Matching Pegs

A few days ago I finished putting the “skirt” on my new cutting table – it is complete!

Made from two IKEA kitchen cabinets, an interior door, some small lengths of timber, little hooks and eyes, some stretchy, covered-springy-stuff that holds up the curtains, and about 5.5 metres of fabric (Shangri-La by Three Sisters for Moda – stolen from an uncompleted project).  I am so thrilled.

The top is painted in the same custom colour that we had mixed for the gutters and the heater surround at our last house – it is hard to pick from the photos, but it is a very dark kingfisher blue – verging on black and I love it.

The cabinets are holding my stash, which is still stored in several plastic crates.  I am debating storing less attractive items under there, and putting the folded piles of fabric on my open shelves – but that is a pretty big job, I’m still thinking through the pros and cons.  Can you see these lovelies well enough – here is a better look.

This is the other side of the space (which was the formal dining room for the previous family – you can see it here)

My Mum has been extremely generous, and has given me her Horn Cabinet, to store my sewing machine in.  I have yet to colonize the space inside it with all my bits and pieces.  It will take me some time to decide where to keep everything – the thing is full of little partitions.

You will have noticed my little friend in the first photo.

After Lotta’s recent clip, the weather turned cold again, so I had to put her in a coat, which I almost never do.  She is wonderful company in my beautiful sewing area, and pretty cute as well.  Stay tuned for more sewing room projects.

Does anyone keep you company when you are sewing?

It has been a while since I posted.

Long term, things in my family (see last post) are looking more positive than they were, but the current situation has changed very little.  In general, the sadness I feel is taking it’s toll, particularly creatively.  I have been taking my time to set up my new sewing area, and have been feeding off the creativity of others, spending lots of time blog surfing.

Overall this “therapy” has been slowing working its magic, and I am started to get ideas again – starting to get that urge to make something.

I have been really enjoying our new house, the space is such a luxury.  At the almost-a-month-mark, we are almost all unpacked, (3.5 boxes left I think).  As I type this, I can hear Kookaburras laughing, which is magic, a real balm for the soul.  The older I get, the more I believe that it is the little things that make life worth living.  Sitting in the sunshine with a good friend, and a lovely cup of tea is a wonderful dose of healing, far better than buying stuff, even red shoes.

This week I have been enjoying the beautiful flowers (above) from a lovely friend (They opened Carolyn, and they are beautiful) and every time I look at them I am reminded of her visit.  I wish I could share the fragrance.

Due to the hot weather, I have had our puppy Lotta clipped.  I asked the groomer (would that be he right word?) to clip her close all over, because there are a lot of nasty little weeds in the garden, that we are gradually tackling, but they have been getting caught in Lotta’s fur, especially her tail.  I think she looks like a completely different breed of dog now (the most recent view of her with her hair is here at the bottom of the post).  She reminds me of the fox terrier crosses I had growing up, especially my lovely “Silky”.

Lastly I thought I would share a site (The Visual Aid Shop) I found last night via Print and Pattern, it has a whole library of excellent posters designed by graphic designers on all sorts of things.  If you look at the Print and Pattern post here, you can see a pretty good selection.  I think they would make cool Christmas presents for the graphically discerning.

What simple pleasure is your therapy?

We have made it to the other side of the move!  We are still feeling a little chaotic, but the space is pure heaven.  The garden is much more native than our previous one, as we are surrounded by gum trees (eucalypts).  There is plenty of scope to put in ground-covers, shrubs and flowers.

The kids are loving having their own bedrooms – this is the one that Amelia chose, which is actually the smallest, she fell in love with the paint colour.  I think it is a little strong, but it does go well with her quilt and fairy wall hanging.

Some areas of our home are looking more set up than others – there are still lots of boxes everywhere – but it is so lovely to finally be able to display some things that have never seen he light of day.  This is a quiet corner of the lounge room that we are going to use when we want to get away from the hubbub to do some work on the laptop, or some quiet writing.

The lounge room also boasts the ugliest lights ever, strung low enough that several members of the extended family are going to have to wear hardhats to enter the room.  See those little specks of light on the ceiling? They are being thrown by the lovely mosaic bowl in the previous photo, which I was given by a dear friend for my last birthday (thank-you Leigh).  We are now calling it the reverse disco ball.

You can see it here with some beautiful roses that my Mum bought from her garden this weekend.  I believe they are “Henri Matisse” Roses.

Our new home is a symphony of those 80’s colours – pale apricot and mission brown, with quite a bit of woodwork thrown in.  Even the ceilings and doors are painted pale apricot -the same strength as the walls.

The meals area is the only living area in the house with a slightly different colour – a feature wall of textured dusky pink.  It is kind of growing on me, but Luke doesn’t think much of it.  It sure makes a nice backdrop to the beautiful flowers that our friends Rowena and Mark gave us to celebrate moving into our new house (thanks guys).

On Friday we were reunited with Lotta, who spent the week at my Mum and Dad’s while we moved.  She is also loving the new space, and we are all happy to be together again.

I will be back to show you more as the house is unpacked.  Hopefully I will have a sewing area to show you soon, once we have created a cutting table – we have great plans that involve 2 kitchen cabinets from IKEA and a door.  Stay tuned.

Thing have been going along swimmingly with my string pieced blocks – which has been great, I have been using them as a kind of therapy lately.  I decided a few days ago that I could probably spare a few strips for a quick-finish-project I had in mind – a string pieced cushion.

As I needed a slightly different sized block to fit the cushion, I decided to choose a different colour for the starting diagonal.  The last thing that I wanted was a stray, odd-sized-block getting mixed up in the New House Quilt!

To give the cushion a bit more durability, and a nice shape, I decided to take a leaf out of Lily’s book and quilt the blocks onto a old piece of blanket I had left over from a previous sewing endeavor.  I was really pleased with the finish this gave to the cushion, and I am saving the rest of that blanket for more.

Now here is the part where you start laughing.  I lovingly crafted this cushion for our Puppy, (I know that some of you will not find this as hilarious as others – but the dog owners out there, that have hounds that shred their bedding, will probably shake their heads at least).

You see, Lotta has taken a liking to perching on this folded quilt in the evenings when she comes inside.  Like a mountain goat, she delicately makes her way to the end of the back of the couch (which, as you can see, is not against a wall, but floating out in front of the shelves).  I had taken to leaving the quilt there as I was gradually sewing down the binding to finish it.  Clearly it took me a while, because Lotta has gotten used to it.

I am hoping she will get used to the new cushion (and the idea that it is especially for her), so that once we move house I can place it somewhere more convenient, and less precarious.  At least I know she will have a stylish cushion that will go with our decor, and not look like something that belongs to the dog – unless she takes up shredding her bedding.

Have you made anything beautiful for your pet lately?

Spring is well and truly in the air here in Melbourne.  Being the changeable city it is (four seasons in one day) there has been some back and forth with cooler weather, but I can feel the overall change on the wind.

These beautiful flowers were put together by “Aunty” Libby, (a much loved almost-family-member) at our Church’s “Spring Fair” on the weekend – she knows me well -she said “These are just your colours”.

I spent the afternoon painting children’s faces – mostly butterflies, and the occasional spider or pirate. When I get the photos from my Mum’s camera, I will have to show your my kid’s faces – Amelia had the most unusual “face” there – she is so imaginative.

My kids had a lovely time, there were pony rides, a handball competition, biscuit decorating and plaster painting.  Michaela even had a chick on her head in the farm area!  There were loads of volunteers, and all proceeds went to charities (not our Church).  Some of the money will be going all the way to an Orphanage in Uganda that the church has been raising funds for, for years.

Like Lotta, who has had her winter coat removed, I am well and truly wanting to leave Winter behind.  August was the sickest month in our house that I can remember – there was less than a handful of days when there was not a sick member of the family on the couch – we were at the doctors 7 times in about 5 weeks.  Nothing serious for my household though – the usual winter ills.

Winter has also been dark emotionally, as my brother has been in hospital for the entire season – hopefully he is getting closer to being well enough to go home in the near future.  My sister had lots of difficult health news too – so we are all wanting Spring to roll on in and bring a fresh new start.

This photo was taken in one of my favourite places – a very large park near home, with hours worth of walking track.  My Mum, Michaela and I visited it last week, on one of the first warmer days.  I am going to make an effort to get outside as often as I can, it really lifts the spirit.

What place really lifts your spirits?

I finally finished that little quilt to match the bunny.  I decided that it didn’t look to towely after all.

As you can see I made it for a little baby girl called Alani – who is not so tiny any more, but several months old.  As her family was moving house, I waited a little while to make a gift, but then I took a little while longer when life got really busy.  All it needs now is a little label and it is in the post.  Luckily I can show it to you – I don’t think they are blog readers (I hope).

While I took my photos, on the deck, in the lovely Autumn sunshine, I had company.

Who keeps you company while you work on your projects?

* That post headline was actually a typo, but I liked the word Quilty so I kept it right up there.