I had an interesting weekend – some good, some very sad. Will write on that later, perhaps in a day or so.
Meantime, we were coming back from where we’d been this weekend and I saw a dead kangaroo on the side of the road and said something like “dead boomer” or “big boomer”. My husband thought I’d said “Wilma”! So all afternoon on the drive back home we called every dead roo “Wilma”.
Guess you had to be there. But I think that “Wilma” will become part of our shorthand to each other from now on.
Resource companies are really strict about safety—as they should be. And because most are located in very remote areas of our big state and country, accessing exploration and mine sites requires a four wheel drive vehicle and driving on some very rough tracks… where they exist.
So it was no surprise that a resource company’s incident notification email is doing the rounds of staff at other resource companies. Here’s the essence—I think the picture tells the story!
Too bad if there was a passenger in the vehicle
It’s been a hectic week workwise, so I’m only now getting around to blogging about the long weekend just gone. I did the Japanese Meshwork workshop on the Saturday, then I had the craft group afternoon up at the estate on Sunday afternoon where Bobbie taught two of us some patchwork piecing basics. This was good—it’s been 20+ years since I did any patchwork/quilting classes, so while I do this hobby for my own enjoyment, I really don’t know the best practices I should be following. We started work on a ‘Blankets of Love‘ quilt each.
On Monday, we took a drive on a big loop along Channybearup Rd (south of Manjimup), around the back of Pemberton, and back through to the Southwest Highway. Channybearup Rd was interesting—I’d heard that Manjimup grew a lot of the state’s avocados but had never seen an avocado tree on any of our trips down that way. That’s ‘cos they were hiding out along Channybearup Rd! Thousands of avocado trees, from brand new ones to well-established ones. And some vineyards thrown in too.
We stopped in at Knights Distillery. I’d heard good things about the liqueurs they were producing there, and I’m pleased to say that my information source was absolutely correct! We tasted some FABULOUS liqueurs, and even bought some of our favourites. It would have been easy to buy one of each, though the bank manager might not have been happy with that!
The ones we purchased were Arabian Knights (cream liqueur with chocolate and Turkish Delight flavours), Frosty Knight (chocolate mint cream liqueur), Mid Knight (coffee liqueur), and Regal Knight (the house specialty). We also bought some home-made chocolates, filled with various liqueurs, and scoffed off all eight of them after dinner that night!
So, how do you do a liqueur tasting when you’re driving out and about? They had these tiniest little shot glasses that probably held not much more than a thimble full. And the guy behind the counter pours a tiny amount, enough to come maybe 5 mm up the side of these little glasses. So you get the taste without too much alcohol. He did say, however, not to drive after eating six of the chocolates as that equivalent to one standard drink! The minimum alcohol content of the liqueurs is 20%, with the Regal Knight and the schnapps varieties at 37%.
I spent part of today at a quilting workshop in town learning how to do Japanese Meshwork. Earlier in the week I spent a few hours making the bias strips I used in my ‘tumbling blocks’ piece. A word about these bias strips—they aren’t made from the bias of the fabric. They’re cut on the straight grain, then put through some type of bias tape maker to create the double-fold strips.
Japanese Meshwork has no sewing in it, until you need to add borders etc. It’s all about weaving the fabric. And it takes some time to get the technique right. However, within a few hours all five of us at the workshop had a handle on it, though whether I could repeat the technique at a later date remains to be seen!
Here are some of our efforts:
My Christmas Tumbling Blocks - Japanese Meshwork piece (9 in square)
Bobbie's Cafe Blocks (9 in square)
Jane's stars and diamonds (6 x 12 in)
Flora's lattice - in progress (6 x 12 in)
Using the bodkin to weave the strips
See also: Japanese Meshwork: Finished
You can get a free 6-month subscription to the electronic version of Down Under Quilts, the Australian quilting magazine.
Just go to The Quilt Mouse (http://www.thequiltmouse.com.au) then scroll to the bottom of home page and click the link. You only have to enter an email address and you’ll get access to past issues and a free sub for the next 6 months.
BTW, this is my friend Bobbie’s website. It’s been revamped recently—her son set it up for her using Joomla, and her daughter did the graphics. It was their Christmas present to her last year, but was longer in the making than they’d all expected. But it’s up now, and you can even see one of the quilts I’ve made with Bobbie’s blocks in the Photo Gallery.
I popped into the fabric store yesterday to see if my new machine might be here by the weekend in time for the workshop. It won’t, so I’ll have to borrow one.
While I was there, the owner said there was this guy who’d seen my Dragonfly quilt in the window (she’s displaying it in the store for a while) and wants to commission me to make a single bed quilt! She indicated that the price would be high—over $1000—but it seems he gave her his number for me to contact him anyway.
Arrgghh! I’ve got his phone number, but haven’t called him yet. I don’t have the time to make it—unless he’s prepared to wait 12 months—and I’m really not confident in my ‘art’ quilt skills as the Dragonfly was my first effort of designing and creating something myself. And if it had all gone pear-shaped, it wouldn’t have mattered. It seems he wants a particular butterfly, so I’m guessing that it’s for a daughter, especially as it’s a single bed size.
And the store owner also mentioned that some ladies were wondering if I did a lesson or workshop on how to make a quilt like that.
What have I started?
Funny how things happen… As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been considering purchasing a new sewing machine since we moved here 18 months ago and I started quilting again.
I staved off that purchase by trading my 33 year-old Bernina in on my Mum’s slightly newer 25 year-old Bernina, at her suggestion. But as my skills have developed and my needs have grown, I realised that I needed a machine that was better able to do things such as free motion embroidery and the like.
I’ve done some investigation and had decided on the Husqvarna Sapphire 870. I was all ready to put in my order when my friend Bobbie offered to loan me her Sapphire 830 for a while. It was 12 months old but virtually brand new as she’d hardly used it while they were building their house, but she was thinking of upgrading to the latest Pfaff, which has just been released. However, she had to find out from the Pfaff people whether a particular part she’d bought for the Husqvarna would work on the Pfaff. She offered me a good price on her 830, should I decide to buy it *if* she decided to purchase the Pfaff.
Anyhow, long story short… Last week, Di from the fabric store asks if I’m still interested in the 870, Bobbie finds out that the new Pfaff will work with the part, and my Mum calls to say my old machine has died! So, Mum picks up her old machine, I decide to purchase the Sapphire 870 at Di’s ‘good deal’ price, and Bobbie decides not to get the new Pfaff, so I return hers to her. Phew!
I think the sewing machine fairies were at work last week making sure that this all happened the way it was meant to happen! Mum keeps her machine, Bobbie keeps hers, and my old now-dead machine gets replaced with a Husqvarna Sapphire 870! Meantime, my old machine is going to an ex-electrician at my folks’ retirement village who will see if he can fix it and then Mum will donate it to charity or one of the people in the retirement village.
BTW, my Mum has taken up basic sewing again. My niece (her granddaughter) visited an orphanage in Africa a couple of months ago and one way that she can help is to get people to make cloth nappies (diapers) and bibs for the babies out of old towels. So Mum’s doing a lot of that.
I’m off to a Japanese Meshwork workshop this coming weekend and had to cut the fabrics and make double-fold bias strips from it. Bobbie lent me her 1/2″ bias tape maker, but I wasn’t happy with the results on my first few tries. I just couldn’t get the folds even, and on the lighter fabric, I got puckering in the centre, even when using spray starch to ‘crisp’ up the fabric.
So off to the internet to see if there was an easier way! I couldn’t find anything on YouTube but I did find an easy method here:
http://creativelittledaisy.typepad.com/creative_little_daisy/2007/11/diy-version-of.html
In case that blog post ever goes missing, here’s my variation on it (apologies for the blurriness of some of these photos).
Position a needle on the ironing board so that the gap between the ‘grabs’ of ironing board fabric is 1/2″.
Needle on ironing board with 1/2″ gap
Clip one end of a 1 inch fabric strip to a point so that it can slip under the needle easily.
Snip the end and pull through gap
When you gently pull the fabric through, you may need to wiggle it a bit to get the folds even.
Wiggle the folds to make even, if necessary
Gently pull the fabric through, about an inch or two at a time. Watch that the folds remain even, and help guide the fabric through if necessary. I found that with some fabrics I had to use my left hand on the lower fold to keep it even—the upper fold sorted itself out when I did this.
Pull through gently
Iron as you go. Press each inch or two as you pull it through the needle. Be careful you don’t burn you fingers—the fabric gets pretty hot with all that pressing.
Iron as you go
End result—perfect 1/2 inch double-fold bias tape strips! Give the strips a squirt of spray starch and a final press, then, if you’re not using them straight away, roll them around a cardboard tube and pin until you need them. The folds will separate if you’re not using them immediately.
Perfect 1/2 inch double-fold bias tape
Very funny! Things a mother would say in a 24 hour period, condensed into less than 3 minutes. Safe for work.
(Thanks to Ron M for sharing this link.)
Sun and Earth convergence quilt
I finished quilting and binding the “Cosmic Curves” convergence quilt the other day. So it’s done.
Sun - free motion embroidered in metallic gold thread
I used a lot of gold metallic thread and did free motion embroidery for the sun and around every little circle (waterhole) on the Aboriginal-style fabric.
Gold metallic embroidery
And I used the same gold metallic thread for the ‘animal tracks’ in the frame, as well as to outline all the ochre lines in the border. You can’t see it in the photos, but I used a maroon thread to outline all the purple lines in the border.
Contours on the earth
I tried to make the earth more ‘earthy’ by adding ‘contour lines’ in a matching thread.
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 