Matching Pegs

Last weekend my family got together to celebrate the current round of birthday celebrations (My twin-brother and I).  It was handy for Rory that we gathered in my parent’s home, because he took possession of his present from Uncle Julian and Liz, and advantage of the room with the 2 story high void.

Rory was in little boy heaven!

He certainly wasn’t the only one.

I took advantage of the concentration involved, to try out my wonderful gift from Luke – An SLR camera.  This is Julian and his partner Liz, watching the action.  Julian is wearing my present to him, a funky shirt, (which I have not really photographed well at all) the purchase of which was prompted by him seeing one of my presents to Luke the week before.

I brought this shirt and merino jumper for Luke’s Birthday, and the jumper was more warmly received than the shirt (although both have been worn-together).  Julian saw them and thought the shirt was great, and professed his love for shirts that are a little unusual.  This sent Mum and I on the hunt for suitable shirts , and we both managed to find something Julian liked.

Here is Julian wearing the shirt Mum found for him, in our usual twin-birthday-photo.

The kids went for it, making a cake for us, decorated with 2 Monster Chefs, an Alien (down the well in the centre) a Snake, Flower, Bucket, Baby, Angry Bird, Apple, Strawberry, Teapot and Cup, and Me on an Armchair.

Here we are in our other annual twin-photo, getting ready to blow out the candles.  Presents are nice, but Birthdays are really about gathering together for shared food, drink, cake and candlelight – something I will always cherish, and never take for granted.

We are in the midst of Birthday season, here in the Matching Pegs household, with 3 of our birthdays within 12 days.  Yesterday we celebrated Rory’s special day, with Michaela taking a couple of hours off, to help her friend Jaide celebrate her birthday.  Pictured above is the top I embellished for Jaide, with a simple needle turn applique.  Rory’s new mini-figures are checking it out.

Rory turned 9, and his cake was fantastic!

It was several days in the making – if you include the practice characters that the kids (and Luke) made with plasticine.

For those of you familiar with the game, it is easy to see that the cake featured “Angry Birds“, complete with evil green pigs (and boss pig with his moustache).

The birds and pigs were made with solid icing, and it is safe to say that the experience of planning and making them was as important as the outcome – the look of the finished cake.

I was so impressed with the figures that the kids made, and the cake architecture that supported them, (constructed by Luke).  Oh and the cake was deee-lish!

Are you addicted to Angry Birds?

After a 6 week absence, I finally sat behind the sewing machine, and made something!

This is my new wrap skirt – made using the “Make it Perfect” pattern – “The Versatile Wrap”.  I love the fabric, but I have to say honestly that the pattern is a great disappointment.  It is very basic and shapeless – something that would not bother me much if it were a free tutorial, but bothers me a lot when I paid $16 for it.  I suspect that all the bloggers who wrote about this being a “great pattern” had not made clothing before.  Having grown up with a prolific sewer for a Mother makes me quite aware of what should be expected of even a basic garment pattern.

Forgive me for this low light photo -it has been very grey here, so this is the best “self-photo” I could accomplish.

I made several modifications to the instructions, to try and give the skirt more shape and to finish it more neatly.  I added 2 darts to the back panel (4″ long 1″ wide) and 2 darts to each of the overlapping front panels (3″ long 1/2″ wide).  I also sandwiched the raw edges of both the top and bottom of the skirt, inside the waistband, and hem trim.

I probably would not have made this up at all, once I had a look at the pattern itself, had I not already purchased exactly the required amounts of fabric.

I am going to have to get a copy of Nikki’s book, next time I want to make a wrap skirt, I know that that girl can write a great pattern.

I thought I would share with you the little collection of characters that are behind me on the window-sill in the self portrait, (beside our front door).  The kids and I have been collecting the occasional Lego Mini-figures.  These little folks come in opaque packs, and it is luck that determines who you find inside.

One of my favorites is the Vampire.  The kids have arranged them in order of which series they came from – series 4 is the series in Australian stores at the moment.

Kimono girl is another favorite – there was much squeezing of packs, trying to work out which one contained her solid-block “legs”.

We are a Lego-loving family, and currently have 9 mini-figures in our collection: Zombie, Demolition Dummy, Deep Sea Diver, Vampire, Race Car Driver, Samurai Warrior, Kimono Girl, Sailor and Artist.

Do you have any at your place?

Tomorrow we are going to farewell my husband’s little sister, Jacinta, who is traveling to Europe for several weeks holiday, and hoping to settle in England to work for a couple of years (sniff).

I wanted to give Cint something to take with her, but knowing she is traveling light, I wanted to give her something useful.  These days there is not much point purchasing gadgets like travel clocks, or torches – her iphone will take care of all that.  Instead I thought I would make her a bag for her laundry, to keep her clean and dirty clothes separate as she travels.  I thought the large peg on the outside of the bag would be a fair hint as to the bag’s purpose, (and to customs officials everywhere).

I impressed myself, by finishing the bag with french seams (very suitable for cosmopolitan travel) as this means there are no raw edges inside the bag to fray.  I made up my own proportions, but used this tutorial for guidance.

We will all miss you “Aunty Cint”.  Travel safe, and if you fall in love with someone over there, like your brother Tim did, make sure they are willing to end up back here, in Australia, eventually!

PS. no dirty clothes were used in the taking of this photograph (but several clean towels were).

I have a new long term goal.  You noticed I said long term didn’t you?  As in, I have made a purchase, but I am not quite sure when the next steps will happen.

Michaela has a lovely bedroom, most of which is painted a soft lavender.  Sadly, not all of it is.

One wall is painted this intense purple, which is hard to photograph, but is the colour of Singapore Orchids, when you are standing in front of it.  It probably suited the grown up daughter who used to live in the bedroom, but it is a little much for a 5 year old, even with the butterflies stuck on it.

That is where the swatches come in.  When we get around to repainting the orchid wall, I would like to repaint the whole room with a colour that is similar to what is on the other walls, but a tad clearer (the current colour has quite a bit of grey in it).

Before all that happens, I am hoping to make curtains, to replace the horrible vertical blinds that currently hang on the windows.  They don’t block out all the light, and they rattle noisily when the evaporative cooling is on.

The floral fabric is a piece that I recently found that fits in perfectly with the current pale lavender, and with the potential new colours.  It is only dress weight cotton, but I have bought 10m of it, and 10m of block-out lining, gathering tape, lining tape, and curtain tracks.  This means that once the tracks are up, and I have exact measurements for the drop, I am good to sew.

Yesterday I finished quilting the swirls in the border of the baby quilt that Mum and I are making.  Now it is going back to Mum, who is going to bind it, before posting it off to the USA.  This is what the swirls look like on the batting.

Mum is very nervous about trusting the postal service with this quilt.  Can anyone give me any advice (or anecdotes) on using Australia Post or a courier service to send precious things to the USA?

The school my kids attend have uniform schoolbags, so the teachers encourage the kids to hang something distinctive from their bags so they can identify them easily.

I whipped up the little butterfly for Michaela by fusing the fabric straight onto batting, and quilting it in place, like a tiny, raw-edge strange-shaped quilt.

Rory’s Footballer had a long needed repair – he has been out with an injury for some time.

School is taking it’s toll on Michaela, she is getting very tired.  This is where I found her the other afternoon, in a little, colour-coordinated nest.

I felt like I needed a little nest yesterday, after a late night on Monday.  Luke and I (and some good friends) went along to the taping of Adam Hills’ new chat show “In Gordon Street Tonight” which screens tonight.  It was a lot of fun, but a very lengthy process.  We had to arrive at the studio at 5:45pm, and left about 5 hours later.

Adam’s guests included the distinctive Tim Minchin and model Megan Gale, which turned out to be an amusing combination (to me anyway) when Megan gifted Adam with some crystals, and mentioned Reiki.  Tim Minchin, (who is a musical comedian) is quite ‘on the record’ about thinking New Age beliefs are a load of bull.  His “Nine Minute Beat Poem – Storm” is about just that.

It amused me no end to watch him, while Adam and Megan discussed the crystals.  I think Tim Minchin is an amazing talent, even his tinkering on the piano as he warmed up was a pleasure.  He played a Crowded House piece on the show, so ‘straight music’ rather than comedy, which is when I find him the most moving.  Here is a beautiful piece I found, that reminds me of my brother who used to play the Notting Hillbillies version.  This one is for you Julian.  Just a warning -it made me cry…

The “American Dude” that wrote “Feel Like Going Home” is Charlie Rich.

The episode we saw taped is screening tonight, on Channel 2 at 8:30pm.

I can now be accurately described as a “Mother of three school-aged children”. I think it may take some getting used to.

Michaela gets the entire month of February to get used to school, going for partial days, and then starts March with full school days.  I may have come to terms with it all by then.  I can say, that for her first (half) day, there were no tears from either of us.

Regular posting will resume soon, as I will not have a house full of children asking me to play games or take them places (except for  after school).

Did anyone return to school (start school) in your house?

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?

This morning I was woken at 6:20am.

It was not the alarm clock, nor the garbage truck, nor a barking dog.  It was a little voice…..”Mummy, the button came off”.

Michaela was up, and dressed in her full school uniform, ready for the school orientation program, almost three hours early.

She was very keen on wearing her uniform, even though it was not expected, and despite me pointing out there there would probably be only one or two kids wearing it.  She looked adorable.  The friends of my older children were very taken with how adorable she looked as she walked into school, to a chorus of “look, it’s Michaela, doesn’t she look cute”.

The reality of having all my children at school is really starting to sink in.  As excited as I am, (and make no mistake, I am excited) I am also a bit emotional.  This year will be the final of 10 years at home with pre-school aged kids, an era will be over.

I am not worried at all about what I will do with myself – that has never been my problem. I am just letting the reality of a different kind of day-to-day existence seep in.

Have you got anyone starting school next year?