I made this

Just for Pip @Meetmeatmikes.

I made this.And this.And this.(The girl and the pants!!!!!)

Pleats to meet you

I realised I hadn't blogged this yet! Before we headed off on our road trip I made this skirt for Romily. Actually, I made it twice - the first one was waaaaay too big around the waist and a little long, so I made it in the next size down. It's from an Ottobre 6/2008 pattern - #16 'Tammy'. It's the first time I've made anything with pleats, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. It's also lined. As the first skirt was so big around the waist, I also excluded the seam allowances. A perfect fit!
The bigger sized skirt has been put away for next winter :)

And just because, here's a photo of Romily with her twin cousins Darcy and Cody - they're exactly four weeks younger than her and cute as buttons. This is their favourite trick and they showed Romily how to do it too!
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All goes well here. We are all healthy for a change! We have also been night-weaning Tristan. It's going well so far after a fairly torrid first night. I think we will all be better for having a bit more sleep at night. Once he's sleeping through we'll move him downstairs into Romily's room. She's very excited about not being the only one sleeping downstairs!

A quilty finish - for Robina

Only six weeks later than I'd hoped! Ah well, I'm sure it will be appreciated by Robina, who has been a professional seamstress for 60 years - fortunately she is no quilter, so I don't feel afraid that my standards won't bear up under her scrutinising!It's a lap quilt (37" x 40") made it to help celebrate her 80th birthday and made to match the table runner I made for her for Christmas. It's a Denyse Schmidt pattern (Hop, Skip and a Jump) from Denyse Schmidt Quilting - you've seen it on my blog before - it's been a favourite! The fabric is mostly Moda Porcelain. I quilted wavy lines in King Tut variegated blue thread and the quilt includes my first attempt at piping in the binding. It is a bit wonky, but I'm hoping that people will think it intentional to meet the wonky strippy piecing! Lesson learned: don't do piping unless you are 100% sure your edges are straight and that you can sew straight. Apparently they weren't/I can't! (Sorry about the appalling photography - it was late in the day and the light levels were not good.)It's nice to get this finished. Uni starts back this week so my crafting time will be reduced, although Romily has two long sessions at playschool this term, which might help my productivity levels!

[Edited with improved photos! They're still not great, but are better.]

Exhausted

We're back tonight from our week in Melbourne, happy to be home and utterly exhausted after a marathon two-day drive home. Without kids, you can do the trip in 7-8 hours (with minimum stopping). With kids and roadworks combined, it's more like 12-13. Since Carl couldn't come on this trip and as Tristan is still not sleeping the night through, I knew I'd be too tired to manage it in one day, so we did it in two in each direction, staying the night in a motel (an adventure in itself for the children) in Albury.

A minor miracle, we all managed to stay healthy this trip! This meant we were able to catch up with friends and family we missed at Easter. Romily just adores her four boy cousins and they like seeing her. It was great seeing them all playing so well together. Tristan was watching with eyes agog, and you could tell he was working out whether he could join in! He had a very exciting time playing with Grandma and Huppa (my parents) and has learnt to speed crawl. He loves nothing more than 'crawly chasy' - especially with his big sister.

(Rom looking like an angel with a halo at my parents' house)

(Tristan after Huppa sneezed loudly and frightened him - excuse the pink sleeping bag - it was Romily's when she was a bubba!)

I attempted to finish Robina's quilt in time for our visit to Bendigo, but our trip was brought forward by two days, which just did me in. It unfortunately still isn't finished, although I only have one side's binding waiting to be stitched down. I encountered some problems with Grandma's sewing machine, which saw many stitches being skipped on the front side of the binding. I ended up having to go around twice. Anyway, it's looking good, and I hope to finish it over the weekend.
Here is a photo of the finished top before it was sandwiched, as well as a photo of the basted sandwich. I hope she will like it.

While watching Romily and Tristan engaging with their grandparents was an absolute highlight of the trip, my initial reason for going was to see Pink! When I bought my ticket she wasn't coming to Canberra. Of course, Canberra concerts have since been announced. Ah well, we were due for a visit down south. I digress. Pink was fabulous! The venue has its challenges - it was the Rod Laver Arena, which is the main court for the Australian Open - including dodgy sound, but after the first few songs the techies managed to fix whatever was going wrong. What a show. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet, but for those who have or don't plan to, let's just say it was world-class and the girl could sing underwater (and just about does!). I had a great time.

It was very hard to say goodbye to my parents yesterday. They're so good with the kids and the kids adore them. We don't get to see them often enough and poor Romily was bereft last night, wailing in the back seat of the car "I want to live with Grandma and Huppaaaaaaaaaaa". She gets the drama queen from me, by the way! Hopefully they'll be able to get to Canberra in the not-too-distant future and we might sneak down again in September, depending on how things are going.

It was lovely to arrive home this afternoon. And even lovelier when Carl got home from work. We all missed each other enormously. Back to reality tomorrow. Carl will take Rom to her swimming lesson and I'll get some crafting done. Got to get some things made for Rom's fast-approaching birthday party...I can't believe she'll be four in three weeks!

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And some excellent news awaited me upon my return home - I received a High Distinction (90 per cent) for my course mark. Woohoo! Yeeha! Got to be happy with that. I must have done pretty well on the exam after all. Thank god!! One more unit of coursework to go before I transfer to the coursework/research program, which will mean a 75,000 word paper, to be written over 2-3 semesters (part-time). I need to get cracking on my research proposal, as well as start reading for this semester's course - Strategic Management. The things we put ourselves through!

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And finally, here are a couple of pictures of my handsome boy after his first real hair cut. It was pretty tricky trying to cut his hair - he was a moving target - but I don't think I did too bad a job!Clapping hands! What a clever boy :)

Swap quilt received and stash boosted!

Finally arriving all the way from the UK, much to Faith's relief, my Spring Blooms swap quilt is here. There was much excitement in our house when the parcel was picked up from the post office, especially from Romily who helped open it. (Click on photo to see a bigger version, as always.) Inside was one of the most extraordinary quilts I've ever seen. Faith has put many hours of work into the quilt, hand dyeing fabric, painting fabric, embroidering and appliqueing. It's a truly original design and completely different - one of the things I love about quilting: no two are ever the same and it's a medium that lends itself to so many styles and interpretations. Many thanks Faith!

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I have been on a fabric ban for a while, with many UFOs awaiting my attention and a large tub full of lovely fabrics. However, when my favourite quilting store, Addicted to Fabric, had its private sale yesterday, I was happy to break that self-imposed ban! I ended up with 15 metres of beautiful fabric, all of which is destined for projects other than quilting! Well, some of it will no doubt end up in quilts, but most of it will be used in dressmaking for Romily, as well as some crafty take-home book bags for the little guests at Rom's forthcoming birthday party, and presents for other little people in my life.

I bought some beautiful fabric from the Patty Young 'Mezzanine' range (I see a couple of dresses and skirts with matching applique tops).Some groovy orange floral and houndstooth Urban Chiks fabric.And some of the Prints Charming 'Rainbow Garden' range in the blue colourway.And the pink.I also grabbed some more Aurifil in white and some Superior Threads variegated blue machine quilting thread for a lap quilt I'm about to get started on. It's for my father-in-law's companion, who turned 80 last month. I made her a table runner for Christmas and the laptop is from the same fabrics. I need to get it pieced, sandwiched and quilted by Wednesday, as I'm taking the kids down to Melbourne/Bendigo for a week. I'll get the binding and label on while I'm at my parents' place in Melbourne and then we'll be able to give it to Robina on Monday week when we head up to Bendigo for the day. No pressure or anything!

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And some recent photos of my two lovely children (who, touch wood, are both healthy this week at least!).

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Finally, happy 4th of July to my US readers!

Ballet girl

I had to take the kids to Spotlight the other day, complete with baby in pram, which I usually dread, but to my delight, Romily was exceedingly well behaved! So when I spied some purple tulle and purple organza I decided on a whim to make her a 'dancing skirt'. I asked her to choose a colour (there was every colour of the rainbow and I hoped she wouldn't choose the bubblegum pink) and happily she also thought the purple was great.I just folded the tulle back on itself and sewed a seam and then did the same with the organza. I attached elastic to the top of the tulle, cut it open at the bottom and repeated with the organza over the top. Romily tried it on and it fit perfectly. She did say that the tulle was digging into her a bit (now I know why the tulle on tutus is attached to some muslin!), so I decided to add a purple ribbon to the top. I'd had the ribbon sitting in my stash since she was a baby, so it was lovely to finally use it. Unfortunately all that stretching and sewing into the elastic made it lose its elasticity! The skirt no longer fit. Damn, damn. Fortunately, by adding the ribbon I had created an accidental casing, so I ended up unpicking a short stretch of it and inserting more elastic. The skirt now fits and looks very cute.Romily insisted on wearing it to playschool today, although I did pack another skirt for her to change into when it was craft time. Here she is dancing for me/the camera just before we headed off this morning. Check out 'dancing face' in the last photo!She's starting dance classes next term and has asked me to make her some more skirts. Well, if you insist :)

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Tristan is quite a lot better this week, although he's managed to pick himself up another cold. Sleep is also now for the weak, with him deciding he should just party in his cot or pull up on to his knees and cry and cry until I come and get him. Unfortunately if I just leave him, he doesn't cry it out and go to sleep, he just cries some more. It's a bit heart-breaking and also very annoying! Why don't babies understand that sleep is actually good for them?

What a week

It has been a pretty lousy week. Late on Wednesday afternoon Tristan managed to pull two heavy pictures down upon himself - one minute he was where I thought he was, I got distracted by Romily, and the next moment - CRASH! Poor thing had his fingers jammed under the pictures and he ripped them out before I could get to him. He nearly ripped his fingernail off one finger and there was a lot of blood. I managed to get a tissue onto it and compress the finger with one hand while racing upstairs with him to give him a dose of paracetamol. He calmed down pretty quickly and a breastfeed made things a bit better. I put a bandaid on, which, of course, he pulled off several hours later. But it did stop the bleeding. What a terrible thing to happen to a little bubba (of course, being a boy, this is, no doubt, the first of many such accidents!)

I woke up Thursday morning with a splitting headache - not a good omen. Then when Romily was at Gymbaroo, Tristan came down with a high fever. As it was all happening, Carl arrived to take over parenting duties so I could dash off to uni to sit my exam. We gave Tristan a dose of paracetamol and hoped he would be okay. We weren't sure whether it was a fever or whether his finger may have become infected. I went off to the exam with a heavy heart and a heavy conscience, trying to put a miserable baby out of my mind and concentrate on the task at hand. Despite my headache growing steadily worse, I managed to answer the required four essay-style answers. I have no idea how I went - 2.5 hours of mad scribbling does your head in!

Tristan was still not himself when I got home, but seemed a bit better. I fed him some dinner, but it all came back up just as I was giving him the last spoonful. I got him into bed and asleep and was also in bed myself by 8pm, hoping that a few extra hours of sleep would see my headache disappear. Of course this was not to be. Tristan had a dreadful night, with a head full of mucous, waking every hour from 8pm through to dawn. He spent half the night in my bed, tossing and turning. Carl and I got very little sleep.

I woke up Friday with my brain still in the vicelike grip of this headache (I still have the residual headache as I type), but with a baby who seemed much happier. As we had tickets to Justine Clarke, off we headed. Tristan was fine until about 15 minutes before the end, at which point he became unconsolable except when I was standing up and rocking him back and forth - thank goodness our seats were in the very back row! I got the kids home and tried to get Tristan to sleep, but he just would not go to sleep. Back in the car, we headed off to the clinic and after a 40 minute wait (this was very quick!) we got in to see one of the docs. He had a look down Tristan's throat - would you believe it? Tonsillitits on top of a head cold! No wonder he wasn't happy.

A prescription of antibiotics later and we headed home. He had a much better night last night (despite a big spew in my bed after a feed) and is considerably happier today. He's mercifully asleep again and breathing much easier. Let's hope those ABs work their magic nice and quick!

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Thankfully some nice things also happened during the week! I ordered three (yes three!) birthday presents for myself and they all arrived within days of each other.

A new thimble for handquilting - inspired by this post from Jan @ Be*mused. I bought it from The Scissorman.The official McTavishing bible. I hadn't heard of this until Emma showed off her version. Can't wait to try some of this. It will be much better than my straight line quilting!And 'Story' by Hollywood screenwriting genius Robert McKee. I couldn't get to one of his last ever seminars run this weekend in Australia (he's retiring), so this is the next best thing. It will be a great read, although it will have to wait, as I have many other books already in the queue!I am very glad I treated myself. Turns out I really needed a lift after what's been a very trying week.

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One more thing. I was saddened to hear of Michael Jackson's death, but at the same time I felt a bit relieved. What a tortured life his became after such bright beginnings. Makes me all the more determined to help my children enjoy their childhood. It's so important that they be allowed to be children.

Groovy pants for a groovy chick

In a last-ditch crafting frenzy before downing tools to study for my exam on Thursday, I finally cut into the lovely cord fabric I've had in my dressmaking stash that I posted about here. I made some 'Katri' pants from Ottobre 1/2009 (#13) for Romily. She doesn't have many warm pants for Playschool, so I thought these would do the trick. They were easy to make, apart from all the fiddling about with 28 pintucks around the pants leg bottoms!She likes them a lot and thanked me for making them for her. She also told all the teachers at Playschool that her mum made them for her. God love her! It's nice to have an appreciative model :)

(Note the fog! It was the foggiest day we've had in Canberra this year to date.)

So now it's time work through my notes from the past semester and do lots of handwriting to get my hand and arm muscles used to the idea of holding a pen again. The exam goes for three hours - ouch! We have four questions to answer out of six, so it will be a word frenzy! I will be glad when 5pm Thursday rolls around and I am free! Well. For a few weeks at least :)

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And, if you're a fan of Oliver + S patterns, head on over to Novy's blog for a giveaway.

Bloomin' Lovely

A finish feels so good, doesn't it? This little baby is due in the post by Monday and I am very pleased to meet the deadline. I am very happy with how this turned out. My FMQ is a little bumpy, but, as the whole thing is pretty liberated, I don't think it matters too much. The overall effect works and, for me, that's what really counts. I've called it 'Bloomin' Lovely'.

The quilt was foundation (the sky) and free pieced (the grass). The flowers were raw-edge appliqued and the stems, leaves and caterpillar were embroidered. The free-pieced grass was inspired by Tami's 4SQS5 quilt. I heavily quilted the sky, but left the flowers and the grass unquilted to give a really textured feel. I think it really works. The backing came from one of the FQs I received last year during the EB Birthday FQ Swap. It's a fabulous print from Valori Wells. Very suitable, don't you think?

Here's a close-up of a little caterpillar.And one of the flowers. Although the binding looks a bit weird here, the quilt is actually 'square'. Well it's 17" x 18", but you know what I mean!

It's off to the United States of Obama. I hope its new owner likes it. I enjoyed being part of the Spring Blooms swap and I can now look forward to receiving mine :)

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And here's a photo of Tristan, who, today, decided to give crawling a try! Well done Tristie!!!! He's been trying for a while now, but not really putting it all together. He now does about three 'crawls' and then pushes back into sitting. He thinks he's pretty clever and gives himself a clap. Too cute!

Birthday baking and cutting some grass

Danananananana

They say it's your birthday
Danananananana
And it's my birthday too yeah
Danananananana
We're gonna have a good time
Danananananana
Well happy birthday to you!

(Courtesy the Beatles)

Actually happy birthday to me :)

I had a lovely day. A mini-sleep in (until 7.30am), woken up by Romily, Carl and Tristan bringing me my birthday present - two books: Breath by Tim Winton and The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. Both much wanted and I look forward to reading them.

Carl headed off to work and after Tristan had a sleep and we got ourselves ready, I took the kids to Monkey Mania at the new DFO in Fyshwick. They both had a great time - so much so that they both had a two-hour sleep at the same time. Anyone who has/had two young kids knows what a blessing this is! A second birthday present :)

I spent some time catching up on blogs and baking my own birthday cake (Carl's done it the past two years, but I was more than happy to make one this year - especially with Romily's help decorating it). It's a Treacle Butter Cake with Coconut Ice Frosting (both from the fabulous BAKE cookbook I posted about here).

Then I put a lamb roast in the oven and spent a little while playing with my two gorgeouses. I also opened a bunch of birthday cards and a couple of parcels. Thank you Bill & Kate for the very generous voucher for a local day spa. Very nice! And a wrap and recipe organiser from Jim & Jacinta and the boys. Thank you!

And thanks to my parents and my father-in-law for contributing to Lily's Overlocker Fund. It's getting closer!

Also arriving by coinkydink today was my subscription to Meanjin. It's the third time I've subscribed and I hope this time I might get up enough courage to actually submit something!

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And I think I mentioned there'd been some crafting going on here (finally). Here is the design for my Spring Blooms doll quilt (excuse the magnets - I had to put it on the fridge to show up the design in the photograph!). I drew the design full size onto sew-in interfacing which I'm using as the foundation. The 'sky' will be foundation pieced and then attached to the grass, with the flowers raw-edge appliqued and the flower stems and petals embroidered. The grass is free-pieced. Here's a sneak preview! I hope to have the piecing and applique finished by lunchtime tomorrow and then to do the quilting and embroidery tomorrow night and Thursday. I should be able to get it bound and labelled over the weekend and then posted by Monday, which is the deadline. Cutting it fine, but with all that's been going on around here, it'll be a good effort!

New York Cheesecake yum!

You might remember my darling husband totally spoilt me on mothers day with a new K Mix...well, his reward was this!
It's a baked cheesecake with berry drizzle and boy it is goo-ooo-oood! You can find the recipe here and make it yourself.

YUM!

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Breaking news:
* Essay is done!
* Romily is getting better thanks to another batch of antibiotics
* I have actually been crafting - I have started piecing the top for the Spring Blooms doll quilt. Woohoo!

Nothing like being outdone by your Mum!

My mum, who is a crafty crafter from way back, decided she'd give quilting a try after seeing me muck around with fabric. Look at this. This is her FIRST EVER QUILT. She chose the design and colours and the lovely ladies at Amitie helped her choose the fabric. Mum's basting it by hand and plans to handquilt it. It's queen size and destined for one of the spare beds in the house she and Dad are currently building on Bruny Island in Tasmania. *Sigh*Do I quit now? Just kidding. But gosh it's good. Years of sewing and crafting and a great eye for colour. Well done Mum!!!

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Meanwhile, we continue our horrible run of sickness. It's Romily's turn again, with a horrible tummy bug yesterday and today (and a night in between that I'd rather forget). Meanwhile, my major essay was due today, but my very understanding lecturer has given me a week's grace. Thank goodness. That means no crafting is going on here until I get it finished. But then - boy do I have plans! My exam is on 25 June and then I have several weeks' break until studies resume. Better make a list!

Fabric Shopper giveaway - good lord!

Who wouldn't want to win this????? Crikey! Count me IN!!

Daniel's quilt all wrapped up

After a three-month delay, I also finally finished the quilt for my friend's baby who was born in January - I posted a pic of the finished top way back in February, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get it finished until last week. I'm sure Jo and baby Daniel will understand! Daniel is Jo's second baby too.
I am very happy with this quilt. I am sure Jo will like it too. It's just in time for winter anyway!

I'm not the only one who loved the Tula Pink Full Moon Forest fabric. Check out AJ's and Nicolette's (4th photo down) work - more examples of how fabric can be used in such totally different ways to make beautiful quilts!