Hey-ho, hey-ho, it's off to work we go...

Well, in my case this has actually meant working from home for most of the last 2 1/2 weeks! The boys are still at home, the youngest starting tomorrow (TG!), middle DS next Tuesday, and oldest DS is supposed to learn from home this year with his application getting completed today - fingers crossed he will get some work sent soon :)

The boys have been scrapping heaps, it's really about time for them to go back to school! I am looking forward to getting back into my schools, too, I have been to a meeting and held a workshop but I'm not one for doing the 'sitting-around-getting-paperwork-ready' for too long...

My nerdy playing-with-computers persona needs to be balanced with some more creative endeavours, so here are some pics of what I have been up to lately:

Tokyo Subway Map Quilt in a few pieces...

... and as completed 'flimsy' (at 100"square, flimsy doesn't quite seem to fit?)

Completed baby quilt

- with fleece backing from the always so generous and helpful Suz! -

 - because the ordered backing, the minky with the peace symbols, arrived on the day of the baby shower...

My latest project had my scratch my head lots, trying to piece my QAYG hands into a 49"square wall hanging...

Trying to achieve a balanced random look is not that easy...

Lots of trial and error for the connecting strips; the irregular sizes of the blocks meant lots of calculating!

I bought a new pattern, too - wouldn't that be great for a retreat??

Happy Sewing!

When the cat is away...

When DH is on late shifts or on night shifts, I often get a bit of sewing done:

1) Tokyo Subway Map: All blocks are completed - yay! Suz was once again a step ahead of me and has all her blocks pieced together, so far I have joined blocks 1, 2, 6 & 7 without major head aches.

2) Fireworks: I am aiming for quilting 'one bobbin full' most daysnd I am making good progress:

(Can't remember if I have posted these before, I'm a few bobbins further now).

3) While I haven't started the 'hands' yet, I have taken the safety pins out of my basted blocks and spray basted them instead.

4) With a close colleague due to have a baby next month, I whipped up a baby quilt top last night and finished piecing it tonight:

(Can't get to the pic of the completed top in my Photostream for some reason?) 35" square. Now I just need my fleece backing to finally arrive!!!

Here are some of the contents of a parcel I received this morning, isn't it simply delicious?

Caitlin McIntyre runs a lovely little store on etsy, called "i don't do dishes". I can highly recommend her, lovely selection and great service! She makes sure you get your money's worth out of the now quite expensive postage from the States! Caitlin blogs here at http://caitlin-mcintyre.blogspot.co.nz/ and please go and look her shop up on etsy!

I leave you with a photo of my AWESOME xmas prezzies from Suz (hers is still!!!! in transit somewhere from the US...) - I couldn't imgine a more perfect mug rug for me:

THANKS SO MUCH!!!

Happy Sewing!

Last two blocks....

This morning I finished block 8 of the Tokyo Subway Map Quilt, and I have just set out the last two blocks:

My little tags 9&10 are the wrong way around on this photo, sorry! I ran out of space on my design wall, so the last three columns of block 10 are just pinned on top of each other. I added one 'stop' (black swirl on white) as I couldn't be bothered to cut just one more black square - hopefully there is a Subway exit at that location lol!

Now off to do some fmq on the Fireworks....

Happy Sewing!

New Year's finishes

We have had absolutely fabulous weather these last few days, with the unheated (!) pool getting to 32degC this afternoon! My absolutely most favourite time of the year! 

We bought a wicker set for the fale at the pool so the hammock finally needed a bag for when it's down:

Following Svetlana's tutorial on http://sotakhandmade.blogspot.com/, this little drawstring bag, slightly enlarged from her version, now keeps our Mexican Hammock tangle-free.

Our boys have outgrown their dinosaur print Venetian blinds, and when we looked around Spotlight last week, we couldn't find what we were looking for. We ended up buying a roller blind replacement set (basically a cardboard roll with spring inside and attachments) and with a bit of trial and error, I came up with this Make 1:

I bought the fabric at Ikea in July, and it definitely needs lining still - Suz and I had look and we think buying some black lining would be best (it's great to have your friend just up the road!!!). It needs to come down a bit more once we have bought some anchor bolts. I am not overly fond of seeing the roll when the blind is down, but I wanted the width; I have seen some box-type covers before, will go and check at the hardware store.

Once it's all done = Make 2, we will let the other boys choose if they want this style, too :)

I have a bit of work to do, but I hope I get my Subway blocks done before I go back to work! And then there's the quilting of Fireworks, and the Hands.... No rest for the wicked!

Happy Sewing!

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!