My sick pillow

Or the pillow I started when I was sick. I started off with this cute little needlebook over at Stitched in Color in mind, with the aim of using up some of the little fabric scraps from Stitchbird that I've accumulated in the last couple years. Somehow it ended up being a cushion front.

I was working away at it being a wonky log cabin, but gosh it's hard to do wonky without things getting distorted and, well, wonky. Any tips on that out there? It's not too bad really, and the wonky wasn't helped by combining some pretty heavy fabric with some lighter ones, but  on the whole it's ok and the quilting with flatten it down as well. I still need to add a white border around the outside.

80% of it is actually from my scrap bag - I had masses of pink and red, a reasonable amount of blue and had to scrounge a bit for green (more new fabric in there than the other squares). Even the white was in there! Not bad.

Sick

Sick, originally uploaded by Hazelnutgirl.

I've been looking at a box of tissues a lot over the weekend - a bad cold/light dose of the 'flu (not sure which!) knocked me out and I missed Pasifika, a birthday party, the Kumeu Show and had to cancel friends coming for dinner Sunday night. Whee!

Today I'm out of bed but still not great - do you think I deserve to sew whatever I want? Something not on "The List"? I have things I should sew, but I feel rebellious and resentful and don't wanna. Mainly because they'll involve thought, and my brain isn't firing on all cylinders this drizzly Monday morning.

Heading for Sydney

Sydney Opera House By 8lettersuk

We've been booked to head over to Sydney for 10 days just after Easter for awhile now, but it's getting close! So excited! Mat and I lived there for 5 years while he did his PhD and I did contract archaeology and temped in-between jobs. As an aside, those typing lessons mum made me do back in High School paid off BIG TIME during the first few years there - and my knowledge of Macs thanks to dad. And you know what, she even told me at the time that it would stand me in good stead. At 17 I didn't believe her but she was spot on. Not about the importance of quadratic equations though, sorry mum.

Anyways! It's been 12 years since we lived there and while I've been back a few times since to visit friends and old stomping grounds (hellooo Glebe!) I haven't been as a fully-fledged crafty person. I know I want to visit the Kinokuniya book shop and the various markets are always fun, but other than that does anyone have recommendations? Great fabric shops? Quirky places? Good cafes? I know I'll have to squeeze this stuff in in-between visits to aquariums and wildlife places and catching up with friends and heading up to the Blue Mountains, but I'm determined dammit. There WILL be fabric and notions viewed.

It's Monday again!

I have actually been doing things this past week, just not very exciting things that I want to blog about. I've painted the kitchen ceiling and it's now a bit whiter than it was (doesn't make for an interesting photo) and I've taped up the windows ready to start on them. They've been sitting in this state for almost a year! It's kind of pretty-looking

I've also been getting ready to make Hazel a Lilla Handlebar basket out of oilcloth. I haven't actually tried sewing the oilcloth yet, I'm hoping my machine will cope with it if I have the walking foot on so I don't have to sew over tissue paper because that will just make it more fiddly than seems it should be. She wants it to be exactly like the one on the pattern, although she decided this morning she'd like the cherry fabric lining because it would be "delicious". She tends to get kissed after saying things like that :)

And lastly, I've been turning out some really appalling FMQ.

This troubles me no end to be honest. I HATE not being good at things, in fact I avoid things I'm not good at. I keep thinking I'm getting better at it but I'm not entirely sure, I might just be delusional. I'm also not sure how much of the appallingness is down to me and my inexperience, and how much of it is down to my machine. I can't stop with the needle down which is a problem, but the main issue is that the fabric doesn't feed evenly so while I'm trying to get into a rhythm and move with the needle, I get spots where the fabric won't move and the stitches are tiny, and then all of a sudden it surges forward and I get a few long ones that may be heading out in the wrong direction. Is that me? Will it get better? The tension also seems off - I can't get it to behave the same as it does with a regular foot so I have the different colours showing through top and bottom at times (I know, different colours isn't ideal for a beginner!) I'd love to blame my machine for all of this but that's pointless. However, I would like to know if some of it IS down to the machine so I'm not unnecessarily hard on myself :) I think upon reflection I need to rip out this section and do it again for my own peace of mind!

Oh yeah it's Monday!

And I did say I'd choose a name on Monday didn't I! So names duly chosen by the random generator - my old method of using my little bit of randomness to choose doesn't work anymore because she's at school. And do you see what I did here, I decreased the pool by one for each run, thus increasing your chances. And let's face it, with only 21 entries they were pretty good to start with! I guess not many people are feeling the love for the DS Quilts fabrics, which of course is good news for those of you that do.

And because at Hazelnuts you're not just a number you're a name, that would be Shelly, Barb and Cheryl. My draw for previous commenters came up with Lyndy - which seems right somehow given that she's sent me many lovely fabrics over the last couple years!

ETA: Oh and look, this is my 600th post!

The wrong side

Perhaps for the same reason that bad boys are so attractive, the wrong side of patchwork always excites me. I know it's impractical, I know it won't last, but I do love it.

Seminole patchwork journal cover

Last year I came across this stunning pillow using Seminole patchwork, done by Lucie Summers. I'd seen Seminole patchwork around but it always looked so not my thing, bright colours, completely symmetrical and repetitive, that I'd dismissed it out of hand. When I saw it reinterpreted like that I fell in love and took some books out of the library and bought myself an ebook from The Book Depository. I finally got the chance to try it out myself when I came to cover the journal that Helen gave us last month at a modern quilt gathering she had. And even better, I got to use up some of the scraps I'd generated, and bitched about, with the last MBOM block. Of course, it took a heck of a lot more fabric than just those scraps, and I generated some more, but what the hey! Like someone said for the MBOM block, we need to be less precious about cutting that fabric up!

It was very time-consuming because I was just winging it, and so I had to add bits on and take them off and make up more, but I got there in the end and learned a lot in the process! Things to remember for next time - think a bit more about colour placement for overall effect, use more thinner strips, make the straight strips wider to start with so the finished strip is too.



But what a fun process and I'm definitely going to do some more. In fact, Hazel was so taken with it this morning that she asked if I could make a cover for her and could she choose the fabrics this afternoon and it could have a heart on the top like so, with another one inside, and then another one underneath. But the patchwork had to be just like this, though in a different colour. Or as my SIL Kate would say (after a trip to Thailand) "same same...but different"

I also need to work on my journal cover construction techniques. After seeing about a gazillion online and in books it would seem I couldn't actually find one when I needed to! (ETA: I found this great tutorial at Bloom via Pinterest, source of all things good. Will definitely use it for the next attempt, especially since it will remind me to put in a bookmark ribbon!)  I may go back and hand-sew the top and bottom middle bit so the seam isn't there and fix that, but annoyingly I didn't extend the batting far enough because I was worried it would add extra bulk. Otherwise I'm very proud of my pretty-much-entirely-winged-journal cover because I don't often do that! It was so hot and humid with pouring rain here yesterday I basically just said "screw it" and sewed instead of doing the things I was meant to. No such excuses today!