Monsterising

When I was little, Helen used to call me Sara Scissor Hands.

Tonight, I used scissors for about 3 straight hours, and HATED it.

I missed my rotary cutter. I tried mixing up the scissors, so they weren't constantly rubbing on the same places on the same fingers. I tried big scissors and little scissors and scissors somewhere in between.

I now have a flat pack* of 26 monsters ready to be faced. I think it gets a lot more interesting once you start giving them faces - that's when the personalities come out.


*These are fantastic for keeping all the little bits together and flat - they're an A4 case about 1.5cm thick that are meant for keeping paperwork in - usually found in the stationary aisle.

Most Sparklyest, Rainbowest Present Ever!

If I'm honest, I'm glad it's over. I'm not a huge lover of Christmas, since it always feels like it will be a huge hassle, and, yeah, usually it is. There's lots of driving about, often with people in your car you would never otherwise have, the awkwardness of having to say hi to relatives you loathe for a variety of reasons and the always fun job of pretending to ignore the fact that two of your sisters are hating on each other, and that your dad is slightly too drunk on account of how he hates Christmas too, and probably for the exact same reasons. Except the driving, cause that's not allowed after a whole bottle of Wild Turkey.

This Christmas though, contained a ray of light not seen every December 25th. And while I loathe surprises and being out of the loop, this was my present from Helen and Casey this year.

I found it on ebay a few weeks ago and put out an open invitation on facebook for anyone to buy it for me, but it was near enough $100 so I doubted anyone would. It ended and was re-listed at 20% off and I seriously considered buying it but by then, someone already had. I took it as a sign, since really, I don't live the kind of life that caters to a wardrobe of rainbow sequined dresses, but today I opened up a little box and saw some sequins through the tissue paper and almost peed my pants.

If it hadn't fit, I probably would have locked myself in a bedroom and bawled for a bit. 

Apparently though, pretty much everyone except me knew I was getting it. I messaged Anna as soon as I got it since we'd cooed over it together and she already knew, as did Mum and Nanny. As someone who doesn't really "do" secrets, the fact that everyone around me does is somewhat disconcerting. Thankfully they've (so far) only used their powers for good instead of evil.

So thankyou to Helen and Casey. I must come up with a suitable occasion to wear it. And some new boots to wear with it.

I'll post a link to them on facebook when I do. My birthday is only 4 weeks away now...

Feelings

It's been a day of interesting feelings today. There was the time spent in the perfume section of Priceline, feeling ignorant and alienated (because I'm anosmic. Google it). There was the time tonight when I realised that I'd made a goddamn stupid mistake* on Casey's bag and had to spend 20 minutes unpicking the zipper, feeling stupid and angry at myself. But on the other hand, I got a small child happily into bed, and that felt quite good, since it's not something I would have previously considered myself capable of. And selling all the monsters tonight at Helen's, in the space of one slightly frenetic hour, actually felt kinda great. It's a lovely feeling to have my stuff be very much wanted, and, even though I'm certainly in no rush, to leave them already wanting more.

Now though, having pretty much finished Casey's bag (I've just got to neaten up and overlock the inside seams) I'm pretty much just feeling tired.

*I cut the vliesofix and had it as my pattern interfaced to the lining to give me the size I needed. But because it was the start of a new piece from spotlight, the edge was wonky and though I remembered to draw a nice straight line to square it off, I didn't actually cut that line, meaning one zipper edge was, at one end of the zip, over a centimetre wider than it should have been. And yeah, I didn't realise it till I had sewn, threaded and cut down the zipper.

I think I'm doing it wrong....

I'm not particularly good at this "Christmas decorating" thing.

Though some of those little arms do look kinda like stockings.

All this batch of monsters are fully faced now and all their little arms have been sewn, but not stuffed, cause I didn't get out of bed early enough to make it to Spotlight and Casey got there at 5.25 and didn't think to name-drop her way in. Silly Girl. Stuffing is another of those things I have *somewhere*

I'm feeling extremely grateful that I have the day after tomorrow off, since I still have a lotta lotta stuff to do. My goal is to get these guys sewn and stuffed tomorrow night/friday morning and drop them into Helen, and hopefully she'll be nice enough to sew them closed for me, since I hate that job.

Lying.

Have you ever made someone something and then been all bummed that you don't get to keep it?

Any of you that said no, I'd like to remind you that Santa is watching, and you've only got yourself to blame if you don't get anything on Sunday. If I know you're lying, then Santa does too.

I've been working hard* on Casey's bag tonight, and I want it. Want want want. Sulk. Maybe I will steal it later. It's not yet finished yet, and I have some distractions, maybe I can pretend that it can't be finished, and then sneaky finish it and keep it for myself.

The distractions I mentioned are a sudden call for lots and lots of monsters, in the next 4 days. Helen put them on facebook, and people went and bought them all, and wanted more. And they're not having Alex (he remains my monster) so I'll have to see what I can do.

*Just because I spent long periods of time getting distracted by making myself a new headband, cooking some rice, playing with some zippers, painstakingly cutting some fabric on the grain, and wrapping a couple of presents, doesn't mean I wasn't working hard, y'know, in between all that stuff.

Later...

Tonight, after visiting Helen to pick up my still sadly a bit poorly* laptop and going to Carols by Candlelight and spending 2 hours at the gym cause Anna was waaaay later than she said she was gunna be, I got all the red and white fabrics, took them to the kitchen, laid them out on the bench and stared at them for a bit.

Then I got out some paper, drew a little diagram and wrote some notes to myself, along the lines of "flowers can only go between two lights" and "stripes can only go between two darks" and "stars have to abut - shame"

And now, 30 minutes later, I've decided to wait till later, chop them up and just do it by eye. There's still 13 whole** days before Christmas. I will be fine.

*by that I mean that although it's useable for now I will still need to replace it ASAP, making me merely poor.

**by that I mean 12 whole days and 22 hours and 20 minutes till midnight Christmas eve. In case you were wondering

Wowee.

Tomorrow will be my 300th post. I'm glad it's not tonight's, because I'm feeling a bit disjointed.

I'm worried about my beautiful little boyf, who fell over and knocked his baby teeth back in. I'm similarly worried about Helen and Steven, who I suspect are feeling even worse than Bob.

I suspect Esther is stressing too, because she'd be getting less attention than usual, and that would damn near kill the poor girl.

I've done an imperial pattern for a scaled-up version of my uber-gorgeous Stairway to Heaven quilt, and I need to convert it to metric so I can make it and take the photos to go with it.

This is mainly a scam to give myself a reason to make it again, but big and for me. It's 3 yards of fabric for the top, and leaves some blocks for the back. It comes out to about 130cm by 150cm, which is my usual big-quilt size.

I've spent most of the day doing the faces for monsters. I've used fabric paint instead of sewing faces on, which, if I'm honest, has been just as much work. Well, it's felt like it, but I've gotten 13 done today, which is more than I had for the last market. I just need to shorten the backs of the bigger safety eyes, and I can get to assembling them. But I'm feeling good about it, because there's still a week till the market, and this is advanced forward planning by my standards.

Channel 11 shows Mork and Mindy at 12.30 on a Monday night (maybe other nights too, but I've only seen it on Mondays.) I'm loving it. The peace-and-love vibe, and a wardrobe I'd kill for. Which, admittedly, isn't very peace-and-love, but nice clothes are nice clothes.

I've just finished season 13 of Time Team. Don't worry, I have plenty more.

What I don't have much more of is stuffing. I hadn't realised until I checked today. I'll get some more tomorrow.

And maybe a half yard of each fabric to do-over my quilt (but not this week, because I have more monsters to make)

Crafternoon II - Keepin' on Crafting

So today was the epic sequel that everyone's been waiting for. I had planned to go to Lincraft before I picked up Kelsey at 1, but then I didn't get out of bed till 12, so that didn't happen. Lucky me she needed buttons too so I still go to go to Lincraft.

Even though I was only gunna get one bundle, I ended up getting 3. These are the two I brought home - the third I bought because I was suffering from Getitforestheritis, a horrible affliction caused by the knowledge that Helen's making a retro tickertape quilt for Esther, and an uncontrollable desire to unnecessarily help. I have no idea what I'll do with these though, since I don't really have a design on the top of my head of a 16 fabric spectral retro quilt.

Since I've no plans yet for that, I figured I'd get started on one of the other ones. The purple, green and blue bundle I assembled ages ago seemed to be preferred to the pink, white and brown bundle, so I went with that. I only got as far as cutting my big squares before the girls went home, but I got stuck in while they had tea, and it all came together around 8pm.

Ah, the joys of photoshop. This is cobbled together from a couple of photos because I took the photo at Helen's right after I'd finished, and I didn't have a stool to take it from. Here's a real life photo.

I got home about 10.30 but unfortunately, the speedway was still on. Tonight was the start of the season and because we live so close, it's annoyingly loud. I haven't gotten anything done since I got home (not including the consumption of yet more mini pavs with whipped cream) and I'm not planning on it, and tomorrow will probably be a washout too since I'm back at work.

More money = more fabric though, so I suppose I don't mind. And it's my last shift for 2010.

Interesting... (or maybe not...)

I just posted in a comment that I have 5 USB sticks, two SD cards and a transflash in my handbag. This is interesting (to me anyway.) Four of the USBs (one on each keyring and two more) are 4gig and the Smiggle one with a ball maze on the back, which my little sister bought for me in Queensland is a 2gig. One SD card is a 4 and the other is a 2, and the Transflash is a 4 as well. So not including the Transflashes in my two phones (a two and a one) I have 28gig of data storage in my handbag.

Our pretty much useless home computer only has 20...

I have another two transflashes - and 8 and a 4 - for my tablet computer and three 2gig SD cards spread between my camera and two palm pilots. And I have two 750gig external harddrives that I know the location of, since there's another couple that have been lost to the mess of my room, and the tendencies of my father to drop trees on our storage sheds.

Not sure that there's a point to this, I'm just a bit shocked at myself. It's possible, just maybe, that I have enough.

Maybe.

Anyway, back to being a craft blog. I took my laptop to Crafternoon I - The Craftening (tomorrow will be Crafternoon II - Keepin' on Crafting) because I had to start work at 4 and knew I wouldn't get to really do much, so I figured instead I'd take the opportunity to pimp Helen's blog. I also got my neat 16ths cut for the first of my 3 bundles, and, tada!

The colouring looks quite strange in the photo, but I like the look of it in real life. That's the problem I suppose with taking photos in the middle of the night from directly above while standing on a chair, and it's why most of my final photos are of quilts lying on the grass.

There's also a big boo-boo in this quilt, but I think it's hard enough to see that noone will notice it. That's the great thing about this design - very few points have to line up, and the pieces are big enough that you don't notice when some of them are 2cm bigger/smaller than they're supposed to be. Yes, I could have shrunk them all down to the same size. But I'm lazy, and when it should only take two hours all up, you don't wanna add another 25% onto that fixing a piddly mistake.

So now I need to think of something to do at Keepin' on Crafting, the sequel to this Summer's smash hit "The Craftening" (because sequels to blockbusters tend to come out on Boxing day, and the public holidays this year are weird)

I think I'll go to Lincraft beforehand, since they still have 30% off, and maybe get another 8 f/q bundle. Then I only need to de-stash one more and I can make another quilt top.

Hopefully not fucking up this one. Even if it is only a little bit.

Do I write too much?

I didn't realise it till I'd gotten home and had my ice-cream, but Helen was right, it has been a very long day. Expensive too. But my pay packet next week should be massive, thanks to four double time and a half hours, eight time and a half hours and three you don't have to work but we'll pay you anyway hours.

It's the best thing about this time of year really. And what's more, because of the timing of it all, I'm still managing to not work new year's eve or most of new years day (5.30pm start) but I still get plenty of bonuses (I'm doing next monday too, so I'll be getting double and a half again)

Anyway, shopping. Since I thought noone was at Helen's when I went there (for future occasions when everyone's out in the backyard, we need to set up some kind of secret home/not home sign) I went straight to Spotlight, but she appeared there not long after. My total spend was about $65, but luckily, that's right about what I got in money and Spotlight vouchers for Christmas. So that would have worked out well, but I'm not super keen on one or two of the fabrics now that I'm home, and I think I'll have to look at replacing them. But it's okay, turns out that the special is on till Tuesday, so I'll be going back tomorrow. And maybe Tuesday as well. I got 3 quilts worth, minus backing for one of them and the binding another, but still, even once I get that we are still only looking at a total cost of about $35 (that includes my super cheap $7p/m batting) per quilt. And not a little quilt either; I'll get around eventually to explaining the pattern I'm doing right now, which uses 9 quarters to get a 120x140cm quilt. It's a bit simple, and it uses quite big squares, but it's very quick and much more economical than a fiddly little thing with all those seam allowances.

After Spotlight (it took a while) we swore at the Kmart photo boxes for some time, had some lunch, and got kicked out of as many shops as they closed as we could. Which was only two. We need more practice. Helen thought she was dodging visitors but when we got back to her house they hadn't even arrived yet, and when they did, they didn't seem very interested in my fabrics at all.

There's no helping some people, I guess.

Bob threw a tantrum when I had to go to Woolies for coke, but the diet stuff is kinda like kryptonite for me, so it had to be done. Tea was yum (I haven't had potato gems in ages) and the babies went to bed, so Helen and I got stuck into patterns.

After the hoo-rah with the work christmas show top, I was thinking how glad I was that I hadn't moved away and done a course of fashion, because I so wasn't into it any more. But if this keeps up it wont be long at all till I am an expert in baby clothes. I wasn't a huge fan of Helen's sewing machine, but then, it wasn't mine. And I stuffed up the cuffed hems, but we chopped them off and it looked fine as just regular flares. Oh, and I should mention in context that they were just practices, made from bright green gingham. From a pattern I traced from some corduroy jeans she's never really worn. We'll need to increase the butt room on the next pair, and I've just realised that means we need to shorten the length of the inside leg on our altered pattern (which I will need someone to remind me about tomorrow), but things are looking good. Not that anyone can see them looking good, because at 10pm you don't think of taking a photo of the baby while she's doing a test fitting of the pants, but we'll get there

If you have a size 0 baby in need of some funkadelic pants, we are the people to call.

And if you want photos of completely unnecessary purchases, this is the blog to visit.

This baby would have been one of the best $2 I ever spent, but I only had a dollar on me so Helen paid the rest. It fits one metre of fabric, but it's not a particularly effective storage solution. It looks so amazingly funky though - I would love a briefcase sized one, but I'm fairly sure those clasps don't come that big, which is an epic shame.

There was a different fabric in it than the blue solid at the bottom, which I bought a while ago, but I like that much better, so that's one less I have to replace tomorrow. I've bought a pink (that's almost exactly between the two shades in the flower) to use as a binding, but only because the lack of orange fabrics at Spotlight borders on the criminal.

There are a few crossover fabrics in this bundle, but for this one I want the contrast fabric to be the yellow instead of the pink (I only put it in the middle this time to show off the tulip print). That brown there is spoiling it for me quite badly though, so it needs to be swapped out.

Actually, I've just had a thought... what do we think of this Erin McMorris being subbed in? I have a yard of it that's been stashed for a while now after I got it on ebay for about $4.

Helen has nominated this as the quilt she wants for her birthday so I guess it's up to her. Here's the back fabric:

Which I'm also considering cutting a strip of and framing for Mum. They look nothing like Barry, but the green ones are exactly the same colour as his crap, which I have fortunately managed thus far to keep him from doing on my quilts. Quilting with birds is even worse than quilting with cats*, unless they're pretty printed-on-fabric birds.

This is my final bundle, and actually, I picked all the other fabrics because I'm so in love with the yellow one. But now I'm not sure that it fits.

The idea is that the whites are the big squares, the blacks are the half squares and the yellow is the little squares (they were the brown ones on Kelsey's quilt) but I'm worried that in the chopping I'll get some that don't really have much yellow in them, and they'll get lost. There were a couple of others in the range but I think they've sold out, which is a shame because I seem to recall they were a more even pattern. There's no rush though - I might find something I love weeks from now but that's fine, I doubt I will have started it anyway.

Crafternoon tomorrow (but I have to be at work at 4 - sob) so I'll be choosing between pants and cutting, probably of the first set because I'm quite in love with their retro-ey goodness - I'll need to find some blades if I take that route though because mine have gotten damned blunt.

Do I write to much? In my defence one of my main reasons for starting a blog was so that my typing would go back to being good, and it's certainly done that. But I do tend to waffle on a bit sometimes, and for that I apologise. With an s, because that's how we roll down under.

*It's damn lucky that blogger in draft is so excellent at saving-on-the-go, because this blog post has been exited out of by Honeycat three times now...

That is very good news...

Well, I'm not as far along as I had planned, but since I had planned on being finished, that's not a surprise. Thankfully, some good news I got today means I no longer need to be finished by 2pm tomorrow, so I rode the wave of backing angst instead of freaking out and rushing into something I could very well now be regretting.

When I got home from work I laid it all out on the floor and thought that it was kinda boring. I love all the fabrics individually (the main fabric, even though it's not a great tie in with the others, will be re-bought on boxing day so I can keep some of it's retro-ey goodness) but together they didn't seem to mesh, and a single pieced diagonal line seems a bit dull compared to all of the fancy stuff I've done. So I got out a couple of other fabrics and laid them out on top, and how I had them laid out looked really nice. But nothing like this:

Which is just some rainbow shapes on a pale blue background. But my idea was that I could just do wide strips of different lengths and widths, laid out on a bit of a diagonal, and the stuff that got pushed out over the edge when I put in the coloured bits I could use to make up the width needed for the backing. But I got all angsty about it, and decided to go have a shower to think it over, and when I came back to it, I decided that even though it was really cool, I wasn't sure how well I could fill out the missing space, if I would need to use lots of little messy bits, and that it was better just to go with the original plan. Which of course took ages anyway, so instead of the quilt being in the washing machine ready to put in a post office box tomorrow, it's basted ready to be quilted tomorrow.

A handy little bit of math (4 large blocks, 6 lines of quilting in each, each way) tells me there's technically only 48 lines of quilting to be done. And binding of course - I thought today how excellent it would be if I could fob it off on Helen but then I remembered I'm quilting either side of the ditch, so it will look best with the second row of stitching on the back of the binding. And then I thought, "Oh no, I don't have enough binding fabric" but that's okay, because I have time to get more tomorrow now.

Phew.

Sunday. Market day.

I do not need another tablet.

I do not need another tablet.

I do not need another tablet.

I do not need another tablet.

I do not need another tablet.

I need to keep telling myself this. Over and over again. I need it tattooed in reverse on my forehead so I see it in the mirror, and written on my hands. I need to rearrange the keys on my keyboard so they spell this out. I need it scrolling along the taskbar.

Anyways, the market. It was stinking hot. Well, low 30s. I wasn't too bad except for me feet - I had sneakers on because apparently I have bunions, which is why I can't wear sandals, but Helen was really feeling the heat, and the car was like an oven when we put stuff in there at the end of the day.

The 8am wakeup was nasty for me, since I'd been up till about 4 getting the monsters finished, but that's just as well, since they were the biggest sellers. A couple of the other ladies who had toys said they were underpriced at $8 each, but they were made to be cheap things that people would buy, so I guess they achieved their purpose. I only brought 3 home with me, Alex, (dark green/blue dots, one eye) who I decided I was in love with and needed to keep, Weirdo (the really tall blue one) and Devon (the yellow one) 

About half of the tissue pouches sold as did a few of the random laptop sleeves I made about a year ago, but only one quilt to my Aunt Liz - The Retro Bright (#20) Still, that put total sales at about $190, and I had told myself that if I made $200 I'd buy myself a tablet.

That's cutting it pretty fine, and I knew that when we packed up for the day, so I demanded that Helen come with me to Spotlight (because she had another one of the $40 off vouchers, and she gets the addiction) and I figured if I spent some of it straight away it would be harder to convince myself that it was okay to buy yet another not entirely necessary computer. Helen went home after picking a couple of things and I put them through with mine after I'd picked it all - some more of the drill I used for my handbag (because I am in love) some more of the off white homespun (because it was cheap) and a lot of hot pink satin backed crepe, because at some point in the near future I need to make myself an outfit for the work Christmas show.

I'm gunna have a couple of days off from sewing though. Well, definitely tonight anyway.

Actually, I'm gunna go to bed early...

Like, right now.

Sunday.

Today I simply could not focus. After helping Mum pack for a bit, since they're pissing off around the country for a few weeks, I put the fabrics for today's top in the washing machine. Then, while that was going, I decided I'd to a tiny quilt, well, not tiny tiny, but the size of my leftover bit of batting, which was around 65cm wide by about 1m. So I got all the scraps from quilts numbers 13 and 14 and laid them all out on the batting, but then I couldn't sew them because there was a really quite interesting documentary on the Melbourne Cup on TV and anyway, Casey was asleep on my bed. So I faffed about a bit more, and cooked myself some chips, and read the newspaper, and helped Mum and Dad re-cover a card table, and, eventually, (much later) A teeny tiny quilt top got made. Then I couldn't find any pins, so I basted it to the batting, and attached the back (from Soiree by Lila Tueller) with save a stitch iron on webbing tape. Just as an experiment.

Tonight, while doing more faffing about instead of doing this post, I quilted it, quite nicely I feel, in a wavy-stitch-pseudo-free-motion-thingie. It needs binding before I can wash it and see if the webbing has affected the final condition at all, but for now it looks nice.

Anyway, obviously, that wasn't my actual planned quilt top to make today. Around having fish and chips for tea, missing both Offspring and Bones but watching Juno yet again, only with ads this time, and cooking myself some chocolate cupcakes, I got this made.

 

Apologies for the crap photos but I couldn't be bothered sweeping the floor so I could take a nice overhead shot, and I didn't want the batting to get all dirty.

Helen's probably a bit excited since she bought the fabrics above for Bob's quilt, but for everyone who didn't know, That's Bob's quilt. Bob is the big brother of Esther, who missed out on a quilt when he was born since I wasn't actually quilting then, but here it is. Upside down, but I also couldn't be bothered turning it around, and this was the end with the couch to stand on.

I'm so hugely proud of the fact that the fish are all the same way up. I rock.

Some kind of backing will be pieced tomorrow so that I can get it properly basted, even if I don't get into the actual quilting for a bit. In case you were wondering, I have since found more pins.

It could have gone worse...

Channel 7 is airing EuroTrip as it's late movie.

I should be embarrassed to admit that I love it, but I'm not. It's just such an awesome movie. But it is seriously cramping my sewing style. When I was watching Catch Me If You Can I was quite happy to come an go. Even though I've seen both films before, this film makes me want to stick around.

So, I'll blog now instead of later.

First of all, obviously, I didn't go to Birchip. But the weather is shit and they were up at 6 this morning getting ready to leave, and I stayed in bed till 11. That alone justifies the decision.

So after I dragged myself out of bed, mainly just to feed the cats because I could have happily kept sleeping, I quilted the pastel quilt and then Mum asked me if I wanted to come into Nanny's where they were going to be building a shed. Even though Bob was sick I thought maybe Helen might be there, since Nanny had been looking after Esther while Bob was with the doctor, and even if she wasn't then someone could drop me to her place, since, frankly, I'm not much of a shed builder.

So I took in the part done quilts and any fabric I've acquired since the last show and tell, which is a fair bit since it's been a while since I've been to visit, and after playing with the baby for a bit, Steven offered to look after the babies while we went shopping.

He's awesome like that.

So we took the part done quilts to Spotlight, and I got enough to fill in all my gaps in binding and backing, as well as a heap of blues and browns so I can do another boy baby quilt like the one I did for Levi. Well, actually, nothing like that, but the same kind of colour scheme.

A heap of the fat quarters were on clearance for a dollar each, so I got a half dozen, of them, and a whole lot more metreage. I only spent $40 of a mental $60 budget, so I'm happy with my restraint.

Mum came and picked me up after we'd had tea, but the shed's only half done so she'll be going back in tomorrow. 

So far I've basted and trimmed the pink batik quilt, finished the pastel quilt and made and part attached the binding to the blue and green quilt. If I can escape the clutches of the movie (it's nearly finished) I'd like to get the binding completed and a back for the two-fabric quilt made. 

Tomorrow, I need to go back to Spotlight. I need a pink cotton to do the quilting for the batik quilt. And I still have $20 of my budget to spend.

CRAFTERNOON!

Mum, Dad and Maddy have pissed off to Melbourne for the weekend, so I'm on my lonesome till Casey finishes work in a couple of hours. The cats have been fed, Bazza has been fed, Facebook and the rest of the interwebs have been checked. So now it's hair washing time before CRAFTERNOON!

Yay...woooh...huzzah...yippee... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

No massive plans, mainly cutting for some upcoming baby/mini quilts. Will be aiming more for the 100x120cm size than the 80x100cm size, since I think that that's a bit more practical in the long run, and I've cut back a bit on my dreams for non-gender-specific fabrics. One is blue and green. One is pink and orange. I'll also be continuing with the same design as the honeycomb quilt - the squares on one side and the crazy on the other. I have 4 yards of fabrics for each quilt.

And yes, they are the same fabrics in different colours. The boys quilt will be big squares of the blue with 4-patch squares of the 2 middle greens, and the back will be the middle greens being wonky with the bottom fabric as the main bit. Binding will probably be the blue, but that's a ways off. Girls quilt I'm not sure what will go where, since the fabrics a lot more similar than the big difference between the blue and the one with the red. There will probably be a vote of some kind.

These fabrics were all from fabric.com, who put a little sticker on the fabric telling you what it is and how much they sent. That's probably the only really nice thing they do, except for be cheap. These fabrics were all $5 per yard before postage, which probably translates to around $50 per quilt when you include postage, and exchange rates, and batting.

Single sided quilts would be a lot cheaper. But probably quite a bit more boring.

Also, since this is all single manufacturer, I don't need to pre-wash. And that means I don't need to iron. And that's worth about $20 in itself. It certainly saves me over an hour of standing at the kitchen bench, and I earn $18p/h at woolies, so that works.

Anyway, hair washing. With someone else's shampoo, since I have run out. Bummer.

I'm not liking this "working" thing...

My much searched-for "Spring to Life" Mingle bundles arrived today, still looking like bundles, so no chance for me to spend a half hour refolding them and getting a good lookie innie, but that's okay. I'm not gunna start anything with them straight away, since I need to make some more progress on a DVD player case for one of the girls at work, who has boys, and therefore picked a blue fabric with cars on it.

Now, I like cars (actually, gimme a sec, I need to go download that new episode of Top Gear... done) but these are not particularly nice kinda Nascar-y ones. And the background is a nasty navy. I like pretty fabrics, but I understand that boys don't. Even worse, it's up to a bit with hand stitching, which is the other reason I stopped.

Still, I had better start it again soon, since she's going on holiday on Monday and that's when she needs it for.

But I really don't like hand sewing.

In other news, Helen, do you think Poppy would lend me the Falcon for a couple of weeks? Becky says it's an auto...

This one's done, and now the (not) fun begins...

I spent the morning sewing, the afternoon shopping and the evening playing with a baby.

Also, I may have borrowed her cot for some more attempts at bloggy photos.

Normal ones first though.

For all that people have said they prefer what I call the back, or that it's really a double sided quilt, this is the side my quilting lines match, so, to my mind, this will always be the top. Last night I bought a roll of what is essentially overpriced, skinny masking tape, and it did help me keep my lines a lot straighter than on the bubble and squeak quilt. But still, $4.50 a roll seems a bit steep. 40% off helped though.

The back is a lot bolder, and quite a bit funkier, so I get that there are people who prefer it. I did the binding a bit differently to normal so I could have it wide on the back to match the lines and still narrow at the front. I didn't fold it double - just sewed it to the front as normal and then tucked it under and pinned and sewed it on the back. Because the quilting was 7.5mm off either side of my seams on the front, it was fine to have a border stitch that far out from the binding on the front without it looking silly. I sewed it from the back so I could be sure it all caught and looks neat and tidy on that side, and then I in the ditched it on the front as per normal, giving it two rows of sewing on the back of the binding, so I know it wont fall apart.

Due to a distinct lack of cute baby cots at my house, these photos were all taken at Helen's house. Every time I call in I seem to spend ages there hogging the baby, and I feel a little bad about it, so open letter to Helen: if you want me to go away, or give you your children back, just say so. Even though they are terribly cute, if a bit noisy, they are yours, and I'll give them back if you want them.

PS, Thanks for blogging :)

And on that not, an open letter to Kelsey: where is your blog?

And for that matter, where are the blogs of anyone else who reads this? Last post on my dashboard was 9 hours ago, and I need something to read.

A blog from on the bed (actually, about 95% of them are)

Having discussed with Helen my tendency to peruse the internet while enjoying the comforting solitude of the loo, it seemed only appropriate that I read her lovely comment while sitting in the bog at work, while hiding from co-workers trying to tell me about how much alcohol they plan on consuming tonight, or how their mum wont let them sleep in the same bed as their boyfriend, because "she was having sex at 15, and I'm 16, so I should totally be allowed..."

No, you're still a kid sweetheart. You should think boys have cooties, and be sleeping with a stuffed toy, not a fella.

Anyway, it's nice that someone else thinks that the things I make are as nice as I think they are. I've probably become a bit up myself about it, because I love some of them so much, but I do still wory that some people wont like them as much as I do. I look at the wonky quilt, in spite of the fact that some points are more than 5mm off, and in spite of the fact that it's too small for me to really use for anything, and I think, shit, I made that. Me. Noone helped, or showed me how to do it, or did the design for me. I came up with it all by myself, and that makes me awesome. And now, or more specifically later, when the nagging doubt creeps in, that my fondness for the wavy stitch and my unwillingness to put in the effort of in-the-ditch makes me a lazy sewer, that my inability to free-motion means I'm not a real quilter, or that the occasional bad tension coming from my sewing machine for no apparent reason means I'm unfit to show anyone anything I've made, I can read that comment, and feel good.

Actually I've been pretty lucky to have come from a family that gets the effort that goes into this sort of stuff. Both Nans knit, Nanna Joy at a much more prolific rate, but Nanny Ella has spread herself out over a whole lot of other crafts: I imagine its much harder to knit a new toy every 3 days when you're also trying to complete a couple of tapestries, or pulling little holes in bits of fabric. Truth be told, I don't really have the patience for any of that stuff. But they all make things, and they know that we are our own harshest critics, and they humour me by letting me go on and on about all the faults in an item, but without really listening. Sometimes, when it takes me a few minutes to find the mistake I've been going on about, they laugh at me. This is of course the correct response.

Anyway, now that I've blathered on for a bit, photos.

It came up nice after the wash. I was a bit worried, having not pre-washed the fabrics, but they were all the same range, so I figured they would be fine, and they were.

First of course is the standard "front of quilt" shot.

Next, and also standard, "back of quilt" shot.

Next up we move into exciting territory. Me, having ago at "quilt blog style" shots. I'm not that good at them - since the Sony T20 debacle I'm back with my trusty old Kodak, in my bedroom, at night. The lighting isn't great, and I cant be arsed photoshopping.

It's all very nice, but I'm worried that having the blue-green quilt as a base makes the photo too busy and is therefore breaking some kind of blog-photo violation. But I lucked out on folding it up in such a way that you only see nice neat seams. That was good of me. Next time I might get up off my arse,* go down to the kitchen and take it on the nice hardwood table, though I think that rustic driftwood would be better, and make me look like I live somewhere much more exotic than I do.

This seems to be a little more like some of the ones on the proper blogs, the ones that have sponsors and giveaways (not gunna, cause I cant help but think they're just a cry for comments.)

Nevermind. Photos arent the be all and end all, though I do feel a bit bad about the fact that people actually sit down and read my drivel. That said, they're showing Princess Diaries 2 on TV tonight for the 43 billionth time, so it's not like there's anything better for y'all to be doing. You could go wash your hair like Babycat is doing. You could blog like me...

On that note, Helen, you should totally blog. I'd read it.

*earlier, spellcheck was fine with arsed but now, without the d on the end, it's no longer acceptable. Silly spellcheck**

**spellcheck: also not an accepted word.

I have a Cow Headache...

I have always suffered quite badly form cheese headaches, which you get from eating (obviously) too much good cheese. Now however, for the first time, I have cow headache.

After I left Helen's tonight I went to woolies and got the garlic bread I had randomly been craving, and it was nice, if a little skint on the garlic (there was lots of bread to make up for it) but, a couple of hours later, I decided that what I really wanted was some shredded cow. Shredded cow, by the way, is beef sizzle steaks from woolies chopped up into strips. Basically it's yiros meat, the proper stuff, not the stuff carved of those meat spindles. That stuff looks gross. This is just beef a few millimetres thick and a centimetre or two wide, by maybe 5cm long. Shredded Cow.

It's good shit. I was veggie for a while (mainly due to one of my Nans having pet sheep and cows - I felt bad that I was eating their friends) but I get that my body wants red meat sometimes, so if I feel like it, I buy a pack (they're about $5) and I eat half. That's enough for me, sometimes I will have it with lettuce (I like lettuce) and I'll feel good, not only that I've given my body what it wants, but that I've done what my body wants. Like I'm in touch with my inner nutrient-level-checkers or something.

Tonight however, I was in a bit of a hurry, because it's late and all, so I decided I would just cut them up with a pair of $2 scissors (I have a lot, because Maddy steals them so I go buy more) instead of fiddling around with a knife (I have to cut all the fatty bits off. They're chewy and I don't like them) and it was really easy so I cut up about 6 slices instead of 4, so I ate too much, and now I have cow headache.

In other news, the mini quilt is in the dryer, drying off (as you would) and once its done (well, actually it will be done in an hour or so, but I'm going to be now becasue I start at 8.30 - I actually mean tomorrow afternoon) I'll take some pretty photos of it before I give it back to Esther. She could well turn into more of a spoilt-with-handmade-stuff-brat than Maddy is.

Ah well, I know Helen appreciates it at least. It seems only fair though, since she taught me how to do most of it. I suppose its good that she taught me sewing and crafting and all that, but I also learnt how to buy unnecessary amounts of fabric (only spent $15.50 today*) and hoard stuff and make things and then not know what to do with them.

Ah well.

*no, that's not true, I also bought 3 bundles on eBay just now, but one of them is to do Casey's Christmas present, and all up they've come out quite cheap, because I'm fitting 3 bundles in one flat rate envelope, but I haven't actually paid for them yet, so I don't know that it counts.

Lemme know...

This is just a test post to see if I can steal photos from facebook.

So here, maybe, is Esther (with a h)'s quilt.

And the back (with creases:)

And a closeup of the back piecing (my first time doing diagonals)

If this works, it wasn't as hard as I thought.