Using up scraps

I decided that it was time I made a little patchwork project for me. Here it is all laid out in preparation for the initial piecing together. Any ideas about what it's going to be?



What if I show you this progress shot?





No? What if I tell you that the project also involves a connection with White Tiger basmati rice? Still no? I guess you'll have to wait until it's finished and I can take a shot of the piece in action. :-)

It's been lovely not having a wedding quilt to worry about these last couple of weeks. I've gone away for weekends and although I've taken handwork or knitting with me, I've not felt any pressure. The Knitting Olympics were fun and I finally managed to learn how to do Kitchener stitch (grafting) which was a great thing.

I've been pulling lots of stuff out of the garden in the last week or so. The soil is pretty crappy in places and in desperate need of a good dose of compost. This coupled with a desire to get rid of the plants that were just annoying me anyway has led to some pretty drastic culling (and the odd relocation) of plants.

Knitting Olympics victory

Knitting Olympics victory
Originally uploaded by Paisley Womble.

I finished my Knitting Olympics project. It's the Sigma tank top by Matt Waldrop in the Summer 2003 edition of Knitty. The yarn is Grignasco Safari which is a cotton/dralon blend (I looked Dralon up in the dictionary - it's a German proprietary brand name for an acrylic of some description). Project was knitted on Clover 4.5mm bamboo circs.

How to understand me better.

I found this meme on Pea Soup who got it from here. I like the slant of this theme as it is more about understanding and personal history, rather than just a list of favourite things.

Movies you need to watch in order to understand me better
A Fish Called Wanda
When Harry Met Sally
Peter's Friends
The Big Chill
Love Actually
Persuasion
Amelie
Carrington
The Hours
Office Space

TV Shows You Need to (Have) Watch(ed) To Understand Me Better
The Wombles
The Goodies
The Good Life
This Life
Dawson's Creek (before they went to college)
McCallum
Seachange
The Book Group
Rick Stein's Food Heroes
Coupling
The Amazing Race
Alias
Spicks and Specks
Shameless

Albums you need to listen to in order to understand me better
Billy Bragg - Workers Playtime and Talking with the Taxman about Poetry
John Mayer - Room for Squares
Flanders & Swann - At the drop of a hat
Billy Joel - The Bridge
Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour of Bewilderbeast
David Gray - White Ladder
Oasis - (What's the story) Morning Glory?
TISM - Machiavelli and the Four Seasons
Michael Penn - March
Icehouse - Man of Colours
1927 - ...ish
Pulp - Different Class
Pet Shop Boys - Very
Spice Girls - Spiceworld


Books you need to read in order to understand me better
Stephen Fry - Moab is my washpot
Laura Ingalls Wilder - All the Little House books
JK Rowling - All the Harry Potter books
Bill Bryson - Down Under (I think this was also published stateside as In a Sunburned Country)
Peter Preston - Bess
Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones' Diary
Ben Elton - This Other Eden
Tracy Chevalier - Girl with a Pearl Earring
Mary Grant Bruce - The Billabong books

Games You Need To Play To Understand Me Better
Sudoku
The Age Cryptic Crossword
Scrabble
Trivial Pursuit

Plays/Musicals you need to watch in order to understand me better
Salad Days
Westside Story

Places you need to visit in order to understand me better
Isle of Skye
Parc Guell in Barcelona
Blue Lagoon in Iceland
Shotover River in New Zealand


Comestibles and libations of which you need to partake in order to understand me better
Custard
Smoked salmon (unadulterated by capers, cucumbers or red onion)
Flat white (coffee)
Biryani
Oyako Don
Egg Hoppers
Spirulina

The Wedding Quilts are all complete...

M&A Quilt detail
Originally uploaded by Paisley Womble.

Bliss!

Yesterday was M&A's wedding and I finished their quilt at about 9am the same day. It's a double-wedding ring pattern, but I can't claim credit for the patchwork. I bought the hand-pieced quilt top on e-Bay a few years ago (from a girl in Kentucky if I remember correctly). I don't know if the seller was the maker. I backed the quilt with a green gingham and the wadding is unbleached cotton. The white bits are all hand quilted in a cross-hatch pattern. The coloured arcs are machine quilted along the outline to give the quilt a bit more definition (in a limited timeframe!). C made the bias binding from a green and white cotton print.

Today I'm enjoying the luxury of not feeling like I have to do anything. I've baked a banana cake, pulled out my fabric stash to have a little look at what I've got, had a little snooze... and that's about it really. Bliss!

The end is in sight

And then the new year begins in earnest?

We're now on the home-stretch for the M&A quilt due this Saturday (I've been working in the private sector too long - I see "M&A" and automatically think Mergers and Acquisitions). Just filling in the hand-quilting gaps. The machine quilting lines were all done on Sunday. C has almost finished making the bias binding so hopefully I can start to apply it tonight or tomorrow.

C asked me last week "what are you going to do with all of your spare time when you have no more wedding quilts to do?? ;-)". Good question. I came up with the following answer.

"read, go to the movies, be a bit more sociable (since my friends don't have the excuse of weddings to plan anymore!) ;-) ...... I might even start some more quilts - with no deadlines! (although I do plan to make 2 quilts this year for Mum and M's landmark birthdays in Feb 2007)"

See? I've discovered the secret of how to avoid quilt UFOs - give myself unmovable deadlines - wedding dates don't change, birthdays don't change. I seem to have turned myself into a lean mean quilting machine.

Mind you, I've got a lot of other things to be going on with this year. Painting my house is looming large on the horizon as is getting stuck into the garden. Lots of plants to pull out, soil to improve, decisions to be made about new plants, regaining custody of my worm farm (my worms got fostered out to my uncle and aunt when I went overseas 5 years ago - they've lived there ever since, but I'm getting them back) - lots of fun stuff.

I succumbed to temptation...

My order from Amazon for Kaffe Fassett's V&A Quilts and Quilt Road arrived today so I am poring over the lush photos and plotting future projects or at least dreaming about them.

I'm down to 6 blocks left to hand-quilt out of 42 on the M&A quilt and I have 9 days left to finish it. I'm cautiously optimistic that it will be finished, as long at the slight shooting pains in my left hand don't get any worse! C is going to help me on the weekend. She wants to learn how to make bias binding so I'll set her going with Shelley Rodgers' excellent instructions and I can try and knock over the machine quilting part of the project.