Still Alive.

Hi everybody. I just wanted to let you know that I'm not dead. Nor have I joined the circus, or a cult, or the French Foreign Legion. Nor, contrary to what you may have heard, do I have a new boyfriend, and, especially, I have not gotten back together with my ex boyfriend. Really.

Actually, the reason that I haven't been posting anything is because, quite simply, I haven't been sewing anything. Until before a couple of nights ago, my sewing for the last month or so had consisted entirely of me hemming jeans and adding ribbons to kids sized shirts to be waist ties. Kids sized shirts aren't that flattering to the waistline.

A couple of nights ago though I remembered that it was only a couple of days till christmas, and more to the point I realised that, even after buying pretty much every single red and green checked fabric in the Mount, that I at no point had bought the right one to make myself a replica of the stocking from the the season 3 Community christmas episode, but then I realised that that it didn't matter because the pink and green on-point-check from the DS range (I think) before last that was chilling in my stash was kinda perfect in every way except that it was pink instead if red, but whatever, no-one cares. So I made a couple of stockings in the fandom-y spirit.

Not that anyone really gets it. But for those who do, yes, they are big enough to wear as a hat.

And then, of course, yesterday, I realised that I knew exactly what to make a couple of my friends for christmas, but, in pretty much the story of my life, I had like 5 hours to make them all.

First up I made another stocking for EmmStaff. It's ever so slightly smaller than the green ones, and she forgot to come in and get it in time for christmas, so Annalise and Hamish held it up tonight after work while I took a photo after work. But it's made with some Birds Of Norway fabric (it's a Kaufman from a few years ago) and it's one of the most innately cool fabrics I've ever bought, without at any point giving away the fact that it knows it's an innately cool fabric. Which pretty much sums up Emm => very cool, doesn't realise it yet, and cause it's not actually a christmas fabric, and because she turns 18 in eight days, she's gunna use it as a birthday stocking.

And then I also made some tumblr things into plushies. And didn't take photos. Annalise took a photo of hers though: a pair of plusies comprising the message icon and the notification icon.

I made two of the other girls plushies too, I just need to wait for them to put them on the internets. In th meantime, happy christmas everyone, from me and the 6 ciders I drank earlier.

I need to cut back.

Since I've been spending *cough* about 4 hours a day on tumblr lately, I got to thinking about how my blog would be different if it was there.

Obviously, tumblr's a very picture-heavy place and I'm not much of a picture person. Small, cluttered bedrooms and an almost entirely nocturnal existence (afternoons, when I'm at work, obviously don't count) don't make for a whole lot of good photos. And quilts don't work well as gifs, static, 2D things they are.

I think my thoughts better in words or numbers but I like seeing other people's thoughts and ideas as visuals. I could happily read a million words but pictures (and even more so, gifs) make things so much more fun.

And the love... Oh, the love. I love to love the love. I love shipping stuff and going down with this ship and mashing two people's names together once they're a couple (My car, Taylor, just got a boyfriend, Harry... Tarry! My OTP*!)

I love the confessions posts and I especially love all the Texts From Last Night posts. I love feels and saying "right in the feels" and "I don't know what my feels are feeling."

On the other hand, tumblr is just a whole lot of people posting other people's stuff. For the most part, it's little more than a handy aggregation service, and even though people are pretty good about linking back, so much of it is the same stuff over and over and over. The fact that blogger/wordpress/livejournal aren't re-bloggable is something that I'm glad of. There's a lot of fantastic original content on tumblr, but, with the exception of a few shitty content thieves, pretty much everything in the quilting/sewing/crafting blogosphere is original content.

Speaking of original content, I haven't been making much of anything lately (a four hour a day tumblr habit being a big contributing factor there) So I'm gunna ease up on posting here every day. I've got other blogs to post non-crafty stuff on, so I'm not gunna force myself to write filler. I think it'd be better off for everyone if I put that effort into forcing myself to sew.

*Actually, I think my OTP (One True Pairing) is probably my last car, BJ (a Ford Mondeo), and his then-girlfriend Vroom (a Ford Laser, basically the next size model down). They were together for two years, Vroom's owner working similar shifts to me at Woolies. We would park them next to one another and talk about how one day they might have a little navy blue (they both were) Ka (the supercompact). This was before Tumblr though, so they didn't have a mashup name.

Wait, what?

Tonight I found myself only wearing one sock, after I got an itchy foot a couple of hours ago and took my sock off to scratch it. I hadn't realised how long it'd been - I must have done it all the time a couple of years ago, since I named my blog after my tendency to end the evening wearing only one sock. I'm not sure why it's not happening much any more, except possibly that my heels are a bit more callused these days, and maybe that helps them grip socks better.

What's more I've passed both 2 years of blogging and 850 posts without noticing. In much the same way, it's already the wee small hours of Monday morning and my weekend is all gone.

How did that happen?

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I've put this off for a while out of indecision but time is running out, so here it is, my entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

I was a bit torn between a few quilts - the quilt I made for my best friend's baby was my first choice, because it features both rainbow and HSTs, and they're my two favourite things at the moment. And then there's my most recent quilt (well, quiltlet really) a crazy-pieced ode to my favourite mathematical equation. But it's still not bound, and the lack of energy I'm stuck with due to a nasty cold I've got at the moment means it probably won't be any time soon. In the end it was that same cold that led to my decision - I'm going to go with the quilt that I've had wrapped around me for the last two days, making me feel warmer and better-er.

I did the bulk of this quilt about two months ago, over the course of about two weeks. Having finished the top, I angsted over piecing the back, eventually deciding not to. I usually piece my backs at a diagonal, so that I don't have to match my quilting lines, but I had decided to quilt alongside the seams of the top, and they run at a diagonal too. Fortunately I happened to find a lovely blue-grey chambray that was 145cm wide.

And, having quilted it, I left it, trimmed and unbound, for quite a while. Binding is my last favourite part of a quilt, but I made the binding and put it aside for the right moment, which came about a week ago, when I felt like sewing, but my current project was at an awkward stage, and it seemed good to do something boring to get a run up before tackling something tough.

It is, in my opinion, pretty much the perfect size quilt. It was small enough to quilt pretty easily on my little old machine, but it's big enough to cover me from neck to feet when I'm laying down, and wide enough that when I wrap it around myself, it reaches halfway down my legs.

I've already assembled another grey and blue bundle to re-make this quilt someday, as well as a pink and brown bundle, and a green and orange bundle.

And now I'm off to sleep under it again :)

A very chill take on the whole dumbing down thing.

I have yet to see a quilt design done in straight lines that I wouldn't be able to figure out how to do on my lonesome. Come up with it; maybe not, but reproduce?

It's all just math. It's measurements, and angles, and thinking about how all the little bits will fit inside the big bit. To me, it is as easy as breathing (by which I mean 80% of the year I'm fine, and the rest of the time I need some drugs to help me do it) but I get that this isn't the case for everyone. Some people feel the same way about something like cooking or gardening instead and those are two things I really, really can not do.

The thing is, I'm very good at seeing the angles. There was a line in Ocean's 12 where George Clooney is talking about how he went to the bank to discuss normal person things, but couldn't help seeing the angles, where the cameras were pointing, where the entrances and exits were. I'm like that. I like knowing where I can scratch my butt at work without security recording it. I like knowing what one little bit of wire I'd have to bend to open up the security cage at work. And, for the most part, I like being able to see, and work out for myself, the angles in other people's quilts. Usually just as a theoretical exercise, to prove to myself I can do it. And afterwards, sometimes I wonder to myself why people pay money for quilt patterns. In the same way I guess that George Clooney wonders why people have real jobs when they can spend their time hanging with Brad Pitt and Matt Damon and breaking into casinos.

But here's the thing. I think modern quilting is much less about the design. And much more about what you do with it.

Yes, there are now a million bajillion quilts out there that are technically just squares of fabric sewn together. And conceptually, the instructions "get some fabric, cut it into squares, mix'em all up and sew it back together" could result in some hideous, or at the very least, quite dull, quilts. But, usually, it doesn't. There's plenty of really really beautiful quilts out there made just on these instructions. My first quilt was, and like it or not, a lot of you probably first came to this blog after seeing it in the Blogger's Quilt Festival, which, when you have a look back through it, features lots and lots of really really beautiful quilts made with the instructions "get lots of little squares of fabric, and sew them together"

The difference then, is one of personalisation. Modern quilts don't have to be about the precision of the points or the intricacy of the design. They can be more about the quilter, what fabrics they like, what they want to put with what, what they want to point focus to and what they want to use to hold it all together.

All of the strict precision and skill comparison has been relegated to second place behind the expression within the choices of the design. These days, the beauty in a quilt is easier to find. We look at it. We can look at it in itty bitty thumbnail form, a hundred times too small to see that it has points, let alone whether or not they match up, and we can say to ourselves, "That is beautiful. That is a work of art. That makes my eyes happy, and it makes my heart happy" Then we can click on that little thumbnail. We can look at it close up, and appreciate the accuracy of the points, the way the quilting enhances the piecing. But we don't need to - if the point's don't match, or the quilting's a wee bit shoddy, that's no biggie.

We are looking at quilts half a world away, far too far to see the points, even if there's a high definition photo there to click on. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to dislike a quilt once I see some skew-whif points, or a little puckering in the quilting, not if I thought it was gorgeous before I noticed it's faults. My eyes have liked what they have seen, the blogger has told the story to warm my heart (if the story of someone creating something beautiful doesn't warm your metaphorical heart, I don't think you really "get" creating) and I have made up my mind. A quilt, no matter how simple the structure, says something about it's maker. It shows a vision. It is a window into it's creator's mind.

The most truly beautiful thing about modern quilting is that we are saying to ourselves "That is beautiful." We are not saying to ourselves something emotionless like "that is technically very impressive" - we care more about the beauty of creativity, about expressing ourselves in a way that is different, that is unique to us, in spite of any underlying similarities.

The lack of rules behind it means the world will never run out of interesting, evocative versions of the simple squares quilt. What the world needs though, is to stop seeing this as a bad thing. The same blank, commonplace A4 page that could potentially have been used to print boring documents could also have been used by a small child, awakening their creativity with a stick-person drawing of them and their dog. Would you tell them that it is not beautiful? That it indicative or their inexperience, that until they get the hang of something like perspective, they shouldn't be expecting any praise for their work.

A quilt of squares could be a starting point. An easy entrance to the world of quilting. Or, it could be a way to express yourself through your love of colours and fabrics, where the design is less important than how it all comes together. It can be a lot more fun than a carefully thought out piece, it can be a spontaneous celebration of your fabric stash,* that's carefree and influenced by nothing more than what you have and where your mood is taking you. It doesn't need much thought, and it can happen a lot more naturally, change more readily to impulses, than a design where every piece has it's place.

Yes, there is a place for intricately pieced, traditional quilting, and in much the same way that the trends of haute couture show up eventually in the local Kmart or Target (albeit in a much more practical fashion), so too in their way do clever little design bits and bobs from traditional, more complicated quilts find their way into the modern quilter's lexicon.

But I like my jeans and my checked shirts, okay? I like being different while being exactly the same**. It may be safe. It may at times be a wee bit boring. But it's very very me.


*That phrase best sums up how I feel about my first quilt.

** I find it amazing the number of middle class women now who are covered in tattoos and have odd piercings. Sometimes if feels like all I have to do is wait, and eventually they will all be covered in so much indistinguishable ink, that I will be the unique, interesting one because I'm completely bare. It's unrelated, but it's something I think about a fair bit. Similarly, sometimes I think I'm the only normal one and the rest of the world's gone crazy, but I may be wrong about this too. It's probably quite a common misconception.

Disrespect, man.

Warning: I'm dissing some fellow bloggers quite hard here. I know we're supposed to be respectful and nice, and coexist Kumbaya style, but you've caught me at a bad time of the month. Nonetheless, you have been warned.

I know this is quite a late entrance to the debate. I know the discussion has been going on for almost a month now, but what the hey. I only read about it today, and I suspect I got more offended than a lot of people. I'm gunna target most of what she said, and be obnoxious and offensive along the way, and I'm doing it for one simple reason. According to this post, I will never be anything more than a beginner because I cant sew a consistent quarter inch seam. Of course I bloody can't - I quilt in metric. In some parts of the world, measurements have moved on. Your way is not the only way. My way is the future*.

I'm talking about the (so called) Dumbing Down of Quilting. Google it. Have a read. There's lots of comments by now, so skim through them too.

Now that you've done that, I'm gunna get mean.

According to some bloggers (one in particular), the existence of modern quilts is creating a generation of quilters with their heads in the sand regarding traditional techniques, leaving them to live a miserable existence bereft of half square triangles, which, because they spend too much time on blogs which are all style and no substance, they think are far too complicated for anyone who can't do anything better than a wonky square in a square (or something like that). Simple modern quilts are the death of skilled craftsmanship, yada yada, we and our precise points and old fashioned quarter inch* seams are up here on our moral high ground while the proletariat are chilling down the hill with their slavish addiction to designer fabrics.

Okay, so maybe that's a bit meaner than I originally planned. I get that that's not what the lady meant, but it's very very easy to hear it that way. And while my love of the centimetre* may cement my place as an eternal beginner, I consider myself to be an expert at unnecessarily rude rebuttals.

The first part of rebutting is to concede a small point, and I'm going to say that I do feel that the obsessions with a particular fabric or designer (Denise Schmidt, Kaffe Fassett, cough cough) that sweep through the modern-quilting blogosphere from time to time can do a lot to curtail originality. That making a quilt using only the fabrics from one range is an easy alternative to having to pick and choose a selection from all the fabrics in all the world. But the thing about a fabric range is, it does go together. It's meant to - all those fabrics compliment one another nicely because they were designed and printed for that very purpose.

But to take it to the extent that she has, decrying modern quilting as a lesser alternative to the traditional variety, and saying that modern quilters are somehow inferior artists because of these foibles, is ridiculous. It's like a meat eater decrying a vegetarian's inability to cook a sausage, like a footballer saying that netball is an inferior game because it's players can't kick the ball... Actually no, what it is, is a soccer player decrying Aussie Rules as easy because the players can use their hands. Because the thing is, it doesn't matter. You are almost comparing oranges and apples. Despite the fact that they are both called football, it's a completely different thing.

Perhaps that's what it is. It's traditional quilters worried that, god forbid, after all that time spent learning how to make two bits of fabric join together in some special way, they're being lumped in with the modern "easy" stuff because the two different styles share a name. Well I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous too, since quilting is actually the process of layering fabric, batting and fabric, and then sewing through all three. Quilting has nothing to do with half square triangles, or blocks, wonky or straight. And it may just be that I'm going to the wrong kinds of blogs (you know, the ones with the pretty photos) but most of the modern quilts I've seen have been quilted by the piecer, while the more traditional quilts seem much more likely to get the professional treatment.

But the thing that made me laugh the most was the suggestion that modern quilting is about making "the same 7 quilts over and over" Well, yes, I've made quite a few of my quilts a second or third time, mainly so I could play with new colours or fabrics, but y'know, I've not yet copied a quilt off of any other blog, or book, or from history. I've never used a pattern I didn't do the maths* for myself. And if anything, aren't traditional quilts just copies of quilts from the last 200 years, made over and over again?

Here's another thing - simplicity is not the same as stupidity. For me, the best part of quilting is finding the most efficient way to get all my pieces from the fabric available. Yes, I posted a pattern for a square in a square quilt. Yes, there's already hundreds of them out there. But the goal of mine when I was coming up with it was to work out the simplest way to fit all the bits I needed into the uncut fabric. A way that uses just 2 yards of fabric to make the top, that can use directional fabrics without issue and has pretty much no waste whatsoever. By considering quilting to be purely a technical exercise, a "how accurate can I get this point" competition, you are missing out on half the fun - the fun of coming up with new and innovative ways to use fabrics that have been bought by thousands of other quilters in a way this is unique to you, the fun of turning a simple design into something that is aesthetically both pleasing and striking.

Modern quilting is more about design than technique, and while more advanced techniques can lead to more complex and potentially interesting designs, complexity does not impart superiority. Nor does simplicity though, it is context which imparts superiority. In the context of your point of view, modern, simpler quilts are getting an undeserved share of adulation. In the context of my point of view, you're acting like a jealous poo head, because the masses have spoken, with their fondness for pretty colours and more efficient methods. Yay for context!

Okay, so calling the opposition a poo head is generally regarded as the end to civilised argument. I think for a minute there I thought I was in a GNW Great Debate - Paul McDermott will probably pop out at any moment and sing a song, and there will be a confetti explosion. Nonetheless, I get that I've taken a post that wasn't meant to cause offence and got really really offended by it.

But when you knock my love of the centimetre, I take it personally.


*The USA is the only major country still using imperial measurements. And while I agree that it can make the math easier, this is only because a .5cm seam (as opposed to the .64cm that is easily stated in imperial as a quarter inch) is cutting it a little too fine to guarantee a secure seam, a problem that could be fixed with better quality fabrics which fray less. As it is, I can calculate fine by adding .75cm to my straight seams and 1cm to anything at a 45° angle, and my points are consistently correct to under 2mm, despite the fact that I press all my seams open. Pretty clever for a dumbed down beginner, no?

Much done and not much to show.

The "Quilts I've Made" list has been updated, and all three tutorials are now in the sidebar.

Plus, it's after 4pm, which is stopping me from going to Spotlight and spending more money I don't have yet.

I've worked out the math for the purple quilt I showed the Paint mockup of on Friday, and I'm gunna make it with a tutorial fairly soon. I probably wont use the purples though, since the range of solids at Spotlight is a bit... disappointing.

For now though, here's a quick look at how I actually do my quiltmath. It all made sense at 3am, and fortunately it still does now.

Includes Sara approved Porn :)

Patterns are, if I'm honest, what I love doing more than anything else in quilting. Picking the fabrics, and doing the math, and seeing if it all works when I actually do it; that for me is the fun bit. I like the piecing, because that's the only way to find out if I was right or not, but the actual quilting and binding is only done because otherwise I'd just have a useless stack of quilt tops. And yes, I could send them off to be done, but that costs money*, which I could otherwise use to buy more fabrics to make more tops. Don't get me wrong, I love the finished product. And when I have some back episodes to get through, a bit of sit-down-and-quilt is wonderful. But to go from a pile of conceptual numbers to an actual, pretty object, even a currently useless object like a quilt top, is my fun thing.

I have never used anyone else's pattern. What, for me, would be the point? I've looked at other people's stuff, and thought, I'm gunna do something like that, but then I've gone off and done some maths of my own, changed it to fit my fabrics or my sizes or my style.

For me, the big thing with designing a quilt is how the bits all fit into the piece of fabric so there's not too much waste. For a long time I used fat quarters, and after I'd moved on from simple 10cm squares, almost all of my designs worked on the base of what I called the "neat 16th" - the biggest size I could get of four rectangles from a fat quarter - usually about 22 by 26cm. Sometimes this would get chopped down to a square 16th - 22 x 22cm but later on I got more used to the rectangles and could do more and more with them. I branched out, trying neat 24ths (6 rectangles per fat quarter) and neat 12ths (3 rectangles)

But really, it's coming up with patterns using fabric off the bolt that I really like. My first ever attempt was for a quilt I still haven't made any progress on because of it's half square triangles, but it was worked out in it's entirety, with detailed piecing and cutting layouts, before I'd finished my fourth quilt. It's easy to get 4 rectangles from a bigger rectangle, but getting different sized rectangles, squares and triangles from one piece of fabric, without having big wasteful gaps, that's the fun stuff. It's like a jigsaw puzzle, but with no pieces. The Two Tyred quilt is the one I'm most proud of, since it fits so so so perfectly and uses exactly the amounts of fabric I had. And while, yes, I would love the opportunity to sit and do quiltmath and play with the pretty colours all day and get paid for it, there is a slight problem.

I believe that knowledge, especially in the internet age, should be free.

Yes, I understand that it takes people a lot of time and effort to design a pattern. I understand that having a proper website (ie. not a blogger/wordpress) costs money, as do the pretty instructional photos and copyright lawyers. If you've got a pattern that has fancy shapes, or curves, or things that people couldn't work out for themselves with a $3 calculator from the stationary aisle at the supermarket, you should go ahead, and get a proper website, and professional photos of how-to-do-it taken, and print out pretty, informative patterns with all of the pieces carefully numbered. Get it copyrighted, because if it gets posted online, all your hard work won't be paying off.

But really, to my mind, I do math. I fit squares on a bigger square, and write down how big those squares are, and how to get to them without hurting all the other similar squares next to them. I really do use a $3 calculator (okay, it cost $3.13) and pretty much everything is done in MS paint. I draw up some grids, and use the painfill button to colour them in. Then I pick the bit I like, and count the pieces, and work out the most efficient way to fit them into some pieces of fabric so they can be put together again. Using software that's been around since Windows 3.1 and a calculator with 23 buttons, one of which is off.

I worry that a lot of newbies are frightened off by some of what's out there. Simple things can seem intimidating - Helen was worried about the bit at the end where it says to join your blocks into rows and your rows into a quilt top until I did one my way at her house and it seemed so much easier (I need to put my way up one day, but it's a bit too confusing in just words.) A lot of pattens that I initially though would be totally hard I now look at and realise I could have the math done for in 20 minutes. It would be a different size, and different fabrics would be in different spots, but when it comes to geometric, straight line piecing, there's only so many patterns out there. If I was to say no to people who understand quilting using my math, they could go do their own. So all I'd be doing is frightening off the people who I like to think my patterns are for - The newbies who are looking for something that's fun and easy, and, unlike a lot of other patterns I see out there, doesn't need a million billion little scraps of different fabrics. I was weird that I had a massive stash before I started quilting. What if I hadn't? What if I'd started quilting by going into the shop and buying some fabric for an actual quilt? I think my patterns would be a good place to start - "two yards of each please and one yard of batting" - no stash required. I see the beginner quilt pattern leaflets in Spotlight and they need way more complicated amounts than that.

I'm going back over some of my earlier quilts and giving them a do-over in my mind before I get into writing them up, to see if I can streamline them or make them fit the fabric better so there's less waste. When I started I was less confident about this, so Helen and Kelsey had lots of scraps to do their tickertape quilts, whereas now I have almost no scrap left over at all. To my mind this is a good thing, though others might disagree. But I've started feeling guilty about the size of my stash (that's a lie, I feel guilty about the unruly state of my stash) so if I'm buying fabric now, I want the exact amount I need, lest I end up with another piece hiding in the corner. If you just want to make a quilt, not become a quilter, this seems about right too.

So I'll keep posting my rainbow coloured grids and occasionally their associated math here, between the proper instructions when I get down to them and the lame excuses as to why I haven't . And they'll be free, for everyone to have a go at, regardless of talent or stash size. Because that's what the internet's all about.

And porn too, of course. My preferred porn looks like this.

*Of course, the quilting itself takes time, but less time than it would take me to earn the money at my real job. Also, I can watch the telly on the lappy when I'm quilting, which I don't get to do at work

I blather. But I'm not the only one.

Today my favourite thing is communicating with the world. 100 years ago, back when phone numbers were a single digit, only the very privileged could talk to someone who wasn't in the same place as them, and that person had to have one of the few telephones too. They couldn't be too far away, and if you were down here in Australia, you didn't really have much hope of getting through to overseas.

Now, not only can anyone anywhere talk to pretty much anyone anywhere else, we have so many new and interesting ways of doing it. We can call them, just as they could 100 years ago, but we can do it from the car, we can do it walking down the street. We can send them an SMS, or an email. We can facebook them or put out a tweet or, of course, we can blog. 

This is, loosely speaking, my third blog, after two highschool ones that generally existed for the purposes of whinging about my teenage life. This is probably better, since it has a bit more of a purpose, but my insistence on posting every night means there's a lot of drivel in there amoungst the good bits. I'm sure this has alienated some people, who would prefer a quilting only blog and lots of pretty pictures but no matter. There's plenty of them about, because whether people acknowledge their liking of it or not, the free spread of information and the ability of the common person to post their thoughts for all and sundry to read has had a wonderful affect on the world we live in.

If nothing else, it gives us something to do when we wake up, when we take a break, when we go to bed, and when we have better things we really should be doing.

Hello world :)

P.S. Since you're all here, quick question on commenting etiquette: how late is too late to post a comment on a post? I tend to not if more than a day has passed, or if a post has been done since, since it could seem weird and stalkerey, like I'm going through your history like an obsessed fan. But then I feel bad about not having commented, especially if I've been away from a comment-able internet (ie. not my phone) for a few days. Thoughts please?

300th post. Statistically quite likely to happen after the 299th...

Over the last week or so, the pressure of the 300th post has been getting to me. I'm aware that a lot of people get all excited and do giveaways and stuff for milestone posts, but, I post every day. Sometimes twice. 300 posts have been done in just over 9 months, and 9 months of blogging seems nowhere near as impressive as 300 posts seems.

I had actually considered just deleting some old posts, and staying at 299 for a while that way. There's a lot of rubbish ones there, mainly I think because I post every night. I know I don't have to, but a) it just seems easier than having to catch up on stuff I've missed and b) there's always the risk that I'll stop posting altogether. And anyway, I like to be reliable.

I had considered putting up the instructions for the Stairways to Heaven quilt, but I feel bad about the fact I haven't taken any pictures, or even made one that matches the pattern I'll be putting up. But on the other hand, you're all quilters. You all know how to do it, and you don't need to be hand-held through the whole process. Surely you can work it out yourself if I just give you a nice big pile of maths to start you off?

Maybe I over-wrote the first one, so this one just seems a bit wishy-washy in comparison. I'm going to hold off, simply because I'd like to double check what I've written by making it to the instructions. There were a couple of things I missed last time that the re-making of the quilt for photos helped me spot. I'm also not gunna bother with the options I put up for the last one. You're all big girls. You know how to be creative. Go and create. All you really need is the math, and that's what I'm good at.

So, what I've decided to actually do is review my initial objectives, and see how I've done over the last 300 posts.

Posting toy patterns - (hangs head in shame) This was my main reason. I had just started to make quilts, but I had also just discovered the Toy Society, and there weren't that many good toy patterns linked to from their site. As you might have noticed, I like doing patterns. It's a thing. It means I'm under less pressure to actually make something good myself - I don't need to be precise and meticulous in my actual creations, because I can work out how to do it and then get other people to do it properly. I was making quite a few flatbears at the time, which were pretty much inspired by the summer traveler's tutorial, but, to my mind, done right. Theirs is probably much easier and quicker, but I have lovely neat seams. And then I came up with some sea creatures, and then monsters. I've got a really cute design for an elephant drawn up, and another one for a bird, but even I haven't gotten around to actually making them yet. What's more, my attempts at sending pictures and info into The Toy Society never eventuated in anything: I did a couple of drops but the people who found them wouldn't have been able to trace them anyway, because they never appeared on the site.

And now, I have to make my monsters myself.

Bitching about the Ex - Not so much anymore, since I got over it about a month or so after the blog got started. I hadn't even though of it as a reason I started this blog, but it's there in my first post.

Improving my typing - This has very much worked. I still need to look at the keyboard as I do it, but I'm very quick and my apostrophes are always in place. Before I started blogging again I was all lower case and would rarely punctuate beyond a full stop, but things are better now.

Staying off of eBay -  You'll probably all be a bit disappointed to to discover that this has worked. I can understand that if people are at the computer to blog they might decide to look on eBay as well, but I blog instead of eBaying. Early last year (particularly months 2-5 after the breakup) I became a teensy bit obsessed with eBay. I may not have had a boyfriend, but thanks to US 99 cent, free postage items from China, I was getting a little something in the mail every day. I would trawl my fantastically set up saved searches and pick one or two things a day to buy myself: I was probably only spending $20 a week, which is two trips to KFC, but it was quite wasteful. Now I had a blog, I figured I could spend that on fabric instead. And I did. But now, I'm so far ahead of myself in big plans I've pretty much stopped. The only new ones I've come up with recently that I haven't immediately created are my bucket-list big rainbow quilt and a hypothetical Central Park quilt, that I'm having to convince myself over and over again is only hypothetical. And I've got the blogosphere to go to every time I talk myself out of buying it on eBay. Which is every second day.

But here's the proof. I was buying two or three things a day. So far this year? 6 things. SIX!* And only one of them was a 99c saved search thing.

So, all up, that's a 50% success rate, 66.6% if you disregard #2. I'm happy with that, and you never know: maybe after I've done these monsters I'll put up some patterns, so I don't have to make any more.

So happy 300th post everyone. Here's to another 300!

*OMG, my x key won't work if I hold down the shift key as well. It works fine on it's own, and I can capslock and it'll work, but... that's just so weird...

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)

Jeez, have I really been awake that long?

My feet are killing me.

My boots are far and away my most comfortable shoes (since my only other shoes are my work shoes which are quite uncomfortable and a pair of $8 granny shoes from kmart that are like wearing socks with a cardboard insole) but putting them on at 6am and wearing them till 10pm is bound to make your feet ache a bit a huge bloody lot.

That said, I'm so hugely forgiving. Because they make me a million billion times cooler than I actually am. The way I feel about myself, the way I walk, the way I act is just, better. Especially in the city, strolling about in cowboy boots and my jeans, feeling awesome having done not absolutely nothing fashion-wise, while perfectly coiffed little fashion plates wandered past looking pouty and unhappy.

I'm just loving being me, and in the city I stand out a bit more as me. In the mount I'm just another happy girl in jeans and boots, today I was the ONLY happy looking girl in jeans and boots.

Very nice feeling. Good to be me.

So I came to the city to protest, and although I'm not totally au fait with regards to protest sizes, I haven't seen any on the news lately where the protesters couldn't fit on the pavement, and where they had 60 (yes, sixty) really big trucks with quite loud horns to back them up. There was much "what do we want"ing going on and I must admit to repeatedly thinking "for someone to give that poor man a butter menthol" because you couldn't really hear him at the end. But there was speeches and fist waving and quite a few TV crews, but we weren't in a very good spot because I'd been to the pub with the boys beforehand, and arrived from the wrong direction (ie, the direction of the pub). As you do.

Afterwards we went to Rundle Mall, and I of course went to Spotlight. I wasn't planning on getting anything much, since I'm trying to cut back till I get my room and stash sorted out. I left the store with absolutely nothing (I posted the previous post from my phone while waiting in line) because my pay doesn't go through till 6pm, and I only had about $50 left. I was planning on getting it all cut and put on layby so I could just pop in in the morning, and pick it up (I really don't mind paying the $2 layby fee) but they concluded that it would be easier to just leave my piles there and I could get them cut first thing. This of course is a massively bad idea, since I'll undoubtedly end up picking way more, and it's at about $90 already.

We decided to have a quick stop off at the casino before going out for tea, and because I'm a loser I immediately thought... ooh, that carpet pattern would make quite a nice quilt... but you're not allowed to use cameras in the casino and my surreptitious phone photo is hideously blurry. That's okay though, it was enough for me to draw it up in paint.

Those colours, while nasty, are roughly accurate. *shudder.* I have much prettier fabrics. What's more, it's two quite simple blocks.

I lost $2 on the pokies (I'm really not much into electronic gambling) but I think it was worth it. Patterns usually cost about $20 don't they?

After I insisted we go to my favourite restaurant in the whole wide world (Burnside Food and Wine Noodle Bistro) when we got there they were shut. Don't open Tuesdays (sob). But two shopfronts along is Royal Thai, and they're quite good too. Then, for reasons I don't entirely understand, we went to the Pancake Kitchen for dessert as well. Not only are my feet swollen, but my belly very muchly is too.

So tomorrow, me and my bitchin' new shirt* (excuse the mirror photo)...

...have to head back to Spotlight and get that fabric, and maybe see if we can find something in lime green for tomorrow's protest. This is a little one for the Flinders Uni Eating Disorder clinic, and I was gunna wear my fab green stripey jumper, but it might be warm again.

I wish my bitchin' shirt came in green.


*just so everyone hates me, it's a kids 12. Normally I go a 14 or a 16, but it was the biggest they had, and it was so bitchin', I couldn't not get it. Thus the top buttons not being done/doing up. But that makes it look even more bitchin'

P.S. I just want to give some thanks to my emergency internet connection, formerly of the box-of-everything in my car. Couldn't have done it without you buddy.

P.P.S. Helen, unless you let me know that you want more, I'll get you two metres of the bird fabric okay? They still have a heap left up here.

That really was a dumb idea...

I have spent the last 3 hours pressing, and cutting, and interfacing, and sewing and I really don't have anything to show for it. I haven't even finished the linings yet.

I'm making some more little purse pouches. I've decided to make a half dozen at once and it's taking bloody forever, because Casey was insistent they have the little card slots in the sides.

This is why quilt blogging is so much easier. In three hours I can have a whole top made, or at least laid out so the floor so I can take a photo. I'm hideously bored with this and I have nothing to show for it yet.

What's worse is that I decided to do this tonight instead of quilting the swag quilt for exactly that reason*. And I know that there's nothing to say I need to blog every day - indeed, I know of noone else who does - but it's nice at the end of the night, after having not said anything to anyone** for the last 3 hours, to spout out some words. They may be pointless, but at least I'm having my say.

I guess the thing is, to me this isn't really a quilt blog. It's just a blog about stuff I'm doing, or thinking about, and that happens to currently be quilts. More specifically, tonight what I'm doing is not quilting, and what I'm thinking is "I could be quilting right now"

Instead, I'm going to bed. When you start blogging to the tune of local car dealership jingles, it's clearly long overdue.


*Also, I had nothing to watch. Except a whole heap of No Ordinary Family, 3 seasons of Burn Notice on DVD and season 5 of Bones. Or maybe I didn't realise it at the time, but I wanted to do thinking instead.
**Except myself. And the fridge, and the iron, and my milkshake. And the sewing machine and the laptop and my shiny new phone which arrived today. Okay, I kinda just killed my own argument there. Here's a new one - the fridge has never even commented. Not once. So, new point, it's nice to spout words to people who care. (sing it so it sounds like the Barry Maney jingle if you've ever lived in The Mount)

Hello, Me of 5 years ago...*

Tonight, I accidentally found my old blog. The first one, not the livejournal one that I can still access pretty easily. The one that was started pre-boyfriend (2005), and ends about 3 months into the relationship, well before I finished school (2006). The one from highschool, when I had lots of different (read: nerd, not bogan) friends, and what feels like much more spare time, but then, when I read it, clearly wasn't any spare time at all. Because I was working just as much and going to school occasionally, and hanging out and being a social teenager.

And asking myself the big questions. This was in the first month of being in the relationship.

"do i change to become something i think they want me to be or do i keep being me because they want me already, and if i change it might cause the loss of what they love about me?"

I obviously wasn't as big on the capital letters 4 years ago. My answer at the time (in the next post) was keep being me, but I did obviously change. It wasn't a change I could notice at the time, and I wonder now if anyone else noticed it, and also if the new girl has undergone the same sort of changes as I did.

Hmm. Anyway.

I've started on my prep for this weekend, which means no sewing got done today either. Also I worked 9 hours, and that seems like a good reason for not getting stuff done too. I've got a pretty big run ahead of me actually, Harrow this weekend, 23rd birthday the one after and my one year anniversary of joyous singledom after that (There will be a party. Unless I'm working. In which case I will party at work). Casey's 18th will be at some point, and Maddy's 8th, Mum's 49th and I think we're going to the Dartmoor Rodeo if I'm not working.

Seems I still have a social life. Who'd a thunk it?

*I commented on one of the posts to see if I got a message on my current hotmail account, that could help me sign into it. I didn't but I feel better knowing that I've let the me of 5 years ago know that it all gets better. She was a bit emo, see, but she seems quite a bit funnier than I am. She probably plagiarised a fair bit.

Once again, all the blog titles I wanted have already been used.

I realised when I woke up this morning that I had gotten so distracted by new episodes of Time Team last night that I completely forgot to do a blog post.

Whoops.

Crafternoon got a bit distracted by a trip to the movies to see Gulliver's Travels, which was quite good, and then, since I was in town anyway, I figured I'd do all my running around. So I bought hot pink shirts, and went into Jagga Jagga, and talked to the man about getting them printed, and bought clothes, and booze, and food, and an esky for tonight, and I went to Spotlight too but I only spent $10 on a heap of eyes and a very cute red fabric with little birds on it, which doesn't match anything in my stash but which I think will make nice headbands.

After that - is a crafternoon still a crafternoon if it's held in the evening? Crafterevening doesn't have the same ring. And silly me had only taken the terribly not-fun task of cutting out the patterns for monsters. I got bored after 6 or 7, and gave up. And I got a blister on my thumb.

I used to love scissors. Helen called me SaraScissorHands when I was little because I was always always using them. But for the last 6 months I have been spoiled by the existence of the rotary cutter, and it's blister free method of chopping fabric into little bits. But I'm willing to concede, it's useless for cutting around the fiddly little bits of a small plushie. So am I really. Once I have picked a craft I can really only temporarily stray from it. Doing a couple of monsters in their entirety would probably be easier, but I still feel that it's more efficient to cut out all the bodies, then do all the faces, then make all the damn things at once. It just feels quite uninspiring to me at the time, especially since they're all ones I've done before.

No time for crafting today, since it is new years eve, and much fun/feralness/dunkenness/ boganness is to be had. We are boating from Donavans to Nelson thisafternoon. I have 16 cruisers and two ruskies. And a cute new esky, which is the exact right size for 18 premix bottles, which worked out well.

So, since I won't be in range of an internet :( till tomorrow night, Have a Happy New Year everyone. Personally I think that statement is a bit far-reaching, and we should all settle for having a lovely Saturday, before planning a lovely Sunday, just like we do every day, but what the hell. Every day should be nice, and we shouldn't only be saying that on December 31st.

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...

Saturday.

The wonderful thing about quilting, and quilt blogging in particular, is the fact that we're all in it together. I'm really liking being a part of this online festival thing, because it's given me an excuse to look at stuff other people have done, without even having to sift through quilters with hugely different styles than mine. I click on a quilt I like, and it takes me to the maker. I can tell them I like it, just as they can tell me they like mine.

I'm so glad lots of people like my quilt. There seems to be much agreement that cheerfulness is a good thing in a quilt, and hey, everybody loves a rainbow.

Today's top of the day isn't quite a rainbow, but it's a cheerful little thing nonetheless. I was soooo not on the mood to do it today - I stalled and stalled till about 3.30, even though I had to start work at 5.30, and then, after a bit more blog reading, decided to suck it up and do something.

Someone had mentioned doing their line quilting by pretty much covering their top in strips of wide masking tape, and sewing down along the gaps. I'd always done a neat, regular top to do my quilting to, and then pieced a crazy back and aligned it diagonally, so the seams didn't have to line up. But if I used masking tape to get my lines, I could crazy piece a top instead.

I really like it in it's funky retro colour scheme, but it was kinda cheating, using a big bit in the middle like that. I got it done in an hour and a half before I had to go to work, so when I got home tonight I did it a back as well.

The bits on the back are a lot smaller, because I only had little bits left, and I had to add a few more fabrics to fill it out. I'm thinking a bright blue binding of some sort will complete my rainbow and bring it all together.

I'm gunna try to do a "big" quilt tomorrow - 120 by 150cm ish. I've no idea how big today's quilt was - it's however big the bit of batting I had was, and it'll get trimmed down even further because it's not actually all that square.

Bloggers Quilt Festival fall 2010 entry.

I had to think a bit about what I felt like entering into my first ever Bloggers Quilt Festival. Officially, my favourite quilt I've ever made is my Mingle Wonky Mini Quilt. But I looked through everyone else's, and my favourites were all spectral/rainbow ones. That make it a whole lot easier to pick one to showcase. This isn't the kind of thing I would normally do, but, if I'm honest, once upon a time, neither was quilting. I came to it via laptop sleeves, which I came at from laptop bags, and it's all a bit by accident that I'm now a quilter.

After putting in stupid huge amounts of effort to sew foam padded laptop bags with zips and pockets and handles and all sorts of fancy things, I realised that really, all you needed was a regular bag to put all your extra bits in and then a lightly padded sleeve for the laptop itself. I started sewing straight strips together to make the sleeves look pretty, but I didn't bother with super accurate cutting, or ironing the seams, or any fancy stuff like that. They were rarely more than 40 cm wide, so accuracy wasn't hugely important. But I was willing to admit, the straighter I cut, the smoother it was, and the nicer it looked.

So, one day, for no reason other than an excess of money, I bought a rotary cutter. One of the $10 ones from Spotlight, because I didn't take it seriously enough to get one of the expensive ones. All their cutting mats were in inches though, so I got an A4 sized one for $3 from Cheap as Chips. I set about cutting all my fat quarters into 10cm squares, that I could then reassemble into the outsides of laptop sleeves*.

The next Monday, I found out that Spotlight were having a quilt show/competition on Thursday. I decided, that since I had all these lovely 10cm squares cut up, I would make a quilt. Only a little one, since I only had 4 days, and I was new to this whole thing, but hey. A real quilt.

I had a top pieced by mid Wednesday, so I went in to get batting and backing. I got wool, since that's what I was using for the laptop sleeves, and I got full width, since I could cut the edge off for a few more sleeves. Then, I found out that actually, it was next Thursday.

Damn. 20+ hours of sewing in two days wasn't a necessary as I had thought. Mum said I should make it bigger, so I decided I'd fill out the whole batting. I had run out of some of my fabrics though, but I got some more, and chopped up old part-done projects as well. That's why there's some fabrics that are only at one end.

Technique-wise, it's a bit shoddy. The border/binding is just the backing folded round, so the in the ditch quilting, which sometimes is aside the ditch quilting, isn't set in at the ends, and I used a different colour cotton for the top and the bottom, so it shows through on the back occasionally. There's a lot of squares that now I think I should switch and, despite the fact that they're different kinds and qualities of fabrics, I didn't prewash them (because they were never intended for a quilt) so now I'm scared to get it dirty. It's on my bed, with other quilts on top of it, but in the morning before I make my bed, I can see all these little rainbow patches in the gaps between them.

When I move out of my parents house, into a place with walls big enough to hang a single bed quilt, I'll probably feature it on a wall, but for now, I like it like it is, a secret rainbow quilt just for me.

*I haven't made a laptop sleeve since.

Completed Quilt list has been updated.

It's turned into quite a big day. I've taken some photos, updated my list of completed quilts, almost finished the Nutmeg quilt top, got good news about my car and chopped up some tree. Now I'm gunna go have a nice long shower, and see what floats to the top of my priority list for the night.