28th February 2010
I’ve finally finished Amelia’s quilt! I’ve been working on it for about 2 years… coming to a grinding halt at some stage when it got to the hand quilting. As with all these things, when I actually sat down and got to it, things seemed to get done quicker than I had imagined in the lead up. The hand quilting was not so arduous when done chatting to my friends or the girls. The binding was a debacle, as usual for me, but it came together when I firmly told myself that if it wasn’t perfect it really didn’t matter. I started off following the Purl Bee instructions and Heather Bailey’s pdf instructions, but then decided to wing it, which was a big mistake. So it’s a little lumpy in parts but it’s done. Of course, I was seized by the desire to sew on the binding when access to my machine was at its most tricky – all the books and dvds from the rest of the house are currently piled all around and under my table while we are painting – so even pushing down on the foot pedal meant my whole body was at an awkward angle. But did I stop to rearrange? Clear my desk of extra bits? Of course not! I just cursed and swore and shouted at people who dared interupt until it was done (20 minutes! Not weeks on end as I might have imagined somewhere along the line).
And tonight Amelia is snuggled under the new quilt and loves it. While the full-on nature of the design is kind of “Me 2 years ago”, and I would probably come up with a different kind of scheme or combination now (a little more subtlety perhaps?), it’s done! I can cross that one off my “Big List”.
*** Most of the fabrics are Denyse Schmidt beauties – mostly Flea Market Fancy. There are a couple of Kaffe Fassett solids in there too. All were a pleasure to work with ***
23rd July 2009
My grandma made me this hand-stitched, paper-pieced, queen sized quilt for me when she still lived in Adelaide, when I still lived in a sharehouse. She kept it for me and told me she would give it to me when I got married. It was to be my “Nuptial Quilt”. At some point she gave up waiting, and gave it to me anyway. It was probably about the time that it was clear I would be spending my life with Phil but would go around shouting that I was “NEVER going to get married – there was no point to such an outdated tradition” etc etc. So we had it on our bed and then we decided it would be kind of fun to have a wedding (party-dress-rings-friends : what’s not to like?) and so we got married anyway.
The floral patches are made from hundreds of little scraps of Liberty material and it has a kind of timeless charm. It’s a beautiful, but delicate quilt. About a year ago, we decided we needed to store it as it was not standing up to the love of small children. Bed jumping (and the resulting spilled coffee), vegemite hands, smeared banana and the tunneling games, cocooning games, underwater adventure games were all starting to take their toll. We have replaced it with a lovely Nathalie Lete quilt which does the trick but isn’t quite so special, because Nathalie isn’t my 93 year old grandma.
26th November 2008
That house is getting bigger and bigger. I know it’s not going to last, but I quite like the way the structure fills with the early evening sun and glows yellow, spilling fragments of light into our house in new and odd places.
And all is quiet tonight – which is amazing because it’s Lily’s first night in her new BIG bed and it’s a very big event.
That’s the bed! The mystery object from last week. I found a cheap bed frame on ebay, found a place just up the road that powder coats stuff ($90!) and voila! Not quite the Cath Kidston beauty but it makes me happy and it was thrifty and Lily loves her NEW BIG RED BED. The quilt is a very old one from my childhood which I think is one of my Grandma’s very first pieces. It’s pretty loud, but sadly getting pretty faded in parts and is a nice stand in until I finish my bazillion other projects and make Lil a new quilt. Maybe it will just stay that way.
She looks so tiny in that bed. I tried to take a photo of her in it while Phil read her bedtime stories, but in every single photo she is a complete blur of movement - she was tucking herself in, rearranging her pillows, moving her blanky into a better position, finding that her pillow was slipping etc etc.
And don’t forget those rabbits on auction!
20th November 2008
I am all over the place at the moment but it feels ok. I go where the mood takes me (which is quite often to the top shelf of the fridge door where there is a block of Green and Black’s white chocolate). So what am working on? From top to bottom: The hand quilting on Amelia’s quilt – that’s taking me a while. And I am still making lots of those punkdorf dolls. One for new baby Georgia, one for Lily, one for Amelia, a tiny one for Mirabel, one first cousin once removed Baby X and so on. The doll pictured is for new baby Georgina – the other’s neck was way too floppy and the puckering really annoyed me and this one is a vast improvement, (although, very annoyingly, the string inside the head which squeezes the face into the correct shape seems to have come adrift so she is still kind of wonky looking). Her name is Tali (until otherwise named) which is Tongan for “waiting”… she was almost entirely made while I waited for news of her birth. And under that? I am always working on the garden these days and I am waiting on capsicum seeds to germinate in my biodegradable toilet roll pots… I may have inadvertently overheated them. And below that are a couple of pieces of trashy old ebay finds which are waiting on the back porch for a lick of paint.
But the project that is exciting me most today? It’s not exactly a craft project, it’s more an exercise in project management. Here’s a little clue:
More to come later.
20th September 2008
My first ever quilt! I thought I would do a show and tell – because I so very rarely finish anything of this magnitude (and it’s only a crib quilt!).
Actually, it’s been finished for quite a while now – but I hadn’t taken the time to photograph it. On Thursday both tikes spent a large amount of the day snuggled on the couch under their quilts so I got a chance to snap it in use.
This quilt couldn’t have got any simpler in design but I really like square quilts. That being said, I am sure if I mastered those tricky corners I would really like triangular quilts (looking at Fiona’s beauty – who couldn’t?).
I did lots of hand quilting on this thing – in retrospect, I think it’s too much. But I wanted to get that wrinkly vintage look.
And does it ever get used? Not really – Lily prefers her light, cheap Ikea doona. What can ya do. It’s good for those sick days on the couch. Next I have the hand quilting to do on Amelia’s quilt which will take me about 14 years, at least.
