Merry Christmas 2017

It's Christmas time again, it comes around so quickly and I have been busy as usual. All the parties are over now and all the meetings and commitments can wait until next year. All my shopping is done and the presents wrapped.

One of my friendship groups shares a Kris Kringle gift with a particular theme. This year we had to make a candle mat that was dinner-plate sized. I had some left over shapes from an applique project and decided to use them because of lack of time and my usual sewing machine was getting repaired.

After I had fused the shapes I used a sewing machine to blanket stitch the edges. As usual it looked much better when I quilted it. I was a bit worried because I wasn't using my usual machine but it turned out ok.

I also bought a candle to go with it; it was a Grateful candle which I thought was a nice sentiment for the end of a busy year.

I received a beautiful Christmas candle-mat from my friend Jo.

In hindsight I wish I had made a Christmas one, it's my first year with this group and they have been very kind and welcoming to me.

So here I am another year older and just as busy as last year but I made a few resolutions at the start of the year and one of them was to start exercising again and I did a yoga class every week and certainly felt the benefit.

I would still like a bit more time for sewing though.

I will finish the year with a couple of photos of my two favourite people, I feel so lucky that I can see them so often and be part of their lives.

I am going to take a break from blogging and have a holiday at home, give the house a good clean and get lots of sewing done. That's the plan anyway!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and thank you to the faithful few who take the time to comment on my blog, I really appreciate it.

Bye for now,

Linda

Party Time

It's that time of the year when all the groups I belong to have their Christmas break up parties and we all look forward to a break from our commitments for a while.

I received a lovely bunch of flowers from the Waverley Art Quilters to say thank you for running the group.

We have finished our study of the principles and elements of design using the Sandra Meech book called Connecting Design to Stitch. Next year we are going back to studying various artists and themes. I have chosen all women abstract artists for us to discover and learn more about; that should be interesting.

A couple of years ago I gave a talk to the Westernport Quilters group and I spoke about my involvement with the Waverley Art Quilters and it inspired them to start their own group. I was so happy when I found out about it, they have gone a step further than us and have a page on their website showing their work.

You can see their art quilts here.

I only have one break up party to go and I will be officially on holidays from all duties, whew,  I need a break!
I have the good news that I got my Bernina 820 sewing machine back at last and it is sewing beautifully. Now I have no excuse, I have sewing to do.

There is still time to visit the AQIPP exhibition in Box Hill, it closes on Thursday 21st and it is well worth a visit. You can see my post about it here. I still want to get back there myself because the opening night was very busy.


Bye for now,
Linda

Felting

I have been doing an online class with Fiona Duthie a very talented and famous Canadian felt maker. I am not a felt maker but have admired her work when it comes up on Pinterest and thought I would look into felt making a little more.
What I found out was that I hate the huge amount of rolling that you must do to make felt from scratch and quickly decided that it wasn't for me. I decided to combine some of her ideas and merge them with my dry felting techniques that I do starting with pre-felts and my embellisher or needle felting machine.
An embellisher machine looks like a normal sewing machine but it uses no thread, just 5 barbed needles that meshes or felts the fabrics together.

Here are some of the samples that I made.

They are only samples but I think they could be used as coral in my Coral reef series of quilts.

I used my embellisher machine and then wet them and did some hand felting and rolling to finish them off. They took a couple of days to dry. Here they are waiting to dry.

I have written down how I made the samples and put them into a book so I can reproduce them if I want. The other people doing the class did some amazing work, most of them are very talented felt makers and needless to say I didn't post my meagre attempts onto the forum.

I have been without my main sewing machine, the Bernina 820 for 4 months while the technician sorts out its various problems, mind you he hasn't spent much time on it and I have had to ring several times to get him to keep on with it; it's very frustrating. It's been so long that I hardly remember what was wrong with it.

I remember that it wouldn't sew backwards and it kept saying that it had lost steps and the sensor wouldn't recognize the foot I had attached and kept telling me to put on the correct foot.

It is very annoying and I have kept myself occupied with the felting and hand sewing but I am getting really sick of it. The latest news is that he is going to get me a loan machine while my machine is getting sorted out. I hope I get my machine back before Christmas.

Bye for now,
Linda