Something else to share

Yesterday was the 12th anniversary of my moving to Australia and I think my DH is glad that I did since he sent me these flowers. I'd like to share them with all my readers and friends to say thank you for all the wonderful visits and kind, thoughtful and encouraging comments you leave me. I'm very appreciative and am so glad of the friendships and connections I've made from the community of bloggers that share my love of stitching. You guys often make my day!

I have been trying to be productive in a snail pace kind of way. I'm still making a loaf of sourdough every second day. It's such a soothing and satisfying thing to be making and eating hand made bread. I didn't think Mr Quiltsalott would get so fond of it that he'd let a bought loaf of bread go mouldy.  I'm committed to it now, there's no going back any time soon.

It's been ages since I made any klosje blocks but here's another 19 to add to my pile. I think the total now stands at 168. At this rate, it'll be a slow growing project, not that that matters in the least.

Below is a very piddly little photo but it's really hard to get the whole border in one shot so this will have to do. I just have to join this to the rest of the quilt and then the top is complete. I'll be back to show the whole top soon.

From the weekend.

I'm a day late posting the latest number of klosjes but here's the next twenty which brings the total to 149. I have to repeat fabrics but that doesn't bother me, it'll still look scrappy. 

It was a gorgeous sunny day yesterday so we headed off down south for a drive. I went to a shop called Japanache which sells antique homewares, furniture and Kimono's. They also have a small collection of patchwork fabrics and I came home with these. Don't ask me what they're for because even I don't know. They have texture in the weave and the red one is my favourite.

Another stop at the patchwork shop and these were picked to come home with me. There was a sign on the door which said absolutely no photography allowed so sadly I think that spells the end of showing off any shops here.

You might have seen the purses and needle keepers I sent to Kathie on her blog. These are the items I made for myself awhile ago that came with a pattern. The scissor case was too big so I made a smaller one but it's not practical since the scissors fall out.

This is the inside of the needle keeper. You put your thumb on the reel of thread and take out the last threaded needle to quilt or hand sew with. Then you take the next one and so on. If your eyes aren't good, you can get someone to thread them for you ready for a stitching session. The pattern for this item apparently dates back to 1849. I recieved one similar about twelve years ago in a secret Santa swap.

The accessories came with the pattern for the giant mother of all pincushions. You can get the pattern here.

Thank you to all who take the time to leave me a comment, they make my day. I reply to all of them unless you are set as no reply blogger. If you don't hear from me that's the reason. Some ask questions that I can't reply to and I'd feel bad if you thought I was ignoring you.

The links to my tutorials, including my applique techniques are on the side bar. If you click on them it'll take you to the post. This is for those who've asked.

Little finishes

When I was young, my mother told me not to start any new projects until I had finished what I had started. I think it stifles me to do that now and my abilities wouldn't grow without tryng new things.

However, the time comes when I really need to finish the annoying little things hanging around like this yarn bag I started last year. It didn't take long, I only had one handle and some flowers and leaves to do. I love it and now I have a special yarn project bag. The pattern is from Attic 24, be warned, once you start looking around, your fingers will start itching to crochet something colourful.

It hold so much and it's squishy and soft.

My other little finish was the pincushion kit I got from Ma Mercerie. I love how it turned out but I have to say when I looked at the macro photo, I can see areas for improvement, just little ones. My tension is a lot better than on the thimble ring I did. I found a lot of information on Ma Mercerie and on Temari Train that helped a lot.

For those who asked how the thimble is used, go to this post. 

After being a slacker last week, I did get to make 28 klosjes this week,

Please don't mind the ones turned the wrong way.

I have them stored by colour so I can see which piles need more. I think I'll start assembling soon. Total now is 129.

Just a little tidbit to finish off because I have to get ready, I'm off to a one year olds 1st birthday party.

I recieved a lovely gracious email from Rannveig about my little purse tutorial being the same as hers. Click here to see hers. It's purely coincidental as can happen and I applaud bloggers who keep an eye on these things.

Her one has the same shape and size and the zip is machine sewn in whereas mine is hand sewn. Her pattern is from a purse she had bought I think and mine came from a Japanese book but with changes made. I'll add a little note about this on the tutorial as soon as I have time. It's a very common purse and there are a lot of patterns out there the same or similar as we now realise.

Big stitching

I promised myself that I would finish the quilting on this cot quilt that I've been very, very tardy about finishing. In my defense, it is a very warm puffy wool batting, too hot for summer and my GS has just gone into a cot after being in a baby hammock. It's done now but I need to bind it with some orange and I've run out of the stripe I used. Maybe if I got all different oranges and did a scrappy binding? The whole quilt was made entirely from stash in the cupboard and that feels good.

My reward for doing the cot quilt was to get some stitches into this one. I'm using varigated perle cottons, (number 8) and just picking up whichever one takes my fancy.

I'm doing all the straight lines and outline quilting by eye without any marking.

It was hard to come up with something in these bigger spaces, I got there in the end.

I'm loving the quilt even more now it has quilting added. Just a note to those of you who want to give big stitching a go, make sure the knot you pull through is small and be careful, too hard of a tug and you may tear the fabric. Sometimes it helps to press your finger down on the fabric behind the knot to create some tension.

I raced to get some klosje blocks done in time for today, these fifteen were hurriedly stitched last night and added to the pile makes for a total of 

                                                  101

Happy stitching, Janet

Party of five

I've got the bad bunnies in line now that I bought in reinforcements. Meet alpha male bunny who likes to take charge.

The lure of some fresh, crunchy carrots did the trick.

A feast for the bunnies.

They have to sit nicely and wait patiently while we set up the party.

Happy bunnies.

Thanks Cath for the pattern in the Homespun magazine, I had a ball making these.

Thanks Clare for the free tutorial for the carrots. I reduced the pattern by 60% to make them more manageable for the bunnies.

Thanks Jeanette for making bunnies too and pointing me to the carrots.

Since I've been so busy rabbiting, not so many klosjes but I'll get going and  prep a whole lot more today.

Wishing you a very happy Easter weekend, Janet

Handing in my report card

It's Saturday and I've been out all day on a little day trip with Mr Q. I wish you could have come with me but I took photos so I can share but you'll have to wait until next time or this post will end up being huge.

I am reporting in with my klosjes for the week,  they look like these spools, not much room for thread.

Only twelve this week since I've been so busy. Any number over zero is good in my book.

I think I have the grand total of sixty five so far, not too shabby for three weeks.

I'm reporting back on the fusible products I was testing for applique on my last post.

Wash Away and Floriani Stitch n Wash Fusible are the two products. First of all, they need a medium heat with the iron and to be rinsed in warm water. They all have a percentage of soluble fibres which differ from one product to another.

For the Stitch N Wash it's 50% soluble and 50% non soluble fibres. They were ironed with a medium low heat and I stitched both products onto a piece of fabric.

I also sandwiched a piece of the Wash Away and stitched around it since this is what would represent the applique piece.

Here you can make out the amount of fibres for the Wash Away dissolving in the warm water.

If you click on the photo below, you can read the labels better.

Finally, the Stitch N Wash Tearaway. I should say that both products came out soft, contary to my first experiment but this tearaway has a little bit more body. Interestingly, the Wash Away didn't dissolve as many fibres in the piece that was sandwhiched but I dare say that after a few washes, that you'd get more fibres out.

I prepped this block ready to stitch using the Tearaway and I'll slit the back after washing to remove it. I used a glue stick to adhere the seam allowances. It pays to keep wipes and a handtowel on hand.

I should say that I'm a tried and true needle turner with a toothpick but I may use this method for difficult shapes. I like to have options and this was an interesting excercise.

Thanks to Miriam from Yellow Roses for giving me this lovely award which is so kind of her. Now, I'm rubbish with passing these on because I'm afraid I'll leave someone out. I visit so many inspiring blogs so I can't pick just twelve. To all bloggers who are out there putting their inspiring work on a blog, consider this awarded to you.

Stitching bliss

My immunity for catching bugs of the quilty kind is a bit low at the moment. I've been stricken with the big stitch bug. First I caught it off Jan and so did Amy. I can't help it, I love big stitch, I love how the threads sit on the surface of the fabric and create another dimension. I love how the texture of the piece comes alive and the stitches seem to dance across the surface.

I've been on the computer, browsing around to satisfy my curiosity on  Japanese Boromono which translates to rag thing. I've seen similar with Indian Kantha stitching which is running stitch arranged very basically or done elaborately. This is all been so interesting, to me, I'm drawn towards the folk art, utalitarian nature of it all.

After Jan shared the link to those bags, and then making a pact with Amy to try some stitch love, I decided that I would play with a design that was similar.

I wasn't loving it and it was hard work going through the strips. The fabrics are some random solids I had lying in a bin but not good quality. When I went to wipe a mark off, the colour of the blue crocked badly so I decided to call it quilts and do some other smaller thing.

I had a piece of Japanese cotton that seemed perfect.

This was quick and I decided to deliberately go for a random, not perfect type of stitch. The best part was freeing myself from being uniform, I like it a lot and I'll make this into one of the small purses. I'm satisfied but It's not the end, I'll be revisiting this type of stitching.

Since it's Saturday, I get to show my Klosjes for the week. Twenty is not too shabby. I've started adding some peachy colours.

I've had a spurt on some book buying too,  all very inspirational, who knows what I'll get up to after reading these.

Since Easter is coming, I had another small project in mind if I get in the mood to do it. Mr Q went and got these for me at the LQS, he got a lot of funny looks but he did well.

After a week or two of play, my sewing room is the worst I think I've ever seen it. I even feel embarrased for myself . A clean up is in order before I can to the machine, that's if I can find it.

A day late

I know now that the klosjes are stitched during the week and shown on a Saturday. Oops, I'm a day late but I think it must still be Saturday somewhere in the world.

Here's the week's worth, all 18 of them.  I do believe my hand stitching is getting a little faster.

I'm waving out to Annemieke she is one of the latest to join in.

I didn't show you the last two applique blocks for Stars and Sprigs. I'd love to move a bit faster on these but I've been distracted, in the nicest possible way of course.

I had some lovely comments on the bread I made and have been asked for the recipe. I don't want to do a whole post as I think there are already some great bread sites and videos on U Tube.

I am using sourdough but I'm making it hybrid using commercial yeast and it's just a basic recipe I made up. We don't like sour, sour bread so this gives a nice flavour and keeps for more than one day.

Here are my amounts in case you're interested.

1/2 cup sourdough starter

1 cup warm water

1 1/2 tsp dried yeast

2 1/2 cups flour ( I use 1/2 cup wholemeal and 2 cups white flour)

1 1/2 tsp honey

1 tsp butter

1tsp salt

If you don't know about this book, where have you been hiding! It's awesome for people with little time and produces a loaf that resmbles that holey, crispy chewy artisan bread. You can find it in most libraries or the basic  technique is on video here. Click here to go to the website.