Sunday, 23 June 2013

.: sewing, holidaying + teaching :.

Happy holidays! - for the Queenslanders amongst you, at least - yahoo, yahoo, so happy to be on holidays!

Today we have a couple of in-progress sewing pics to share, and also - pics from our first-ever screen-printing class!! 

First up - Priscilla, Queen of the 'Burbs, moonlighting as a cockatoo-lamp.  Are you with me?  Joining her on the Curly-Pops sideboard is a little Echino owl.  I think it will all end up as a cushion cover.



And next, how awesome is this - Wonder Woman!!  The super-talented Kristy from Quiet Play called for a few pattern-testers for her new line of Lego super-hero paper-piecing patterns.  I was so on board! Kristy's patterns have the blessing of Lego, and will be available for free, from her blog.  Wonder Woman still needs a face, of course, hoping to move onto that this week.  Click through to Kristy's blog to see the start of her Lego Star Wars designs too - she's amazing!


And now - Vee and I taught our first-ever screen-printing class today, to ten gorgeous ladies from Brown Owl.  We all met up at Imogen's Art Space in Bardon - a really lovely, friendly space, which is sadly now closed - today was the very last day the space was used.  Imogen's farewell party was just last night!  


Here are a couple of pics of everyone hard at work on their designs - so many great ideas, lots of chatting and careful paper-cutting going on here.

And here are pics of nearly-everyone's fabulous prints! - I missed taking photos of a couple, which I'm really sorry about.  Take a look - and enjoy the awesome.








It was a really fun experience - we met some lovely people, learned a lot about the teaching-process, and were very inspired by everyone's ideas and cleverness.  We're looking forward to seeing pics of what everyone creates from their panels. 

Thanks so much to everyone who was able to come along today - and especially to Rebecca, who invited us along to teach.

Hope you have all had a happy weekend.   xoxo cat







Monday, 17 June 2013

.: AusModBee blocks for Julie :.

Julie is the Queen Bee of our AusModBee for June, and asked for 'stash-busting stars'.

We had free-range to make two 12 1/2 inch star blocks of our own choice.  Julie's fabric package was full of really pretty pastels in blue, pink and green.

Here are my two blocks.


Both blocks came from the fab book 'Shape Workshop for Quilters' by the Fat Quarterly team.



This one is called 'Eight Pointed Star' and was designed by Katy Jones of ImAGingerMonkey.





And this one is Wonky Star Nine-Patch and was designed by Brioni Greenberg of Flossy Blossy.




The blocks will hit the post to Julie tomorrow, to add to her growing pile of super-pretty pastel stars - they will all definitely come together to make a really sweet quilt.   

Vee and I got together today for a dummy-run of our first-ever screen-printing class, which is on this coming Sunday.  It was good to get back to basics - to draw up and cut out stencils, and print without using our super-awesome contraption that we screw our screens into, to stabilise them for printing.  We are now ready to roll - save for an epic packing-the-car session on Saturday afternoon.  

Hope your Monday was a good one.  xoxo cat 







Saturday, 15 June 2013

.: Hottie Challenge + do.GoodStitches :.

A beautiful wintery day in Brisbane today - it felt a little more like August, around Ekka time, since it was pretty windy too.

I finished my Hottie Challenge at last - it will hit the express-post-mail on Monday to the gorgeous Cam.  There have been so many wonderful hotties popping up in Cam's instagram photos, I can't wait to see pics of all of them at the exhibition - over 100 people are out there making hotties!! 


I kept changing my mind about how to approach the hottie, but finally decided on the leafy heart, filled in with hot pink flowers.  That wasn't quite busy enough for me, so I snipped out little letters spelling 'breathe'.  They're all made from wool felt and stitched on with perle 8 thread.  


I think the white spot/grey background is from Stof, and the binding has two of Cam's Curly Pops fabrics, and a knitty-fabric, which I think is by Timeless Treasures or Michael Miller.  


I had quite a few false starts with the hottie-opening - I started with binding, switched to pom-poms, changed again to ribbon, then tulle, and then had the light-bulb moment to stitch flowers on top of the tulle!!  I do love it - it makes me think of an old-fashioned shower-cap. 


On the back is one of our Spoonflower panels - Vee and I call this one 'Cam', since it features a quote from Cam on Modern Family (I cut the words off, but they say "I can't turn it down, it's who I am" - they're from the very first episode).


I'm going to stitch on a couple more flowers tonight, to cover up the start/end of the binding, I think.

And then this afternoon, I started and finished my first two blocks for the CARE group of do.GoodStitches.  The blocks are based on Amy Stitchery Dickory Dock's Garden Lattice tutorial


I was so happy to join a do.GoodStitches group.  do.GoodStitches was founded a few years ago by Rachel from Stitched in Colour (you can read a whole lot of Rachel's posts about it here).  It is a virtual quilting bee that makes quilts for charity, and has a 'home base' on Flickr  - there are many different groups (or 'circles'), and each group has its own 'check in' page on Flickr.  

All the do.GoodStitches groups make quilts, each month, for charity.  There are quilters and sew-ers in each group (I am very definitely a sew-er!).  The quilters take it in turns to choose blocks for everyone to sew - which they are then responsible for sewing up into a quilt - and I think they also choose the charity that will receive the quilt.  Our group is called CARE.  This month (my first month in CARE - I'm taking someone's place), we all followed the Garden Lattice tutorial using fabrics from our own stash.  The fabrics for this month had to be greys and yellows that were unisex, but most likely for a boy. 



I'm hoping to find time tomorrow to sew up my AusModBee blocks for this month, so they are all finished and posted before the school holidays start.   Vee and I have a couple of printing days this week too, so there will be plenty of behind-the-scenes panel-cutting-and-ironing going on too. 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  xoxo cat





Thursday, 13 June 2013

.: hey girl ... I love your mini :.

A little bit of blog-radio-silence over the last few days -- Vee and I have been printing up a storm, and getting sorted to teach our first-ever screen-printing class next weekend.

And all my sewing time has been spent getting this little mini together for the super-awesome Modern Mini Quilt Challenge hosted by Jennifer from Ellison Lane Quilts.

This is the first time I have entered the Mini challenge - in fact, I think it's the first time I've entered any sewing-related challenge.  I knew I wanted to make something especially for the challenge, and pretty quickly decided on something word-related.

My AusModBee month is August, and I am going to ask my bee-girls to make word-blocks, with a random-texty-print background.  Most word-blocks I've made so far have been from Tonya Ricucci's excellent Word Play Quilts book, so I thought I'd try out a paper-pieced word or two for the challenge.  

And I also really wanted to try and break away from my fussy-cutting obsession, and just slice into the fabric without worrying if I was cutting a word or design in half ... that was a whole mini-challenge in itself! 

So - challenge set - but what word ... or words ... to choose?


And then the Ryan Gosling 'hey girl' pics came to mind (here are a few on Pinterest).


I have a bit of a pink and orange thing going on right now, so tried to keep that my main colour-choice - there are so many of my fabric-favourites sewn into these words. And apart from the 'hey girl' words (which are from Elizabeth Hartman's excellent refrigerator magnet pattern ... except for the 'y' and 'g' which went a little off-track, totally my fault), I thought I'd add in a few little quilt blocks.


To add in a third main colour, I chose a long-time favourite Prints Charming print for the binding.


You can see that the quilting is a little random too - I hand-quilted in green, light blue and orange around the words and a few of the blocks.  And then I did a little straight-line machine-quilting.  And now for some close-ups ::

I cannot even tell you how much I completely LOVE the background - there are SO MANY of my very favourite prints there, and I had such a great time digging through my texty-scraps to piece everything together.  


For the triangle block, I copied Katy's idea from her 'Floating Triangles Wall Hanging' in the fab Fat Quarterly 'Shape Workshop for Quilters' book.  The floating triangle has been on my list of want-to-makes ever since I saw it in the book, so I was really happy to sew one up now. 




I so love the fabric in the middle of the wonky star - I saw it on the teapot in the Sew Ichigo Parisienne Cafe pattern photos and asked Penny on instagram where she had bought it - Sew Me A Song, if you are keen to buy some too!! 


I think this may be my absolute favourite little section of the whole mini.  That cat newsprint fabric just gets me - and the grumpy Fish & Chips cat is just so awesomely bored and irritated.  And I had an idea to make a tiny little checker-board-squares block.  Each square started life at 1-inch - so the whole thing is teeny-tiny.  I was SO careful cutting out the gnoma, 'play', 'life' and the little cat-face ... it seems my fussy-cutting obsession is never completely at rest ... as if I could slice through a gnoma ... 


The bottom right corner had to be a signing-off 'x' gnoma-kiss to Ryan, sandwiched inside Violet Craft's Madrona Road 'memoirs'. 


On the back is a Riley Blake print by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet, and our label, some cute twill tape a little piece of 'C' ribbon. 





This is the first quilt I've made for myself to keep!  I am going to hang it on the wall in my sewing space.  It measures 23 x nearly-21 inches.  I am so very happy with it.  Thanks so much Jennifer for hosting the challenge, I am so happy to be part of it, and I am looking forward to seeing what everyone makes!   

Have a great day everyone.  xoxo cat

Thursday, 6 June 2013

.: a quick pop in :.

Quick one today.  

We posted off two e-n-o-r-m-o-u-s post-bags to the lovely Elissa from Kelani Fabric Obsession today, full of our panels and cushion covers - if you are headed to the Craft + Quilt Fair in Sydney next week, please do go say hello to them.

So now I am back to my Hottie Challenge - I don't think I've posted any progress pics yet - so here's a little peek.  I'm hoping to finish my Hottie over the weekend and post it to the gorgeous Cam next week. 


And I wanted to share this super-cute package that arrived in the post box yesterday.  The gorgeous Ros put together a sweet little surprise package of goodies from her local Japanese dollar shop - I'm thinking maybe Daiso?  I would sooooo love there to be a Daiso in Brisbane ... 


Did you work out the yellow rabbit and pink bear?! - they are boiled egg moulds!!  Will definitely post a pic when we make them.  And how cuuuuuute are the teeny tiny stamps and the little note-paper?!   Thank you so much lovely Ros, it was such a sweet surprise and so kind of you. 

Only one more day til the weekend - a long weekend too!!  Hope you have some nice things planned.  xoxo cat

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

.: show time for the home-ies :.

The lovely Elissa from Kelani Fabric Obsession is taking our home-ies panels, as well as our Step Aside Coffee panel, to the Craft and Quilt Fair in Sydney and Melbourne

Vee and I have been busy printing, packaging and sewing up sample cushions - and we are headed to the post office tomorrow to send it all to Sydney for the show (it's on 12 - 16 June). 

I wanted to take some pics of the cushions all together before they fly south - so I drove to Pillow Talk this morning - waited 20 minutes for it to open (I did have a takeaway coffee and instagram to distract me) - to buy a few size 18 cushion inserts.

Shame that Pillow Talk didn't have any size 18 cushion inserts.  Lucky that I had one at home.  So instead of a couple of pics showing you all the cushions ... start scrolling for 11 pics ... yes, 11 ... 
{{Priscilla, Queen of the 'Burbs - black on flax}}
{{Step Aside Coffee, loving the pom pom trim}}
{{Bela Hoo, purple on flax}}
{{Millie Mischief, blue on flax}}
{{Millie Mischief, pink on white}}
{{Finn McTrickster - our new colourway, red on flax}}
{{Finn McTrickster, orange on white}}
{{Pipsqueak, red on white}}
{{Lisey Meow Meow, blue on white}}
{{Bela Hoo, navy on white}}
{{Pipsqueak, red on flax}}
And here they are - dodgy night time lighting and a little blurry - all packed and ready to post.  Vee has all the panels at her house - she has been on a packaging frenzy.


Very happy to be sending a rather hefty package off tomorrow - and hope that Elissa and all the stall holders (and shoppers!) have an awesome few days at the Fair.     xoxo cat
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