Seize the Days

Seize the Days certainly seemed to fit the end of September/beginning of October for me. I attended the Australian Machine Quilting Festival in Adelaide. Quite an experience. The flight was no problem even though Lisa needed her hand held a few times on the way there. Patty used her first 2 days to sightsee while I filled my days with classes. I attended 4 workshops with Cathy Wiggins. She is on Facebook using her full name so check out her page. She makes whimsical art quilts from a wholecloth and has recently moved away from this to quilting on leather.
I attended 3 workshops in total with Jamie Wallen. I have certainly got better at drawing as a result.

 

One of the best workshops I attended by a local tutor was by Emma from Bell Photography and Design. She has this wonderful resource available from her website www.bellphotographydesign.com.au it gives you all the information you require for taking, editing good photos of your quilts. Of course the basic photography lesson can be used for other photos as well. I have since purchased a stand which I think just might become a temporary design wall as well.

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The most challenging class was Tablet Design for Quilters with Carla Barrett, but Oh so worth it. She runs an online class for this topic and we have since been enrolled in that also. It teaches you how to use Photoshop Elements and a tablet to draw quilts, quilting designs. I am still progressing slowly through the online classes which is helping to reinforce what we did in a packed 4 hours on a Sunday in Day 1 of Daylight Saving. I sure did miss that extra hour of sleep on Saturday night, especially as Queensland does not impose daylight saving on us.

 

It takes a bit to get familiar with connecting all the leads. One of the class members had a small portable tablet device which you draw on the upright screen. Others had a tablet device  that sits off to the side and you draw on it and watch the screen at the same time. Mine is one where you can draw directly on the screen. It becomes a second screen of the laptop. A bit bulkier but for me it works. Carla covers all the types of tablet devices in her blog at www.featheredfibers.wordpress.com.

 

On the Friday night the AMQA quilt show opened, it is run alongside the Festival. I was relieved to see both my quilts hanging and both were hanging straight, amazing after being folded up for postage.
 I did a workshop with Cathy Wiggins on quilting styles etc, and we had a preview of the show for that class. She stopped at my quilt and went " WOW, look at all those points" as she never matches points at all as she paints most of her quilts. I did not receive a judged prize but the winners were amazing to view. Best of Show went to a wholecloth quilt whose owner was also in Cathy's class.
I helped on the last day to take quilts down and pack them up and that is when somebody informed me that my quilt had won Viewer's Choice. Apparently I was still in a class when they announced it.

My prize is supposed to be a roll of Batting to arrive in the mail from a supplier. I was a bit amazed but happy to have received it for my first time entry in a show of that size.

 

Back home, my feet had to hit the ground running. It was mustering time and an earlier weaning due  to the drought conditions. We now have to find some room for these. We culled a truck load of old cows last week. This should have been done regularly over the last 6 years but due to the spiteful actions of certain older family members we were prevented from doing that until recently. Thank goodness we are now allowed to run this place as we wish to, without any further interference from them. Just hope that the weather improves so that we can keep improving the herd and the paddocks.

 

When the mustering was finished, a local cabinet maker decided he could now fit in a job for me. Our side veranda office has a few shelves along one wall. I want to replace this with drawers and cupboards. You guessed it, back to the necessary painting. The wall is 11 foot high on one side of the room and about 8 foot on the window side. I have washed, sanded, filled, re sanded where necessary and painted. First above and to the sides where the cupboards will go. The colour is Dulux Half Hogs Bristle ( that is the current ceiling colour) so how trendy is this old house? That seems to be a very popular modern colour. The walls Dulux White on White. In this photo the ceiling is finished. I have had to purchase more filling stuff so hope to have that job completed next week. I have decided to complete the whole room. The cabinet maker I think won't be back for at least 4 weeks.

 

I have also been back outside working on the laundry building. It is getting a bit warm outside so I spend the first few hours each day working on it. In this photo I have 6 bottom boards to the right of the windows to sand. I broke the louvre in the shower window but removed the bottom one so I did not do that again. Now I have to fix the louvre. Stocked up on more undercoat, so there should be no delays in painting when it is ready.

My recreation leave finished last Friday, so have been back at work for a few days. Amazing how fast those weeks go by. I have been working on some new sewing projects to continue with while I am away from home. Lynda and Patty took me shopping in Brisbane, we visited 2 fabric shops and  we visited IKEA for the first time. I came away rather overwhelmed with that experience. Somehow Lynda's fabric for a quilt found it's way into my car, waiting for me to design a quilt using it. Hopefully we can get together for a few days and sew it up. Will keep you posted on the progress.

Welcome to Spring Painting

Spring is certainly the time for painting, no westerly winds to blow you off a ladder.

 I mentioned that I was considering painting under the window hood the dark grey colour. I had second thoughts after looking from the inside out and painted them white instead.

 

A view of both window hoods and sills finished. There are no fascia boards below the guttering here so a decision will be made one day to decide if painting the guttering is a good or bad idea.

 The next project in line is to finish paint removal on the laundry building. I have to wait for the purchase of very high trestles  for the rest of the house. It is 16 feet to the height of the guttering on this side of the house but I can manage the laundry building. That window hood will eventually look like the others.

This was one mornings work a few weeks ago, now that my ladders have been returned I can get to work.

A very sad state awaits on the western wall, I have decided to replace these boards and door with all weather boards as that door never gets used.

 

 In the last few days I have finished paint removal, sanded, undercoated and one top coat. This will be finished today.
In other news, my quilts made it safely to Adelaide for the Quilt Show. Thank you Australia Post.
Not long to go before Patty, Lisa, Liz and I fly out to attend the AMQF and Show.
The special shopping trip to Rocky, resulted in success, so all is nearly ready for the big occasion on September 20th. Will be good to catch up with the family. We will be missing Bryan however as his job prevents him from attending but he did have fun at the Boys Night Out 2 weekends ago.

August Update

 August certainly sped by, but sometimes I wish it went faster just to be finished with the cold weather. I decided to enter my Sunshine Rose Garden quilt in the AMQF Quilt Show, mainly because they extended the entry deadline and I could enter it. I also can collect it so do not have to worry about the return postage. This needed a photo of it finished, so once again I hung it over the veranda rail and clicked away. It now has an Australia Post tracking number and is in transit. Hope it gets there, I will know in a few days.

 I started the last few blocks in my next project. I have always wanted to make a basket quilt. Sometimes I think I will be a basket case myself but I am still here. This is a series quilt from QNM with some modern flowers. My new ( 1yr old now) sewing machine is doing a good job with a few different blanket stitches.

 The good news came in mid August with some much welcomed rain.

August is also birthday month for my 2 of my girls. So off I went on a road trip. Actually went to Rockhampton twice. Once for some shopping for a very special occasion coming up soon. Then off to Monto for 2 nights to help take care of Parker and also see the eldest birthday girl. She was busy as usual but her garden is coming along fine.  The start of most trips see the car and I visit the nearest rubbish dump to offload the household rubbish, funny how we clean the house before we leave. Here we are at the Brigooda Dump.

I moved from Monto to Rockhampton for 2 more nights, and caught up with the shift workers there. Spent a day down at Yeppoon, watching the waves come ashore.

 Then I headed south west, past Moura, met my new grand niece at Paranui, then onto Theodore, past this dragline doing some work.

 Went to Taroom, where I had never been before and then swung further south west heading for Roma. Found this huge patch of pasture out that way. They still need more rain but are grateful for what has fallen. This is the view on the other side of the road. Craig wanted to know why didn't I bring that paddock home for him.

 Joined the Warrego Highway at Roma, and continued further west to Amby.  Spring Hill at Amby is in the distance in this photo. 3 k's of gravel road was all I had to encounter in the 520k from Rockhampton.

 The bottle trees certainly are impressive. I brought 2 home as they are different leaves to the ones here.

Finally arrived at the Spring Hill Country Craft Retreat place.

I helped Gay out for her Open Day on Sunday 31 August. She has converted the spare house on her property to be a working craft retreat complete with craft shop. I am not sure of the numbers that attended but the ladies travelled from Injune, Mitchell, Roma, Wallumbilla and Dunkeld and lots of places I had never heard of. One lady drove 99.9 kms over  rough roads to attend. Their nearest dedicated patchwork shop is Dalby, and the most important thing of all, it is intended to be a sanctuary away from the ever pervasive drought and land conditions. The lady who won a shopping voucher has only just moved into a new home after spending all of this time living in a flood condemned house.

 

Back home, I have painted the 2 window hoods this morning with the metal primer. Has been too windy the last few days. Still deciding what colour to paint underneath it. The top is dark grey. I was going to paint underneath white, but after looking at it from the inside, I might try the dark grey, hoping it will hide the spider webs better. Will decide by trial and error.

In preparation for my classes at AMQF in October , I have finally hooked up my drawing tablet to my laptop. It basically becomes another monitor. It enables me to draw actually on the screen. What a steep learning curve. I am off to work for 5 days and nights so had better get packing but am taking this with me.

What happened to July?

 In my last post I mentioned quilting my Sunshine Rose Garden quilt for the deadline of August 6th. I made it with a week to spare. I had a few setbacks with the washing and blocking. The drought meant we ran out of tank water, you guessed it the day I wanted to wash it.Our spring water and a white quilt do not mix. We do however have a small tank behind the shed, so I was able to carry water to the laundry. After a slight mishap with a 50% bleach dab on a small stain, I had to wash/rinse again, I hung it on the wobbly Hills Hoist ( lucky it didn't break from the weight of it) overnight and in the morning light took this photo of the back. We have had a plague of wallabies on our lawn every night so I was expecting to find grey fur as well meaning another wash cycle but that didn't happen. After the bleach mishap, I had to re quilt a small area as the silk thread either dissolved or yellowed. Lessons are learnt along the way. I successfully blocked it and rolled it up to drive it to Bundaberg on August 6th.

 2 close up views of the quilting. I ended up going with my friend Kerry's suggestion of just echoing around the applique as the sashings were just too narrow for a filler that I contemplated. The day I delivered it to the Bundaberg Quilters Exhibition I helped with the setting up for the show. There were quite a few wooden stands to be organised.

 My quilt hung alongside quilts from a prize winning quilter. I was quite happy to be considered worthy of that privilege. My very first formal patchwork teacher Margaret, from 1987, found me wandering the aisles on Saturday August 9, and was suitably impressed. She taught me the basics and also a lot more about advanced quilting of quilts and understanding quilting designs. I really wish she had the opportunity to continue teaching me but life gets in the way sometimes. I really hope her creative muse is allowed to return soon. I have come to the conclusion that having a very large project on the go for a long time is also a destroyer of the creative muse. My mind certainly has been wandering about  future projects ahead now that this one is finished. At the show, the most often asked question was " if this quilt is for the spare bed in your house, what quilt have you got on your bed" They were most amused with my answer of " a Spotlight bedspread about 8 years old" Whenever I have made one for our bed , I am always told it is too good to sleep under.

 The house has not been forgotten in my quilting marathon. This is the downstairs room where I hope to move most of my sewing stuff into. The walls are currently a yellow colour and I chose a test pot of paint simply on its name. Taubmans February Frost, our birthdays are both in that month and when I saw it in the colour area I was looking at, I had to try it. I have not been back to buy more paint yet, as the outside window hoods are next in line for painting. I have had the timber venetians installed though after the window frames were painted.

 At the AMQF in October I am doing 2 classes with Carla Barrett the quilt whisperer from the USA and one of those  is where we send her a photo of some quilt tops so she can design potential quilting patterns for them. I have sent her these as I want to emphasise the cube shapes with the quilting.

With this one I want to create movement across the quilt.
On the family front, the annual trip to the Ekka is happening, Grandbaby number three is set to arrive early next year, and we along with most of Queensland are still in the grip of a severe drought. Today there are some predictions of potential rainfall shortly so lets hope it happens.

June Happenings

 June has been the month of accounts, sanding and preparing the southern wall of Ivanhoe for painting and quilting the Sunshine Rose Garden quilt, pattern by Kathy Nakajima, that I have been working on since 2009. I hope to have it finished by August 6th 2014 to display in the Bundaberg Quilters Exhibition. My sister also wants it for display in the Mundubbera Art Gallery for October 2014 when The Lemon Jo Quilters have their display. Looks like I'll become a member of their group also. The view above is to put the quilt's size into perspective compared to the house. The quilt is 2.25 metres square. I think the house makes a nice background but I wish someone would hurry up and finish the renovating. The roof sure does need a coat of paint.

 

I quite like the wall colour on the veranda walls from this distance.



 Here is a closer view of the quilt. Click on it and you can see my trusty assistant who just had to supervise. To date, I had Lisa Warne at Quick Quilts at Tiaro baste it on her longarm machine with water soluble thread, I have finished ditch stitching and stabilising the sashings, compasses, I have finished outlining each applique shape on the edge and again a hopping foot width around all of the applique. I did all of the ditch stitching and outlining by free motion quilting. My uniquely made hopping foot for my Pfaff grand quilter machine certainly works brilliantly. I have since ordered another one from America as it certainly helps with the consistency of the stich length, no stitch regulator used here. I thought it was a standard Juki hopping foot but no it is engineered by Curt of the Finishing Touch Quilting Studio in America. I used Superior Kimono Silk 100wt thread for that work. Today I started the free motion work in the compasses. I switched back to 40wt Glide polyester as the silk just didn't show too well. Then I will have to fill in all the remaining background. I have practised a piano key outer border in water soluble thread and it looks good. That will be the last bit to quilt. A piped inner border of red ( just washed the fabric again but will do so another time yet) is required to cover where I accidently snipped into the outside edge when doing the applique, then I will bind it in white. Better find the original fabric bolt. I still have a ton of threads to tidy up but I think I will meet the deadline. Have to, as I sent my form in this week for the Exhibition. I have had 3 days rec leave from work so have been able to quilt, but next week I think I'll be still tidying up threads as well as sleeping between shifts.

 This is the house wall I had ready for painting. We had a "quality time weekend " together on June 21st where he said "he'd paint the wall" as he did not like seeing me standing up so high on the trestles. He is used to heights so I stood on the ground and pretended to be "Carol" from House Rules for awhile. This is the undercoat finished. I did undercoat and one top coat while the power was off before that. I meanwhile wielded a paint brush in the downstairs rooms where I am getting some white timber venetians soon. I am then going to repaint the wider room, maybe timber laminate floor it, then move the quilting stuff in.

Clicking on the photo removes the lines caused by the weatherboards. The bottlebrush tree is due for a cut, then I am going to move back down the wall and finish the veranda posts. The window hoods will be primed, then I have ordered a Resene Cool Colour paint in Gumboot Grey for them.

The next dilemma after that is how to get in around the tall tank stand and tank to get at the western wall. The boys have some ideas and I think I will be leaving that to them.
The grandkids have visited and had fun at Grandma's house. I managed to keep the 1yr old  out of my sewing area but he loved playing with my Glide spools. I'm sure he is as attracted to their colours like me. I'm not sure if his mother wants me to teach him how to sew but he sure loved me letting him ride his 3 wheeled dune bike in my kitchen. He was only allowed to do that on their patio before he visited us.

The May Blurb

I might change the title to "The May Blur" and the month of May isn't finished yet. Between work, the house repairing and some social activities, the month has been flying past me.
I spent Mothers Day at Monto to celebrate Danielle's first Mothers Day with her. She was helping to stage Monto's First Mothers Day Classic for Breast Cancer. We walked the 5 km fun run and thoroughly enjoyed it. I must admit the early morning start was a bit brisk and a sleep was necessary afterwards. I then stayed the night and caught up with the Mt Perry girls at patchwork the next day. I actually did get some sewing done. I am still working on my blocks ( up to number 5 of 15) I will take some photos when I have a few more finished. The new Pfaff and Glide threads are working well together.
A few days later I travelled to Cooroy for a High Tea Luncheon at High Tea Licious along with some of my old class mates from Mundubbera and Gayndah School Days.

 This is where we caught up on all the gossip from many years. It was amazing as it does not seem like 40 years since we last sat in a classroom struggling over some lessons together. The guest speaker was Elaine Mergard who was the Home Economics Teacher for our years 9 and 10 classes who has recently retired as a milliner and now runs the hatacademy website.She even made hats for our former Governor General Quentin Bryce. That's why some of us are wearing hats. The venue is owned by one of OUR class mates, Jackie, who has always loved cooking and sewing and more recently retailing. We had over 110 varieties of tea to select from and the china and table settings are first class. The noise in the room from about 40 of us who all had Mundubbera connections was amazing.
Back to reality, I then did my 5 shifts in a row at work, finishing with my 2 night shifts. Oh boy, if the new copayment for bulk billed doctor's visits comes in in July 2015, we are going to be so much busier ( providing that Pathology Queensland still does the service ) as more people will end up in DEM instead of their GP. I will not enjoy night shifts then if we get any busier. There is only so much one person can handle at a time and I was certainly busy last week.
Back to the Ivanhoe house. In this photo you can see the laundry building under the tanks at the back. I have started the paint removal on it.

 

 

 I decided to use a flap disc on the angle grinder and started 2 weeks ago doing a few boards at a time as my shoulders get a bit sore.I have loaned my ladder to our tenant so he can work on our Brigooda house so have only done halfway up the wall. I think we'll be replacing the end door and lower boards as they are all pretty bad.

 Some good news on the power inlet to the house. The maintainence crews were out and noticed the 2 bare wires that fed the power into the house. The second wire used to hook onto that L bracket.These were supposed to be replaced 2 years ago but the crew did not show up to turn the power off when the other crew were here to do it. When I contacted Ergon and asked "when is it being rescheduled?" I got the usual fob off from their operators and nothing more was done. Until the pole/line maintainence crew saw it and someone was back within 3 days and the 2 bare wires are now 1 rubber coated cable. I have since been told the previous setup is now illegal, so no wonder they moved fast, especially as they would have noticed the paint stripped boards underneath.
Back to quilting, I have successfully repaired the tiny hole I cut into a compass point, and am visiting Lisa of Quick Quilts soon to baste it on her A1 machine. We`are going to use Glide Water Soluble thread then I am going to quilt it on my Pfaff Grand Quilter.Am hoping to finish it for the Bundaberg Quilters Exhibition in August.

 No I haven't forgot the Nolting. I do turn it on and run it every few weeks. I have booked into the AMQF in October in the hope that I will be further inspired to learn how to use it better.

The other best event of May , so far, I now have my first grand niece or great  niece, either term will do. Annalise (already shortened to Anna) arrived 2 weeks early catching a few people by surprise. The family keeps growing. The other new arrivals are all doing well also. Nearly a year since the first one was born. Time certainly flies by.