Matching Pegs

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?

On Wednesday night, Amelia blew us away with her confident and clearly enunciated performance as Alice in Wonderland, in the school play.  I had spent some time, going over lines with Amelia, (so I knew that she had memorised the pages of dialog well) but I had no idea she would have such presence.

At times Amelia is pretty shy, I was expecting nerves to be a bit of an issue, but I was so wrong.  She nailed it.  Apologies for the ordinary photos – we were not allowed to use a flash, as there was an official videographer at work – I am hoping that the video they shot is pretty good, because I really want a record of the event.

Another little thing that is making me inordinately proud, is this small piece of fabric (8″ x 8″).

It’s fabric I designed and printed using Spoonflower.  I saw that they were having a free swatch day, and it was just the prompt that I needed to give it a try.  I quickly manipulated the floral and butterfly designs that I already had drawn up in Illustrator, and was fairly pleased with the repeat that I created.

While you can use any colour you can conceive for your designs, I chose to use some of the colours that Spoonflower recommend.  They are colours that print true to the colour you see on screen.  This resulted in a print that is quite bright.  In my imagination, I have a whole line of fabric, in much more subtle colours.  If I decide to go ahead with any more fabric design, I will probably go to the trouble of printing test swatches just to narrow down the right colours.  I am thinking that the curtains that I need for my laundry might have to be bespoke!

What would you make with your very own fabric?

What would you make with my butterfly fabric?

I am busy building butterflies, on piece at a time.

I am pleased with this colour combination – I just have to decide what colour to use for the little french knots that adorn the lower wings.

The upper wings spots are appliqued to the upper wings before they are cut out.  Once the spots are attached, they are appliqued, as a complete upper-wing-unit, into place on the block.  This method is called “Off the Block” construction, and I have shown a tutorial for how I do this before here.

Next month I have a pattern being published in Australian Homespun, which features applique using this method, I can’t wait to show you.

There are no butterflies on it, but it might make you hungry……..care to guess what the applique might feature?  Just a hint – there is a peek posted way back in April, here.

Well I have finished my teapot, and I am really pleased with these colours – they make me so happy.  On Friday, I worked a little on this, while I was Multitasking again – this time Michaela and I were doing jigsaw puzzles on my cutting table.

Also making me happy are some recent music acquisitions.  I won a copy of Mark Sholtez’s album “The Distance Between Two Truths” after listening and writing a review online here.  Listening to him makes me feel the same way as I do when I listen to Norah Jones – relaxed and uplifted.

I have also bought “Anchor” by Mindy Gledhill after reading Sandi Henderson’s rave review on her Portabellopixie blog.  Sandi has a Mixpod music gadget on her site, where you can listen to quite a few tracks (from her post, it is clearly something she has permission for).  I listened a few times through, and then purchased the album from itunes.  I love it – So happy and quirky.  Being able to listen to an album sure makes a difference between me purchasing or not.  I am usually more likely to spend spare money on a book than some music, (I rarely buy either) but music does make me so happy.  I always listen when I sew.

These purple butterflies are fused from Michaela’s choice of fabrics, for her party cushion.  I am almost through free motion stitching around all the other cushions, but hers is still to go.  They are the same butterflies that are going to go on the “Tea in the Garden” Applique, but I am yet to chose which colours to make them in (and they will be needle-turned, not fused).

Michaela repeated the purple theme on Saturday with her costume for a Witches and Wizards birthday party she attended.  The emphasis was more on pretty than scary – that’s for sure.  It thrilled her to bits to dress up in the cloak I made for her big sister about 5 years ago.

What’s making you happy at the moment – music, a colour, a book or something else?

Well here is the evidence of progress I made while away on Quilt Retreat with the NOTYQ Guild last weekend.  8 blocks and quite a bit of needle turn applique, not to mention 4 other partially completed blocks (not shown).

Since my return I have done a little applique every evening, but most of my time has been taken up with 2 sick kids – back to motherhood duties!

Here is a little picture of the joy that is a whole weekend of nothing but sewing, eating and chatting.  That is my little station on the table, (there were 6 of us on our table – 3 with machines and 3 hand-sewing).  You can see more of the venue here.

There was a little nature spotting amongst the sewing – this cute little fellow is a Superb Fairy Wren.  He stands out quite a bit more than his female counterpart, who is a much-harder-to-spot brown.

I have moved onto working on the teapot in my applique – here is my handle and here is my spout!  I really love my needle turn applique, and have recently found 2 websites that celebrate the same technique.  Glorious Applique is a blog started recently, dedicated to the work of people making up the applique designs of Kim McLean.  I have never made any of her design (preferring to make up my own) but I love her work, and the skill of the appliquers following her patterns.

Speaking of skill, the other blogger is a designer and appliquer of amazing skill and complexity.  Her name is Sandra Leichner, and her appliques are amazing.  You can see some of her winning quilts here.  I have started following her blog which shows each step of her current work in detail – so many applique pieces, and so much detail.

It gives me hope that one day I will be able to write patterns for some of my more complex designs (like my fairy, above or my shark, below).

The sick child on the couch is calling me, so back to nursing duties.  Have you done any applique lately?

After pre-washing all my fat quarters, yesterday I prepared them for cutting, by adding a new step.  I decided to lightly starch each piece, in the hopes that this will help the accuracy of my pieced star blocks.  I have done lots and lots of Maths, while designing this quilt (My Tea in the Garden Quilt) and have worked out all the cuts and fabric requirements.  All that was left was to actually start cutting.

This is where my multitasking genius comes in.  I managed to play about an hours worth of Go Fish, with Miss Michaela, while cutting.  She was perched on a stool at the end of the cutting table.

Now I would not normally recommend this type of multitasking, but because my maths had all been done, and I had actually drawn out all the cuts per fat quarter (with colour diagrams representing each different piece of fabric) I didn’t have to concentrate quite as hard.  I was able to keep us both happy at the same time. Win-Win.

And then my clever girl arranged an Elephant with the scraps.

Do you wield sharp objects with your small people close at hand, or do you think I’m crazy?

Well I finished Michaela’s library bag, and am quite proud of myself.  As I planned, I finished the applique by stitching (twice) around each shape about 1/8″ or so from each edge.

This time I challenged myself, and did all of the sewing free-motion (as in, feed dogs down).  It’s tricky, but another one of those skills, where the only way to get better, is to actually do it.  The letters of Michaela’s name were the hardest, but luckily they are really dark, so the mistakes don’t stand out.

Did you notice who sneaked her way into that first picture?

Lotta the Moodle, who is the fluffiest she has ever been!  Here you can see her just after a bath, a blow-dry and a brush.  Unfortunately, I have to have her clipped, as she is starting to get matted, especially on her underside.  Once her fur is this long, she is very hard to keep snarl-free, and I think wearing her coat at night has contributed to the matting.  She is going to be wearing the coat a whole lot more after her trim!

Meanwhile, on the weekend, Luke picked up a new friend, while mowing the lawn – a Stick Insect (or phasmid).  We were all fascinated, so we had a good look, and then gently popped her (as far as I can tell, the male phasmids have wings, and the females do not) back onto one of the bushes in the backyard.

The sun is shining today,and I think Winter is starting to lighten up, or perhaps that is just hope talking.  How is Winter (or High Summer) treating you?