Photos with last post

So here some of the photos to the last post:

I like the finished product :-)

I have made a start on the Dinosaur Quilt, well, at least put it on the wall:

Note the lack of space around the most outside dinosaurs? Very annoying, one would think they print these so that they can be used in one piece...

Fabrics for the Log Cabins - I have decided I go with the black centre

I have made a start on the logcabins, the first one, done in a hurry, has a whole lot of messed up seams (aarrgghhh, when you think you can rush sth.....), I have started another one and I am more happy with the order, too, but as I am photographically challenged, there is no photo tonight :-)

Tomorrow I have to arrange a 9y old birthday party (cake, dress up, activities) for tomorrow afternoon (obviously a sucker for punishment, I know...). We'll see what if any quilting time Sunday brings but Monday I am off work and after our trip to the next city (80km away) I will hopefully get a chance to get some LCBs completed, photographed and uploaded!
Happy Quilting everyone!

PS Unsure about picture quality, please bear with me while I learn...

Gosh, time flies! Already the 20th, and I don't feel I have made much progress on anything (well, definitely not on cleaning that's for sure!)
Here in the southern hemisphere summer is on the way of course, so I have spent considerable time outside weeding and weeding and weeding some more... My veggie garden is looking nice, hubby has had to eat tons of radishes already (no one else in pur family likes them) thanks to my lovely neighbour's advice to buy some Quash anti snail pellets. Never since coming to NZ have I had such success with peas and carrots etc! Can thoroughly recommend it, because it claims to be not poisonous to anything or anyone else.
In the meantime, our local P & I Show in Waimate North has come and gone, and I found myself proudly in company of Miss Lottie and Suz winning third in the Patchwork over 40cm square section with the Reverse Applique and second in the under 40cam square with my Journal Quilt "One" (sorry, can't remember who got first). I proudly laminated the little tickets together with my kids' Cool Kids Awards from school (they get them for being noted doing sth. well)- they matched in size and in colour:-)
Yesterday while many braved the Kerikeri Half Marathon, Suz and I went childless (!!!) to Carolyne at the PowerQuilter for long overdue retail therapy. Not only did we have a great time, I finalised my ideas on quilting and applique for the tesselation quilt and I also bought some more bits to go with my youngest boy's new Dinosaur Quilt.
He has always been a 'cold baby' and even now sleeps under a snuggle blanket, a duvet and a big flannel backed sampler - my first quilt ever. Unfortunately, this last one is very heavy, so too often he ends up in my bed at night, cold like an icicle, because he couldn't pull the quilt back up. Hopefully this new quilt will solve the problem. I might look for some brushed cotton to back it with, but definitely keep it light. Unfortunately the panel he chose is an akward size with not enough space around the dinosaurs to use as seam allowance. Luckily I bought two of the panels, so I plan to use the second panel to applique the cut off dino head on top, possibly making it a bit 3d - I haven't tried this before, so will see how it goes. The rest of the quilt will be made up from log cabin blocks, I have only ever made wonky ones (on purpose!), but this time I plan to do the real thing incl. dark & light etc. Well, that's the plan at least, after all I had that Marty Mitchell book for about 6 years now!
Lastly, today I finally 'buried' my dream of getting into weaving for the time being, a friend of my mothers picked up the humonguous floor weaving loom I had sitting in the garage. It looks rather empty in there now - for about a week our kind friend suggested, then we will have found sth. else to put in there (well, he's probably right lol!). Well, in return his wife and I will get his teenage daughter hooked on quilting xoxo

Law against bloghopping...

There should be a law against blog hopping, don't you agree? It leads you astray very easily... All these lovely projects of other people to look at!
I have been quite intrigued by the 12x12 quilters and their work, and recently Ms. Lottie had mentioned on her blog she had made a journal quilt titled "One" so here we go, the resolution to my 'what to do' dilemma!
I have no idea why she called it 'One', but inspired by the 12x12 quilters this became the theme of my quilt. So what is 'one'?
To my mind came images of mosaics where lots of often irregular pieces form a one (much like some of my crazy quilting placemats, or the diary cover and matching pencil case). Mosaic is also one of the similes I have used in my work when I try to explain to teenagers that everything they do in their lifes will add to the mosaic that is their life, and blank spaces might be filled up by different experiences or choices later on.
I also thought about contrast, how white = light and black = absence of light. Good or bad wouldn't exist without the other. The Yingyang symbol would have to be part of my creation, but not in a negative but in a complimentary way, much like Paul McCartney's "Ebony and Ivory": Living together in perfect harmony, side by side on my piano, so why can't we...
I didn't take working progress photographs, but essentially I made a background from brightly coloured squares and rectangles (oranges, yellows and pinks). While I had aspired to make it 12" square, I got sick of it at about 8" :-) On top of that I invisibly appliqued a Yingyang symbol from ivory and blackish Moda fabric scraps. However, something was missing, so I found some dark blue batik and appliqued the square onto it with satin stitch and on point. Much happier now! Masking tape provided me with the distances for some parallel lines in the blue corners, and inspired by some recent free motion quilting practice I used variegated thread to quilt the 'hairband' pattern on the coloured pieced part. Voila!
Now a quick handwash to get rid of marks the iron left on the light fabric and - disaster! The blue batik bled all over the work... Yes I know you are supposed to wash all fabrics when you buy them, I have done so with some but not all, and so far, in about 6 years, I have never had a problem until today!
Following good advice I ended up removing the Yingyang and instead of invisible applique I tried out my latest purchase - Mystifuse - and with raw edge applique added a new Yingyang - phewww! The lines still needed something else in them, so I decided to free motion 'write' in the space. At home we speak German (though the boys' is rather a Genglish...), so following my theme of the 'different parts making a one' I wrote eins and one in two opposite corners, and zusammen and together in the other two:

 Yingyang (with bonus hair at the bottom). The points turned out much better with raw edge applique.

together (the good old cursive lessons in Y1 were good for sth.!)

eins (= one) oops another little piece of thread!

some of the 'hairband' quilting, and yes, the yellow looked less green before washing...

Overall, I am quite happy with the end product, less glamorous than some of the works that have inspired me, but a decent start. Number 'One' after all :-) Suz asked the very good question what I would do with it - what does one do with these?? I am not sure, any suggestion much appreciated. Nadia suggested to have a few hanging above each other as a wall hanging - a good idea if they go together.
So why make journal quilts? To set yourself a challenge. To make sth. small and achievable. To try out a new technique (or a few). I wanted to see if I cut turn sth. abstract into a quilt. Have you got any other suggestions?

Just a quick picture of the blanket stitched reverse applique:

I will find a frame for it eventually!

As for UFOs, I have decided I will finish the pastel tessellation and the fabric weaving quilts, I would struggle to pick the former up again if I put it away (and I still like it), and the latter has just been taken out of hiding, so it might as well stay out to.

That's me for the moment, and if anyone can tell me how to post two photographs side by side I will use up way less space.

Sidetracks

That pastel tessellation quilt just doesn't talk to me at the moment... so I keep on going off on little sidetracks to satisfy my creative 'needs'.
Had to do some little repairs to the 8y old's "Don't worry, be happy" backpack - he still loves it, and almost two years on it has held up well:)

 I also pulled out Jan Mullen's Reverse Applique with no Brakez:

Here are my sketch (please note the muddy prints one of our 4 cats has left...)

my secret layer,

(the greens at the bottom don't come out very green on the picture!)

the top with faint outline

and the sandwich ready to quilt:

Plan was I might take it on holiday to hand blanket stitch but this turned out to be a naughty word because after about 6 blanket stitches I couldn't stand the look so I might machine quilt it after all, and I will have to go on a quilting detox for the 10 days we are away (horror!!!)
There are a few other little projects I am working on, one can't be revealed yet as it is a present I have been working on for a while but still need a few bobs'n'bits, and I would love to get my shopping tote finished before the big trip to Aussie; we'll see...

P.S. Reached a new mile stone today; not only have I now found that card reader on the laptop (duh... except the batteries on the camera are flat lol), I managed to upload pics with the ipad (way more complicated though) but I ended up editing it on the laptop after all. I'm obviously not made for ipads...