.: 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

.: 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 

.: 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