Mother of Two, and Quilt Art Inspirations

Spent some quality time being mother of two these last 3 days. Saturday and Sunday were spent emptying Becca’s room and restacking it. One and a quarter rubbish bags of "junk", a large box of toys for the school gala, some bits and bobs for Trademe. She now has EMPTY storage containers, and I’ve taken 1 basket off her for my quilting fabric.

Today we went to Quilters’ Dream first. They have a small stock of YLI variegated threads. I chose 3 – "Cafe Romano", coffee & cream; "London Drizzle", light and dark greys; "Teals", shades of teal. They also had a copy of "Altered Photo Artistry" by Beth Wheeler & Lori Marquette. Beth is the moderator of the Yahoo Rust dyeing group I belong to. I feel like a bit of a "wanna be", but then we all have to start somewhere. The book has a trial version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0, which I’m looking forward to playing with. I’ve already got some interesting ideas to try out – including using monofilament thread for texture.

Then we went and played Miniputt golf in the pouring rain - two rounds – lots of fun. Becca did very well for a first timer, and Tom (just turned 20 on Saturday) also did OK. Me, I’ve only ever played it once before, WON! Both rounds! Hehehehe. Fish & chips for lunch, then a visit to the grandparents – B&B.

Other recently inspiring input has come from old episodes of Simply Quilts – Machine Needlelace with Judy Simmons, and Nancy Prince’s Thread Painting – very cool. I’ve already made some logs, and next is some plants for my pond edge.

David is dubbing old episodes onto DVD for me, and about 1 in every 10 episodes have something really interesting or inspiring.

I've also discovered the joys of HGTV on-line video clips, and feature pages, which have instructions. Someday I'd like to sign up for The Quilt Show - Alex Anderson & Ricky Timms, but it's $25 USD, so will have to wait.

This is my Ghostgums rust dye print. I think the fence looks a bit wonky, and I'm not sure about my green grassy lumps, made using solvy and the needle lace technique. I think I'm going to remove them - They will live again! I've stitched in a dried pond, so next is to use monofilament to create texture.

The attempts at using my rust dyed cotton thread have not been successful - it won't feed thru the bobbin, or from the top spool, getting jammed each time. I've tried washing and soaking it, but to no avail. I'm going to try rust dyeing some Birch 50wt polyester thread, and see what happens with that. Might just have to use it for hand sewing - ugh!

I have a half day off tomorrow - I've told Becca it's a "stay at home" day, as I'd like to spend the morning sewing, not driving round the countryside in the pouring rain (gale-force north-westerly's are forecast!)