Goodies!!!

It's the holidays thank goodness!!!
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(I had to leave this space so you have time to appreciate the importance this holds lol I so needed a break...)

As to be expected, the weather as simply awful. How on earth will I get the boys outside?!?! I have raked my brain to come up with a sensible, educational holiday programme that extends beyond each of them staring at a screen, thank goodness there are some appropriate movies running at the cinema, and if the weather improves, we might be able to go to Russell for the Birdman Festival (in the middle of winter watch crazy people trying to fly crazy creations into the freezing water of the Bay of Islands - I don't know how much that says about my level of intelligence either, but desperate times require desperate measures...). Not much to do around here in winter I'm afraid, no museums, school holiday courses etc.

Oldest DS has already been on break for a week, his school started earlier in January to allow for 3 weeks in winter, so by now his blood sugar levels (and his behaviour some of the time) are truly awful as always in the holidays, but mid July we're getting him on an insulin pump and hope that this will make a difference. He will be 12 this Tuesday, just another year until official teenagedoom starts...

Isn't it amazing what you can tell about a person by their folded washing? Youngest DS ("Little T") on the left, always on the go, always heaps of dirty clothes. Middle DS in the middle, he is a darling and will look after his clothes so usually little washing. On the right his highness, oldest DS ("Big T"), who will wear each item only once no matter how clean it still is :-)

We've obviously gotten too acclimatised - look at that pile of socks!

We started the holidays with a trip to the next bigger city, Whangarei, an hour drive south, and the majority of our spending was at the shoe shop - time for the boys to move beyond cheap sport shoes to leather type shoes with laces except - the bad mother never taught her boys how to tie laces! Thank goodness for 'springers', laces that look like springs and somehow twirl themselves together. By the looks of it they will not last so maybe I need to start teaching them anyway...

I got myself some gloves for the snow as I will accompany middle DS' class on their trip to Mt. Ruapehu as well as a smart cover for the new iPad - in pink so none of the boys will ever claim to their mates it is theirs lol. Poor DH got nothing :-( He has to go back to work tomorrow so I better make sure he gets decent dinners while I am off work!

Over the last week I got a couple of lovely packets in the mail - each accompanied by a gorgeous card, makes me feel so bad that I never sent any cards with my FQs!

This one is from Rebecca, it is hand carved and printed on light blue batik - isn't it just amazing?

This gorgeous one is from Emily, it whispers 'handbag, handbag' to me lol

I finished my stripey LC before June was over, so another Sew It's Finished item off the list:

With cat Crystal

Closer up of large stipple on the polar fleece backing

That lounge is starting to look more coordinated, and there are still some more leftovers that could add to the currently two cushion covers

Today I tried to repair what our white little monster cute cat Crystal wrecked - the sheer curtain in the bedroom. At almost 4.50m wide for half of it, I will attack the other half another day:

I substituted the bottom part across the whole width with a satin type black fabric. Not perfect but ok - and cheaper than replacing the whole lot she might only shred again.

Now I will have to think about what I will be working on over the next two weeks... Pastel tessellation? More cushion covers? (well, they might become a last resort for when I haven't got my monthly finish for Sew It's Finished) Portrait of middle DS? Abstract representation of cherry blossom in the area where I grew up in Germany? Too many choices...

Happy Sewing!

Change in the air?

[Here are some non-quilting ramblings about my life in general - feel free to skip this and scroll down to the 'interesting' stuff :-)] I have been wondering about this. I am not quite over the shock of the government announcing they are cutting my job, then capping the cuts to what would still have cut me, to then taking it all back. Their explanations for this have been very poor, the PM has said they didn't sell it well - which tells me that he sees nothing wrong with making me unemployed. Well, I didn't vote for him last time, and I surely won't this time!

At work our interim principal has been appointed, we might get to meet her Monday or Tuesday, so there comes another change. In the meantime I had been encouraged to apply for a job at another local school, but after much deliberation I decided against it - my life is too busy as it is right now - and sent the lovely people who encouraged my a polite email explaining to them why this was not the right decision at this point in time. One change I can't face right now. Have you been in this position before, where someone offered you sth., a job, and you felt you should go for it because it was so flattering to be asked, to be wanted? I have made this mistake twice, and both times I didn't enjoy the experience.

On top of all that I have been shortlisted for a job I had applied for weeks ago, outside school. I would love the position, from people that work they I have heard how supportive people are, what great PD you get, that there are opportunities to specialise etc. Unfortunately, that particular vacancy is only 0.6 - at least was when I inquired. Not enough money to pay the bills - but maybe I can find a top-up p/t or relief at school? The major change here would be no school holidays - real world conditions. How would I cope? How would my family cope??

"Nothing ever is quite perfect", a friend once told me, "you have to decide with which imperfections you can live." Well, we'll see if there is or isn't change in the air...

NOW ONTO THE INTERESTING STUFF

I have been sewing these little strips together, and this is what's on my design wall at the moment:

Current plan is to extend it to 5x5 blocks, which should make it approx. 55" square - big enough for a polar fleece backed throw for the lounge to go with the stripey cushion I made last month :-)

I've also been busy for Leslie's Handprinted Fabric Swap (see the button on the side bar). I screen printed, stamped and eventually dyed fabric. Here are some glimpses:

I had some trouble with the set screen print flaking off after I wet the fabric. I am wondering if this has to do with the pearl colour I mixed in?! Will have to ask Petra from Zigzag.

My first ever attempts of dying with Procion dyes - I really like the results (will reveal more after the FQs have gone off to their new homes). As my screen prints where in shades of grey and charcoal, they were harder to see on blue and purple, so next time I might use black for this instead - which might eliminate the flaking off, too?

Now I just need some envelopes and they will go off to their new homes - mission accomplished!

Have a good week and stay warm!

Common sense prevailed (for now...)

The Minister for Education made a u-turn and abandoned the proposed cuts to teachers - phewww. A number of other undesirable (at least in my opinion!) changes are still on the table, but for the moment at least the common sense of parents and the education community as a whole have prevailed!

At the moment I am so busy at work that I barely get to sleep at night from all the unfinished work floating around in my head... I managed to get through a few urgent items this week, but this weekend I finally have to finish the remaining 45 reports for term 1 (I haven't started on the 200 for Term 2 yet!), I have to prepare my relief work and make my presentation for the ICT conference on Thursday and Friday (yay, another short teaching week for me!)

But on to more pleasant matters:-) As I mentioned in earlier posts, I have signed up to the ATC swap at the Quilting Gallery, and by Monday I will have sent off my four cards to my secret swap partner:

For the front I experimented with different techniques I enjoy: Top and Bottom left were created using leftover scraps / crumbs, ribbon and lace spread onto 2 layers of cotton-silk batting, covered with wash-away fusible and stippled with variegated cotton thread all over. Top right was a piece of the cotton drop cloth from the Jeanette DeNicholis Meyer Workshop in March on 2 layers of man-made batting, quilted with interlocking squares, seed beads added, and Bottom right is a Diane Gaudinsky inspired echo feather on a piece of left-over batik with 2 layers of cotton batting (I used this recently for my ironing tote).

That orange bugs me...

I decided to use hand painted fabric for the back and printed some of my details on it (cut a piece of Freezer Paper to A4 size, iron to fabric of same size and feed through your printer - didn't work perfectly every time but I got enough usable pieces).

I was actually harder to work with in this small scale than I had expected! Satin stitching the edges was the biggest issue, my zig-zag stitch is not very reliable, I need to get the machine looked at... I feel quite self-conscious about these cards, in the end I stuck to things I knew - but then somehow that's what an ATC is about, it's about what that person does. I am not sure that they are up to the expected standard, but looking at my explanation of what I did it sounds not totally simple... I hope...

Other than that I need to get my hand printed fabrics finished for Leslie's swap, here is just a little glimpse:

Sun Printing...

... but the paint must have been too dry before I laid it out into the sun because there were few mark in the paint...

but this one that my youngest DS painted turned out a bit better - faint but visible.

I am not going to use this for the swap but if you remember the pics of the back of the ATCs, I cut that rain bow coloured fabric up for it :-)

Tomorrow I'll meet up with some friends for a bit of quilting at one of the local schools - thanks Suz for organising this!!! I'll take my Startavarious leftovers and make some more of those logcabin variations, will see what it turns into (I need a finish for June for Sew it's Finished!

Happy Sewing!

Busy busy

Despite my rather frustrated post from two weeks ago I have been busy busy - at work (that anyway...), at home (loads of washing done and with help of middle DS and some bribery = a new Lego Minifigure washed half of the windows from the outside), and sewing :-)

Last weekend was our Club's Retreat, and I got heaps done:

• Finished my place mats for family overseas 

Excuse the bad quality, but I didn't want to wait until morning to take a pic :-)

I had screen printed them in summer, batting is polyester, backing green with little leaves. Using my walking foot (that needs oiling squeak squeak!) I just stitched parallel and perpendicular lines. I tried to get some kind of Ikea look but the Calico I used is rather coarse, hence some of the lines look a bit wobbly (moving by a thread width is quite a deal here). I hope the recipients will like and use them :-)

Evidence of window washing bribery at top left!

• Made a reusable shopping tote that folds into a little pouch (above)
• Pieced the backing and crosshatch quilted my second of four pastel tessellation pieces that will one day go on my bed
• Made a reverse applique heart for our Guild's heart quilt (didn't take a picture)
• Using the Stratavarious Leftovers I made a new cushion cover and played with some ideas for the pile of pre-cut strips I found in that box:

[Blogger is really mucking me around with photos today - grrrrr I hate it when they turn up at a completely different place and then you can't move them! And in the load pics window your already uploaded pics are invisible, and above placement is called centre?!?!?!]

Since coming home I have been sewing up some of my classes wallhangings - they turned out quite nice after all:

This week I received the name of my secret ATC Swap partner - I better get cracking with that soon!

But this weekend I couldn't resist piecing my The Lorax top! I yet have to buy some nice polar fleece for the back, and once finished I will give it to my younger boys' school for fundraising. It was a fat quarter pack from Craftsy, at approx NZ$50 for 9 fqs and the panel incl. shipping it was a great bargain and my boys like it (we'll have to get some raffle tickets to win it ;-))

The panel blocks were rectangular, some 1 1/2" strips of Truffler trunks and a bit of chopping top and bottom brought them to 10" square. After consulting with Suz I alternated them with pieced blocks. Add a narrow border and a pieced border with fuzzy cut corner stones - voila, top that just needs quilting and binding!

Have you noted my pastel strips have disappeared from the design wall? Finally in place as back of the pastel tessellation :-)

Mickey thought behind my sewing machine was the best place for a nap - while I was sewing!!!

Well, dinner will soon be ready so I better go! Happy Mother's Day to you all!
 

Stormy's Quilt and Screen Printing

My little niece Storm is 27 months old and absolutely gorgeous - blond hair, blue eyes - and VERY headstrong, in fact she could probably be my daughter lol. She has her three older cousins firmly wrapped around her little finger, from "go away" when she wants to do something on her own to "TEEZZZEE, come here" when she expects them to jump at her command lol. She started her life as an undiagnosed breech birth (outch for my sister), had a tied tongue but nothing ever seems to stop her. Storm as a teenager will be very interesting....

My sister and BiL bought her a big bed because she keeps on waking herself up in the cot or in the travel cot when they are away. Well, the big bed had its own challenges, a different size to the regular beds so the new mattress didn't fit etc. Her txt from yesterday said she put Storm down for her afternoon nap in the big bed for the first time, Storm decided to play and rearrange her room for an hour until she put her into the cot where she fell asleep straight away lol. Somehow I'm glad that we're out of that stage!

Well, I hope her special quilt will help her learning that the big girl's bed is for sleeping! I have written a few posts about it, so here's the summary (I will add more pics as I get access to the laptop - 5 of us on holiday means there is a waiting list;-)):
After I had made my Pinwheels which I turned into a table cloth, there were heaps of left overs in the most gorgeous colours. I chose triangles in green plus a solid and white and a solid and pieced them into rectangles. These were cut to 3 1/2 x 6 1/2". After playing with them for a little while, I decided to arrange them in a tesselating pattern. The resulting blank squares I filled with white 3 1/2" squares from the sheeting material I want to dye. Lovely Suz helped me sort out how to piece the tesselating pieces to minimise partial seams.
The completed tesselation section was fairly small, so first I added a 2" white border, then from my pinwheel scraps I cut 2 1/2" strips of pieced jellyroll strips (if you remember, the pinwheels were constructed from 5 strips cut at 60 deg angle). This still wasn't quite big enough, so I added another white 2 1/2" border. Next I took the remaining scraps apart to get as many 2 1/2" squares as I could - I had to add some in from the white sheeting but they blended in well. On top, I appliqued flowers and hearts on the white squares and her name on the top of the quilt - Tada!

For the quilting, I knew I wanted to get away from stippling and from feathers. On A Few Scraps, Christina had shared branching designs for quilting. So after laying out the backing with loads of pins in the carpet and sandwiching it with polyester batting and the pieced top, I started quilting a small creeping vine with leaves and swirls. In retrospect I should have put it in my Flynn Quilting Frame, my last few projects were smaller and / or QUAYG and not with polyester which has little 'cling'. No puckers on the back, but some 'bubbles' in the front not helped by the fact that I quilted in all directions. It's not something I would put into an exhibition, but I still love it and I am proud to give it to Storm!

On a completely different note, on friday I had coated one of my screen with Photo Emulsion but only got to develop it on Saturday. Unfortunately all I got were some faint marks on the emulsion. I put it down to the emulsion being too thick or the exposure not long enough. I did it again, this time using a 'proper' scooper - handy DH made me one from an old coat hanger rail. Amazingly, as soon as you use the right equipment it works :) It was a breeze to coat the screen with the emulsion which has a honey like consistency. I put it to dry in the garage, out of direct UV light as directed. With the beautiful sunshine we had yesterday, I put it outside in the sun to develop with the image on top. Unfortunately again all I got were faint marks!!! Very frustrating. I followed the intructions here
In the meantime I will design some patterns fror Lesley from Silkscreen Maker http://www.silkscreenmaker.com/ to burn onto Thermofax Screens - have a look at her site, thermofax screens are very easy to use. I'll add her details to my Suppliers' Page.

Later on today we're off to Whangarei for another appointment with oldest DS, also need to get to Auckland this week to pick up the new babysitter aka xbox360 kinnect. I better get sewing now to make the most of time!

Screen Printing and Painting

We had an awesome time yesterday - a small group of us me at my art room and we played with fabrics and paints. I never take enough pics, here are a few:

Rona, I never took a photo of your printed fabrics, can you put some up on your blog to share, please?

 

For a horse lover :-)

 

Rona had also brought her fabric painting supplies and showed us the method she had used for her painted quilts - that was amazing! 

For me this has opened a whole new world of possibilities! There have been a lot of ideas swirling around in my head, but applique can be limiting, some of the finer detail is hard to 'cut out'. With this method which came from LuAnn Kessi, you change a photograph to a black and white sketch in your photo editing software and print it onto a piece of freezer paper backed fabric (no other treatment required). Similar to painting by numbers, you paint on this fabric with fabric with fabric paint watered down with aloe vera gel. The added bonus is that your painting smells very nice! You then sandwich and quilt :-) Even my DH was intrigued and looked for pictures from our hometown and surrounding area. I can see a series developing...

 

Another really cool experiment yesterday was this helio print:

Painted with a translucent fabric paint wash, then put in the sun with leaves and some weeds on top - magical!

So where to from here with Screen Printing???

Screen printing designs onto items is fun but not enough for me. Screen printing is somewhat limited in size as I have not found an easy method yet to quickly create repeat prints, so slightly smaller than fat quarter is what I can achieve at the moment - but then I have bought lots of fqs over time lol. I want to try combining screen printing with dying to see if I can create my own personal line of fabrics that I can use in my quilting. So right now I have one screen coated with photoemulsion and after I have finished here I will put it out in the sun to develop (my other developed screens were all done by someone else, so keep your fingers crossed it works!). If and when it's done, I can print fqs with this and later go and dye them. Hmmm, really no time to go back to work lol

One of my biggest frustrations at the moment is the lack of access to resources, I feel very much like "living in the wobs" right now after I ran around all through Whangarei (1h sth. of here) and no one even knew what photoemulsion was! I did find it online, in New Zealand, so I'll add a page with supplier details to this blog - please let me know who else I can add :-)

There is another post waiting to be written about my niece's quilt - will post it this weekend :-)
Happy sewing!

Screen Printing Reminder

Just a reminder that we're going to SCREEN PRINT on

Friday 13 April, from 10am

At Kaikohe Intermediate School, Art Room (11 Park Road Kaikohe)

Please bring fabric, T-Shirts, pillow slips, tea towels or similar to print on, as well as old clothes, an apron, optionally gloves and your morning tea / lunch.
Rona also offered to show us her method of painting on fabric - really looking forward to it!!! All welcome, RSVP asap
Many thanks, Monika

SCREENPRINTING in the holidays

School is out hoorraayyy!!!!
First thing I did today after I got home was order some dyes and more screenprinting supplies lol I think my hubby has the hope that we'll tidy up the garden and the house in the holidays (he is off as well), but I'll have to get some time to play, too!

Unlike at home, at school I have a nice big space available aka the Art Room where any mess can easily be cleaned up (poor Charlie, our cleaner, is looking forward to me teaching ICT next term which means he won't have to scrub that floor every day!). However, if you are interested and in the area, on
FRIDAY, 13th April, from 10am
you are welcome to join into some messy, arty fun (not sure about the order of these two adjectives!!!) at Kaikohe Intermediate School, 11 Park Rd, Kaikohe. Bring white, pre-washed fabric (preferably cotton), or pillow slips or T-shirts or canvas or tea towels etc., an apron, gloves if you wish to wear them, and your morning tea / lunch. I will provide paper / card for stencils, screens and squeeges, screen printing paints as well as hot drinks. I have made some workbooks for my students this term which can take you through the process, or you just get right into it. Please make a donation towards the screen printing paints.
Plese let me know no later than Wed 11 April if you want to join in (so I can get some more paints if we need them).

I better go sew now, need to make use of every minute off work...

The real world has me back...

So school has started again (...), well at least that means getting paid which means I need to go back to my online banking (I just spent half my next salary on bills) because I forgot I still have to pay the March workshop with Jeanette DeNicholis Meyer and the May retreat I booked myself in for - so there's something to look forward to over the coming months! [That was one loooonnnngggg sentence!]

So what have I been up to?

Nothing much on the quilting front I am afraid, I am still slowly getting rid of the thread ends on the dino quilt alternating this with finishing the binding. At least it has been very warm lately during the day, so he doesn't quite need the double wool batting quilt yet :-)
I am also working on the screen printed place mats that will hopefully find a loving home overseas :-)
I have just finished looking for another teddy bear pattern because I still owe one to middle DS who as always waits patiently - he is just gorgeous (99% of the time).
Suz and I have had a great play with screen printing, and on Friday the first group of kids had a go. For some reason on their prints the paint bled out under the stencil, will have to do some more research on this over the weekend (when I repeated what they did, it was fine...). Have a look at what Suz did with her prints on her blog - mine are in the meantime stapled to the walls in my art room, by Easter I am probably so sick of them that I will bury them in my cupboard!
While my 3 of my 4 men are out, I might quickly cut up some fabric for another DD9 for my darling niece who turns 2 today - HAPPY BIRTHDAY STORM!!!

Once things settle down, i.e. the printer and the photocopier at school work simultaneously so I can print off what I need photocopied (oh the joys of technology!!!! I am waiting to print 220 copies of my 8 page workbooks for this term....) I will have to return to some resemblance of routine in regards to quilting so I stay sane lol

So I better log off and go sew!

What's been going on...

Heaps has been going on, but somehow nothing seemed to get finished to a point where I felt like I have something I could show here. Earlier this month I took the boys to Hamilton and we had a great time catching up with friends!!! My lovely friend Carla is not only incredible smart (check out her site here, while I have not been to a church in a long time, she makes a lot of sense to me), she is also very creative and showed me how to make teddy bears. Tad-ah, today finally Johnny joined our family:

Am I cute or what?

Of course (!) there are already rivalries between the boys who will get Johnny, so I have bought two more lots of fur and I will make a few more. It's not necessarily something I would want to do forever and ever, especially because it's all hand stitched, but a few every now and then would be nice:-) Unfortunately, the process makes quite a mess, especially when I got to the 'shave around the nose' bit:

Might need camouflage pants for the next one...

Speaking of mess, I might have mentioned that I will teach screen printing at school this term. I went to a course a few years ago, so I completed a few projects to refresh my memory and remember the pitfalls:

I had photographed this upside down, so now it looks a bit funny :-)

The topic for this term is Tangaroa in the wider sense, so my idea is that the students pick a sea creature, print that in one colour (light green), in a second go they add darker details to it (greenish - grey) and lastly they cover what has been printed and print the background in a sea-kind-of colour. Had a great time experimenting with Suz from the All-the-good-ones-are-taken blog and I wish I had taken photographs of Nadia's pillow cases (hint-hint!). I have more pics of the process and when the mood strikes me might put a little tutorial together.

These are some I prepared earlier:

These plus some more will be used in a yet to be revealed way - I hope the person these are for does not read my blog ;-)

What else? I have quilted my first quarter of the pastel tessellation quilt with cross hatching; sewing together the backing drove me to distraction, it pays to cut your strips to length if you don't want to unpick HEAPS of them...

Looks a bit like a cot quilt for a baby girl at the moment...

I made use of the gazillion squares you get after cutting out the squares on the lean

The cross hatching was so simple, the distance from a corner to the middle of the square to the next corner was short enough that even I could stitch (fairly) straight lines, esp. with the walking foot (don't know if I needed it or not, I don't use it much really). Onto some more of this quilt in the near future :-)

I have learnt HEAPS from doing the Dinosaur Quilt which I will blog about in another post - family outing to the new Minigolf place soon :-)