31 October 2014
Halloween for most people and the end of the tenth month.
I love reading and following other people's blogs however have found that doing one yourself takes time.

I have been working hard on getting my small handmade business viable and in the process have created many things.

I am still looking for that direction - something that sets me apart from the many others out there doing the same thing.

I continue to love everything connected to fabric, sewing and creating.

This piece is from a three day master class that I did with Pam Holland in early October.
The photo was taken by me in Kakadu National Park back in 2011.
I still have a little bit to do to complete however I am
very pleased with the results.












I have also completed some other original hand dyed items that have included photos.

This was made for the first anniversary of a couple who got married in Vanuatu.

I hand dyed the fabrics as well as adding in batiks.

The words word hand painted and then quilted.

Frangipanis were printed from photos and then appliqued on top.

It was well received by the couple.

I will post a tutorial of the process to create this as it is a great way to make a special memory quilt.





If you like my hand crafted items - I do have my shop on Etsy

https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/morethanjustquilts?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Cleaning out my Stash

Maybe it is time to have a complete overhaul. here in the southern hemisphere Spring is dancing on our doorsteps.
What a wonderful start it has been - cold fronts and all but one thing remains - the gardens are looking fantastic.
I have been making a quilt for a lady I worked with over the past 9 years. I did get her interested in quilting but I don't think she ended up with the same passion as me. However she did start to develop a healthy stash and passed most of this to me with a request that I make her a quilt.
I did start one last year and then stalled - something was not quite right.
Recently I have acquired two books by Camille Roskelly and in her latest one there was this glorious large quilt made up of only 16 blocks. Today I finished the blocks and tomorrow I will put them together.
I will post photos tomorrow as this quilt looks stunning. It is in classic blue and white and I cannot wait to load it on my frame and get into the negative spaces.

As I was completing these blocks today I looked around my work space and decided I really must complete the many almost finished tops as well as half completed.
I am also a fan of scrap quilts and have saved almost every piece of what I think is useable fabric over the past 30 years.

I am setting myself a challenge over the next year - how many quilts can I make with what I have.
I will document this process and post hopefully each day so it will be like a diary.

Keep coming back to see how I am going.

Dedicated to Robert

It was never my intention to let things pass me by.
However back in February life seemed to be perfect. I was working on creating my Etsy business, busy creating fabrics and other quilted treasures.
I was back living in a climate with four seasons which was wonderful.
I was spending time with my son who was going through some difficult times. His wife had decided to leave him the day before we arrived in Adelaide.
Christmas and his birthday in February were challenging as his wife was being particularly difficult in allowing him access to see his 6 year old daughter.
She filed for custody without giving my son the opportunity to discuss anything.
What followed was a difficult time of seeing lawyers, going to court where regular access to his daughter was granted.
However even though things on the surface appeared to be positive and moving forward it was apparently too much for my son.
Sadly in the early hours of May 24th he chose to take his own life.
You read about the effects this has on a family but it is only when it is your family do you truly understand what a life changing event it is.
We have been slowly getting back on track knowing that we will never be the same or even view life in the same way.
The craft that I enjoyed creating at times becomes too much as one has all that thinking time and your mind always goes back to wondering if you could have done something different.
There are certainly no winners in Suicide and I have since discovered that the way you are treated as being the mother of a person who has taken their own life is vastly different from someone whose child may have died from cancer or a road accident.
There are some fantastic support networks made up of people just like me and it does help to know what other people are dealing with.
And so I dedicate my blog to my son Robert who was just 33 years of age and to all the other people whose lives have been torn apart by this disease.
I have learned a lot about suicide since that day and we need to be more open in acknowledging it as one of the greatest threats to our society. It is growing at a rapid rate and here in Australia 6 people a day take their own lives, five of which are men.

Robert  20 February 1980 - 24 May 2013

And the story continues...

I have managed to cut out the rest of the pieces to finish the jelly roll quilt but in order to do this I needed to cut up pieces for a second one.
The photo above shows all of these works in progress. It took me a bit of time to get to this photo as I decided it might be quicker taking the photos on my phone and then uploading to my google+ account - never as easy as one thinks and in the process I shared it with all.
My 13 year old grandson is my technical advisor but he is at school at present so will need to wait for him to come home.
I think I will go and quilt to lower my stress levels at being a wee bit technically challenged - sitting at the sewing machine always calms me down.
Stay posted on my future experiences with all these new things.



I find it very difficult to stay on the one project which in some ways becomes counter productive.
I read about other people who are able to manage doing this but even though I have tried it seems not to work for me. Oh well they say variety is the spice of life.
 

Time flies when your having fun.......

Here it is another week and I don't seem to have been as productive as I thought I would be.
Thrown into this week has been my son's 33rd birthday and making curtains for one of the bedrooms.
The weather in Adelaide has been hot so it led me to more dyeing and sun painting - now I just have to get everything ready to put up on my Etsy shop. This all takes time - I need to get some of the descriptions written so as to streamline the process. The photos take time as well - composing the items, ensuring the lighting is good and then editing them - need to work on these next.

On top of this I have decided to create a quilt design. Some years back I made a quilt for a co-worker who was having her first baby. I liked the finished product and it is only lately that I thought it would be great as a quilt design - hence my first go at putting a design to paper. At present I am making one with all the information as drawings so will need to translate these into step by step instructions. I have some of the fabric from the original one that I made - some 10 years ago and will use it to make one from my instructions to ensure it works.
Time to get back to this project - also will finish the strip quilt from last week by adding a border.
Need to also quilt some of these items to complete them - hopefully next week when the weather cools down.

A lot has happened since I started this blog and now is the time to get really serious.
I have relocated from the top of Australia - Jabiru in the world famous Kakadu National Park to Adelaide which is known as the City of Churches - to the bottom of Australia. These two places are 3000 kms apart.

So far I am enjoying the change of climate. Although the temperatures are much the same at present the humidity is vastly different.Will be a different story in the winter.

I have been busy doing a few decorative changes to the house I have purchased as well as trying to re-establish a new creative space. I have a large shed but at the moment it is currently full of my daughter's belongings as she looks for a house.
Hopefully this will happen soon and then I can really get to work on my new space.

I have been busy dyeing fabric for a couple of projects that are stuck in my head - more on this later.
I will also post a tutorial of how I quilt a graduation which is coming out great. Very vibrant colours and great mottled look.

I have also been busy taking photos of flowers and have replaced the waterlilies with roses. Once again for some quilt ideas I am playing around with.

I am about to try selling my items at a local artisans market which should be fun.
Who knows what may come of it but from small things big things grow.

I have also bought a spinning wheel - something that I did in the past and yesterday I purchased a beautiful fleece from a lady who keeps a sheep as a pet by the name of Bertie. Will keep this activity for when the weather gets cooler.

The other thing that I am going to do is organise and clean up my stash. I have been reading many articles about this topic lately and now is a perfect time as it was all boxed up for the trip and so needs to be unboxed.
I have got 2 DVD towers which are perfect for fat quarters - to sort in colours as well as maybe themes. I have a lot more fabric than I realised so maybe some of it needs to move on as well. It appears that fabric can also be like your clothes - if you haven't played with it for a few years then maybe it is out of favour with you and it needs to go.

As far as creating new things I have made a couple of jelly roll quilts. I had an idea for one like those made from a jelly roll race. After the first 2 lengths are sewn together I cut them at random intervals and inserted plain white squares. I then kept going with the process. It worked out okay so now all that needs to happen is to complete the border and quilt.

Enjoy!

I have been busy organizing my items in my new shop on Etsy.
morethanjustquilts
This is a really interesting process and just taking the time to look at other shops and read about them is really rewarding.
There is so much talent and creativity in the world that it blows me away at times.
I am going to create a short tutorial on the sun painting that I do as it is a fantastic way to create an unique piece of fabric that can then be used in a variety of ways.

I am also trying to organize the hand dyed fabric that I have done and put up on the shop.
Next it will be to take photos of recently finished quilts also for sale.
i have lived in Kakadu for 10 years and am planning to move back down to South Australia at the end of the year. This means sorting out the accumulation of craft items to make this journey a little easier.
I will be placing many of these up for sale in my shop so this means more organizing and more photos.

I will add more photos here of the wonderful surroundings and the great inspiration that I get out of my backyard.