Bella Parade 2012

I'm guest posting today as part of the 2012 Bella Solids Parade over at 13 Woodhouse Road.  Me! Guest posting! How cool is that!


The series focuses on the use of Bella Solids fabric in your creative projects. And since the Bella Solids range come in a massive amount of gorgeous colours there's sure to be one or two or six to compliment anything your creative brain chooses to dream up. 

And so without further ado, the solids I'm going to share with you today are: 

I'm going to attempt to match these up with some fabrics from my stash to show you just how easy it is to use solids in your projects for maximum impact. And since I'm known for my questionable ability to chuck just about anything together fabric wise,  prepare to have your eyeballs dazzled. Go and get your sunglasses now. 

Boysenberry Bella Solid Paired with some randomness from my stash. In my humble opinion a colour like this doesn't need a lot going on to highlight the solid. 

Strawberry Bella solid with selected fabrics from the Strawberry Fields range from Moda. Beautiful!

Platinum Bella Solid with Bunny Hill's Designer Select Fat Quarter Bundle. It doesn't get any more perfect than this so why reinvent the wheel? 

Berrylicious Bella solid with Amy Butler's Soul Blossoms. This would be one striking quilt ! 

So there you have it. My picks for the Bella Solids Parade.

Come back tomorrow to have a gander at my first ever tutorial (eeeeek!)for a project you can make in a day using these beautiful fabrics. It may turn out to be a three sided quilt or a bag with disappearing-never-to-be-seen-again handles but whatever it is -it'll be  something fun. And easy. I promise. I don't do hard. I'm way too lazy.

Favourite Things Friday will be posted tonight...and I'm super excited about my planned post for today. It's had me skipping round all week in anticipation!

Tumblers, Strings and Other Things

I went back to working on a few things this week . My sewing ADD kicked into full gear over the weekend and I drifted from one thing to another quite happily. 

I learned that the sky wont fall when I change my mind about a project. I'm pretty much over the string quilt blocks so I decided it was OK to finish that quilt at 48 x 60 inches for a lap throw instead of the mammoth 72 x 72 I originally planned.   I'm 17 blocks from being able to put it together, having completed 10 more this week. 

The reason for the change in the string selvage quilt was because I had the brilliant idea to make  selvage star string blocks instead. This was my test block. I think a quilt made from these in all the colours of the rainbow will look gorgeous and much prettier than a plain string quilt. It's also a but more of a challenge for me. I could make plain string blocks in my sleep since I've probably made 1000 of them in my quilting lifetime. 

Out of nowhere on Sunday I decided to make this for Rachael at Blue Mountain Daisy who has done a shout out for people to send her house blocks. 

I stole the idea for this block from here. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it.

And the tumbler quilt got basted, and is half quilted so I may even have another finish soon. Happy Days!

So I blitzed the weekly 15 minute challenge over at Kate's this week. Pop over and see how other crafty individuals spent their time. 

Favourite Things Friday

I wasn't sure I'd make it to my own party this week . There are so many things going on here that if I can find 3 seconds to scratch myself it's a miracle. I've neglected your blogs, my blogs and my emails for the last week in a vain attempt to try and catch up with other things and to minimise stress. It's not working ! Thank goodness for the opportunity to kick back and focus on a bright spot in my week. 
Or so I thought. Little P has been sleeping over the last couple of nights and I thought I'd sneak in this post before he got up this morning and before I went to work but he just surprised me with an early morning wake up call. I walked back into the kitchen to find him wide awake and wanting to play cars. 

I'm woefully out of practice with the "writing a post and simultaneously  playing with a child" juggle. As I write he's sitting next to me on my I pad doing drawing asking me questions approximately every 8 seconds. He's also playing fruit ninja (better than I do ) and destroying my carefully thought out bakery game. 
For my birthday last year nephew of pyjamas and his girlfriend gave me a gift voucher for T2 and I finally got there a couple of weeks ago to spend it. For the uninitiated T2 is a shop that sells every single tea related thing imaginable including, you guessed it, about a bajillion different types of tea.
The problem when you go to this store is working out exactly what you want to buy. I drink a lot of tea. Normal tea. Black tea. Occasionally Green tea. But this store has funky teas in every imaginable flavour. 
I went nuts. This is "take a second mortgage out on your house to buy it" kind of tea. In the end I spent a small fortune. (and all because I cant buy just one of anything !) 

I've been mixing the chocolate chip chai and toffee (doesn't sound much like a cup of tea does it? Sounds more like dessert!)  The green rose tea is another fave. Mr. P snaffled the peppermint and took it to work . 

I even went out and bought a tea glass so I can look ultra classy while I'm sipping on my tea. 
So that's my favourite thing this week. Funky Tea. pop on over any time for a cuppa. I have plenty to go around!

Still here ...Just Hiding

I took a mini break from blogland over the weekend to concentrate on other things. They say a change is as good as a holiday. That's crap. I didn't feel like I was in a tropical vacation spot. I felt like I was vacationing in Antarctica all the while dreaming of our trip to Hawaii in a few months. 

This long weekend has been full of sewing and relaxing and other good things. My life needs a good shake up and this was the first part of it. 

Friday Night I was talking on the phone to Little Miss Sunshine while putting together and sewing a row of my Tumbler quilt. Talking and sewing can often lead to disastrous results as evidenced by this screw up.

I'm not unpicking it. This quilt is being put together randomly and the fact I have two identical blocks next to one another just reinforces the randomness of it all.

I managed to finish the back for the quilt on Friday night without any major disasters like sewing over my own finger, sewing something backwards or swearing (much) 

Saturday saw my monthly Farmers Wife group get together at Tazzie's house. It was a lovely afternoon of eating and chatting with Tazz, Claire and Loz and I even did some sewing, although not on my Farmers Wife blocks. In fact not one of us did anything Farmer's Wife related. The likelihood of me finishing that quilt- ever- is so slim that I have publicly started referring to it as my Farmers Wife pot holder. 

So, I worked on my hexie flower garden quilt and got 4 more flowers done. Since I was on a roll I got another one finished on Saturday night.

Tazz has the most gorgeous quilts stashed all over her house but this one took pride of place in her dining room. Its called Nearly Insane. I felt crazy just looking at it so I cant even begin to imagine what it must have been like to actually make it. It's even more gorgeous in person. 

If you want to see what an actual FW quilt looks like nearly finished pop on over to Tazzie's blog. If I didn't like her so much I'd be muttering about classic over achievers.  

I slept in late Sunday and then spent hunks of the day working on my tumbler quilt while Little Miss Sunshine worked on a quilt of her own. We did this together despite the fact that 2000 kilometres separate us. Facetime Sewing rocks! I'd encourage everyone to do it. 

And on Monday I worked my backside off to finish the tumbler quilt top. I'm breaking with tradition here and naming my own quilt. It's called "Home on The Range ". It makes me want to go out and square dance or something.

Two more hexie flowers were also completed today but I'm too lazy to take pictures, so you're going to have to imagine them instead. I will get to emails and blog commenting at some point this week- I'm just not sure when !

So in summary, this weekend was spent finishing a front and back for a quilt I started last week (insert round of applause here ) , sewing 7 hexie flowers, gossiping Saturday away and teaching myself to sleep in past 7 am. I'm call that a success. 

Favourite Things Friday

It would be so easy and obvious to do a post about my four day long weekend as my favourite thing for this week.  OK- I'm bragging. I had no intention of doing the long long weekend for my favourite thing . I just wanted you all to know I'm having one because it's the last one I'm going to have until October. 
This weeks favourite is  something I collect . Something I find very hard to resist.  Something I have a lot of . And like shoes,  I think I collect these because no matter what your weight is - they still fit. 
I've heard stories about people who only have one or two or possibly three of these. Really? I can't imagine what that must be like. Unless you only wear three colours how do you match your handbag to your outfit?

I have black bags  because they go with pretty much everything

Summer bags. 

Serious brown bags...

Purple bags 

Red...my favourite colour. I love that one on the lower left.

Getting girly for a bit of fun bags

 Classic grey

And my "I have to tote everything but the kitchen sink" bag

My favourite thing this week is my handbag collection. And in doing this post I've realised I don't have all that many, despite what Mr. P says when he opens the wardrobe,  so I may just pop out today and buy a new one. 
If you have a favourite thing ,link on up so we can come and have a look at what you love.  And if you share my handbag obsession I'd love to know about it. 

Whoooooo Hooooooo!

For anyone who doesn't have their mojo at the moment, I think it's at my house and by the way - I'm keeping it. 

I started this quilt in September with a huge amount of gusto and enthusiasm. I  stole the idea from Thea who was working on her own  hourglass quilt at the time.  I loved how hers was turning out . She managed to finish hers in November.  You know when you see a quilt and think "I have the perfect fabric for that in my stash " and cant wait to start? That's what happened to me.

Along the way I made a mistake and kind of gave up on this quilt and it lurked  in my unfinished pile ...and kept lurking .. and in the end it was thumbing it's nose at me and screaming "You're never going to finish me loser ".   It was in good company - there were plenty of other quilts there to keep it company. At one point they were all yelling at me like an out of control football crowd. 

But as part of my "I gotta finish my WIP's" vow I dragged it out last month and now it's finished. I was kinda hoping for a May finish but I'll take June. 

Awwwww pretty!

I'm in love with this quilt and it's staying right here. Miss P snaffled the jelly roll race quilt on Monday for her place so I have room! I'm open to suggestions for names. I'm so crap at giving my quilts names. 

I'm hoping for two more finishes in June. I have a gorgeous project lined up in my head to start in July if I can pull two finishes off this month. And maybe if I can finish some more stuff I can write a decent blog post again !

Cue the Twilight Zone Music

I feel like I'm living in an episode of the Twilight Zone this week. 

On Thursday I managed to go to work with my undies on inside out and wore them like that all day without even noticing. I guess I should be grateful I didn't discover I'd gone to work commando.

On Friday my Dad ended up in hospital and it wasn't even anyone's birthday. He's OK now but I'm starting to suspect his forays into hospital are some weird pensioner plot to save money on his home grocery bill.

Saturday I discovered we had run out of tissues so I'm using toilet paper to blow my nose until Wednesday because I'm too lazy to go to the shops. We NEVER run out of tissues. Normally I have 43 boxes in my tissue place stash right next to no less than 89 toilet rolls in case there's a world toilet paper shortage, or a flu pandemic.  


On Saturday I managed to double delete my entire email inbox and I have no idea how I did it. It's like I had an electrical force field around me that sucked all the emails into the ether.  So if you emailed me in the 24 hours between Friday and Saturday and I haven't responded, I'm not being rude, some dumb arse deleted my emails. 

I spent some time Saturday morning pondering the fickle nature of life, and  decided to just go with the flow. If the universe wants to chuck weirdness at me I'm not going to fight it - I'm going to go right along with it. 

And so, I started making a quilt back for a quilt front that I hadn't even started yet because I'm one wild and crazy girl. 


And on Saturday night I discovered I am a mere 1.5 metres short of being able to finish the back and make my binding, so the universe really did have the last laugh. Not to be deterred, I ordered extra fabric online to finish it up and I'm showing what I've done anyway. 

Sunday dawned looking particularly foul so it was a good day to stay inside in my pyjamas (any excuse will do)  

 I cut 324 of these little blighters.

and even managed to get some of them sewn together into  a couple of rows

I also made a big run at my Selvage String blocks this weekend,  prompted in part by this pile of goodness sent to me by Sue at Craft The Final Frontier Thank you Sue. 

By the way my "big run " was 10 whole blocks. I better get a wriggle on because I'm planning to finish this quilt by the end of the month and at this stage I still have 96 blocks to make. 

After a while I got bored with that and went and tortured my oven . Mr. P got banana bread...

and I braved making whoopie pies for the first time since my oven was resurrected.

Finally!  Woopie Pies that don't look like pancakes or have the consistency of Chinese throwing stars. 

I've been meaning to show this pork belly off for about two weeks.  I've cooked pork about three times in my life and this was one of them. I think I'll be cooking it again because it was DELICIOUS! And it looks pretty too-like something out of a food magazine.

Last but not least, I'm at the "finishing the binding" stage for the Hourglass quilt. 

I started that tonight while I watched Downton Abbey. I wonder if I can pull off three quilt finishes for June? 

I hope your weekend has been fabulous. Mine was nowhere near long enough !

Favourite Things Friday

Winter officially starts here today. Autumn has already been freezing. Electric blankets, heating turned on full blast and dressing so I look like the Michelin man have been the order of the day. I've spent a lot of this week imagining what it's going to be like when it gets even colder and I have to scrape icicles off my car when I go outside to go to work. OK -I'm joking about the icicles part. It never gets that cold here . But sometimes it feels like it might. 

However as sure as day follows night (or is it the other way around-it's a bit like that chicken and egg conundrum) rain will continue to fall, the weather is still going to be cold and overcast and I'm going to continue to need clothes made from hairy yak and other woolly sources in order to not freeze to death before spring hits in September. So rather than grizzle about something that's impossible to change I decided to out my big girl undies on and think about the positives that winter brings.


And one thing that I absolutely love about winter is the fact that I get to blob around inside wrapped up in warm blankets and quilts while it's cold and vile outside. Which led me to think about my obsession with chenille. 


I was born in the 1960's. In the 1970's practically every kid in Australia had a chenille blanket on their bed. Some of them were hideously ugly especially when they started losing their chenille-ness. There's nothing uglier than a partially bald chenille blanket. 


But at some point I decided to make a chenille quilt and started collecting squares, and random bits  and later whole chenille blankets. And my obsession was born. I can't walk past a vintage chenille blanket without buying it (just in case I need it ) And they're fabulous for backing quilts. I've probably backed at  least 10 quilts with chenille and they are ultra warm and cuddly.

The chenille that started it all, which is also backed in fluffy white chenille. This one is currently on my bed.

Part of my stash . I have more, but it's hidden from Mr. P who keeps mentioning ( quite rudely )  that perhaps I should seek therapeutic help for this obsession of mine.

Bits- waiting to be made into my next chenille quilt. I'm sure the fancy will strike at some point. 

Yes- we have chenille blankets on all the beds here - even the guest room...

So my favourite things post this week is an ode to chenille. It's not just a relic  of  the 1970's! And so fluffy and warm. It's probably one of the few things I love about winter. 

What are your favourites this week?