I blinked and ...

... another 6 weeks were gone, just like that!

A belated Merry Christmas to you, Happy New Year (and at the rate I am going here maybe I should add Happy Easter to it?). I hope you had enjoyable and relaxing time to spend with your family! The weather has been very kind to us here in the Far North of New Zealand with plenty of warm weather and sunshine, with sufficient rain in the mix to keep pastures green and water tanks full (there is no public water supply where we live). I have been off work for since 18 December, and truly felt like on holiday for about the last week (it took some time to wean me off lol!). Another 2 weeks to go, so I have decided I better make the most of it and sew to my heart's content while I can! However, I have been sewing since my last post and here are some pictures:

This little Chromebook bag came about after a twitter conversation with a colleague down in Nelson. She has ear rings sporting the QR code of her blog, so I told her about my little adventures with printing my QR code on fabric. So this idea was born! Using white sheeting I sun printed it with my Lumi Inkodye, and as my colleague is an Apple and a Google expert, both symbols had to be included. Some fmq and threadpainting, and some grey Moda Marble for the binding. On the inside some aqua polar fleece left over from ?? and closed by elastic over a Google Chrome button. You can scan the QR code off the fabric and get to her blog :)

Early November we had our P&A Show, and my mum entered several of her own pieces and as usual came home with a number of certificates :) She also entered the placemats I made her - and they won first price :) I have the suspicion there were very few quilting entries this year, but nevertheless :)

During October Megan from Canoe Ridge Creations had started the Giant Startburst Quilt Along. While I don't often let myself get tempted into QALs and the likes, I couldn't resist, and it was quite a straightforward process which led to this:

Don't try to sync your Picasa while writing blog posts, uploading pics to blogger has been taking forever so I will leave the uncropped picture here with oldest DS' cat Mickey Mouse in the backgrounds :)

I am not quite sure what I will do with it, 60"square finished is not a size I often make. With all that negative space, it would be a great opportunity to try out ideas from Judi Madsen's Quilting Wide Open Spaces (I have been drooling over this...)...

Here are some more of my recent fabric purchases:

Barcelona City Map FQs - no particular plans for this yet

Various half and full yards for binding

Just because I liked it :)

Kona Steel backing for the Tokyo Subway Map Quilt

From Spotlight's Boxing Day Sale: Half meters of batiks, yardage of white homespun and of a cream and black print (a future backing) plus some more black and whites for my no longer small collection!

My Tokyo Subway Map Quilt is making progress, just three more blocks to go! It had been dragging over the last few months, until Suz showed me her blocks laid out and now I want to get it done!

Block 24

Block 23

Block 3

Block 8 is ready to piece

It was pretty hard to get a decent photo of the progress so far, this was the best of the lot:

Upside down and once again with Mickey Mouse in the photo - two other cats joined him later!

Now I am quite excited about the project again, the end is in sight, and though it's January already (and block 8 is yet to be pieced) I will try to get through the remaining three (8, 9 and 10) asap. Suz and I have talked about the quilting; my thinking is I want to have a different fmq in every of the different (colour) lines. I am not great at sidd so was thinking about 1/8th" distance from the coloured lines instead - but that limits my background quilting options. Hmmm, any suggestions anyone??


The most time I have spent on Fireworks; all startbursts are quilted, and I am starting to fill in the background:

pieced backing - with a little help from my friend Suz:)

You know who is helping :)

Close up of the quilting - pebbles and swirls in the background, with eye-balled straightish lines in the stars all with my favourite thread Aurifil Cotton

There is a third project I have spent a lot of thinking and tutuing time on lately, the 2014 AQC Challenge 'Ten'. I had two different trains of thought and at the moment I think I will go with my original idea, hands expressing different parts of life and emotions. Here is an example of one of my practise pieces:

Can you see the two hands outlined in thread? I didn't enjoy the needle turn, though :(

Current thinking is I will go with white thread painting on white background (hence the white homespun from Spotlight), QAYG style (possibly using a nice woolen single batting I have; I had intended it for a quilt for middle DS, but he is a hot sleeper anyway, so this would not work for him). We'll see what it looks like when I have put a few blocks together, I was thinking about 'writing' into the sashing / borders - 'ten' in different languages, or maybe rather emotions / stages of life? Any suggestions and critique would be much appreciated :)

Well, that's me for today, I better go off and piece that block 8!

Happy Sewing!

A six week post!

Trying to sum up the last six weeks in one post - where do I start? Maybe here, this is the view I had at breakfast this morning:

Work

Work continues to take up most of my time; I went to Ulearn 2013 in Hamilton in October which was great on many levels. I met up with lots of people I had only known online, I scored some freebies from exhibitors and I came away with the realisation I am not as dumb as I sometimes think;) I also presented there on why and how to connect with learners. I am very passionate about the topic, but I did some key mistakes with assumptions about the participants - a big learning curve! You can read more about this on my other blog, thebelbird.blogspot.com. You can also find me on twitter regularly - well maybe lots? or - ok then, almost always! @BeLchick1 is my twitter handle, but only follow me if you are interested in future-oriented teaching and learning, e-learning or game-based learning, otherwise you might find me very boring!

We had a couple of f2f events over the last 6 weeks which are always great, tiring and a mission to juggle with DH's work roster and the kids' schools. One of the coolest experiences was when one of the guest speakers tweeted about our event that she was meeting with the 'who is who in NZ e-learning'! She surely must have meant everyone else there?

Then there was the big data day last Wednesday where we had to have loads and loads of documents and evidence submitted. This was my first experience of this, I can see how I could improve this for me for future occasions.

On top of that I took on a few other work related commitments, such as presenting at another conference in January, signing up for the Google Summit in Auckland next April, dabbling with offline Minecraft servers and setting up a Google site for it...

Did I mention that in between I did my actual work like in-class modelling, online tutorials, workshops and staff meetings??

Jobs

As usual for this time of the year, there was worry about jobs. My contract is due to expire on 31 December so I had to go looking for jobs. While I love what I do (and I think I am not too bad at it either ;D), I find I quite hard to juggle the kids with it. I seriously looked into going back teaching but have not been accepted in a position locally yet. I even made a digital CV for my applications! In the meantime my contract has been extended by 12 months, so the whole scenario will repeat next year. In addition we will be working with more schools, further away from each other. I am really not sure if I can do the kids and the job justice?!

Schools

Middle DS is finishing primary school and has been accepted at the high school we had hoped - yay! Oldest DS unfortunately has not been accepted there. We will have to make some serious decisions, he will be in Y10 next year and it is very important that he can take the subjects he needs for his chosen career (programming) as well as a broad range of other subjects. At least the youngest boy will be fine for another couple of years!

That finally brings me to sewing!

I have actually made some progress:

I have also pieced the back, but it is a bit short (no photo yet, sorry). With a little bit of help from my friend Suz I will have enough pheww. Threads have arrived at the Country Yard and should be here some time this week so I can start quilting!

I have also worked on the Tokyo Subway Quilt, we were doing blocks 19 & 23 in October, and 24 & 25 in November. I laid mine out in a different order, so 19 and 25 are done, and 24 is under way:

Suz and I have had numerous discussions about the new AQC Challenge, "Ten". I just need to find that mojo somewhere... By the way, my Frei quilt is on the way home now, will be interesting to see how it has lasted...

On the hunt for that mojo Suz and I had a play with scraps yesterday. Inspired by a recent post on "Me and My Quilts - Exploring Possibilities" we made some cards. This is my finished collection:

With summer just around the corner and beautiful sunny days as of late, DH and I have been busy weeding and mulching, alternating with dips in the pool which today was at 31degC! I better go out and water the garden tonight!

Christmas will be over if I wait another 6 weeks to my next post, I better get onto it! Love reading everyone's posts, though!

Happy sewing!