I did part one of a two part quilting course on Saturday. I’m learning how to make half square triangle patchwork blocks. It’s fantastic, the possibilities are endless. I’m using different fabrics from 2 colour families for the quilt, I have chosen blue & brown.

I’ve decided that for this quilt, since it’s meant to be a scrap quilt, I don’t want to buy any new fabric, I want it to be made entirely of fabric already in my stash. This decision has led to me using a lot of fabrics I don’t particularly like and some that I love. A lot of the fabric in this quilt has been given to me by people who know I quilt & have responded to my request for scraps. Some of it is fabric from my Mum’s stash, the print I find the most ugly is one my Mum used to make matching dresses for my younger sister and I to wear to our Uncle’s wedding about 18 years ago! The rest is scraps of fabric that I have chosen in the past to make quilts or clothes for myself, obviously these are the prints I love the most.

I know it seems so odd to use fabrics I don’t like but I wanted to give those fabrics the chance to be something I can like. I wanted to challenge myself to think outside the square, to push myself to consider things I may not otherwise have bothered to use.

In the class on Saturday while looking closely at the quilt Trish (the teacher) has made for the class I realised that there were a heap of fabrics in her quilt that I wouldn’t have chosen off the shelf. Some of them I’ve even seen as a fat quarter & thought they were too bright, too “yuck”.  Seeing them in the quilt though, as a small piece, surrounded by other fabrics I realised that I do like them. That made me feel better about some of my more revolting prints, I think they could look good together, especially when they’re pieced with some prints that I love.

From now on I’ll be looking at a broader range of fabric options when I buy fabrics for quilting because something that I don’t really like could become part of something that I love!

EDIT 25/10/10 Here’s a photo of my pieces on the design board in class. Photo taken by my teacher

Liam and I are going to do a joint photo quilt project. Liam will provide the photos which we’ll print on to fabric & I will turn them into a quilted wall hanging.

We’ve decided to go with a theme of gardening since it’s something we both get a lot of joy out of.

As we select photos we’ll upload them to this post, and as the project comes together we’ll upload photos of that too.

I’m really excited about this joint project, I think it’ll be great fun!

Today the Perth Upmarket was on at UWA so we (and just about everyone else in Perth) decided to go along for a look.

It was great! The crowd was a bit overwhelming but I tried to ignore that because there were some fantastic stalls. Ironically, my favourite stuff was to be found at Liam’s friend Karrie’s stall. We got a pair of cut pants each for the children and an awesome A-line skirt for me. The skirt is a dark purpley-maroon with 3 butterflies appliqued onto the front, it’s lined with the same fabric used for the applique. I love, love, love it.

We bought the sewing machine! We decided to go without some other stuff for the time being & now we have the machine at home. I’m so thrilled!

Liam promised me a few hours of child-free sewing time at the weekend & he delivered. All I had to do was breastfeed Babyman when he wanted it, which wasn’t so often because I locked him in the cupboard…

Putting Babyman in the cupboard so I could have some uninterrupted Bernina time...

He didn’t seem to mind.

NO! Really he was being happily entertained by his Dad, Bruce (the man who drove us to Leonora in his bus), The Bubble & Bruce’s daughter while they assembled Bruce’s new camping solar system on our back deck. Oh the peace and quiet I had inside, music playing & the sounds of Aurora steadily sewing… Bliss.

I got about 4 hours sewing time all up, I managed to get quite a few more blocks finished for the quilt I’m making The Bubble. Then we went to visit detainees at Perth Immigration Detention Centre, after we got home I did a little more sewing when The Bubble was in bed & Babyman was happily playing on the floor in front of a mirror. I didn’t get as much sewing time in the evening because Liam dislocated his shoulder (again) at Perth IDC so he couldn’t carry Babyman.

Before Sunday Liam hadn’t dislocated his shoulder since I was pregnant with The Bubble, at least 3.5yrs ago. He dislocated it twice in a 4-5 week period then & he’d been careful with it since. Before he dislocated it the first time (which was before we were together) he played A-grade volleyball, at Perth IDC he was invited to play volleyball with some of the men there, he forgot about his pre-existing shoulder injury but remembered how good he used to be at volleyball… One shot & his shoulder was dislocated. He popped it back in after a bit of messing about trying to find a suitable pole to use as leverage, then went on to play cricket! Foolish thing to do! His shoulder is quite sore now & it’ll take a little while for the inflammation to go down so the next week or so of evenings may involve more Mama-Babyman cuddles & less Mama sewing. Oh well, I’ll have many years to sew & not so many years to cuddle my fat little Babyman.

I went to a UFO (unfinished objects) Monday at the Quilting Matters studio last night. It was nice to have a bit of an outlet after such an emotionally intense weekend. I got back into the quilt I’m making for The Bubble for the first time since before Babyman was born. I managed to make up another 5 finished blocks (6.5 inch squares) and 9 almost finished blocks 2 sides of the border left to do, I’ll be able to chain piece them together in no time, so I’m happy with that.

I’ll ask Liam to get some pictures of the blocks I’ve sewn so far. I worked out today that I’ll need to make 26 blocks of each of the 6 colours (pinks, oranges, yellows, greens, blues & purples) – 2 rows of 13 blocks – in order to make the queen sized quilt I’m planning to make. That will all make much more sense when I have pictures to share. Of the 156 blocks I need to make I’ve made 56 (excluding the almost finished blocks I made last night). Even though she’s only 3 I’ve decided to make a queen sized quilt because it’ll still fit over a single bed but she can use the quilt on a larger bed if she wants to keep using it as an older child or an adult.

So, now to the inspiration for the title of this post…

The contents of The Bubble's craft box on the lounge room floor...

We went to a fabric store today to buy a couple of new blades for my rotary cutter so I can keep cutting up blocks and to get a little bit more fabric for the quilt, while we were there The Bubble was talking about craft and I told her we’d play with her craft box when we got home. She had a fat time crafting and it didn’t take THAT long to clean up in the end, so it was worth it. We just had to make sure the chunky baby didn’t get too close lest he choke on googly eyes or eat pony beads…