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!

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…

I’m thrilled. I’ve just finished my first quilt! It’s only been 2 years since I started it…

I did a Beginner’s Quilt Making By Machine course with the lovely Trish from Quilting Matters when The Bubble was about a year old, she’s just turned 3. I’ve had the quilt sandwiched and basically finished with the exception of hand sewing the binding to the back for almost a year, the hand sewing was really daunting for me so I kept ignoring it. I even did a second course with Trish (Dark Nightz) and have begun a Queen Size quilt for The Bubble in an attempt to avoid the final bit of hand sewing. I had a burst of inspiration and decided tonight that having a new baby wasn’t a good enough excuse anymore given that Babyman is 7 months now so I thought I’d just get on with it and see how much I could get done tonight before my hands got too sore. Well, they got too sore about 1/2 way into it but I told them to harden up and kept going I’m so pleased that I did.

There are several bits of the quilt that I’m not happy with, bits that I could have unpicked and done again, but I decided to embrace the flaws as “first quilt flaws” and I’m actually growing to love those flaws anyway. I like to look at the quilt top and see how much better I became at sewing a straight line (by Beginner’s Quilt Making I mean a real beginner, I had to learn to sew in that class!) and now that I’m finished the hand sewing I can see it’s obvious which of the hand stitches are my first and which are the last.

I’ve also worked out how to use the sewing machine a friend gave me many moons ago so I’m going to get back into making the squares for The Bubble’s quilt (previously I’d just been doing all the sewing in Trish’s studio on her spare machine). I’ve also got my hands on a bucket hat pattern that I’m going to attempt to make with patchworked fabric. Yay for pursuing hobbies again…

Unfortunately the light in our loungeroom is a revolting fluro and the photos I have don’t do the divine fabrics justice. The green fabric is a paisley*, so is the brown & the backing.

*I’m a complete Paisley Geek – I’ve even looked up the history of paisley because I’m such a Paisley Geek, I devote far too much energy to trying to convince people (business people or otherwise) to wear paisley ties.