Not quite on task

I have been itching to get some more sewing done, but there are only so many hours in the day and I am still quite tired after I even took a day off work last week.

One of the things I have been experimenting with is fusing plastic bags for my recycling art unit with my students at school for term 4. After some experimenting I have gotten better at fusing layers of shopping bags together, and I have also eperimented with some forms of decoration - crayon shavings are probably the easiest way to colour white bags. I am toying with a few different ideas for the fused plastic, originally thought about weaving strips of it - similar to harake / flax weaving - or just cutting to shape and fusing into ??a bag?? Fusing the sides together still proves a bit of a problem, easiest would be stitching up with the sewing machine but not sure I can organise this for school. Other ideas include using yarn made from plastic bags ('plarn') and use this for more traditional weaving, or for crotchet or knitting (I only knit continental though). I also saw an easy way of weaving a mat from whole shopping bags. Any suggestions much appreciated!!!!

I photographed my test pieces, looks not as good as I thought...

I am keen to get my hands onto some more real sewing soon, still working on my pastel tesselation quilt, also want to get back into my weaving quilt - note to myself: Check Lotto Ticket to see when I can retire to fulltime quilting Lol

Making a special effort

Today I decided that I would make a special effort for a particular job I am applying for:

I hope that this cover for my CV makes my application stand out positively and tells the prospective employer that I am going the extra mile, that I am creative and I like a bit of fun. Should it not work out, I still have a fun cover for a big journal :-)
Here's front and back:

Yes, music is one of the subjects I want to get emplyed for ;-). I hope the value my choice of colours which are from their logo. I need to put something over my name in chalk on the blackboard fabric to fix it - maybe hairspray?
Now I just need to make sure I put a similar effort into the application ;-)

Against the Odds Pics

Tadah: Against the Odds, yet to be put up on the wall in the lounge [I need my handy husband to recover from the cold he caught from me :-(] 

Some Details...

I confused myself here, I had wanted to show the block Splashes of Colour is made up from: Imagine a vertical line on the right of the small brown square and a horizontal line from it's right bottom corner over to the appliqued circle, you might be able to see the next vertical line go up from the circle. [I apologise, but in our high tech house hold with various laptops and gadgets I still need to turn on the old PC and printer to get pics off the camera card onto a memory stick to transfer to the laptop - too hard to do this twice within a day sorry!!!]

Can you see my golden bead with tiny bead on top? Looks nice in the original, but I don't know if I would have the patience to do more than 12 (x2) beads with invisible thread in one quilt?!

I freehand quilted the outline of some of the flowers in the sari panel.


The back is pieced - isn't it annoying when you have spent heaps of money on the quilt top, a fortune on the batting, even more on the threads and then you need to buy still more fabric for the backing?

Against the Odds

This started as a bundle of Fat Quarters I got from mum (who blogs as Felting Annie) for Christmas - not my usual bright batiks but oriental looking prints. I found a beautiful sari I was given by another Annie the Christmas before but had stopped wearing (oh to be a NZ size 10 again...). Add a pattern I had wanted to try out for some time (Splashes of Colour), and with Carolyn's closing down sale, the missing bits and pieces became more affordable. The project grew some momentum when I had time off work with an awful cold - all of a sudden it all started coming together and voila - here it is! [except this time the laptop doesn't want to let me upload the pictures! I'm working on it...]

Why 'Against the Odds'? The two Annies share being artists and raising challenging teenagers.Felting Annie has said on more than one occasion "I often wondered if anything will ever become of them", and the other Annie has supplied me with wonderful coffees and afternoon teas when I used to visit her and her teenager at least once every month to get him through his schooling. And guess what: Felting Annie's challenging teenagers have grown up and are successful in what they are doing, and Annie's teenager finished his secondary qualifications and has gone off to study :-)

This is to remind me that no matter how dire it looks, things will fall into place against the odds, just like this quilt did :-)

So much easier to upload a photo from the laptop! Anyway, here's the finished trial of fabric weaving, just 6'x8'. A leftover piece of green batik which accidentally had been backed with fusible web determined the size. As it's two fused layers on top of the batting, some pin marks show as well as where I took out stitches, will see if and how I can get these out.

Weaving

Yesterday I got my first early birthday present, and today the next, have a look at http://thefibernation.blogspot.com/2010/06/complete-photo-guide-to-textile-art-by.html
(tried to make it a link but it wouldn't let me!). I had wanted to try fabric weaving for quite some time for a so far UFO. Provided I figure out how to upload photos I will post the result (iPad seems to make everything very complicated...)

Starting out

I think we're all on our little (or big?) journey, sometimes the destination is clear, sometimes it's The Great Unknown! This is me starting out into the Blogosphere where I want to document my Quilting Journey.
How did it all begin? 500 (or so) years ago I was a skinny little thing and my mum, a very creative and crafty person, used to sew clothes for me and my sister. I had already talked her into teaching me to knit and learnt basics of sewing. I knitted, gave crotchet ago without much success, eventually learnt to spin and felt. With the arrival of the firstborn, time became more precious. After the birth of the second I became friends with a wonderfully creative person (you know who you are!!!) who introduced me to patchwork and quilting - and life has never quite been the same since! A stint in Hamilton when the youngest was still a toddler led me to Grandmother's Garden and a beginner's course; much money has been spent at various fabric stores since :) My long suffering family put up with threads, lint and pins and at times get rewarded with creations they requested.
A gift subscription introduced me to Quilting Arts and I have been fascinated since by 'new' approaches to quilting. However, life has long since caught up with me, I am working full-time and my sewing room is my luxury retreat from reality where I sneak away from the "mum, he hit me", "mum, I'm hungry" or "what are we having for dinner?".

My intention is to post every other week or so to keep myself on task. If anyone else is interested in my ramblings - great! - and any advice and feedback is much appreciated!

Let the journey begin...