Wiggly worms

Who ate a hole in my quilt?



- the very hungry bookworm did!

(apologies to this bloke, who wrote this book :-)

Here is another bookworm:



also "eating" the same quilt.

not that it is really a "worm" ... it's body is worm like, but it has antennae ... which would technically make it a caterpillar ... but then an "inchworm" is a caterpillar too, and they still get called inchWORMs ... LOL

Here is the quilt:



The name of the quilt is "Bookworms" - It was/is my entry for the challenge section of this year's Canberra Quilters Exhibition - the theme was "A Novel Idea" ... most people made quilts about books they liked ... I made a quilt that looked like a book, with bookworms eating holes in the plot ... maybe that was because I have "lost the plot"? LOL

The "worms" are actually made from needle felted and stitched dog hair, which I just happened to have dyed with the same hair dye I did my hair with a few weeks earlier (there was dye left on my gloves and the blob of hair was lying around handy - so I decided to see what colour it would go ... then I realised it would be perfect for my bookworms). The yarn I used to stitch the segments and antennae with was some stuff I got given at a garage sale ... I also used it to make a shawl ... which took me ages ... and which I will blog about some other time ... (eventually ;-)

The "pages" of the book are bits of fabric - there is no batting - just layers of fabric ... some of it was an old sheet or something, and most of it was the lining from a rotten old set of hessian curtains that I found hanging in a store room at work (they stole our store room to make it into an office, and they were not going to want those rotten dusty old curtains in there ... so I took them down, took them home, and washed them ... not sure what I will use the hessian for - something weird and creative ... if I ever get around to it that is ...).

The "cover" of the book is a bit of leather ... it came in a bag of scraps I was given a few weeks before I made the quilt ... I was going to find something else for the cover (possibly the dead hessian curtains) but then I reallised the leather was perfect - the bit I used was about the same shape it is on the quilt - I just trimmed the edges at the top and left hand side, then snipped the little chunks out of the other edge to look like the bookworms had eaten chunks out of it ... I also ended up with a little chunk missing from my left index finger ... oops ... sharp scissors and blunt brain?

I wrote on the pages with an overhead projector marker (a permanent one ... which I have found work as well as any fabric markers I have tried, and actually seem to last longer before they run out/die) I kind of made up bits of story/etc that sort of half made sense with the first half of each line missing ... it was kind of fun doing that ... I wrote some of it before I finished the sewing, but then I had more room on the pages so I made up some more stuff ... I did the writing (and some of the sewing/etc) on the day that I had to deliver the quilt - nothing like a looming deadline to give one a spurt of creativity!

Talking about caterpillars and stuff - while I was looking for another photo, to go in the post I just put on this other blog of mine, I found this photo:



yes - it was meant to look like we have some kind of weird worm/caterpillar crawling around near the videos near my desk at work (the science staff room at a high school) ... but it is actually a potato chip/french fry (with a pin holding it onto the side of the shelves) ... and I did not put the eyes on it - those 2 dots, that look like eyes, were on there when I pulled it out from my bag of hot chips (from one of those take away chook places) a night or 2 earlier ... I couldn't eat it - it was too cute - LOL
... actually I think it is still lying around on/near my desk at work ... unless the mice have found it.
oddly enough - guess what was the first thing I thought of when I found that weird chip (french fry) ... I thought of a cartoon that got faxed to somewhere I used to work (back before e-mail became he way that stuff got sent around - odd things used to arrive by fax, and get pinned up on notice boards for all to see) ... can't find the exact same thing on the www, but this one is a coloured version of the same thing - http://www.thehumorarchives.com/joke/French_Fry
actually, I probably still have a photocopy of it filed away in a folder in the filing cabinet beside me, but I can't be bothered looking for it and (if I even find it) scanning it at this hour of night ...

in fact I probably should be going to sleep at this hour of night ... goodnight ...