Matching Pegs

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?

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!

…………. largest hospital.

For the past week, we have been in Canberra on a family holiday. We went to see the sights and visit our friends, who moved there back at the start of July.  Unfortunately, we spent most of the visit sick.

We started out holiday with a lovely day out at Floriade – Canberra’s annual flower show, and celebration of spring. It had something for everyone. The weather was perfect, and entry was free!

We spent the whole day watching buskers, basking in the sun, and visiting different tents; containing all kinds of displays and shops. The kids loved the tent from Questacon, housing lots of different science and illusion exhibits.

Here are the boys using a machine that tested your reaction times – they tried to beat it by working together.

The next afternoon, when the boys were kicking a football, Rory fell and hit his head on the ground.  He felt really unwell afterwords and before long started throwing up.  We decided that a visit to the emergency room was in order.  The doctors were concerned that Rory had a head injury, and so he (and I) spent a sleepless night in the emergency ward, where he was observed hourly, and they tried to stop the vomiting to no avail.

Rory was placed on a drip for re-hydration, which did improve things, but he kept vomiting intermittently, so Luke took over hospital duty, and our girls went for a day with our friends.  By the second night, Rory was improving, but still not keeping food down, so he spent a second night in hospital, this time with Luke, on the paediatric ward.

By the third day, Rory was discharged in the afternoon.  Minutes before Luke and Rory joined the girls and I, in our hotel room, I suddenly felt terrible and started throwing up violently.  The head injury was looking a lot more like Gastro!

Within a couple of hours Amelia was also sick, and the pair of us spent “quality time” in bed together, close to the bathroom.  At this point (dinner time) Rory started falling asleep in his meal.  Luke was under strict instructions to bring him back if he became suddenly drowsy.  Even though it was most likely tiredness, from two nights sick in hospital, Luke was advised (on the phone) to bring him back.  Back to hospital they went for night number three.

Michaela was the only one of us to sleep through that night – the rest of us were too miserable/sick/uncomfortable.  Eventually Rory was discharged again, and Amelia and I emerged from our sickbeds.  For our final night in Canberra, I had fresh sheets delivered for Michaela and Luke (I was trying to contain the Gastro, as we had been switching beds a bit).  The kids were all put to bed, but Michaela was soon crying – she was covered in a rash, wherever her body had been touching the sheets!  She had some signs of rash earlier in the week, which I had put down to some artificial colours in some lollies, but I think it was a reaction to the detergent in the sheets all along, and the fresh set were more strongly laden with the stuff.

By this stage we just wanted to go home.  I put Michaela to bed, wrapped in our beach towels, and we all slept, ready for our last morning in Canberra.  We tried to revive the holiday by spending the morning at Questacon, the only place the kids were desperate to visit.  It was a great success.

The highlight was Rory’s drop from 6m high on the “Free Fall”.  You actually only drop a very short distance, before the slide (which starts of vertical and ends horizontally) catches you – it is designed to make you feel weightless.  Amelia and I were not really well enough for this type of experience, and Michaela was too small, but Luke also had a go.

After Questacon, we took off south, bound for Wodonga on the Victorian border.  The accommodation was great, but sadly Luke’s turn had come, and we both had another sleepless night – his much more miserable than mine.  The next morning, after a late check-out, we limped home, pleased that our holiday was over!

So Michaela was the last one standing, and two days later, is still well, with no sign of Gastro.  Now that you have read all the way through my horror holiday story, do you want to share yours?

The kids were determined to enter a competition on one of their favorite websites – Moshi Monsters – by making two of the characters out of recycled rubbish.

Amelia and Rory made these guys out of boxes, cardboard rolls, milk cartons, and paper mache. I think they did a fantastic job. I told them they will have to share the iPod touch if they happen to win, (not a problem I am really worried about) but either way, we had fun making these guys.

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?