I went into the store with intent of finding some plus sized clothes…a mammoth job as most clothes there are in standard sizes and it takes forever to go through all of the ladies and also the mixed clothes downstairs. Out of the whole store there may be around five  plus sized items…and the store has two levels of women’s clothing….that is how big a job it is.  Also problematic are the racks which are stuffed to the max with clothing…one rack over another one and the racks are full of clothing on really flimsy hangers which constantly snap in one’s hand. So after checking out a third of the downstairs I popped upstairs to check the ladies shirts and jackets etc. By then my hands had gone.

A little explanation…due to my silly arthritis and accompanying stenosis of the spinal column in my cervical and thoracic vertebrae I have trouble raising my arms above waist height …my hands go all pins and needles …and they hurt…and then they go numb and I  start to drop things. I dropped several tops which I was buying but I left them at my feet as I knew I would only drop them again and I was still looking through the lower rack.  A man I took to be a volunteer …he was wearing an apron and was muttering to himself as he went through the store  repeatedly….I kept getting out of his way as there is no room to manouvre in this shop anymore. Anyway he came upstairs just as I dropped the shirts and I heard him say…as he looked at the things at my feet…okay just drop them there ..that’s the way to do it…or words to that effect.

I must say I was chagrined and mortified to be spoken to like that and when a few minutes later a worker I know came upstairs and asked if something was wrong I said yes…. I did not like being spoken to by the volunteer that way. I said I felt he was a little unusual and had been rude. A booming what has this particular volunteer done came from behind me and  bugger me if he was not directly behind me …totally invading my body space and I felt inappropriately questioning me about what I was discussing with the worker. Well, not one to back down, not after our previous experiences….I repeated I did not like to be spoken to like that. He said he was telling someone else to leave donations somewhere……even though he was looking at me and I saw no other person…although there could have been one….I did not see one however.

Well then I apologised and said I was sorry …that it was bad timing that it happened as he said it to a customer but he was very shirty and kept saving aggressively…I am so over this …it is gone it is nothing etc etc. Well it was not over as I felt both  my body space and my disability had been poorly treated. I went downstairs and saw him chatting to the workers on the cash register and he then went upstairs again brushing past me in quite an unusual manner.  I asked the workers if the manager was in and they said they would get her. She came down and apologised and said something like …you know we have problems with some people not being able to talk to people properly. I said …yes but I felt that you should know as if it happened to me it could happen to others. I also explained a little about my health and how difficult it is to shop there since the new overstocking of the racks came in. She said to let her know if they could help get anything down for me…which was sweet but not really the point.

So all in all a good day as my clothing order from the US came in the post…trust me you have never seen the like of these jackets etc…silk and embossed, embroidered or quilted! The whole experience was pleasant even picking up the parcels! I did however find a stunning Liz Claiborne handbag and two lovely shirts for myself in Vinnies….I think it was worth it…..I hope so anyway…it just leaves  a nasty taste in the mouth. Where is Mary Queen of Charity Shops when you need her?

So…. have had a lot of fun researching ebay and after cataloguing my extensive wardrobe collection…in all sizes…I have started listing some of my designer clothes. I will also be adding good quality clothes from Millers, Target and other shops as I have a lot of those complete with tags…or as we in the trade call them BNWT’s!

I will soon be adding really good quality European plus sizes by designers such as Marina Rinaldi of Italy, Olsen, Geiger of Austria and my favourite...Basler of Germany.

Here is the stunning Basler waistcoat which did not even make it to ebay before my friend grabbed it! It looked stunning on her though…and the detail is amazing. This was as new…which would have been over two hundred dollars Australian…I found it for seven dollars at Vinnies and I would have added it to ebay at ten dollars starting bid…so keep an eye here and on my items for sale. I do not have a store yet as such but you can keep track of the goodies by clicking on my sales items…here on ebay my world and by clicking the link on my drop down menu here on magikquilter.com.

I am determined to find quality clothing including plus sizes…and offer them to you at the lowest possible price I can …while still allowing for a living to be made of course! I have some stunning Laura Ashley jackets coming soon for winter…really exciting! The quality I am aiming for is of Nordstrom’s in the USA.. with really excellent designers using natural products like silk, wool, linen and cotton in their clothing. Also with really good clothing being such an investment I am busy researching all the time where I can find the very best additions to our wardrobes.

Some designers/ fashion labels I am listing this week…not all plus sizes either…David Lawrence, Laura Ashley, Marina Rinaldi, Anthea Crawford, Trent Nathan, Sportscraft, Hugo Boss, Gap and many more.

In the next few weeks I shall be writing posts on plus sized fashion in Australia and the trends which are developing in that field. I will also be covering European fashion labels and American and British ones.

]]> http://magikquilter.com/2010/01/05/a-seasoned-ebayer/feed/ 1 http://magikquilter.com/2010/01/02/happy-new-year/ http://magikquilter.com/2010/01/02/happy-new-year/#comments Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:15:31 +0000 magikquilter http://magikquilter.com/?p=3217 So it is 2010 …can you believe it is ten years since everyone was carrying on about the millenium bug? It seems like much, much longer.

Ah well Christmas is over…and with it almost the  worst case of the flu I have had in ten years…well the only one I have had in ten years! And to top it off a headache so bad I could not get off the bed for many many many hours…..but that is a dim memory now…mostly because it kind of knocked me senseless! I think it was all part of the same virus…nasty bugger especially considering I had my swine flu shot recently.

Okay to show that this is still an occasional sewing blog….

something I am planning on sewing

and look…

half hexi quilt top… almost finished

A whole lot of thrifting has been going on over the break…but through ebay…oh my… the fat person’s lifeline! I cannot believe the things I have found and the new labels I discovered in the process. There appears to be a movement of plus sizes to affirm themselves with quite revealing gear…and now I know the names to avoid for me but to look out for at the local shop to resell as these brands are going like hotcakes but at platinum prices!

So I do hope you are all well and that you had quality time with those you love over the break…I will be updating the blog in a more chatty way this year and showcasing fashion labels and designers as well as the usual quilting and thrifting. See you soon!

I find myself very reflective at this time of year. Maybe it is all that is involved in getting ready for Christmas or maybe it is the excess that is so prevalent.

I have trimmed down my life to the essentials…my friends and my immediate family are what is important to me and my friends have indeed become my family. We live modestly and try not to overindulge at this time of year.

My son and I went to see the David Jones Christmas window displays earlier this month and I had almost as much fun watching the children and the parents and the grandparents faces as I did looking at the scenes myself! Maybe it is because as the child of migrants we had very little in the way of family…especially grandparents so I love to watch the interaction between them today.

My son has had very little actual time with his grandparents …he does not remember really the times when his British grandmother spent the holidays with us and my family…well let us say they would rather be with my brother and his family at Christmas…nothing new there.

So here is what is important to me…the nativity…and my own little family. Sharing in children’s joy of the time of year …school concerts and the delight they find in the lead up to Christmas. I also love spending time with my closest friends and their families…..but I also love spending time alone sipping a flat white and reading the fashion, art and design magazines at my favourite coffee shop in Randwick.

I love our tree decorations, such simple pleasures to be found in the decorations of yesteryear and in finding fabulous new hand crafted ones like my new found hand painted one above and the four hand painted ones my son gave me for Christmas last year.

I love sitting watching the reflections on the wall cast by the tree lights.  I would love to know what Christmas means to you.

Oh by the way…if you look closely at the first photo…or click on it and make it larger on flickr you will see little old me reflected in the window…purple top….grey hair!

All photos courtesy of cjwriter [my son]

]]> http://magikquilter.com/2009/12/22/reflections/feed/ 2 http://magikquilter.com/2009/12/11/ruminations-of-a-mad-quilterfacebooker/ http://magikquilter.com/2009/12/11/ruminations-of-a-mad-quilterfacebooker/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:35:52 +0000 magikquilter http://magikquilter.com/?p=3153

I was chatting on The Friends of Fabric Patchwork and Quilting Fanpage on Facebook today with Sarah of Sewn… her blog is The Last Piece... about a photo of a quilt which I had shown there to try to promote Australian quilting. The flickr photo does not have much documentation, it simply says quilts as a tag. Sarah said that it is run by someone who looks after the website of the Hunter’s Hills Quilters in Sydney. It turns out that I ascribed the quilt incorrectly to the person whose stream it was in as there was nothing else there to say any differently!

The quilt was actually made as a group quilt, by the Hunter’s Hill Quilters which includes Sarah as one of their members, for the raffle at their yearly show. You will find the quilt here. Oh and there appears to be a flickr group showcasing the work of the group.

Cascade Lily is an Australian photostream on flickr I discovered today where the exact opposite is the case! Her photos have some rights reserved which means I can actually show you here the photos as long as I attribute back to her….which obviously I would always do. Usually I ask first by email …so that I have it in writing that they said yes… but this method of attribution avoids all that and is such a great way to share work that I am thinking of doing that with most of my photos.

Anyway Cascade Lily added links to her blog posts about the photo and along with the attribution also mention the name of the design of her quilt and explained about the fabric etc. Fabulous for we who live and breathe quilting!

Cascade Lily lives in Canberra  and is in the Army Reserve. She added these stunning quilted pieces to the group today and I was so excited and thrilled and ….they are up for QOTW and POTW! The quilting on the tablerunner is wonderful…pyramids…and the rail fence..though so simple a pattern is wonderfully sophisticated here. I won’t give away all her secrets…do visit her here on her blog …all I will say is that there is one lucky school teacher at the moment!

By the way I find it very intersting to read of the other meaning for rumination…..regurgitating so that animals can make more digestible …or something like that…maybe that is what I did today…..made more palatable a situation where I could not actually digest or benefit from my meal…in my case my earlier poorly attributed quilt ! Well I did say ruminations of a mad quilter/facebooker!

All photos are courtesy of cascade lily on flickr

UPDATE..Lily is so honest she just let me know what her inspiration was for the quilt…although I have seen the block  before many times and well…that is why she is up for QOTW! Cause hers is such an original take on it. The colourway …the limited amounts of fabrics…it is a very original take on what I believe is a block in the public domain. Well done Lily! And Lily…you have actually inspired me…can’t say what I am going to do yet but it is down to you!!!!

Leslie’s stunning Bricks quilt is a work of art in this room

as is Kimono and her namesake’s quilt below.

I like to see how Leslie’s inspiration develops…from these

to this fabulous spiderweb wip

I love looking at Leslie’s work as it is so refreshing and true to the spirit of her muse, Denise Schmidt while still being fresh and original. Leslie is blogless but you can find her on her flickr stream here.

My new summer outfit, 100% thrifted and 100% natural fibres and products!  The designer is Marina Rinaldi of Italy who makes the most glorious plus sized as well as usual sized clothes in only the most gorgeous of natural fibres. This is a set which again took me three visits over two weeks to find as the outfit had been split up. It is unworn and made of silk and linen.

The outfit consists of a maxi coat dress in linen, a stretchy cami and stretchy pants. It is incredible to touch and really beautifully made. When new the coat dress would be minimum four hundred dollars …so this is around a thousand dollars for this outfit…a grand outfit in more ways than one!

Yesterday while charity shopping I found the perfect handbag made of silk….patchwork too! The Diana Ferrari mules with a small heel are the perfect companion  to this outfit. Roll on all those Christmas parties and theatre evenings! All I need to do now is make myself some jewellery.

Do let me know if you like this and if you would like me to look out for one for you..I am selling my finds through The Wardrobe Store.com and I can also look through their data base to see if they have anything similar on your size. Unfortunately though it would cost a tad more there than the thirty dollars I paid for the three pieces. The mules were eight dollars and a real find as they are brand new as is the bag…a steal at eight dollars also.

faithfulquilter

spunsugar

I was savaged on flickr for taking the award away while I investigated the matter…I think that is what is done in sport etc while investigations go on.  I am not and have never said that I am anything but an encourager of quilters …so I am not really sure of the procedure…I just knew that I had to explain why I had removed the photo and the award…although on the surface it looks as if it did not matter as very few people have been prepared to comment on the issue apart from Joan and Ruth and the previous ones on Facebook.

That post had seventy views…  and of those views

30 were from people reading the blog from the link on flickr

17 views were from quilterblogs updates

5 or so from the facebook discussion

The remaining were people rechecking the post and the person who savaged me accounted for several visits though she was not prepared to speak her mind here! What is interesting is that there are several people whom I know had considered stopping blogging recently due to supposed stealing of their ideas….and not a peep to be heard from anybody who had read their posts…..one of the posts had 95 comments!

So I do thank dear Joan who is always level headed and Ruth who is as honest as they come and admits when she is torn about something.

I have been rethinking my habits online. I do spend a lot of time on flickr looking for wonderful quilts which will inspire the more experienced quilters and obviously as with many others a lot of time is spent in the encouragement of both new quilters and quilters with works in progress.  I also have spent a fair bit of time on the facebook fanpage....which helps show the selection of QOTW and POTW photos. So I guess what I am saying is I am not sure how much time I am now willing to spend on the flickr side of things…it does not really seem worth the effort when issues like this arise. I think the facebook page is worth developing as it opens quilting up to people who are not on flickr and I know there are a lot of people on facebook who do not blog …although I think that many of them are involved with quilt guilds etc.

I have met some wonderful people through flickr …Ruth, Betty, Sally and Joan…who started a blog after meeting us crazed bloggers…and she now has more readers than moi! Trish is another, and several older ladies whose health is compromised and can no longer quilt but enjoy the companionship of fellow quilters. What I am finding though is that Facebook offers more immediate feedback and actually I have met more people who are willing to express themselves honestly through facebook in six months than I have in over two years of blogging and involvement in flickr.

I have decided to spend some of the time away from flickr to keep more up to date with blogging through quilterblogs.com and while I was there today I found [on the blogroll of another blogger]  the blog of Michelle Hill whom I have long adored…she is an expert in the field of quilting using William Morris as inspiration…and I found her link to flickr.…oh my…this has all her fabulous published quilts. I cannot recommend this highly enough….Australian art quilting at its finest! I will be sending links to her from facebook soon so check it out there ….you will be mesmerised! She has a book available on Amazon.com which I have put on my wishlist!

Okay after a wonderful evening last night at Nida watching my friend’s grand daughter and the rest of the dance troupe I feel inspired to finish sewing one of my quilts. There was the most fabulous tribute to Michael Jackson last night….although it was a tad loud! The costumes were fabulous though…if I had my time over I would definitely have gone into  costume design.

I have since asked the quilter to add it to the Kaffe Fassett Love group here and she did so …so am thinking this was probably an innocent mistake…however we must be vigilant in defending the work of our designers…too many are losing valuable money through the people who knowingly infringe their copyright. We all know designers/artists who have to work at a different job to put food on the table…..every time someone makes something from a photo they have seen here without acknowledging the inspiration is money out of the pocket of that designer and also a betrayal of the community we have here.

By all means be inspired by artisans….they love that but tell everyone where that inspiration came from. Artisans love to see what people are making from their patterns…I often let them know if I see something in the group…and they are nearly always excited!

This is Veryty’s version…fully attributed

I do see that the quilt was entitled Venetian Tiles…so I believe the fault is also mostly mine here…I knew there was something about this quilt which caused me to wonder about making it QOTW….indeed I did not make Ann Stewart’s gorgeous quilt QOTW because she so strongly defended the honour of the designer Nancy Crowe that it seemed that the quilt Venetian tiles seemed more original by comparison…though Ann’s was exquisitely crafted. I am so pleased to have the fan page on Facebook which enabled me to clearly see where the inspiration came from for Venetian Tiles. I also see that the quilter on other photos clearly said “my design”…..but it is as important to acknowledge who actually did design the one’s we didn’t!

So I would like to apologise ….for giving out an an award then taking it way and also apologise to the designers in our groups….I will try to be more vigilant…and I am introducing probably the most important group rule…attribution of inspiration or design….this also includes whether it is a kit. Thankyou Sarah for your input and Joy and Hildegard on Friends of FPAQ

UPDATE …Stella has been in touch and she actually based the quilt on the actual floor…which was what I took her to mean when I saw the quilt. I love the use of purples and think it is a wonderful interpretation of a real life artwork. I just wish I could see it for myself…the floor…and the quilt!  I have reinstated her award as I feel it is a remarkable quilt from someone with very real talent in the arts field…the shades are sublime in the quilt. I am grateful that Stella took this well and is updating her photo description with information about her quilt ’s journey to completion.