Valentino Exhibition and visiting Mooloolah

Wow, wow, wow - the Valentino Exhibition in Brisbane was amazing.  The designs are so unbelievably intricate and detailed, yet so wearable (if you are Model sized that is).To stand at the entrance of each of the halls and look in at the designs is breathtaking.  I just cant think of any other way to describe it.  If you have been fortunate enough to see them you will know what I mean. 

This was an amazing dress, the woven effect was beautiful.  The colours here don't do it justice.

The lining of this coat was too good to be hidden.          So soft and beautiful.

These are not my photos of course, as you are not permitted to take photos of the exhibition. 

Today I travelled with some of my friends to the Open Day of Mooloolah Craft Group.  The group is small but always puts on a brilliant day of showing off their work of the past 2 years, as well as providing morning tea and lunch, and lots of lucky door prizes.  We had a good day, finished off by visiting a couple of Patchwork shops.  It doesn't matter how many stores we visit, the range of fabrics is always different. 
This used to be the Craft Group I belonged to when living in that area.

I took along the quilt I have been working on lately, to show in their Show and Tell. 

Here is a sneak peak of it while I was working on the quilting.  I need to wait for daytime for better light to take a photo of the whole quilt.

Happy birthday Kai.

Last week I started quilting a quilt that has been hanging around a little too long.  It is progressing well, and I am pleased with how it is turning out.  It is always a puzzzle to know just how to do the quilting so is good when it comes together.  But it had to be shelved for the weekend.  Maybe this afternoon I will get back to it.  Pics will be in next post.

Saturday a group of us met up at Bribie Island for lunch and a fun time of chatting, laughing and enjoying each others company, having a bit of Show and Tell, and checking out new projects and patterns.

Today is our second Grandson's 5th birthday.  Yesterday we went along to Australia Zoo to celebrate his birthday with him.  I hadnt been there for some years, so it is always good to see the progress.  He and his younger brother had a wonderful day.

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His Mum made him a dragon cake.  (Rather a happy looking dragon I think).

Are you doing it right Mum???

I can cut it myself now I am 5.

 I think Little brother Charlie is dreaming of when it is his turn to choose the cake and be the centre of attention.

Repurposed Thursday.

I thought it might be fun to join in Re-purposed Thursday hosted by Fee. 

This is my Scissor Tree.  (sorry to say it is not easy to take a good pic of - in real life it looks better than this, and is very useful).  In its former life it was a tea light candle holder, with little lanterns hanging off the hooks.  I decided to make use of it for my scissors when my collection outgrew the mug stand I had used previously.

Oh dear, that does look a jumble.  But at least I can easily find my scissors, and truly it doesnt look that bad.


The little pots around the bottom were spice canisters, but fit perfectly around the base of the scissor tree, and hold rotary cutters, pencils, etc.

This pair of tailor's shears are one of my treasures.  They belonged to my Grandmother. Before she was married, she worked with her Father as a tailoress.  (He was a tailor in Broken Hill at the time).  My father had them for many years, and I must say they were used and abused over that time.  I claimed them after he died, and had them cleaned and sharpened.  In spite of their long and arduous life, they now cut beautifully.  That is definitely a testament to the quality of them.  The scissors would have to be between 90 and 100 years old.

My treasure indeed.  And they have been re-purposed back to their original purpose.

Purchases and spool collection

My visit  to the Home Patch store in Bathurst was a highlight of our trip to Orange.  I was tempted to buy more, but with limited time came small purchases.

The coloured buttons in the front are to give to my home quilting group friends.  They are so beautiful - and I couldnt resist buying them.   One piece of fabric is for a project coming up, and the others are "just because" ones.

 I found the spools there as I was leaving, so they had to come with me to add to my small but growing collection of old or interesting spools and reels.

From Bathurst we then headed to Sydney and I was able to have a bit of time with our second youngest Grandson, Sammy.  We dont see him very often at this stage.

Such a cute little one.

Crazy times

Well, after the past 2 or 3 weeks of crazy rush around chasing my tail time I am back to normal (whatever that is).  We spent last week at Orange for the Australian Field Days.  The company had a site there, and it seems to have been very successful. 

We had to stay in Bathurst - late decisions mean that motels were already booked out in Orange.  But, we stayed in the Citigate Motel on Mount Panorama.  Wonderful time !!!

There it is - the Motel.  From our balcony we looked at the Armourall Bridge. 

 Of course if we are staying there we at least have to do a circuit of the racetrack, dont we.  How do they travel at the speeds they do ????

The view as you drive around is spectacular - who would want to go so fast that you miss it?  But then I guess after doing the number of laps they do, it would be all too familiar - and they do want to get to the finish line asap.

My task for the site display was to make some paperweights with the company logo.

Before we left Bathurst, I was fortunate enough to have a little time to visit The Home Patch, and was in awe of everything in the store.  Beautiful fabrics, beautiful gift items, beautiful stitcheries.   Everywhere I turned I saw something new. I could have spent hours there, but we were on our way to Sydney, and time was limited.  Hopefully I will be able to visit there again one day.  I did manage to buy a few things - fabric, buttons etc. -   which I still need to take a pic of, so will post it later.

Now we are back home I have heaps of catching up to do.  So I will be off to visit some blogs and see what everyone has been up to over this past 2 weeks.

New binder cover

On Monday our craft group got together to finish off our Binder Carry-all, using the beautiful binder cover pattern from Joypatch.  The dresden plates were made a few weeks ago, and now the binder is assembled, and is ready to be filled with my patterns for WIPs and my Want to do's.  I dont think it will take long to fill - like so many, my list is loooong.

The front cover.  The background is very light blue fusions fabric, though it looks kind of murky cream in this pic.

The spine with embroidery.  (I did mine on the machine, rather than the beautiful hand embroidery in Joy's pattern - sometimes I need to take the quicker way or it will take too long to complete.)

 Inside the front cover - I need to find 3 buttons to put on the pocket flaps.  I added the little piece of doctors flannel on there to hold  needles and pins.

The back cover.

After sewing on the dresden plates and doing the quilting I decided to go for a bigger binder - not thinking that the dresden plates would then be off centre. I can live with that.  We also found that our binders must have been slightly bigger than the one Joy used, and so we added a little extra to both length and width of our cover.  All of the binders look good - with a variety of colours and finishes.

Late Early Bird finishes

Finally here are some more finishes for the Early bird Christmas Crafting. 

 At the Craft and Quilt Fair last year was a kit for this bird Christmas ornament.  It was so enjoyable to make, so I have made a couple to give away this year.

 I have made this little purse from the pattern of the teepee purses, but have sewn the last seam flat instead of forming the teepee shape.  Again the design is from Designs by Sick, and it is made completely in the hoop on my embroidery machine, apart from that last seam.  This one is filled with "necessities" to carry in a handbag - tissues, bandaids, hand cream,  anti bacterial hand wash, pencil, etc.all together in the purse to make it easy to transfer from one handbag to another as the recipient is rushing out the door. 

 A couple of the very young people on my gift list will enjoy these owls, also completely made on the embroidery machine apart from the opening for stuffing.  They are so colourful and such fun to make.  This is a design from Hatched in Africa.  It has been good to use my embroidery machine to make things other than straight embroideries, and to see how versatile they are.

This month has been filled with Family things, so sewing time was much shorter.  I was really pleased to get these finishes.

Also in the last two weeks I have been moving my sewing room from where it was in the dining room area of our house, to the garage.  I still have a bit of a way to go but it is working out well and should be good when finished.  Theres nothing like moving camp to remind us of just how much we have stashed away in our sewing areas. 

Peta has been enjoying using her cooking set with her playdoh this week - and the apron is being worn every day.  She seems to favour the cherry fabric side.  She is such a cutie.

The Party

Peta had a wonderful 3rd birthday with her friends.  She was wearing a Tinkerbell costume, and one of the Mum's there did facepainting.  She did an amazing job.

Peta liked her apron, and the best thing was she could put it on by herself without straps needing to be tied.  She did the velcro waist strap up straight away. She then explored the cooking set and was keen to be able to try it out.

Happy Birthday, Peta.

Tomorrow we are going to visit our Son, DIL and children for Peta's 3rd birthday party.  Not too far - just over an hour each way if traffic is not too heavy.  Peta is our only Granddaughter, the other 5 Grandchildren are boys. 
So today I dug out some girlie fabrics  to make her an apron, as we are giving her a little cooking set.  She loves to help Mum.  I used the pattern for the reversible apron from here.  But I substituted the straps from here.  Hopefully having the elasticated over the head strap will mean she can put it on herself, and the velcro on the waist strap will be easier and quicker to attach rather than tying the straps at the back. 

At our Machine Embroidery club this month we made tee pee bags.   They were so quick to make - even the zip was sewn in as part of the process in the hoop.  These will make great little gifts for the Early Bird Christmas Crafting over at Judith's blog

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We had a choice of quilted styles for the bottom of the bag, and quilted, embroidered, appliqued or embellished tops (or all 4 together if we wanted to.)  This design is from here.  I am going to make some more of these for Christmas gifts.

Settled!!!

These past few weeks have been so crazy.  I have been helping my daughter pack ready to move from near Caboolture to Moree in NSW.  That is a full on task with a 4 month old to care for as well.  However we managed to meet the deadline, and headed off to Moree on Wednesday.  Thursday  saw us constructing wardrobes from Ikea. 

We still had to add the hanging rails and the doors, however her husband is home for the weekend so hopefully he has been able to help her do that.

We also managed to reconstruct the bed before I had to head back for home.  We were very pleased that everything fitted back together.  (It is evident there is a baby living here.)

Harry was quite used to just "hanging about" while we worked.  Such a good little fellow.

It was sad to leave them , but sure is good to be home again.  It was so relaxing to sit at my sewing machine this afternoon.