Matching Pegs

As I mentioned in my last post, the guild that I belong to held our biennial quilt show this weekend.  Part of the show was a “mystery challenge” which members entered anonymously, and this year the theme was “pincushions”.  This was my entry, a little house pincushion.

I was inspired by the wonderful teacup pincushions made by Mimi Kirchner, a fibre artist with a blog called “doll”.   She calls her pincushions “Tiny Worlds”.  Her little houses look like storybook cottages, with high peaked roofs, (as well as the occasional lighthouse) but I wanted mine to look more like a typically Australian house.  This tiny house is based on our first home, a very suburban, triple-fronted brick-veneer.  Australian suburbs are full of them.  I added some eucalypts (which surround our current home) made with needle trunks.

This is a photo of our first home which was used on the sales brochure when we sold it (the real-estate agent added the photoshopped blue sky).

The hill of the pincushion is made of an upturned peanut butter jar-lid, covered in felt and stuffed with poly-fill.  The rest is made of felt, and embroidery thread.  The trees and bushes are simply shapes cut out of thick felt, with old needles through the middle, as trunks to fix them in place.  All the felt is 100% wool from Winterwood.

I am looking forward to using this as my pincushion, until now it has been a secret project, hidden away.  Some of the other entries in the challenge were fruits, a sewing machine, a hamburger, a turtle, an elephant and various patch-worked shapes.  The winner was a wonderful witch, stirring a cauldron, with pins stuck in her ample backside.  Do you have any elaborate pincushions?

During these school holidays, (last week and this week) I have spent lots of time with my kids, and very little time on my computer.  I have not blogged, and my feed reader has filled with posts that I will probably not get around to reading.

In other words, all is as it should be.  I would rather be a bad blogger than a bad mother.

The other afternoon we spent 2 hours playing a game we made abut 4 years ago, with nothing more than some coloured paper and cardboard, and some imagination.  We call it “Good Luck, Bad Luck”.

Long, long ago, we came up with examples of good luck and bad luck to put on the cards, and assigned them moves, eg.”Your read your favourite book, (Tonka) move forward 3 spaces” or “It rained on the way to school go back 2 spaces”, or my personal favourite “Your baby learns to talk, go forward 3 spaces”.

We all enjoyed laughing about who had come up with the different pieces of luck, and how funny some of them were – “Peanut butter for dinner, go forward 2 spaces” was definitely Rory!  We kept telling Michaela that the baby mentioned on the cards was really her (When she was actually a small toddler).  It was wonderful to have that baby reading her own cards (with a little help – my handwriting didn’t make it easy).

Yesterday we took off for the hills and visited the Tesselaar Tulip Festival with some friends.  I am so glad I took the camera.

The weather was perfect – overcast, (which kept crowd numbers down) but not cold or wet (until we left).

The tulips were beautiful – these very dark purple ones were Rory’s favourite, (because they were almost black).

Some of the tulips, that were starting to “turn” and were past their prime, looked almost as interesting as the ones at their peak.

As much as I enjoyed the Tulips, I was actually much more taken with the mass plantings of the Ranunculus.

I just love them in all their colours.  Speaking of colours (not a very skilled segue, I know) if you are anywhere near Eltham this weekend, and would like to see all the lovely colours in many quilts on display, please come to our Biennial Quilt Show.

The North of the Yarra Quilt Guild Exhibition is held at the Eltham Community Centre,
801 Main Road, Eltham, (Melways 21 J6) between 10am and 4pm on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th (this weekend).  Admission is $8 – Children under 14 are free.

Come and say hello, I might be a bad blogger lately, but I am always happy to have  chat in person!

I was driving through the backstreets of my suburb earlier this week, when I saw these chairs sitting forlornly on the nature strip* – a clear indication that they were there for the taking.  They were still there an hour later, when I returned the same way, so I liberated them from the impending doom of hard rubbish collection.

The chairs are very similar to the The no. 14 bentwood chairs by Thonet. Like the more famous chairs, these seem to have been made with woven cane seats, which have been replaced crudely with board, nailed in place and covered with the tattered remains of upholstery.

We have been searching all over the Internet to try and find out more about them, especially as the label under the chair seems to indicate they may have been made in Austria, like the Thonet chairs were – Weisskirchen is a place name in several countries.

The coat of arms on the left looks almost identical to one we found connected with Austrian and German Infantry- it looks to be an imperial, Double-Headed Eagle.

None of this tells us how much work is required to fix them up.  We are contemplating what we will do with them.

Yesterday was such a lovely day, that we all went walking down by the nearby pond.  There were two sets of ducklings to admire.  These older ducklings above, and seen below, these fluffier, younger ones.

We were careful not to get too close to them – it was my camera that allowed me to “get closer”.  The kids spent quite a bit of time throwing stale breadcrumbs to the ducks, from their vantage point on the footbridge.

I just love the way the lone, white duck stands out amongst all the brown ones.  We can always see him/her as we drive past the park, from quite a long distance away.

Have you seen/picked up any treasures by the side of the road lately?

*nature strip – an Australian term for the narrow strip of grass between the street and the footpath

So I have switched the squares in the second ring on my quilt – replacing the yellow ones with the pale-peachy ones.  I am really happy with the result.

It is getting much harder to photograph this quilt in it’s entirety, as it grows.  I am not quite finished with the 7th ring, of green diamonds, but I am itching to get started on the next ring, which will most likely be lavender squares (a bit more blueish than the third ring).

You have to go around quite a way before you can see the effect each ring has on the whole of the quilt.  In a few more rings I will need to have another very dark brown one, I think, for balance.  I have some pretty hot-coral pinks waiting to make an appearance too, and I think they will be as punchy as the orange ring.

The back of the quilt poses quite a pressing challenge.  When I say pressing, I don’t mean urgent, I mean pressing with an iron!  There are many intersections that are made up on 6 seams.

I have pressed all the intersections like this in a circular direction, but not the ones on the edge of the quilt, because I still need the stitching lines, which disappear with the heat of the iron.  These lines are marked with a “frixion pen”, which I picked up at Officeworks.

You may not find talking about pressing seams very interesting.  Well for you I have an interesting article, titled “The secret to success is failure” from the New York Times.  The title is much more simplistic than the article, (as titles tend to be).  It is 9 pages long, but well worth a read – make a cuppa first.  It discusses how people that tend to achieve things in life often have particular character traits that are quite separate from their intelligence, and it ponders how to teach or encourage these traits in children.  Can you teach kids optimism, persistence, self control?

It will get you thinking.  Enjoy.

This week I visited the National Gallery of Victoria for the wonderful “Vienna – Art and Design” exhibition.  Luckily it wasn’t too crowded, so I was able to have a really close look at the exhibits, but I still wanted to be able to pore over them at my leisure, so I bought the exhibition catalogue.

This cutlery service, designed by Josef Hoffmann (for Fritz and Lili Warndorfer), is a great example of the things that really appealed to me – understated elegance and simplicity bestowed upon ordinary household objects.  Blow is a Tea and Coffee service designed by Jutta Sika.

Many of the paintings in the exhibition were really lovely, but I was much more drawn to the design of everyday objects, because they relate directly to my degree in Industrial Design (which could be summed up loosely as the design of products and furniture – mostly).  Anything that is useful and still manages to be elegant and proportionally pleasing, really makes my heart sing.

I was also very taken with the surface design works of Koloman Moser for textiles, and wallpapers.  The one above is called “Silvanus”,

and this one is called “Arlette”, for use on silk.  It was my favourite.

Lastly, this was a piece of furniture that I was, quite unexpectedly, really enchanted by; a writing desk designed by Dagobert Peche.  This was at the end of the exhibition, and taken from a period where there was much more ornamentation and surface decoration.  While the piece itself looks to me to be slightly unbalanced on the whole, the individual decorative elements are quite charming.  They are very graphic representations of different vegetation.  Looking at them closely gave me an urge to pick up a pencil and get sketching.

This exhibition is on at the Nation Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, until the 9th of October.

Have you been?  What did you think?

I have been steadily adding to my Wheel of Fortune Quilt, currently half-way around with green diamonds.

It is quite fun coming up with the patterns for each ring, and I love playing with dusty apple green fabrics.

One thing that has been bothering me has been the 2nd ring – the yellow squares.

The fabric I used was not the best quality, a bit too thin and too loosely woven, and  I have not been 100% sold on the colour.

I am not quite at the point of unpicking, but I am certainly getting closer.  I have been auditioning alternative fabrics.  These are three different pale peachy fabrics I am considering.

This is the effect I am closest to settling on.  As usual, a photo doesn’t quite capture the subtleties of colour, and the overcast conditions are making the colours of this quilt look more blah then they are in person.

If I do unpick, it will be a big step, because I have ironed away the stitching lines.  I will have to redraw them on and hope for the best, a prospect that makes me nervous.  I might just decide that the yellow is good enough, even though it is a little more see-through, a coarse than all the other fabrics.

Are you happy to unpick work that you did ages ago, just because you have changed your mind?

…there has been too much going on, including this – Rory bringing home the 4 x 100m relay in 1st place.

Rory was one of only a few 9-year-old kids, from the school, to qualify for the district athletics.  His relay team will now be going on to compete for the school in the “Zone”.

He was pretty impressive in the 100m sprint

He makes it look pretty effortless, and he loves it.  Running is his idea of fun.

I couldn’t get a shot of the finish, but he almost caught that boy in front – it was very close.  He came in second.

Apart from Athletics, I have been to a 20 year school reunion, and there have been several concerts to attend, including Amelia performing with a mass choir at Federation Square, which was fantastic.

The concerts have also kept me busy on the computer.  I have created tickets and programmes for 3 separate school concerts – not amazing graphic design, but time consuming none-the-less.  If only I could remember to bring my camera to the concerts, to capture my offspring performing.

On a creative front, I have not had time for much, except putting aside small piles of fabric for later.  Here is some of my Koala fabric, (that my sister purchased from Spoonflower) with a pile of coordinates we picked out.  At some point I will turn them into a quilt.  Now I just have to find somewhere to store them in the meantime…

Have you got lots of little piles of fabric waiting for you?  What do you store them in?

On Thursday Michaela turned 6, and yesterday we had a party to celebrate.  This is the amazing cake that Luke made with the kids on Saturday.  There are the equivalent of 4 cakes in the castle, with additional jam rolls for the towers.  It is hard to see, but Michaela placed 3 little fairy figurines on the cake, along with some ducklings.  All I did was a tiny bit of the icing.

It feels like yesterday that Michaela was this big.  Her personality has always been pretty sunny – she is the family charmer, a real delight.  It is clear from all the friends she has made in her first year of school that she is a lot of fun to be around (although I will admit that I am biased, because I love her to bits). She loves to draw, and dance around to music, and is really enjoying learning how to read, making great leaps forward due to her persistence.

Poor Michaela ended up with an upset tummy on Thursday, so missed out on any cake on her actual birthday.  Here she is feeling poorly, but appreciating her new beanbag that Grandma made for her, and wearing her new clothes from Nanna and Poppa.  Mum has made all three kids a beanbag this year, and they love reading in them in the evenings before bed.

Mum has done well to make them to coordinate with their bedrooms, and their taste and personalities.  It might be hard to make out, but Rory’s beanbag is covered in spiders.  Every evening he sits in his beanbag with his “Spacewalk” quilt over his knees and reads his Harry Potter books.  He started it all off by asking for a beanbag to read in.

While the other two have beanbags covered in Polar fleece, Mum made Amelia’s out of patchwork fabrics that coordinate perfectly with her Doona cover and feature Polka dots and Scissors.

Mum was so pleased to make a handmade gift for each of them that was so eagerly anticipated, excitedly received and happily enjoyed.  She was also pretty grateful to have a daughter that was prepared to stand in the bath and help wrangle the polystyrene beads into the bags!

Do you, or your kids have a special spot where you/they like to read?

Spring seems to be arriving here at the house of Matching Pegs.  It is too nice to stay inside and blog.

Instead, I’m creating something tiny, while I sit outside in the sunshine.

Today Amelia turned 11.  Wow.  We have been parents for 11 years, I can’t believe it.  Amelia, who was our tiny, little, first baby, is a happy, healthy, talented, caring, imaginative big girl.

Sometimes I look at my family and I feel like I have won the lottery.  We are so lucky that this ordinary life is ours.  It is everything we ever wanted.

In so many ways, Amelia is a chip off the old block, but with plenty of her own quirks thrown in for variety’s sake.  She crafts the most detailed little drawings, loves eating raw pasta, spends many happy hours playing with my button collection, hates to get her fingers dirty, (unless she is cooking) and quite unlike her parents – has amazing will power to save her sweets until later!  She was pretty excited about the bike we had waiting downstairs for her this morning, which she had to wait until after school to try out.

Here is Amelia in the beanbag her Grandma made her, for her birthday.  Amelia was pretty impressed with Mum’s fabric selection, in her favorite shades of aqua, to co-ordinate perfectly with her bedroom.  Mum presented it wrapped in an old sheet, which was a trip down memory lane – a sheet from my childhood bed.

Here is another trip down memory lane – Amelia, right before she became a big-sister (21 months old).  Happy Birthday Amelia!