I'm still here!

Just checking in, I have not disappeared from the blogosphere or from my sewing room lol In fact I have had a bit of fun, playing, thinking, browsing, buying :) Not long until dinner, but I quickly wanted to update the progress on my resolutions:

Finish Press Start

Finish Giant Chevron - still just over half way through background fmq; after reading a post by Karin from The Quilt Yarn I have decided I will play with tension (esp. bobbin) and with different needles again to see if I can make fmq more enjoyable.

Finish Opal Essence - 21 cubes quilted

Complete remaining Vintage Quilt Revival blocks - currently piecing block 16 of 20:

 

Exploding Star

Star and Pinwheel

Piece Metro Rings top

Flimsy is a very suitable term, it will need a lot of starch and pressing, and then I plan to quilt it extensively :)

New little project - steadily adding to the little pile

I enjoyed a bit of online shopping, now I'm waiting for a package from Craftsy with batting and another one from Pink Castle Fabrics with Me & You Batiks :) Thanks to Karin's blog (mentioned above), I have also ordered another ruler foot, and I'm determined to make at least one of them work:)

Work is great, I absolutely love it! Working hard, but everyone is incredibly supportive, and we are already starting to see positive results.

Not a bad view from the office...

Flagstaff on Waitangi Day

Happy Sewing!

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