Buyers Remorse

I bought this at Spotlight about a month ago and I've got a mild case of buyers remorse!

I'd covetted this fabric for months for months. Had plans for it before it even left the shop.



I thought it would look great in my red room and I thought this would look good in a cathedral windows quilt. I could picture it very very clearly. It was 40% off if you bought the remainder of the bolt. As far as I was concerned I couldn't go wrong. My mum had a quilt in a similar fabric to this (not sure where that ended up) and I think the pattern triggered something in me. She used to have the quilt on a miners couch that sat in our back sunroom, right next to her sewing table and I spent many hours on the miners couch with a book while mum would be sewing. Maybe, I just wanted to recreate a bit of that. Who knows!!

Well, when I got it home and put it in the red room. All I could see was pink!
Yep! those tiny pink flowers that were practically invisible in the shop, just seemed to bleed all over the fabric the minute I put it up against the red wall. It just isn't going to work as I had intended. And with quite a few metres of the stuff I had better come up with something to do with it. I still think it's lovely. I think I'll still do the quilt, but it just won't go in my red room.

Not my usual carry on.

This is a bit of a departure from my usual drivel.

Our friends Paul and Jules are having a bit of a rough time of things at the moment and recently had these shots taken. Paul has cancer and they recently found out that it has spread to his liver. Life isn't being kind.

I'm posting this link, just because I think it is something I want to share.

Have a look at the pictures on Liz's blog and read her post. I don't think I could put into words what these guys are going throughords any better than she has.


Jen

Flannel

I think I need to face facts. I have a flannel obsession. I can't help it. It gets so dang cold here in Melbourne that I NEED flannel. But all I ever seem to do with it is make it into quilts for other people (yes prior to me starting this blog, I did have a couple of finished projects).

After finishing the quilt for baby Emma, I got to thinking "Why should she get all the snuggly, toasty fun of a flannel quilt?" I've had that quilt over my lap most nights for the past 6 months watching it get bigger (and warmer) and I 've kind of grown to like it. Which brings me to the point that......... I *ahem* haven't put the quilt in the post yet. It's still folded up on the couch in the lounge room. I found the other half snugged up in it the other day and I just keep finding excuses not to post it. It's not good. ("Shut UP! I've been busy, and the lady in the post office isn't nice")

So in an attempt to wean myself of the baby quilt (no pun intended), I purchased this ("Of Course You Did!" I hear you cry).


All that lovely warm, flannelly goodness - and it is going to be ALL MINE do you hear me? Mine. However, this brings me to another confession (seems to be the week for it). I have this sitting in my stash, abandoned,unfinished and not going anywhere.



Oh, and before you ask, Yes, Yes I am abundantly aware that the colours in the yet to be completed quilt and the recently aquired fabrics are similar. Quite similar in fact. Did I think of the quilt top, lying abandoned in my stash, when I was buying the new flannel fabric?? No. No I didn't.

I'm starting to think this is how addictive/ obsessive personalities get kick started.

You know those women who end up living in houses with like, 87 cats - there but grace of god go I, I'm thinking.

Oh and just on a completely unrelated topic............. Your blog content can't be used as conclusive evidence to say, have you committed to an institution......... can it??

Wanted Dead or Alive

"Patchwork fabric stealing lady, police are urging people not to approach her as she could be dangerous and ridiculous" ...............

Well that's what they might be saying about me on crimestoppers........... or not.

Yep I confess I'm nothing more than a a petty thief, shoplifter, clepto, nay robber if you will, because apart from describing this fabric as 'green', you could also describe it as......... (insert da da da daahh crime music) 'stolen'. That's right! You heard me 'stolen'.

I popped in here earlier this week for a bit of a look see. Great fabric to be found here, not a regular haunt for patchwork fabric, but every now and then she has a bolt of something that "will do just nicely" in my stash.


Yep I made like a bandit with this. Well, when I say 'made like a bandit', it was more a case of the lovely Lisa at TDQ cutting the desired amount of fabric, bundling it up and then we got to talking (read "me talking, her listening until her eyes glazed over and she was jerking her head in an attempt to stay awake"). I then hightailed it out of the shop. Simple really. It wasn't until I was checking the finances later in the day that I thought "where did all that money come from?" The answer to that rhetorical question was "It didn't 'come' from anywhere - it never 'left' my wallet".

So after a very rushed phone call that involved me coming clean, I said I'd pop in and pay her next week when I'm back in her neck of the woods. ( I figured it was only a matter of time before the law would catch up with me - well that, and I go into her shop on a weekly basis - didn't want her thinking "here comes that 'clepto' again, lock up the expensive stuff").

But.......technically, I've not paid for it. That makes me, technically - until next monday- a robber. So be careful, I is dangerous.

I think this is what's commonly referred to as.............

............ an anti climax!

After all my palava about what lay beyond the red curtain, I kind of got to thinking "Shid! you've built that up a bit, love!" So I thought I'd better pull the pin on my 'carry on' before both my readers got unduly excited. Mind you I was looking forward to hearing Lizzie Jane "cuss" if I didn't reveal.

Well......... Here it is. Yes folks, my first finished project on the site. There is a little lass called Emma (my great niece) who'll be rugged up in this for her walks along the beach with Mum and Dad. It's english paper pieced and it's taken me since January and I've calculated there are approx 39,200 odd hand stitches in the top of the quilt. (there's a chunk of my life I aint gettin' back anytime soon - I'm referring to the time it took me to do those sums on the stitches, not the quilt.)





and in case you didn't get the idea, here's one more pic for good measure.


PS and thanks to Jen at FrazzyDazzles who talked me out of backing the quilt with more of the same - ie english paper pieced but bigger blocks. I think her words were "Why don't you just make that into another quilt ? " Yet another example of the obvious walking straight toward me in a flouro lycra screaming "Helloooooo, Yoo Hoo! Pick me!" and me just walking straight on by.

Being a Helper

I don't know if this phenomenon happens to anyone else, but it happens to me ALOT.

Even though I spend an abnormal amount of my waking time thinking about, doing or looking at quilt related stuff, I often tend to forget the basics. A recent example of this is forgetting to attach my walking foot for quilting, and as a consequence I spent a lot of time growling at the machine and using language not often heard in your garden variety quilting circles. My husband stuck his head through the door at one point laughing and saying "Whoa ! don't think I've EVER heard anyone call a quilt THAT before !". It was like the writers from Deadwood had re written the script for "How to make an American Quilt".

I get a chronic case of the 'forgets' and I need to have visual direction for something to sink in. I can look at diagrams in a book and get the jist,it isn't until I see someone 'doing it' that the penny drops. So, in the absence of having someone living in the spare room who I can summon to provide visual instruction, I fall into a bit of a slump. It's a frequent cause of what I like to call "Project Paralysis" (some people call it procrastination, but they're JPR -Just Plain Rude!).

So when I stumbled across these tutorials on the innanet I was 'beside myself'. Admittedly it's all stuff I've done before but they are great refreshers! She does things so effortlessly and, I note with interest, without feeling the necessity for "cussin'"

There is still something lurking behind the red curtain.......... but she's just not quite ready to make an appearance................

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard.....

My Darwinian theory is if you can survive the first three days of freezing Melbourne after a week of sunny Darwin - you can survive anything.

I'm baaaaack - loved every minute. Well nearly every minute. Races = fun, lolling around the pool like a pool loller = lots of fun, being able to read because I simply had nothing better to do = very much fun, putting up with redneck neighbours with ill behaved kids = not fun, but fun thinking that their karma is in fact that they are......... well, them.

On the way up we had a bit of a stop over in Cairns and killed most of our time wandering around Cairns and sitting around in Qantas Club doing not much. Sitting next to a pilot in QC reading "Australian Flying" magazine. Could not fail to notice he was engrossed in an article entitled "It's never too late to learn how to Fly". Like Flick it isn't! To top it off he had an attack of the yawns and was lamenting the fact that once he starts yawning he finds it 'near impossible to stop'. All I needed for him to do was to open an exercise book and start taking notes straight from aforementioned article and I would have flown the bloody plane myself! Never been bothered about flying......... That is until now. In fact I'd have been more comfortable if our pilot had looked like this!



All in all had a great time.

Oh and by the way stay tuned to find out what's behind the red curtain!