Matching Pegs

A whole month ago I went with some girlfriends (Debby and Julie) to visit the last annual Quilt Hanging in the little Victorian town of Loch, in the South Gippsland region.  Every year I have taken a photo from the same place, outside the Public Hall, looking towards the distant hills.  This year there was a cute little car parked in “my” spot.  Isn’t it lovely.

I was very taken with this quilt, which according to the notes is called “Inspired by Morell” by Jenny Coates.  There were too many people crowding around it to get a better picture of the whole thing.

This was the centre square.

I really liked this block.  I assume the quilt was inspired by the original quilt that this one seen on the Quiltsmith site was also inspired by, or perhaps it is a whole chain of inspiration, with the Quiltsmith Quilt as a link in the middle.

This block was another favorite.  The quilt had Broderie Perse Applique, Hand and Machine piecing.

Both the quilt above and the one below conspired to obscure their numbers from my photo.  I didn’t realise until I got home.  I can not deduce which ones they are from my booklet of notes, but I liked them both.

This one was hanging up vey high, from the second floor balcony of The Royal Hotel, where we had a very plesant lunch.

This Quilt is called Rainbow Whirligig by Clare Brown, machine quilted by Patchwork of Essendon.

Loch is a very pretty little town, with lovely street plantings of fruit trees, and flowers.  The end of the Quilt Hanging will leave a sad little place on my calender next year.

The light has been terrible for the last few days, so I am not making much progress with my tutorial.  I decided not to make you wait until it was written to reveal what the sneaky peek was of.   It was actually two things, which I have since found out are called Lotus or Tulip Biscornu.

The word Biscornu is derived from a French adjective, meaning skewed, quirky or irregular, and usually refers to an 8 sided pincushion or ornament made with 2 embroidered (or cross stitched) squares, which are joined after one is rotated 45 degrees..  You can see some here and here.

These are a variation on 15 sided Biscornus, which, when joined slightly differently, result in the Lotus Biscornu.

I first came across these when Whip Up linked to May Britt’s tutorial for a pincushion back in April 2007, using a paper piecing method.  When I tried to make one back then, I made a construction mistake and got that doughnut shaped thing you see there, that I have just found out is actually a 15 sided biscornu (Thanks Melanie).  The other day, I finally got around to trying again with some scraps (although I made mine on the sewing machine) and made the small flower shaped thing you see above, so my ability to follow instructions has improved!

I was completely smitten with the result.

Immediately I knew that I wanted to make a bigger one.  May Britt’s tutorial calls for 2.5″ squares, but I made the small one above from scraps I had on hand, so they are 2″ squares.  I scaled up to 4.5″ squares and made the larger green one, which is roughly 10.5″ across.

I wrote to May and she was kind enough to give me permission to write up a tutorial with measurements to make a larger one, so I have been working on one that starts with 6″ squares, which I calculate will end up about 14.6″ wide.  I am using the pink fabrics that you see in this photo.  If you would like to make one too, you will need 15 identically sized squares, out of two or three fabrics.

I will be away this weekend at the 10th annual (and sadly final) Loch Quilt Hanging, and then on Monday the delightful Lily is coming for a visit – she has just moved to Melbourne.  This full schedule means that you will have to wait a few more days for the tutorial.  I hope you can be patient with me.  In the mean time, why don’t you check out May’s tutorial and make a small one.

Lately, my family of origin has been having a pretty terrible time.  There has been very serious health problems and lots of very hard news.  Yesterday was a low point, leaving me (and all the other members of my family) feeling extremely fragile.  Today my Mother, Michaela and I took ourselves off to a beautiful nursery/cafe to sit in the sun, and be fed lunch.  It is amazing how restorative such simple pleasures can be.  Therapy ended up encompassing a purchase of these shoes.

How could I leave them behind – they had all my favourite colours, and were predominantly red.

There was one arguement for leaving them behind – my friend Debbie (who is in another state at the moment) bought a pair of these when she was down the coast about a month ago.  Will you forgive me Debbie – even thinking of your pair, I still could not fight “the wanties”?

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.

Thank you so much for all the lovely Birthday Wishes.  My birthday was much better than expected.  Even though we could not take Julian out of the hospital, we found an empty common room, and had some lovely cupcakes my sister had made for the occasion.  Michaela and I took in some festive helium balloons, so cake + balloons = mini birthday party for 5.  These interesting flowers are actually some ornamental cabbage that Mum gave me on the day.  They look amazing, and last really well – they look exactly the same now, 5 days later.

Luke, the kids and I had a yummy pizza dinner out, and then I went to my weekly sewing evening, where the girls spoilt me like crazy.  Turns out that some of them were actually stalking me when we were shopping in the patchworks shops the previous weekend.  They were following me and buying some of the fabric that I ooohed and ahhed over.  I also received tea related gifts, candles, decorative pegs, (see they know me well) and one of Debbie’s lovely handbags.

Today I had a blissful Tuesday to myself and accomplished quite a bit.  I finally dealt with the old sheers in our bedroom.  I have hated these since we moved in 7 years ago!  For ages I have had the plain sheer fabric to make new ones, more in keeping with our taste.  The problem has been getting an empty house, so that I have the floor space to measure them up and cut them out. Voila!

Having just past the shortest day of the year, it is unsurprisingly dim in our south facing bedroom*, so this picture is not the best.  If we did not live with the school at the end of our street, I might not have bothered with sheers at all, but everyone knows we live here and the morning school traffic would all be able to see in if I didn’t have them.  Instead of me in my PJ’s, this is what they will see.

Keeping with the bedroom theme, I also got out another work in progress that I worked on a little more.

I took this photo before I filled in the white spaces you can see, they are now gone.

The flowers are looking a little intense and flat.  I plan on adding thin over-painting to give more subtlety to the colours as well as more colour graduation and shadows.  I used to paint with oils years ago, but I am using acrylics (having no time to wait for oils to dry) , so I am making it up as I go – I hope the over-painting works, I may have to use some kind of medium – anyway the fun I am having is more important than exact technique.

I also did a little sewing today – but that’s another post, for another day.

Do you have sheers on your windows, or can the public see in?

*For northern hemisphere readers – a south facing bedroom here, is like a north facing bedroom over there.  If a room faces due south, it doesn’t get any direct sunlight, and tends towards dark.

Bendigo Post Office

On Saturday Amelia, Mum, our friend Eryn and I took  a day trip to Bendigo to see “The Golden Age of Couture: Paris & London 1947-57″ at the Bendigo Art Gallery.  It was Fabulous.  Because it was the last weekend, it was also packed with people.  Luckily Mum had the foresight to book tickets online, so we avoided the 2 hour queue.

Sadly there were no programs left to be purchased, and there was definitely no photography allowed, but here is a photo that was on the Art Gallery website until yesterday (I guess they took it down because the exhibit is finished).  I grabbed this image off the link I had posted yesterday on my Facebook profile – I don’t usually use images that I have not taken myself, but I am bending my own rules for this beauty, one of my favourites in the exhibition.

The collection was put together by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  The Bendigo Art Gallery did very well to get permission to host it exclusively here.

In the afternoon we stopped by the Sacred Heart Cathedral.  This magnificent Cathedral is where my Grandparents were married, can you imagine walking down the aisle in such a large venue?

Overall we had a lovely girly day, and it was well worth the day trip.

Here is a little photo which sums up my Sunday, which in comparison was pretty quiet.  Inspired by Rachel, I made a lovely Buttercup bag.  The Buttercup bag is a free pattern from “Made By Rae”, cleverly designed to use 2 fat quarters.

It is a pretty small bag for me, but perfect for the walk up to collect the kids from school – I only really need to take my keys, wallet and phone.  Oh, and the green coat was a new purchase from yesterday, (a super-bargain).  The coat is also perfect for the walk to school, now that it is starting to get a little cooler – autumn is on the way.

Here is a better look at the bag on its own.  For those considering making this bag, I made a couple of minor changes to the construction.  I added a layer of pellon inside the bag to pad it slightly (I ironed the pellon to the lining) and I added the handles (which also contained a layer of pellon) before joining the lining and outside together, so that the handles are sandwiched between the layers.

One of the strengths of this design (IMHO) is that the proportions are balanced so well.  I may make it again, at a larger scale, which would of course require more than fat quarters, but hold more of the stuff I usually lug around.

Why don’t you make one?

Any other Melbournites feel a tremor just before 9pm?

The bookcases were rattling and the kids were calling out – “our beds are shaking”.

Wonder if it has anything to do with the Volcano errupting in Indonesia, that I found when I went to breaking news on The ABC Breaking News website.

Updated to add

You can see details at the US Geological Survey Home page

Earthquake Details

This is Rufus, another furry friend that is with us at the moment, but this one is just visiting.  Rufus is the class mascot and it is Rory’s turn to bring him home.  I have never come across a class mascot before, but the idea is that Rory has to write about all the things he does with Rufus  in a special diary.  We had fun the other night coming up with bizarre things that Rufus could do (with perhaps a little help from photoshop).  Meanwhile, he is just hanging about, taking up half the couch.

The other morning there was a knock at the door, a package had arrived for me from Rachel.  I sent Rachel a few things a little while back with the pegs from my giveaway.  On request I provided December’s Homespun, which included my Spacewalk Quilt, for a swap.  Rachel has not only sent a magazine, she sent two, and lots of little goodies, and best of all, fabric.  It was such a lovely pick me up.  Thanks so much Rachel – it is so nice to have friends from in the computer.

Today I have been playing with paper circles again, working on a new project.  I really enjoy working this way – mocking up a project with paper in full scale.   It helps me really visualise possible designs.  Do you ever get out the coloured paper and the scissors – it is so much fun?

Tonight’s sunset was lovely, yet not far from here (about 30 minutes away) there are those who have lost their lives, and many that have lost their homes.  The colours in the sky were surely created, in part, by the clouds of smoke  hanging over Melbourne.

Yesterday the mercury reached 46.3 degrees C (115.3 F) here in our suburb, and Melbourne recorded its highest temperature since records began 150 years ago.  At least 84 people perished as major fires burned across the state in a day worse than Ash Wednesday.  The death toll is expected to rise as more victims are found. Over 750 homes have been destroyed.  Some fires still burn.

The Red Cross is calling for donations to help fund emergency relief for victims, meals for fire fighters and emergency personnel and many other relief work.

You can donate to The Bushfire Appeal Fund by calling 1800 811 700

Burns victims require blood over many months.  The Australian Red Cross Blood Service is encouraging people to donate blood.  People should call 13 14 95 during Monday to Friday to make an appointment.

10th Feb, Edited to Add:

The death toll has risen to 173, but is expected to rise as more burnt out homes are searched. There are fire fronts that are still active, the threat has not passed even though it is cooler.  The Salvation Army has a donation site that has links for donations from outside of Australia.

This is very close to home, metaphorically and physically.  Close friends have lost members of their extended family. Friends children have lost classmates.

This morning Michaela and I went to Kynan’s 3rd Birthday Party.  Kynan is the 5th child in his family, and the only one that didn’t already have an apron (made by me).

Yesterday I whipped him up a pirate-map and coin fabric apron, made entirely from my stash.

At the party there was a travelling farmyard full of baby animals, for the kids to pat and hold.

Michaela got up close and personal with Rabbits, Guinea pigs and Chicks, but kept the other animals at arms distance.

Kynan had a lovely farmyard cake.  Thank for inviting us Kynan, we had a lovely time.

After the party, Michaela was so tired that she had to retire to a custom cubby house, (made of quilts of course) with her brand new bunny, from the party.  She has named him Albert after the large white rabbit at the party (and not Kynan’s Grandpa – who is also Albert).  Funny thing was that the bunny at the party was actually a girl – I wonder what Michaela’s Albert is?

Next post I promise to tell you more about Loch.