Magik Quilter

Thanks Sulz for this meme, sounds like fun, fluffy things usually are! Here we go:

Five things found in your bag

1] Sunglasses…..Have photophobia and am blinded without them.

2] Wallet with credit card as well as money just in case I see that one special thrift item that I have to have!

3] Tissues as I have sensitivities to cigarette smoke and perfumes, anything really and it gets the old sinuses going

4] Notepad and pen for writing down quilt and design ideas and to write down websites that I see in design and art magazines while I am at the coffee shop.

5]Unscented wet wipes as I often find they come in handy, if not for myself then for others.

Five favourite things in your room

1]My vintage sewing table, it is quite like a shaker design.

2]My tablerunner on my sewing table, it is a gorgeous colour.

3]My three Chinese ginger jars, hand painted and they are lovely colours.

4]My turquoise artwork made from a photo frame and four gorgeous cards that CJ and his father and I have bought over the years.

5]My duvet cover I bought from Target on sale for $69 instead of $169, it is chinese faux silk patchwork.

Five things you have always wanted to do

1]Go to a Kaffe Fassett workshop.

2]See The Gilmore Girls from start to finish.

3]See some of the churches and buildings housing some of the works Tiffany and William Morris, especially the tapestries and the stained glass.

4]Visit America.

5] Tidy my work/storage area.

Five things you are currently into

1]Our flickr group about Laura Ashley, William Morris and Liberty.

2]Our flickr group fabric, patchwork and quilting.

3]Our flickr group fabric, patchwork and quilting reclaimed.

4]Our flickr group fabric, patchwork and quilting in the home.

5]Blogging, and guess what I no longer check my stats religiously!

Five people you want to tag

1] Bombshell.…give the bastards more fodder Ivy

2]Jacquie….take your time and no offense if you hate these things and do not want to do it, know you are busy at present, think these things are open ended.

3]Stina …although she too is MIA

4]Janey....although she already owes me one so she can take her time…also she has three kids and two dogs and a sick cat!

5]Ginger ..like she hasn’t already got enough to do!

This was fun and as for being fluff it actually exercised a few brain cells!

School holidays over here so we had the pleasure of showing my young friend Daniel of quilt fame the movie Terminator..he is 13 now so after starting him off on Star Wars, Indiana Jones and many others we thought he might like to see the Terminator films in case he happened to catch the series and needed to know where it all began. I remember being petrified of the machine as he/it just kept coming when I saw it twenty years ago. Now it was the dilemma of time travelling that got to me. It stood the test of time though cinematically, must say James Cameron is a genius.

We went shopping yesterday and bought some things on sale. A chef’s trolley to store all my saucepans etc and some lovely butterfly cups and saucers which will also come in handy for my photography. I also bought the last two seasons of the Gilmore Girls on sale as Foxtel keeps going back to the beginning instead of showing them and channel 9 of our free tv decided to put it on at 3pm on Sundays with no advertising so I missed too much of it to know what happened after Rory left Yale etc and went to live with her dastardly grandparents breaking Loralies heart in the process. Whew, feel like I need to draw breath.

My groups are doing well, oh did I not mention that we now have three groups on flickr? Fabric patchwork and quilting in the home and fabric patchwork and quilting reclaimed. I have long been interested in layouts of rooms using quilts cushions etc so we now have a wonderful place to showcase the actual quilts as they are meant to be used…you might even like it as it is more what you do with the quilts than how they are made. the reclaimed group is to showcase work made using at least 50% recycled fabrics and trim.

This week I found two lovely white and silver items while charity shopping. One is a lovely little box with a mirrored inside which I am using to store my new jewellery set of hall marked silver and a brand new photo frame. In a different shop I found a silk georgette evening coat which is sublime. The box was $5 and the frame $10 and the coat$8 and the jewellery $15 all told…..$38

I am going to start putting up photos of some of the quilt tops I have recently finished as I need a little help deciding whether to have them as quilts or tablecloths or duvet covers…please please please give me feedback, I would really appreciate it. Also going to showcase once a month past quilts I have made with the stories behind them for those of you who have come here in the hope that it is a craft blog! I have been aiming for a mixed kind of blog as I find craft blogs fairly boring especially when the issues of the day are often totally ignored and everything is hunky dory in blogland…..it isn’t in life so why should it be in our blogs? I have come to really enjoy the blogs where the writer slowly reveals small things about themselves, not the woe is me day after day kind of thing, just little things so that you don’t feel you are in Stepford land. I have also found memes to be a good way of opening things up a bit so look out for the two memes that I am participating in this week thanks to Janey and Sulz, two perfect examples of fiesty women who never bore!

This week I hunted for a Salvation Army store I was sure I had seen sometime last year. It was raining and cold and gloomy, making it hard to see where I was going, then I found it tucked in next to the back of a nursery [plant shop not childrens centre] up a back street which is used more for offices and real estate agents etc.

I tried to look relaxed as I walked in but wondered what I had let myself in for. It is a rambling old building which by the look of it used to be a house. The rooms are all knocked through but the layout of them is still there, it was like going into someone’s dining room, lounge room, then bedrooms and finally working back to the old kitchen area. It probably had been used as offices or something but it didn’t feel like it as it is such a rambling old place. I started looking for fabric…no chance and worked my way through various rooms until I found myself back in one of the middle areas…..a lot of mens coats and on the other side of the hallway formal womenswear. After looking for some time and getting dead itchy I had a half hearted look through the mens jackets in case something was there that I could cut up for my throws. I spotted a vinyl jacket in a turquoise colour and after checking realised it was a woman’s swing jacket from the…. wait for it ….the 50s. I found a changing room with a door, unlike the vinnie’s ones with curtains that people can see around as you change. It fitted really well as it was meant to be a swing coat and would therefore have been really roomy anyway.

I paid for it and started talking to a gorgeous young chap about some blue Spodelike dishes on a sideboard. It was like being in my grandmother’s house except no doors! We established that it was Spode and a divine shade of blue and I showed him my coat and he said “but that is kid leather”. So I went outside into the light to check and there it was, in all its glory, a sort of hand dyed swirly kid leather. Not a thing wrong with it and doesn’t even smell after all that time and what with the company it was keeping in that store!

So I skipped along…I wish…..hurry up damn knee replacements…. to Westfield and smiled my way through coffee and banana bread and everyone smiled back…..it is like being in love, everyone picks up on it! I had better be careful in case this feeling becomes addictive but there is really no fear of that as it is so rare that I find anything in my size and for my sort of age bracket. Okay I hear all you women screaming in rage…what is she talking about …we can wear whatever we desire…well maybe but it doesn’t mean we should!

I try to wear quality clothes of rich colours and textures in natural fibres and they are not readily donated to charity shops in my size I find. Okay I am a size 16/18 Australian….see Sulz it is not too hard to tell people your dress size, if I can admit to that then how difficult is it to tell all you are a size 8? [ Sorry, that's a whole other story! ]Last week you may remember I did not actually shop at all so this week I allowed myself $50 and the jacket was $25 can you believe it? Can you?

Speaking of value, Melissa of tinyhappy fame sent me some fabric in exchange for the embroidered linen that I found her and the floral fabrics are wonderful, thanks so much Melissa. It isn’t easy giving people who have particular tastes and needs fabric etc but we seem to have done it! Also a huge success was the Melly and Me swap that Dawn in Durham, England and I are doing together. Her swap arrived here the day before Melissa’s and I truly feel that I have let her down as she did not want too many florals [and me the floral queen] so I sent hand dyed and batiks and now am really really worried. Her fabrics are different to my usual though, bright and quite gorgeous so maybe we will both be moving out of our comfort zone. Perhaps that is why swap challenges are so successful.

Speaking of moving out of my comfort zone, after the thing with flickr and being banned by the administrator I decided after encouragement from several ladies to start a different group and since Monday we have over 150 contributers and over 650 photos. I have chatted with many artisans and been really astounded that the more talented these people are, the more humble. Most are truly delighted to have a new platform to share their work and to also share in the work of others. I have assured them that they will always be informed if there are any problems and that there will be no banning with no recourse here. Of course that has led to a few emails this week trading horror stories of being kicked out of quilting guilds or being asked to leave because their baby gurgling with delight was such a distraction to some of the members. The thing I love about our new group is that there are no rules apart from not flooding the pool with too many photos and I am really enjoying seeing the sheer quantity and quality and range of some of the work on offer. The generosity of the contributors is heartening and their support of the group has been overwhelming. Sally who offered to resign from the other group has been a huge support and her experience as a fabric rep, quilt shop worker and artisan is really appreciated. Some of us are trying to stylise our photo shoots more in future ….to show the quilts and artworks as they are meant to be used.

So this week has been really rewarding and interesting how sometimes painful experiences can be turned around, and an even better outcome develops…all I need now is for my son to start feeling a little better after he had a setback this week healthwise. But he turned things around bless him by writing the funniest post which had his core readers crying with laughter instead of the usual sadness his work evokes. He also fixed my google reader which is wonderful and means I should always be up to date on all your goings on!

Well here it is Friday and no thrift shopping done. Feeling really tired so decided to skip shopping for this week, instead I took some photos of some of the things thrifted before I discovered Thrift Thursday. The ginger jars are a real find as have not seen them anywhere new and love the design on them and the colours are just wonderful. Like everything in my home this week though they could have used a dusting, especially before photographing them. I tend to put things up high where I cannot see the dust…. my husband is 6′5″ and son 6′2″ but my husband just does not see dust, it is invisible to him!

Am really enjoying taking pictures of all my fabrics and shoes and bags and sharing them with other mad collectors on flickr. Funny thing with flickr suddenly most of the offending people who have business links under their blogs have taken them down so am pretty sure my benign link to my blog was the cause of my being banned. Looks like the others were warned or word got around and it snowballed but still naturally no confirmation from anyone….flickr said my blog was okay but some zealous administrator obviously thought I was abusing the system.

Still looking for the fabric for little Ollie who lives opposite, I told them to give me two weeks then to go ahead and buy some and I will make him one anyway. Can’t have him without one the first real winter of his life, that he will understand anyway, he is about 9 months old I think and crazy about animals. Bumped into my friend Daniel the one of the Bar Mitzvah quilt today and I swear that in the month since I saw him his voice has broken! Time moves on for us all. My flickr friend Sally was asking today could it really be 40 years since their daughter was born?

Today I was awarded a couple of blog awards from Glassoffashion an amazing blog whereby GOF regularly lets us into her vast collection of vintage Vogue and other catalogues and patterns and by vintage I mean 1920’s and 1930’s, absolutely fabulous. She is currently creating a lovely bridesmaid’s dress for her upcoming wedding, flapper style of course for her cousin to wear.

I will take this opportunity actually to apologise to everyone if I appear not to be commenting as regularly as usual but after going to GOF’s blog I realised my blog surfer has more than the not unsubscribing of blogs problem going on, it is not showing all of my subscribed blog entries either. I fear that I have missed huge chunks of peoples blogs and that is not acceptable so am going with the something or other feeder or rather my son is when he has time to set me up with it. Hope you have a great weekend doing whatever it is that warms your hearts, see you next week.

Feeling quite inspired after my latest lovely bag arrived from Janey of Sewstylish. She included a lovely handmade card and a really great magazine that I haven’t seen over here. Also sent off my swap for Melly and Me’s scrap challenge to Dawn in England and some embroidered linen to Norway for Melissa who makes the most divine baby shoes from old linens[when she can find them that is].

Did a little shopping earlier this week and found a couple of cute fat quarters and some wool to knit a scarf to go with my turquoise suede jacket. Also sorted through my shoes and gave some to a friend, the other ones I do not need will go up to the charity shop when I go there tomorrow. My handbags that I bought from charity and second hand shops are currently being photographed and loaded onto some more friendly groups on flickr. The link to my photos is here, especially for Sulz and the Bombshell. Bear in mind ladies that these are only some of my thrifted ones. Wait until you see some of the ones I bought new!

The photographing of my upholstery fabrics is going quite well but buggered if I can find a piece of Designers Guild fabric with giraffes and animals on it..the little toddler who lives opposite us will be at school by the time I find it! I was quite amazed at how much fabric that I have been shunting around our bedroom, no wonder I was so off sewing for a while. I am going to sell some of it on my etsy store which is soon to be opened and also some of my jewellery and bags as well.

Have finally photographed the skirts which I made a few months ago and I thought they would go down a treat in the coming summer months overseas. The photos of several skirts are here. The mini skirts are 10cm above the knee and are cut on the bias. The longer skirt I made for myself with some glorious Italian swiss voile [sounds like a contradiction doesn't it] and silk has been a real hit. It is a pleasure to wear as I used cotton lawn for the lining fabric, it is cool and helps the skirt keep its shape.

Update on the being banned from a group for no reason at all. I actually went to the help forum about that and they were pretty baffled too, especially since they thought quilting groups above politics! At first they thought it was the link to my blog in the description section of the photos and I spent a good few hours deleting that just in case and then they said that was okay!

So all in all a busy week, my son is starting to feel a bit better after a few weeks of being quite unwell so that is a relief and means we can plan to do a few things together. Also means I can ask him to do my website without feeling too guilty unless I stuff it up again that is! Back tomorrow with Thrift Thursday, hoping to find some goodies tomorrow at the Salvation Army shop and the other church run shop in Bondi Junction.