchen and fantastic cooking advice.

When we came back from our disastrous holiday, amongst all the bills that my neighbour collected was a mystery package.  Inside was a lovely surprise from my talented (and ludicrously busy) friend, Melly.  Fat quarters from her entire range of new Australian fabric.  The range is called “Where the Wind Blows” and is the debut line for her distributor, “Creative Abundance“.

It didn’t take me long to work out that the fabric really wanted to be a softie (after all, it was designed by a softie expert).  With my chef set in Homespun, hitting the news-agencies, I knew that I wanted to create a chef of some kind.  While I was tossing around a few ideas with the kids, Michaela suggested a monster and so Monster Chef was conceived.

Speaking of Monsters, see a furry blue monster’s take on the Old Spice commercials.  Grover (Sesame Street) talks about the word “on” in “Smell Like a Monster“.

Now look back to Monster Chef – all he or she needs now is a name,  “………. the Monster Chef”.  Can you help?

I’ll share it soon……..

I just opened my mailbox to see that the Kids Issue of Australian Homespun is out, containing one of my projects – A chef set for Girls and one for Boys.

I actually designed these a year and a half ago (when this photo of Rory was taken) when I was very close to having a whole book of projects of my very own published.  The opportunity fell through (thanks Global Financial Crisis) and I have been sitting on them ever since.  I am so excited to be able to share them in Homespun.

This was the prototype set, which you can see was made for a little friend, Kaitlin.  Doesn’t Michaela look young!

The strangest thing about having them published, is seeing them on other children, who are modeling them in the magazine.  If you want to make your own set, duck in to your nearest newsagent, and ask for Australian Homespun No. 89, Vol 11 No. 10 “The Kids Issue”.  You will find my project on page 82, along with a profile page all about me.

Please be sure to send me an email and photo if you make one of these yourself, I would love to see your apron and hat.

Happy Cooking!

Way back in February, I bought a lovely floral bib-style necklace on Etsy, which is much admired when I wear it.  Admirers usually ask if I made it myself, and it slightly embarrasses me to admit that I didn’t. The embarrassment is due to the feeling that I certainly could have.  Yesterday I decided that the time had come to have a go myself.

Here is what I started with: some thick felt from my stash, 1 meter each of five different ribbons and 2 metres of a thinner Grosgrain ribbon to be used for the neck ties as well as in the flowers.  I picked up the ribbons at Spotlight for $13.77 to give you an idea of cost, if you want to try making one yourself.

There are many, many tutorials online for making floral flowers.  I looked at quite a few, and then dived in and tried it, (there was no one particular tutorial to send you to) using the materials I had on hand.  I was out of my comfort zone, using heaps of glue to make the flowers, which felt very strange, (oh a pun).  I used that tacky, stringy, clear craft glue to glue the ribbons to the felt backing as I twisted and turned them.  After the glue was dry, I cut the excess felt backing away from around the roses.

Sewing (as opposed to gluing) the beads and tiny buttons on to the centres of the roses felt more natural (there is that pun again – Dad would be proud).  It was great to be able to bust out the tiny button stars for a little dash of whimsy.  I also sewed the ribbon ties on, after applying fray-stopper on the ends.

I would love to show it on me, but I will have to wait for better light, and another grown-up to take the photo.  I am taking a class with Kellie (Don’t look Now) tomorrow, at our Guild’s Symposium, so I plan to wear it and someone can take a snap for me.  I am really looking forward to the class – I have not seen Kellie for ages, and apart from being very talented, she is really lovely.

This project was really fun, and easy to finish in an afternoon.  Are you going to give it a try?