Quick Post

My three Jack Russell's.

The two yougesters play well together, all supervised by Blaze

Having a puppy does make life interesting! Missing shoes, teeth marks, puddles strange things on the carpet etc. Keeps you on your toes!

Being doing a bit of sewing in between making red inchies for our swap this week.
Bag I have made using left over strips I found in the scrap box with a denim bottom.
I was looking for fabric to cut into 2 inch square to make some fabric baskets, found a heap of strips all about the same lenght and decided to join them together and try out another bag pattern I found for size.

New Addition

Craft, painting walls and all else has come to a stop at the moment as we have a new addition to the household!

Meet our Patchalena - known as Lena

3 month old Jack Russell from our wonderful Geraldine in Donnybrook WA

I had forgotten what hard work they are and the biggest time wasters too. My other two Jack Russell's are getting used to her. Cushla plays really nicely with her but Blaze has never had a puppy in his life before so is not sure what is going on.

Blogging

I am still around but have not got to up date my blog lately with trips to Perth, Cervantes, renovations, work and additions to the tribe.

I will add more details and photos soon as I have joined with Deb, Carole, Doreen and Ann, and we trade ATC's each month and then with Heather and Georgina and we trade every two weeks so I am getting a great collection of 'small art works'.

Painting of the renovations is also cutting into art time, but it will be wonderful when it is all finished.

Fabric Baskets

A quick blog!

I was printing out photos of 'art works' I have done in the last few months to show the girls in Perth when we catch up at the Craft Fair, what I had been doing and had to share these with you.

The 'receipe' can from a lovely tutorial from Ayumills at Pink Penguin blog. I really enjoyed making then and hope to do more for Christmas gifts. I also love the way Ayumills uses the 2" squares to make bags and pillows. Great way to use up all your scraps and off cuts.

Catch Up

As promised from my last post here are the photo's of the wonderful mail I received!

ATC trade with the lovely Carole in New Zealand. Lovely the way she has used the selvages.

Another ATC trade with Nikki Love her ATC's and the small quilts she has made. Makes the mind go at million miles all the possible ideas!

My trade with Debbi

The lovely Deb turned up for our "meeting" on Wednesday night with some fibre ribbon, netting ribbon and some narrow silver organza ribbon she had found at the local craft shop and shared her lovely loot with me. Thank Deb

And lastly the fibre postcards I have been making for the Unique Stitching Red Cross fund-raiser. Most of them have napkin bases with FME over the top. Using the Embellishing machine has really got me to 'relax' and I am alot happier doing FME work now.

Weekend Over

Easter and Anzac weekends DH has been paving out the back off the office with me as TA or Site Supervisor so very little craft has been done. We are using old pavers so the project has not been easy but will look good when all the work is complete.

Started some postcards for Unique Stitching fundraiser for the Red Cross so must continue with them.

Will post during the week with photo's of our handiwork and of the goodies the postie delivered!

Weekends Results!

??Brewing!!

I tried to over dye a piece of cotton dress fabric with not very good results, but Linda had sent me a receipe for Scrunched Layer Dyeing so as everything was out I gave it a go! Results below but.....

in all the excitement I forget the cardinal rule of NOT to mix opposite colours together!!!!.

The results where a bit muddy and not very strong colours so Sunday back they went into two other colour dyes and I am much happier with the results.

The above fabrics were only in the dye bath for two hours which was not long enough. With further reading, someone recommended the minimum time for a dye bath is four hours so the second round was in for five hours and a much stronger result. Big learning curve for the weekend!

The dyes are all out now so will have some more fun soon!

Inspiring Weekend

I joined the "No Theme ATC Swap" in February and had great fun making the below ATC's with a technique I found on Fannie's blog - putting watercolour oil pastels on the fabric in the rough shape of your design and then free motion stitching the design. Love the technique and will be having more fun in the following weeks. Thank you also to Carole for sharing the blog.

I recieved these ATC's from Diana last week for the 'No Theme Swap' Thank you to everyone for the great 'little' works of art. My collections is slowly growing!

Jane Howie, Karen Dean, Les Clarke

Alison Christensen, Cherie Hoyle, Marilyn Wilson

DH has gone to Perth - shopping, for the rugby and a Who concert so I have got the Procion dyes out to have some fun. Thank you to Linda for all her help to, I will share the results with you later. For once I managed to find all the ingredients here in Kal and not have to wait for the Postie to arrive.

Now off to get the sewing machine out to do some quilting to dye as per C June Barnes book Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art

I found this mystery flower in the garden last week.

Lovely yellow - my favorite colour but it has taken a while to discover what it is. I set Mum a task and she has discovered it is a Spider Lily.

Strange things happen in my garden!

Collage Fun!

Not much art work or sewing has been done recently, but had to share with you the collage of the doves that decided to make a nest on top of a shoe on top of an electrical control box.

Mum on the nest the first photo and then the baby ready to leave at the bottom.

Two Months!

Two months have passed since my last post.
Christmas was quite celebrated with Mum and Dad, with Dad being on the mend slowly.I found these "three" (DH Blaze and Cushla) having a discussion with Father Christmas regarding next years gifts already. (Father Christmas says HO HO HO on a sensor)

Hand bag construction has been on the agenda - ideas from the Haute Handbag magazines. Volume 5 due out soon!

Denim and cotton lace

Denim, beads and machine stitching.

Then I discovered a great tutorial on the construction of "Disappearing Nine Patch" quilts on Helen in the UK blog site and have been using up my stash making small quilts. Blocks cut out and ready to sew. My craft room could do with a few metres added to the side of it!

Deb and I have been good this year on our Wednesday evenings and learning new techniques. See Debs post as I have not photographed any of my work yet.

Back to work!