We went to the Brunswick Show at the weekend to see my younger sister show our Uncle’s cows. My sister is now living in Victoria so it’s lovely to have her back in WA for a quick visit. We’re feeling a bit spoilt actually because she’d just visited at the start of the month to show the cows at the Perth Royal Show. I didn’t watch much of the cattle judging at Brunswick, I’d seen them all at Perth Show and I don’t really understand how it all works like my sisters do. Instead we opted to take the kids around the show, it was a bit overwhelming. It was crowded and there were very few animals on display which surprised me. We took our sproggets and my older sister’s sproggets for a ride on some of the kiddyland rides & saw a friend who was working on the rides. It would have been a long and overstimulating day for him. I felt exhausted after a couple of hours in the kiddyland section! I didn’t realise how long it would take to give each child 4 rides…

The Bubble on a big, inflatable slide.

Cousin A & The Bubble on the kangaroo ride

Our nephew was a scared of all of the rides excepting one little carousel-esque ride that went slowly and tamely around in a circle. It made me dizzy to watch him go around but he loved it so I watched him go around for 2 rides. He ended up forfeiting a ticket on the inflatable slide because he had one slide and decided it was too scary and we gave his fourth ticket to our niece to use for a second turn on the slide. We were very careful not to pressure him to ride. The internal conflict he had going on was hard enough on him. He would get in line for a ride, then decide he didn’t want to ride and cry and beg us not to make him, to which we’d reply he didn’t have to ride at all and it was ok. It was clear he wanted to join in with The Bubble and his older sister but he was so overwhelmed. Bless. We saw some terrible displays of pressure from parents of very young children. It was sad to see a little boy crying on the ride while his parents laughed at him and took photos that they intended to use “to embarrass him at his 21st”

After the rides we headed back to the cattle lanes for lunch. I managed to knock a mug off a jerry can and slice my finger on the broken pieces so had a quick trip to the first aid post before finishing lunch. Then when the cattle judging was finished we went for another wander with my sisters (including honorary sister Laura), the sproggets and my Mum. We got icecream & had a look at some quilts, cakes, flower arrangements, prize winning vegetables, photos & prize winning lego constructions (no, I’m not kidding about the lego).

Mum bought the kids a little pinwheel each, I wish we’d been able to capture the look of pure, simple delight on The Bubble’s face when she was first given hers.

Cousin J & The Bubble with their pinwheels

Delighted with her pin wheels

We bought a little Bertie Beetle showbag (which we found out is owned by Nestle, after the fact… verrry frustrating since we boycott Nestle) which just completed a perfect day at the show for The Bubble. On the way back from Brunswick to our Uncle’s farm for dinner she just couldn’t keep herself awake…

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!

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.

… because soon I’ll own one!

We’re investing in a sewing machine. I’ve chosen the Bernina Aurora 440 Quilter’s Edition. SQUEE! I’m very excited.

I’ve wanted a Bernina of my own for such a long time. I’ve done a lot of research, spoken with a lot of experienced seamstresses & quilters, tried one out and been to a couple of different sewing stores.

The Aurora 440QE is not a cheap machine, it’s a layby jobby, so it’ll take a while before it’s in my hot little hands. I’m so looking forward to stitching many a night away…

Stay tuned for pictures of the loverlee work I’ma goan do with it

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.