Christmas is coming...

And apparently the goose is getting fat.  I'm not sure about the poor goose but I'm certainly getting fat!  I went to retreat in Ballarat last weekend and I believe I ate my bodyweight in chocolate!  It was delicious though!

I've been thinking of making some Christmas quilts for my living room as I have a banister dividing the room because it's one of those 70's sunken living rooms where they put up the banister in case you fell to your death down the one step.  I'd tear it out myself but my husband loves it so I do my best to disguise it with dust quilts hanging from it.  While I was at retreat Spotlight was selling the Christmas fabric cheaply and as I had a 30% off voucher too I bought 13 metres of fabric for very little money woo!

I decided to make napkins for the Christmas table first.  I used a pattern by Shabby Fabrics and added the little trunk part.  I'd left all of my turn through holes and threads to do at my Tuesday sewing group.  All the ladies saw were half circles with this weird thing sticking out and they were so polite ooohing and ahhing over them.

They were amazed once I folded them into trees!  I probably could have taken a better picture!

After that I decided to make a Merry Christmas bunting.  I cut the fabric into rectangles.

Then cut the letters out using appliqué paper.

I used my machine to blanket stitch around the letters.  

Four down, quite a few more to go!  Why are there so many letters in Merry Christmas??

I don't think I'll get around to starting the Christmas quilts and, in fact, I need to look at a lot of pictures for inspiration first anyway.  That might take some time.  I'm thinking years of time...

And here I am, the quilter, hemming pants.  Sigh.

I finished the second bedroom curtain to the stage of the first curtain.  They'll be hanging until I feel enthusiastic enough to hem them.  But I got the hard heavy lifting part done at least before I had to empty my studio for the engagement party.

Oh la La!

I finished the baguette!  I'm not sure the French would like to claim it as one of their own but I am quite impressed with it considering I have little sculpting and painting skills!  I've always looked at those short  pottery video clips where they create a trinket bowl or something with a bit of flattened airdrying clay and and after a few smooshes here and a smoosh there there's a work of art in front of them and I thought "I can do that!" Well this baguette has certainly cured me of that idea!

The theme for the party is sunflower picnic because my son proposed to Erin at a mystery picnic and her favourite flowers are sunflowers.  A mystery picnic is a great thing to do if you ever have the chance.  You're given clues in order to pick up your food and after you've filled your basket you're directed to your picnic site.  And you don't always have to get married afterwards ;-)

The baguette was a very important part of the picnic display because once Erin realised what was happening she kept saying "I'm holding this ***** breadstick!" So I had to include one and I couldn't have a real one or it'll be covered in ants and other bugs within minutes of setting it out.  Although, that would have been far easier!  Ha ha! 

So this is how I see the picnic display looking.

There's another thing crossed off my to do party list.  What's next...

Curtains maybe?

Quick cushions

The theme for the engagement party is sunflower picnic.  I bought a cheap blue throw to use as a picnic blanket and saw some sunflower yellow cushions so I bought those and hoped to buy some blue cushions as well but I couldn't find any.  So I bought another blue throw and used that to make cushions.  As these will probably be one use only I wasn't going to spend hours on them (says she after spending days painting letters that will be thrown out after use!) so I folded the throw into quarters and cut along the folds willy nilly with scissors.  I ended up with four pieces of fabric that looked like this picture.

I then folded it up like a pillowcase and stitched the edges closed leaving the centre open.

Because I wasn't going to do a great job of hand sewing that opening closed I then used the lining from the first set of curtains to make two cushion inserts.

And I had a huge bag of stuffing I've saved "just in case".

The stuffing probably took longer that making the whole thing!

I put the insert inside the cover and hand stitched the hole closed.

Ta da!  They turned out nicer than I'd hoped.

I then made a couple of square cushions.

And that left me with these two long strips and I wasn't going to waste them so I stitched them together and cut out another square cushion.

Ta da!  These are lumpier and bumpier than the ones I put a cushion inset inside.  But they're ok.

They've been useful already!  My son's girlfriend hurt her ankle.  She was feeling very sorry for herself.

I started my paper mâché baguette for the picnic scene.  I boiled some torn up toilet paper and made a pulp.  After straining I added glue.  I saw a video where the gluey pulp was then rolled out and wrapped around the tube form but when I tried the pulp stuck to the rolling pin and not to the form! 

So I grabbed handfuls of it and squashed it onto my form.  It took forever to dry!

Once it was dry it looked like a pile of pulped up toilet paper stuck on a form so I bought some of that ready made filler you fill holes in your walls with and smeared that all over.  I bought a real French stick at the shop so I could attempt to copy one but before I had a chance to use it my dog stole it and ate it.  I didn't kill him.

But I had realised that the real bread isn't as smooth as I was trying to make it so that was good because it made things a bit easier.  My next task is to paint it and I'm very nervous!  I hope it all works out!

How are the curtains I hear you ask?  Well I can't actually hear you ask because I don't even know if anyone even reads this but I'll pretend!  The curtain was too long originally so I shortened it but luckily hadn't sewn it.  And it was too short.  It's still too short because I've lost the will to finish them!  I'll do the second curtain and hang that and then I'll hem them whilst they're hanging.  Fingers crossed that  they'll be just right!

These curtains will be the death of me!

About ten years ago I decided I needed new curtains for my bedroom so I went shopping.  I couldn't find the drop length I needed anywhere and custom made were too expensive!  But I did find some tab top linen look curtains in IKEA and thought I'd remove the tabs and add curtain tape.  I washed them first.  I'm glad I washed them first because they shrunk 15cm!!  This then made them too short for my windows grrr!  I should have taken them back to IKEA for a refund but I decided to add a different fabric to the top and make them look as though they were intentionally that way.

I made one of the curtains and for many reasons didn't finish the second.  Well now I'm redoing my bedroom and I need curtains!  I thought it would be easy enough to finish the second curtain but no, it wasn't to be.  I'd cut the lining too short which is probably why I gave up on finishing them ten years ago.  When I went shopping for new lining the type, colour and size were different so I bought enough lining for a pair of curtains and unpicked the first ready to start all over again.

I cut all of my fabrics and hemmed the linings.

I am so glad I have extra long tables for cutting and pressing because these curtains are long and heavy!

I went crazy with the pins!

I finished one of the curtains and hung them to check the length.  My lining is waaaayyy to long!  Which makes me wonder if the original lining would have worked ha ha!

So here is one curtain temporarily hung.  I need to fix the top because I didn't use enough hooks and clearly the bottoms need a lot of attention but luckily, I still like them so I will persevere.  My back, shoulders and arms are killing me though and the thousand odd dollars I was quoted for custom is now looking like a good buy!

I finished painting the side of the deck for the engagement party.  Jim will be in charge of sprucing up the grassed area and we have a bit more work to do on the deck.

I finished sanding and oiling the outdoor furniture.  We need to buy more furniture and I was going to try to find some on Facebook Marketplace but after doing all this work I'm wondering if brand new would be better!

I've painted polystyrene foam letters.  Oh boy were they a pain in the bottom to paint!  But they were cheaper than wooden or carboard ones!  Never let it be said that I'm tight with money but uh...I'm tight with money!

And I bought some fake food for the picnic rug display. I can only begin to imagine the bugs if I use real!  I want to make a French stick out of paper mache next.  I don't know how successful I'll be but the YouTube videos I saw made it look easy enough.  Famous last words!

I've been busy!  But no quilting...

A bit of this and a bit of that

I'm supposed to be making curtains.  So what am I doing?  Not making curtains that's for sure! The curtains need to be finished so that I can start decorating my bedroom.  After that, I'll be decorating what will be the guest bedroom which is covered in all of my stuff from my bedroom.   So if I'm not making curtains what am I doing??

I bought some beautiful wool from Abbe and she told me how to blend my balls of yarn so that I didn't end up with bands of colour. I couldn't work out how to do this without ending up with a billion yarn ends to sort out so I just started crocheting this shawl and hoped for the best.  In fact, at first, changing the balls every now and again was working so I thought I'd get away with it.  But clearly, you can see from this picture, that it was a failure.  Abbe had offered to redye the shawl but I thought "How hard can it be?"  ha!  Famous last words!

I didn't want to do the stovetop method of dying in case my shawl ended up like a triangle of felt so I did it in a bucket.  I had to stir that shawl for thirty minutes!  Thirty minutes is a long time when you're bent over a bucket!

The instructions told me to wear gloves and I did.  At least I did until I started rinsing the shawl and then I turned into an idiot and forgot the gloves.  Nail varnish remover, hand sanitiser and lots of scrubbing later I was almost back to my normal colour.

The shawl has been washed (it dyed the towels I stupidly put in with it) and dried and it looks better.  Not perfect but I think I'll get away with it when I'm wearing it.  I suspect that'll be the last time I ever dye anything!

I've been working on my Santa picture.  You can't really tell how much I've done until you turn it back to front.

I think at the rate I'm going this will be for Christmas 2030.

I hemmed some pants.  Exciting stuff.

Ooh and exciting news!  She said "YES!"  My firstborn son proposed to his girlfriend and they'll be getting married in just over 16 months of dieting time. Me dieting that is.  Either that or I end up on their wall for all eternity forever being mistaken for a washed up whale in their wedding pictures.

Jâc and Erin are having their engagement party in my garden so I've started sprucing it up.  This involves doing all the odd jobs that I've been putting off for way too long.  First on the list was to paint the side of the new deck to match the old deck.  I was going to do two coats but I realised that I'd then have to redo the original deck so I'm sticking with one.  Win win!

I'm also finally getting around to sanding and restaining the outdoor furniture. I've sanded one table and it came up well but I'm over doing it!  I need to find some get up and go!

You know though that it's going to rain after me doing all this work and we'll end up inside the house!  Yikes!  There's plenty to do inside too!  I'd better get cracking!  

Fun at retreat and a finish at last!

I did all the grocery shopping on the Thursday before retreat and then wondered where I was going to put my sewing and clothes for the weekend.  There was certainly no room for Judy's stuff ha ha!  But we managed to squeeze it all in.

This time retreat was at Gisborne and so there were lots of different projects on the go.  

This is Annie's dragonfly.

Judy had cut six panels into triangles and had started to place them into a hexie design on the wall.  It looked interesting...

And turned into this magnificent quilt top!

Barb and I were up to no good on the sofa.  I'm slouched and in my pyjamas but, hey, I was comfortable!

Barb was stitching these hexagons together.  She got quite a few done.

 

This was my view as I stitched the binding down on the back of my camera quilt.  And I also embroidered the label and stitched that on too.

This project is Debbie's Alice's wonderland sampler quilt almost finished.  The walls at retreat are great for displaying quilt projects.

This is one of Rosie's projects.  She spent most of her time embroidering balls on a Christmas quilt.

This is another of Judy's projects which started life as a panel.

Kate was working on these foundation paper pieced circles.  She even started sewing them into the back ground.  It looked very complicated!

Here's one Kate brought with her to take to be quilted at Hummingbird Quilting 

After finishing my camera I worked on my Santa cross stitch.  Debbie read my instructions and told me that the print gets washed away after it's been stitched so that put my mind at rest because I was worried about the printing showing underneath the stitching.  My view was of Gail's Kaffe diamond quilt project.

We had a lovely time and it's a bit sad that we're not going back there until May next year.  Still, a few of us are back to Ballarat next month so that's something to look forward to!

After finishing the camera quilt I had to find some way of removing the sticky residue from the fabric from leaving masking tape on it too long during the heat of summer.  I did a search and all kinds of scary liquids were offered up as a solution but I thought I'd try heat.  I used an appliqué iron  which gave off heat without flattening my quilting and a soft toothbrush.

It worked!

Then I found a hole!  It was a tiny hole that I made bigger while I was investigating it.

I stitched a simple patch on top of it.  All fixed!

And here it is all finished.  The lighting is terrible so it looks a bit dull but it's finished at last woo!