All my stuff looks the same

I was sitting on the couch eating breakfast this morning when I looked over and saw this pile on the shelf next to me

There is an almost-finished crocheted coat hanger and yarn from that, and fabrics I've been making hexagons from. My first thought was "they all look so good together", my second thought was "they're actually mostly the same colour, I just need to add some aqua to the coat hanger" and then I thought "I'm going to make a matching hanger with aqua in the middle and orange on the outside". And then all my stuff will look the same! :)

Graffiti

We're embarking on a fairly major renovation which will involve knocking down quite a few walls so yesterday Hazel and I started drawing on them. Why don't we do this more often? I think it's because Pinterest makes it look super easy and cool but the indelible nature of sharpies make it a bit fraught!

I copied this from a pin on Pinterest, but to get it remotely symmetrical involved a lot of measuring and pencil erasing and a definite lack of effortless cool. It's still kinda cute though!



These others are more free-hand although I admit to copying the cat off Pinterest as well and depriving a vinyl wall art store of a sale.



Hazel's mouse is cuter than mine below, she got the eyes in a better place I think. The caption is because I made the mistake of thinking it was a French Bulldog when I saw it sans eyes, whiskers and tail. I should have kept my mouth shut as it caused the artist a fair amount of angst!





I can picture a whole house of cool little doodles but we're only at foundation stage for the new bit so there won't be any walls available for awhile and let's face it, I'll probably chicken out and go for plain, unadorned white with a few other colours - other than the ubiquitous Half Tea which the house is currently painted. Kiwis will know it only too well, for people who don't have Resene paints I've heard it described as 'new house brown' - the bland colour that's so inoffensive it's actually kind of offensive!

New Quilts for Alberton Beds

The New Quilts for Alberton Beds finished yesterday afternoon when we gathered up the quilts into big piles and took them away, leaving the house looking a little less colourful!  I think it went pretty well, we've had some nice feedback and quite a few people stopped by to talk to us on Saturday and Sunday as part of Heritage Week. Unfortunately the exhibition had been put into the Workshops section of the brochure, along with an invitation to come along for free workshops on quilting which sent (some of) us into a bit of a tizzy (ok me) but in the end it was ok. There were a few people who showed up expecting something, but I don't think they were too put out to get some time on a design wall making quilt patterns and then getting to try out hand quilting and binding. One lady, when we mentioned coming along to our group, announced she was a traditionalist and really didn't like the colours of modern fabrics and flounced off, apparently with a mouth like a cat's bum. We all just looked bemused I think! :D So if that was it in terms of active negativity then we did well.



Now what the heck do I do with all these quilts I have back in my house?

Crochet

During my blogging break I've been doing quite a bit of crocheting as well as making quilts - well ok some crocheting and making quilts!

A teething ring for my little niece Eva. I saw a similar one on Pinterest and also in a tutorial. The rings are curtain rings and the beads are just wooden ones from Spotlight that I sanded until all the varnish was gone so nothing will come off when chewed :)



Some egg cozies







and some kittens



I also made another crocheted hanger, from Mollie Makes No. 41.

I've got a style!

Last Christmas we did a little present swap at our Monday Modern group. I made a pot holder and when Lou unwrapped it she knew straight away who had made it (and so did everyone else). I was puzzled because as far as I know I don't really have a definite style.

I was wrong, I do! I only just realised it though, when I was making up the info sheets for the quilt exhibition and my four quilts were on the same page briefly. I was quite taken aback when I saw them together like that, particularly the first three, because despite being quite different quilts, they're all remarkably similar when judged purely on colour. The oven mitt fits in perfectly so I can see how I was outed so easily!

I'm currently working on a red and white quilt and one with Lotta Jansdotter fabrics in oranges and blues and greens so I'm hoping that means I'm not going to typecast myself too much! I think having a style is great, but not if you don't push yourself to do different things sometimes.

Modern Building Blocks Quilt

Ages ago I did a post about starting to make the Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt. I did actually finish it quite quickly for such a big quilt (and for me!), but then it went off to a display case at Alberton without a photo of it finished and it's been there for almost 2 months. We finally set up the quilts for our Monday Modern 'New Quilts for Alberton Beds' exhibition and I got a proper photo at long last.

The colours aren't that great as the only place we could find that was big enough that we could hold it out fully was on the verandah where the lighting wasn't the best. This pre-quilting photo I took for Instagram shows it more clearly.

It was quilted in an all-over geometric pattern by Carol Fearon at Art Quilts in Onehunga. I love the way the shapes reflect the angles of the block patterns. Although part of me likes it for the bright solids and some of the blocks are great and I'm glad I did it, I'm still not a fan of the sampler quilt - they're just too busy and jarring to my eye. Luckily not everyone's like me and it's going to a friend who does like them!

If you're in Auckland come along to the exhibition at Alberton - not only do you get to see a bunch of nice quilts there's a fabulous old house to look through as well!

Crocheting hangers

I've been wanting to make crocheted hangers for quite awhile now but we only have two of the really basic wood hangers in the house because, really, they're totally crap on their own! I had a look around Spotlight the other day for some but couldn't find any and gave up. Then the other day I was in there to get some more solids for the Moda quilt and the lady at the counter in front of me had about 10 packages of them and when I asked where she'd got them the assistant pointed to the shelf right behind me and voila! Adult and kid sized ones. I only got one pack of 6 each, goodness knows what the other lady was going to do with so many hangers!

Anyways, the first one I did was for Hazel from the tutorial at Karen Anderson. The colours and flower were chosen by Hazel (art direction), the crocheting by me (labour). It's pretty cute!




 I got a bit cocky after that and decided I was going to do Dotti Angel's hanger in a lighter yarn and it would turn out ok. Well it did - in the end! I finished one side and then realised it was too big so pulled it all out and reduced the number of chains to start with and that was perfect. And it was still perfect when I realised that it was going to be too narrow to go around the hanger and I'd have to add an extra row of single crochet around it to make it bigger. But then it wasn't ok when I did the second row of sc to stitch the two sides together - suddenly it was two shells too long. I kidded myself that I could pad out the ends of the hanger and make do, but after getting half way around it I realised that was a no-go and pulled the whole thing apart and started with two shells less chain. Perfect (for real this time!). Of course, I could have made two and a half in the time I've been messing around with the one, but at least I can do the whole pattern off by heart now!



For my next hanger (remember I have 10 more to cover), I'm going to do the spotty one in this pattern from Mollie Makes.