All the Fun of the (Craft :) Fair

There is one particular weekend each year, when someone says "have a good weekend" I can Fairly confidently say "yes, I will" ... not specifically because of the Craft Fair, but because included in that is the Canberra Quilters exhibition :)

I generally manage to enter at least one quilt, sometimes a Few ... This year I entered Four ... and, surprisingly enough, I actually got them all Finished in time for delivery day (just! - there *might* have been some Frantic last minute sewing involved, as is usual For me :)

The Craft Fair/Quilt exhibition actually goes For more than just the weekend - it is also on the Thursday and Friday, but I generally can't go on those days because I am at work (as was the case this year too) however on Saturday and Sunday usually Find me there For the whole day, either wandering around looking at quilts or checking out the vendor stalls, and buying something or another that I probably don't really need (although this time I bought a few buttons and charms' and a pack of Fat quarters - which are 1/4 of a metre of quilt Fabric - and I Found some wooden star shaped beads, there were only 2 packets left, but if there had been more I would have bought more because I had been wanting more For a while - they are the same as the ones I used for the Fidget bracelets I posted about a Few months ago - I had Forgotten where I got them From ... I guess it was at the Craft Fair last year :)

I had started typing about my Exhibition Entries as my E post for ABC Wednesday ... but I kind of never got around to copying it in to blogger (From the notes app on my iPad, where I typed it) and Editing it ... but I did post something Else For that, over on my Wordpress blog - which I created a Few years ago, and decided to Experiment with again, to see if it works better than Blogger ... that post is at https://aykayem.wordpress.com/2017/08/09/everything-is-starting-to-make-sense-now/

Anyway ... I decided to copy a big chunk of the E stuff into this post, because kind of Fits nicely here:

Excited ...

... and Extremely surprised and happy ... I Entered 4 quilts in the Canberra Quilters Exhibition ... and one of them got a second prize! 

I actually found out I had won a second prize a few days ago, while I was Entertaining myself, being Energetic, and just a little bit crazy, taking photos in the wind and rain, on top of Mt Stromlo, after having gone on a bushwalk all morning, had coffee, and then walked up 2 other smaller hills to find Geocaches :)

I would include a photo of it here ... Except ... In my usual Extremely disorganised state (Executive Function is not one of my strong points :) I Ended up finishing the last of the stitching on one of them at about the same time as I needed to walk out the door to go and deliver them ... and I only just made it in time ... and I didn't take photos of the quilts before I left home because inside my house is a bit dark and outside there are patches of bright sunlight with weird shadows in all the wrong places, so I had figured I would take photos at the Canberra Quilters rooms, when I got there to deliver the quilts, as the lighting is better for photos there - a lot more Even ... But when I arrived, the people checking and signing the quilts in were ready to head home because the heating had not been working all day and they were freezing, so I didn't get a chance to take photos ...

I was hoping to be able to take photos today, when I was there helping hang the exhibition. .. but, after the Extremely frustrating and difficult task of organising to work some Extra time Elsewhen, I order to Extricate myself from work slightly Early, I had just headed off and driven on,y a short way down the road when I was called and told threat the hanging was done, so I do t need to go ... so ... I Expect I will be Finding a way to include my quilt photos in an F post next week :)

Of course I Forgot to actually Finish and post that ... but now I have taken some photos of the quilts I had in the exhibition, so I can Fiddle with those so they look ok and put them in here For you all (the 2 people who might read this? lol) to see:

(I also stole my descriptions, From the online catalogue (a First this year - they used to do a printed one), in case they are too hard to read on the signs, in the photos.)

Falling apart... and putting myself together again                                         84 x 132 cm 

Andrea made this quilt at the various drop-in sessions in the Canberra Quilters rooms, from scraps she picked up from ‘the free-to-a-good-home’ bucket. Coming in and sewing this and other things was good therapy while she was off work, recovering from a stress disorder. 

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Crosses? or Plusses?                                                                                            101 x 101 cm 

This quilt was made from blocks done Canberra Quilters Modern Quilt Group meetings. The name means that, sometimes, things that seem like ‘crosses’ (such as unfortunate events) can turn out to be ‘pluses’ – it all depends on how one looks at life. 

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Late Bloomer (finally finding myself)                                                                   50 x 70 cm 

Having spent most of her life feeling like she was fighting an invisible enemy, this year, at age 54, Andrea was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. This was actually good news – rather than having missed her prime, she can now be a late bloomer and be happy being herself. 

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Whatever Happens...Happens                                                                              30 x 26 cm 

Draw a rough idea; find fabric; draw a neater design, but totally change it; change fabric; change design a bit more; do nothing for three weeks; submit entry form; start making quilt. Yes, that is how someone whose life has gone a bit haywire does things! 

And ... this one is not mine, nor is the photo (I forgot to take one on my phone, so I "borrowed" this one from the Canberra Quilters Website - this one also won a prize), but I did help make a tiny bit of it - I was at the meeting where we sewed the blocks, and I think I put together about 4 blocks, using fabric someone else had, because the type/colour fabrics we used were something I don't actually have in my stash ... I can't actually remember what fabric I used, which makes it a bit hard to pick out which blocks ... or if they actually even ended up IN there ... sigh 

Kross Kut Kaffe                                                                                                      169 x 154 cm 

Members of the busy Canberra Quilters Modern Quilting Group contributed some Kaffe Fassett and low volume background fabrics. Some fun and creative collaborative piecing and cross-cutting revealed a chaotically intriguing and colourful modern quilt. 

I did make my own Cross Cut quilt too ... but it is still only a top ... I wanted to enter it in the exhibition, but it only fitted in the same catagory as 2 of my others, and we could only enter 2 quilts in each catagory ... besides ... I still have not worked out how the heck I want to actually quilt it ... or when I will actually get around to it ... lol
Because I don't still have the photo on my phone, and can't find it quickly on my Google photos online - here is a screenshot of my post on Instagram - which is where we found out about this design :)
(if you have Instagram and type in that # you will see a whole lot more, and I found the link to the instructions in there too ... not that I really followed them that exactly or anything ...)

There are photos of the prize winning quilts on the Canberra Quilters website ... At http://canberraquilters.org.au/2017-members-exhibition-results/

Oh ... and, like most of my posts on here, this post is a bit weird because it is my letter F post for https://abcwednesday.com/ :)

Eventful Exhibitions and all the Fun of the (Craft and Quilt) Fair

ok ... so this looks suspiciously like an E post for ABC Wednesday, even though we are up to the letter F this week ... to be honest - that is Exactly what it was going to be, until the chunk of spare time I thought I was going to have to organise some photos and write it didn't actually Eventuate ... but that is Fine - because the subject of this post also quite nicely leads into a Few things that can also just as nicely work for the letter F  ;-)

A couple of weeks ago, was the annual Canberra Quilters Exhibition, which is now on during (and as part of) the Craft and Quilt Fair (organised by a mob called Expertise Events - lol).

As usual - I Entered a Few things ...

First (first finished in this case ;-) was the diary cover that I made back in January, and blogged about at the time - that post is here - http://aykayem.blogspot.com/2011/01/zzz-zen-and-art-of-stitching.html (yes ... another ABC Wednesday post - lol - scroll down past the couple of "doodles" I drew and you will find the diary cover ... and when I found this post to tell Mum where to find it so she could look - I also noticed that further down is a photo of another small quilt that I had sort of forgotten about - I probably could have entered it in the quilt show if I had remembered it at the time entries were due! ... next year will probably be too late, becuase it will have been made too long before the show to be allowed under the rules, unless they change them back to what they were a few years ago when it didn't matter when the item was made ;-)

Here is a photo of it hanging in the Exhibition:



... with the card for someone else's stuff, and the corners of a few other items "rubbed out" (using GIMP ;-) because I don't know if they really want photos of their stuff on my blog (or anywhere on the www for that matter)

and yes ... it seems the quilt judge actually liked it! (didn't come first/second/third - but I got this neat certificate saying it was "highly commended" ... which is more than I expected to get for anything I entered this year)

btw ... once I decided to enter it I took it off my diary, to keep it clean/new looking ... so my poor diary had to be naked again for a while ... it is back on my diary now - and I think I am the only person I know of who is using a diary with a cover that has been "highly commended" by a quilt judge - lol

Next is my challenge quilt (next photo, not next Finished - I Forget Exactly what order I Finished them in anyway - the last Few were done in an Extremely Fast rush - LOL)

The theme we had to follow, for the challenge, was "Home" ... as usual I had several ideas, most of them looked good in my head but I knew I probably wouldn't be able to make them look that good in fabric ... except for this idea - because I had actually done something that looks similar in the past - and that did look good (in fact I believe it is still getting admired whenever anyone sees it hanging up inside Mum and Dad's campervan ;-)

Anyway ... this is (a rather bad photo of) my challenge quilt - I can't take another one right now because I don't actually have it here at home (they become a travelling Exhibition for a year so it did not come home with me at the End of the Exhibition like the others did)



oh poop! ... I just realised, when I was fiddling with that photo - I Forgot to colour the lake in blue! LOL
(or draw on a few green tree symbols or something, for a bit of extra colour/interest/realism/whatever)
I came up with the idea of doing a map to Find my way home ... and got to thinking about how home is the place where one is at ... so this is kind of meant to depict where I am at, and the stuff that is happening around my life ... or something like that ... hopefully reading the place names on that map will help my Explanation make a bit more sense ... and it may help Explain why my blog posts are as weird as they are, and as sporadic as they are ;-)
(it is no co-incidence that the "here be dragons" is right near "procrastination plateau" at the bottom of "slippery slope" LOL)

My miniature quilt probably also explains a few things about me:



... there are definitely a lot of things about this that the "quilt police" would arrest me for - wobbly weird stitching and lumps and bumps and tucks and puckers and creases and wrinkles ... but I made it because I wanted to (the "Tiny Treasure" (miniature quilt) catagory does not have to be to any theme, but this quilt was actually another idea I had for the "home" theme - figured it was not that easy to make a good looking bigger version so I did a little one - and I like how it turned out ;-)

I only had 2 actuall QUILTS in the quilt show ... but they have catagories for creative clothing - which can be actual vests/coats/etc wearable things, and accessories. So ...

I entered this bag:



which was easy to make - machine quilted some grey fabric, hand stitched between the lines of machine quilting (which takes quite a while to do but I really enjoy doing that kind of stitching and stuff) and made it into a bag ;-)

I also found some green fabric that I had machine quilted with black thread (as an experiment for something or other that I ended up not needing for what it was originally done for) and I decided that seeing DH had just bought us an iPad - it needed a bag to keep it in (so it didn't rattle around in places like the car glove box when we took it somewhere) - so I did some gold hand stitching in between the black, and made it into an iPad sized pocket:



Trouble is ... I finished the bag in time to use it on the holiday we were taking the iPad on ... but the quilt show was AFTER the holiday - so I did not want to use the bag and get it dirty/scuffed/whatever before the quilt show (which could have easily happend while I was taking all those photos of food that I posted to Facebook - lol) - so I put it away, rather than using it, and then had to whip up another bag for the iPad!
(no photo here ... think I took one, but it is still on the camera - I might have to post that, and some better photos of some of this stuff, at a later date)

The other thing I made ... was for the creative clothing challenge - same theme as the quilt challenge ("Home") but had to be either clothing or an accessory ... so I kind of somehow came up with a rather weird idea ... and was in a bit of a contrary/cheeky mood - and figured that I would be a bit mischevous and enter something rather weird and wonderful ... I was kind of expecting to totally confuse the organisers and have them wonder what the heck it was and what to do with it ... because this is actually a HAT!



pity they didn't tell me they needed a "head" for it - I could have found/made something that would have worked (even a foam ball on a stick with fabric over it would have worked, had I known ... or been able to be there helping in the afternoon/evening on set up day like I usually do, but couldn't this year because I had a meeting to go to on the other side of town).
It does actually fit my  head - I made it so it would (no Mum - you don't have to walk beside me when I wear it - and yes - I DO intend to wear it ... somewhere - lol)
 ... it is meant to look like a hollow tree trunk, that is "home" to a bird (in a nest) and a whole pile of other creatures (worms and spiders made from yarn, plastic lizards, spiders, snakes ... etc).
(and the bird's body is a ball of yarn - because I ran out of time to crochet the body - although now I kind of prefer the idea of using a ball of yarn anyway ;-)

Funny thing is ... my weird idea kind of backfired on me - in a really nice way - lots of people actually liked it, including the quilt judge! - in fact she liked it so much that she awarded me that nice blue ribbon - yes - it came First! LOL
(and, I have not got it yet, because prizes are awarded at the next meeting - but according to the list in the catalogue - my First prize is a voucher to go and spend at a local quilt shop ... so I can go buy more Fabric to Fill up my sewing room ... or maybe I could spend it on some Fancy quilty gadgets/tools to Fiddle with?)

btw ... I Found the blog post where I wrote about the other quilt I made that looked like a map ... the post is at http://aykayem.blogspot.com/2007/07/magical-map-of-journey-of-life.html ... but now that I know when I posted it I can go and copy the html for the link and put it in this post so the same picture also shows up here:



... and so you don't have to go read all the other junk in that old post (although you can if you like - your keen stare will not wear the electrons off your computer screen ;-) I will explain what it is right here - I made this small quilt for Mum and Dad, and gave it to them for Christmas one year ... Mum made a LOT of quilts, and Dad used to work in a hardware store - so there is a "Quilt Town" and a "Hardware Hill" ... and a few other odd things ... lol
Both of those quilts are made from bits of the same peice of fabric - a length of calico that I rust dyed (by wrapping a whole pile of rusty junk, and dirt and stuff, in it and leaving it in a wet soggy heap for a day or 3 before I shook all the stuff off/out of it and washed it)

Anyway ... too bad if this blog post is not Finished ... because I have dedided it is ;-)
- I should be heading off to bed ... and even if I don't do that - I was meant to be doing other things this evening and still have not done them - and the main one was to Find some Fabric that I need to start making something that I want to have Finished For the textile art exhibition that is also coming up in a Few weeks time ... a Few too Few weeks ... as in I only have about 2 weeks to Finish the thing that I need that Fabric For!
(hopefully it will only take me a Few hours to make it ... providing I can Find a particular box of Fancy Fabric that I know I have hiding away ... somewhere ... !)

er ...

goodnight.

Crochet stuff and a few other things that start with C

I have been meaning to post some photos of some stuff I have Crocheted for ages ... so ... needing something for a C post for ABC Wednesday seems like a good excuse to actually to do it ;-)

... now I just have to find the photos I have taken ... and see what I don't have photos of, and actually FIND the items I don't yet have photos of so I can take some ... no wonder I drive myself Crazy!

ok ... I found some crochet photos, and some other C stuff ... now I just have to put them in here ... hopefully it won't take long - I spent too long finding and editing photos (some needed cropping and stuff) ... and I WAS going to be in bed by this time of night ...er ... morning ... because I have to get up for work in a few hours ...

I will start with the crochet ones ...
... and first - some shawls I actually made a couple of years ago, but didn't take photos of until late last year:

A green (wool) and black (who knows what sort of yarn it was) one:



with a rather cluttered background ... must take a better photo sometime ... or (even better but harder to organise) get someone to take a photo of me wearing the thing ...

A pinky purple/black/silver one:


done in a couple different fancy yarns.
And another one I actually made even earlier ... this thing is HUGE:



That is the top edge of the shawl stretched out down the passage - the but under the cat's tummy is the bit that goes on the back of my neck ... the bit that hangs down the back is actually draped over the dog's paws and he has his head on it - LOL
btw - the last few rows on this ended up so long that not only did it drive me mad, but each row took TWO balls of yarn!
(and it still drags on the ground after I wrap it around myself ... but it is nice and warm so I could probably use it as a snuggle rug or something ... or as my costume next time I am invited to a fancy dress party and want to go as a wookie ;-)

This is my "rainbow shawl" that I finised a year or 2 ago:


It is made from some fine wool I was given, and when I finished crocheting it this is what it looked like:


and yes that is asphalt under it - I spread it out beside my car, in the mostly empty car park at wiork, to take the photo.
This is what it looked like after I soaked it in some vinegar for a few minutes and then arranged it in the bottom of a large ice cream tub, attacked it with various colours of food dye, and zapped it in the microwave for a few minutes (until it was hot, so the dye would set):


hmmm - if you click on this to see it bigger you might see how clean the kitchen floor probably isn't - lol

This is something weird I crocheted last year:


it was for the Summer challenge for the textile art group I am in - we had to do a hand of some sort, on a stick - they were then displayed at the exhibition later last year. I crocheted a hand with long pointy fingers ... then I was mucking around and tied knots in the fingers ... and decided I liked it that way.

Some crochet vines I made for the textile art exhibition last year:


The light green one is some weird green wool I had in my yarn stash, and could be worn as a scarf if I want to. The darker one is some even stranger fuzzy yarn I got from the op shop, with flowers made from some fuzzy yarn (same sort as in that huge shawl) and the pods are made from felted dog hair - so maybe it is a dogwood vine? (hmmm I wonder what dogwood actually IS ... something I have seen mentioned in books I have read, but it isn't native to Australia ... I might have to "google" it sometime ;-)

This is a green cotton shawl I made last year ... in September/October - mostly in the car on the way to/from Queensland (and some of it in front of the tv/etc at Mum and Dad's place, and the last bit at a friend's place here in Canberra just after the trip to Qld.) ... so I call it my "travel shawl"



the danby bits were fun to make ;-)
this is the back of the same shawl:



I also made another (smaller) one in cream coloured cotton, but I have not taken a photo of it yet (I think i took these photos while I was still crocheting that one) I started the second one while i was part way through the green one, because I wanted something smaller (without such long rows as I was up to with the green one) to test out if the pattern I had in mind for the last few rows would work ok, and to work out how many stitches I needed to have in the row when I started the pattern bit ... so once I worked out the pattern and how many stitches in each repeat/etc - I had a miniature shawl - so I kept adding to it until I ran out of that particular yarn (in fact I did run out of yarn part of the way around the edging but I had something else that was similar enough to use for the last bit of the edging and not show up as different ;-)

These are some quilted fabric Coffee Cup Coasters I made in December:


I used 6 of them as part of the Christmas gifts I gave to the science teachers I work with (we seem to have a tradition where everyone puts a little something on each other's desks at the end of the school year ;-)
The other 3 are on our coffee table, but I am not sure they get used ... or even noticed ... lol
This is a beetle ... it wasn't in the B post, and it IS in this C post, because I took the photo during the Canberra Quilters meeting last week - I found it on the floor near my feet during the raffle draw (after which everyone gets up and stomps around packing the Chairs up) so I picked it up to save it from getting Crushed underfoot - and it Crawled around on my fingers and on my lap, making Chirping noises!


...  much to the amusement of the few people sitting Closest to me ...
(not a very Clear photo - it wouldn't stay still! ... so I Clicked about 8 photos then Chucked it out the door)

I found some Cloud photos too:


I often take photos of Clouds .. I think these are Cumulus, probably in the process of becoming Cumulo nimbus (those big tall thunderstorm clouds) Because we had a Crashing big thunderstorm not long after I took this photo last week.
This one was taken from very Close to the same place as the other one (a Couple of metres away probably)
but it was a Couple of days later ... and there was an even bigger storm even sooner afterwards ... with Crazy purple streaks of lightning and rain so heavy it was hard to see where I was driving ...



During the storm I just happened to be picking a friend up from work and driving us both to her place ... I live thunderstorms and she ... doesn't  ... so every big flash of purple lighting I would say "wow" and she would say "s..t" (or worse ;-)
And last (beCause I have well and truly enough photos in here already) 3 videos of a spider - Argiope sp. (not sure which one - but this is the genus the Saint Andrew's Cross spider is in) ... although it could be a Nephila sp. (which is another genus in the same family - the Golden Orb Weaver is in this genus) .
btw - yes I guess it is a long stretch for a C thing - but it was Creeping and Crawling around it's web, next to my Compost heap:











I know - too Creepy? lol

... and too late ... to make the Cut off for adding to the linky thingy, for the letter C posts, before it Closed ... oh well - I will just have to put the link in a Comment ...

hmmm - a C post and only one photo with the Cat in it (and she had to share that one with the dog!) but I am sure she will Cope ok with that.

Zzz ... ? ... Zen and the art of stitching?

[Note: this sounded like a great post - in my head - while I was out walking the dog an hour or so ago! ... I wonder how much of it I can remember now that I am actually IN here typing it all up?]

[Another Note: the dog walk was actually a day or so ago now ... but I came in here and started typing this about an hour after walking the dog ... spent an hour or 2 typing it, then went and took photos, came back in here and typed a bit more, and did a pile of editing, and somehow I seem to be still up at "stupid o'clock" again.
btw - I can type quite fast, but it usually takes me a while to think up what I actually want to type]

Zzzzzzz ... oops?! ... I slept in? LOL
... actually no ... well ... er ... yes - not having to go to work at the moment (I work at a School - so am officially on leave for most of January) means that I have been staying up until "stupid o'clock" in the morning and sleeping in until lunch time most days ... but that is not why I am almost probably definitely too late for a Z post for ABC Wednesday (because the linky thingy is closed ... sigh ...)
I kind of didn't have any fantastic ideas for Z ... and then what few I could think of kind of paled into insignificance and didn't seem worth me raving on about, in light of what has been going on with all the floods (and some bushfires, just for variety) here in Australia (and in a few other places for that matter).

so ... this post sat here as a draft with this small list of ideas in it and nothing else:

Zed (as opposed to Zee)
Zonked?
stuff with Z genus/spp names?

The were a few things that I thought of while I was logged in doing my X post, or maybe it was while I was typing up the other thing I posted on Tuesday?
hmmm 3 short lines doth not an interesting blog post make - LOL
Zed is how we say the letter Z here in Australia ... well - except for way too many kids who have been watching a bit too much American TV and say Zee instead of Zed ... sigh ...
Zonked is probably what I should be instead of being up too late getting lost in blogger/doing my e-mail/playing with Gimp/on Facebook/surfing on Youtube or some other weird website I found/whatever.
And I could have found any number of Zoological or botanical/etc things to post about ... like spider species/genera with names starting with a Z ... or Zooplankton ... or Zygospores, Zygomycota, Zygotes ... etc etc etc ... I could have even posted about Zooxanthellae (except I only just found out what those are a few minutes ago - while getting side tracked on a website where I was originally looking at stuff about spiders - lol - well - a link to a sea slug forum sounded too weird NOT to go and have a quick peek at ;-)
(btw ... the first 2 links go to some random Amazon.com search results ... the third one goes to the Australian Museum website - where I was looking at spiders, and the sea slug forum - lol)

But ... doing another rambly nonsense post, for no other reason than to ramble on about some Z stuff, just didn't seem right ... so I went back to getting lost checking the e-mail in the yahoogroups I am on, and checking Facebook - because I know people on both those who have been flooded out, or nearly were, or have family who were, or who live in areas near the flooding but I wasn't sure exactly where they were until they posted to say they were ok.

In between times - I spent some time doing some of the sorting out I was hoping to get finished during these school holidays, but probably won't again (sigh) and a lot of time watching the varous 24 hour news channels on TV, and watching a few other odd TV shows that DH (Dear Husband) and I watched together because he is a shift worker and was on days off ...

Then a day or 2 ago I did start to think of half an idea of posting something about Zentangles ... which seem to be all the rage among some of my e-mail and Facebook friends (and yes - that link is to the blog where I kind of accidentally WON a Zentangle drawing by being the 100th person to subscribe to her blog! - I posted about it here but it had not arrived in the mail yet so I didn't post a photo of it) ... I have not got into Zentangling as such myself - but I have been doing the odd similar sort of doodly thing ever since I can remember ... at least as long ago as when I was in high school ... so maybe I can do Zendoodles instead of Zentangles? (especially seeing Zentangles is a name that the "inventor" of that name has copyrighted).

Seeing everyones Zentangles on the WWW has actually inspered me to do a few doodly drawings lately - mostly during a couple of interesting public lectures where I realised that I did not need to spend the whole time taking copious pages of notes that I never get around to reading again anyway - so in the spaces between the bit of note taking I did do - I doodled ...

This is one I did in the front page of my "visual diary" ... which I started drawing/writing/pasting/etc  stuff in aproximately a year or so ago (very aproximately - for some odd reason I didn't write in the date I started it, or write a date on the first few things I put in it ... except for "2009" on an envelope of leaves I collected in 2009 but had in a plastic sleeve with something else for at least a couple of months after I collected them, and a date in March 2010 printed on a bit of paper that I then wrote/drew something else on and stuck in the book)



The book was actually some old one I found in a drawer in one of the science labs at work - in fact I think there were 2 of them and both had a page or 5 in the front that were used and they were going to be thrown out - but the rest of the books were still nice and clean looking and the rest of the pages were still blank - so I tore out the used pages and kept them (I think my original idea might have been to write out some poems in them or something, because I did already have a visual diary with blank pages, but I had used it for a bit and then kind of stopped).  I also drew a quick doodle on the front ... actually I think I remember doing that in about Febuary and that it was just after I started putting stuff in there ... but the cover of the book is some sort of shiny stuff and I used an overhead projector pen, so even though it was a permanent marker it has almost all rubbed off again ...
Here are a couple of more recent doodles, done during 2 or 3 different public lectures I went to late last year:



I didn't glue these into the book yet because I was thinking of scanning them ... I might still do that sometime later - then I will have a lot clearer/better image of each of them to play with in GIMP  ;-)
Anyway ... when I was thinking the other night (probably one of the nights when I took the dog for a walk at "stupid o'clock" in the morning, which is why I sort of half forgot about it again until I was out walking the dog at a more normal hour this evening ;-)  I started thinking about maybe I should do a post about what I had been sewing and maybe not worry if I did a Z post or not ... and then I got to thinking about what I might say about my sewing, and about the floods that I was watching stuff about on TV while sewing some of it ... and I got to thinking about how that sort of sewing is possibly a kind of stress realease type thing ... and I reaslised it is kind of rather ... Zen ... ! LOL   ... so - I guess I was doing some Zen stitching ...

[Yet Another Note: this is where I finally got to the point of this post, and the title actually might make some sense to anyone mad enough to still be reading this]

It started out as a bit of calico fabric (an off white coloured cotton fabric known as muslin in the USA) because I wanted to do something for the "Summer Challenge" for the textile art group I am in - ACTTAA and the only rule is that is has to be some kind of cover for a diary/notebook/visual art diary/etc and it has to start off as/with a bit of calico.
so - I went and found a bit of painted calico that I had - it was one I had from an art quilt group activity day, where we played with painting on fusible webbing (stuff like Vleisofix/Wonder Under/Mistyfuse/etc) with acrylic paint and ironing it onto fabric ... and I used this particluar bit as my clean up rag - if I do fabric painting (or dying), I always find/take a bit of scrap fabric to use as a clean up rag - and I find as much interesting stuff to clean up as I can - so that I end up with a very painty (or dyed) bit of interesting looking fabric to play with later on ... this one just happened to be a sort of greyish greenish blue, because those were the colours I (and probably the person next to me ;-) had been using.
Once I had dug out and ironed that bit of painted calico, I then grabbed something as a batting/backing material (needed something a bit stiff but not too stiff, and soft enough to give the stitches some texture but not too thick ... and I found a couple of weird cleaning rags (unused ones - I "borrowed" a couple from work because nobody liked them anyway, and gave them something else instead) that were just perfect. (even more so seeing the front was a "cleaning rag" too ;-)
Then I machine stitched some swirly lines all over it, and then spent ages doing hand stitching all over it using various threads (mostly, but not all, cotton sewing thread - because I had that in the colours I wanted).
This is what I ended up with:




and this is the back - showing the weird cleaning cloth I used underneath:



I drew that black line around my 2011 diary - which is what this is the cover for - before I did the stitching (and I allowed about 1mm for the shrinkage that happens when you stitch on something like this) and then did a line of straight machine stitching on that line so I could see where to stop when I was hand stitching on the front.

Oddly enough - the colours were not inspired by the floods (but I am kind of happy that the colours kind of suggest that they might have been, if that makes any sense) ... the worst of the floods had not happened yet when I chose that particular bit of fabric, and the threads I used on it. I was originally thinking of using blue and green thread and maybe some purple and some gold metallic stuff I have ... but then DH (Dear Husband) and I took DS (Dear Son) and his girlfriend out to tea at an Indian Resteraunt that they like, and I saw this hanging on the wall:



yes - it just happened to be almost the same colours as my bit of partly stitched fabric (so far I had only done a little bit of green and blue stitching on it) and I realised that I liked the greenish blue and silver better than the original idea with the gold in it - and I also have some nice metallic silver threads - so I used those ...

hmmm - it isn't easy to see unless you do the "click on it to get the original size image" thing - but I didn't realise just how much gold was also in that Indian quilt! LOL
Anyway ... here is what it looks like sewn up into the diary cover:



one side ...

... and the other side





both sides with the diary open upside down:




diary open so you can see there actually IS one in there - lol



- of course I had to be "me" and put a matching tassel thingy on the end of the bit of ribbon in the diary.

btw ... that one is actually my second thingy I have made for that challenge - I made this one late last year:



... but this first one was never meant to be the only one - it was something I did fairly quickly (a couple of weeks after we were given the challnge, which isn't due to be finished until the Febuary meeting) when a couple of left over bits I had been using to make ATCs (Artists Trading Cards) jumped out of a pile of sewing stuff I was digging around in (looking for something else I probably never did find) and told me to use them - I didn't have a new diary for 2011 at that time, and was not sure what size I was going to buy, but I had seen some small ones for $1.50 at the newsagent ... not sure why I didn't find an old one the same size (I have a few - I keep my diary each year, just in case I need to go back and look when I did something) ... I probably wasn't sure I wanted a diary that small anyway (not much room to write in all the things I sometimes do) ... so I grabbed a small notebook (one of those ones that is just a pile of sticky notes with something odd printed on them ... the sort that get handed out as advertising/etc) and decided to make a cover that would fit something about that size (which was also a good size to make a calico cover with those ATC things on each side) and if the diary didn't fit I would use it for that, or make a notebook/art book/etc that did fit. Next time I went to that newsagent (the next day on my way home from work ;-) I bought the diary ... it did just fit (if I took the plastic cover off) but a day later I found a bigger diary (the one I now have inside the Zen stitched greenish blue and silver cover ;-) at a different shop, for the same price as the small one ... so I gave the small one to DD (Dear Daughter)'s boyfriend because he said he needed one when he saw me fiddling with it the day I bought it. I might make some sort of arty farty mixed media art book thingy to go in that cover ... and/or I might use it as a cover for my business cards, if I ever get around to designing and printing any hmmm - kind of not a lot of point having a business card if I don't have a business ... LOL ... but I do sell one or 2 odd things in the shop they have at the yearly textile art exhibition and guess I could also use a business card, with my name, e-addy, and blog URL, as a label for the items I put in there to sell ... (or at least try and sell - not everything gets bought - if I don't want to keep it why would anyone else? ;-)

hmmm - this post wasn't meant to be yet another ratty "all over the place" one ... but it sure looks like it is! ... not really very Zen at all? ... sigh ...

It is also Zzzz time again ... and I have not put any of the photos in yet ... probably because I have not put them on the computer yet ... I was going to do that while I typed this, but I kind of never got around to doing that ... and I realised I still needed to TAKE some of the photos ... which I have just been doing for the last half an hour (I got busy digging around finding a few other things I needed/wanted photos of, that were also in the same pile of stuff, or nearby ... oh ... and I took a photo of the 1 Chritmas card (out of about half a dozen I got sent and about the same number I got given at work) that actually got hung up this year (oops?) and then I took a few weird photos of spider webs amongst the stuff on the top of some shelves that I realy should dust a bit more often than every 2 or 3 years!)
so ... I might add the photos, and anything else I need to write about them (depending which ones I actually put in here) and then hit the "publish" button sometime tomorrow.

Yes I DID find/take a few more photos to add in here ...

- a pile of bits I will be making something with soon, but after the other thing I have to do first, the art quilt group I am in (part of Canberra Quilters) did a Christmas swap - where we swapped envelopes of bits, with the idea that we will make something with the bits and bring it to the March meeting.



The other thing I have to do is for the same group - but due at the Febuary meeting ... so of course I have not started mine yet ... but I will do that in the next few days.

a spare postcard, and an extra not quite big enough one I also did the same thing to, from the Spring postcard swap we had on an Art quilt yahoogroup:
(I sent 4 but I think I forgot to take a photo of them before I sent them - but they were the same design as these 2)



... and above them is a brooch I made a year or 2 ago, because I don't think I had ever taken a photo of it and it was hanging around with all this other stuff (the brooche is some fabric - probably more leftovers from ATCs or something, with dog hair and shells stitched on to it)

These are the 4 wonderful postcards that I got back from the swap:



(they are from Ann, Marg, Diana and Buffy)

And this is an ATC ... but not mine ... it is one I got from Linda who offered to swap a couple with other bloggers - I sent her one and she sent me this one (except it was the other way around because she had already made hers and I was a bit slack and took a while to make one to swap back ;-)



maybe it would have looked better NOT sitting on its envelope/card/etc?
... but the card/etc were nice too ;-)
(the ATC is made from selvedges - clever eh?)

This is something else I made late last year:


in fact I was in the middle of making it when I found out about that diary/journal/notebook cover challenge and maybe could have got away with using this ... except the background fabric is not calico (but the backing is ;-)  Actually I don't have any particular use in mind for this yet ... I needed something to take somewhere and sew, and threw togethe this fabric with some batting and backing and Zoomed up and down it with some wiggly lines of machine stitching and then did all the hand sewing ... I might use it as the top of a box or folder or something, or I might just hang it on the wall as it is ...
(btw ... the hand stitching on there is done with crochet yarn, crochet thead, some beads, linnen thread, some yarn I finger spun out of hair from my dog (with a bit of the cat mixed in on one end of one bit), and a little circle of my hair as well)

And ... because I just couldn't do a Z post without at least one weird Zooological type photo - here is a snail:



He/She (snails are actually both at the same time ;-) was on the path when I was walking the dog the other night ... looks like this one was being a typical Canberra driver - keeping one eye on where it was going ... while the other one (er - 3 in this case?) was on whatever else it was doing instead of just driving ... lol

btw ... I did think about saving this last photo for my A post, but seeing I have something else in mind for that - here is a photo of the Illuminated A Zentangle thing that Jane sent to me:



it is rather Amazing!
(it is approximately A5 size, which is half the size of A4 paper usually used for letters, or bills. I didn't realise just how incredibly fine the detail is in her work until I saw this one in person, rather than on a computer monitor ;-)

and now ... I seem to have run out of evening again, and seeing that I have to get up in the morning - and go to a sewing morning with Canberra Quilters and then have lunch and a vitit to the art exhibition at the cafe and visitors centre at the Australian National Botanic Gardens with a group of people from the Textile art group I am in, and it is now almost "stupid o'clock" again - I had better go get some Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

My Mad Mind

We (and there seem to be More and More of us every week!) are up the the letter M for ABC Wednesday ... and I just happen to have something that Might do for My M post! (providing I remember to take a decent photo of it ... or Maybe I Might be able to actually find the one I took when i finished it? ... yep - found that one ;-)

I actually Made this Miniature quilt for a challenge, over a year ago (almost 2 years ago actually) but I finished it just before I delivered it (probably a day or maybe even an hour before - the photo was taken on the front porch of the house I was delivering it to) and it has been travelling around (and then possibly sitting forgotten for a while until I remembered to ask about it, because I did not supply a return envelope for it to be sent back - because I live a couple of suburbs away from the person who ran the challenge) and I only just got it back a week or so before I headed off on holidays (Meaning I got it back about 3 weeks ago).

er ... where was I?

We (those of us who signed up for the challenge) were all given a small bit of fabric (the yellow bit on My quilt) which we were Meant to use all or some of in the quilt, there was a set size it had to be (or maybe it was just a maximum size - can't remember offhand - either way it was quite small) and the theme for the challenge was a self portrait ... but I figured who would want to look at a picture of Me?!

(that - and I am almost totally useless at drawing people/faces ... although I did do an A4 sized quilt a year or so before this one, that was Meant to be a self portrait of sorts - but it ended up looking more like someone reading My e-Mails/blog Might imagine Me than what the real Me actually looks like)

so ... because we were allowed to interpret the theme any way we liked - I decided that instead of doing a picture of the outside of my head - why not do one of the INSIDE?!

The quilt is meant to look like the top of my head (that green thing at the bottom ;-) exploding with all sorts of weird stuff ...
... and the title of this blog post is what I named my quilt - "My Mad Mind"

I Might even be able to remember what some of that junk I sewed on there Meant:

A "fried" (as in it kind of died a sad death, taking a bunch of My photos with it!)  Memory card (for my camera) - because I think I have the same problem sometimes - lol

some nuts - because I am nuts.

a few loose screws - because I am "a few screws loose"

some fuzzy yarn - for fuzzy logic ... or is that just fuzzy thoughts?

some light bulbs - for ideas ... not sure if the light bulbs work - ditto with some of my ideas ;-)

a fuse ... for when I blow one

an odd corner (probably something used/made for scrapbooking or something) - my mind has lots of odd corners!

some stars ... probably because I like space, and we are all made of stardust ... and we probably all dream of visiting and/or being stars?

a spring ... er ... my spring has sprung? ... cartoons often show springs flying out of a car/machine/etc when it breaks down ... the inside of my mind probably looks even worse ...

a cross, from a broken necklace DD had lying around - to represent faith and spirituality and religion and the whole "why are we here?" thing that I often think/wonder about.

a few other assorted dingy dangly things etc ... probably no particular reason/etc - just stuff I found in my stash, and liked, and figured it would look good if I put it/them on the quilt.

... that last lot includes a snail I made by embroidering eyes on stalks above a shell - I like all sorts of odd creepy crawlies and other weird creatures.

there is also some copper wire, some wound into springy looking things ... I think that and the light emitting diode (the little green light) were kind of meant to stand for faulty wiring and short circuits and stuff - I am sure there is some of that kind of thing going on in my brain/mind at times!
(even as a child I used to wonder why I seemed to be "wired differently" to other people ... as I have got older it is good to see I am not the only one ... although I think I still am "one of a kind" ;-)

There is probably other stuff on there that Might have Meant to Mean something ... but now that you can see what sort of Mess is in My Mind - sometimes a few things kind of get lost in there ... or fall out of the holes (or into black holes?) or something ...


btw, I did some Meandering lines of Machine quilting before I sewed on the bits of stuff ...

pity I finished it so "at the last Minute" - I really should/could have done a better job of the binding (I think I stretched it too Much as I was Machine sewing it on so now it looks like a total Mess) ... but I really had a lot of fun Making the rest of that quilt!
... I Might have to do More of that kind of thing - lol

textile art meeting - it wasn't worth going home in between work and the meeting because I would only have been home for less than an hour before it was time to head off again, and drive back past work to get to the meeting - lol
... I actually got organised and typed most of this blog post, and added the photo, a few days before it was time to post it ... which is why I can post it now, when I am not actually at home - lol
- I am at work ... but I am not wasting the boss's time - my "knock off time" was over an hour ago ... but I stayed here because I had a pile of old e-mail to delete, this blog post to publish, and I a couple other things I wanted to do before I head off to a

... but ... I DO have a couple of things I need to do before I walk out the door, and if I don't go and do them now I will be late for the textile art meeting ...

talking about My Mad Mind ... Most of what I just wrote is probably a perfect example of why people probably think I am "Mad as a Meataxe"
(Not to Mention Nutty as a Fruitcake ... but N is Next week ... )

Under construction ... or just Unfinished ... ?

Uh oh! ... my half written Q post, for ABC Wednesday, is still a draft (yes - it is Under construction but still Unfinished a few weeks later! LOL) I might have to change the title and post it as another letter (at the rate I am going lately, I might just get organised in time to post it for A when we get Up to there Again). Any ideas I had for R and S and T will just have to wait for next time ... except there was one idea that could have been an R or an S post that I Really Should post about a bit sooner ... seeing I was going to post about it for C but kind of didn't get there ... I will see (C?) if I can get organised for that when we get Up to there again ;-)

in fact my old website even Used to have a sign in it saying it was permanently Under construction (not that anything that was on Geocities was permanently anything - lol  ... although mine is archived on that wayback machine webite. (not that it is worth looking at or anything ;-)

U is also for Up too late and for Usual ... considering what the title of this blog is, I just had to mention that ... lol
(not that it is so Usual for me to be Up late these days ... I seem to need sleep ... sigh ... )

U is also for Unusual ... which a lot of my blog posts are ...

and ... U is also for UFO  ... and yes I am interested in flying saucers and the like, but - oddly enough - that is Usually NOT what I am talking about when I talk about UFOs  - U see, I am also into quilting (and crocheting and a few other textile art related things ;-) and quilters often talk about how many UFOs they have ... and they are not talking about collecting flying saucers - UFOs are Un Finished Objects - and I have been known to sign my e-mails (on the quilt related yahoogroups I am on) with my signature and this line under it: "... who has more UFOs than all the episodes of The X Files"  ... because I think I probably DO!

... which is why, back in November, I joined in the "UFO pledge" thingy they have for Canberra Quilters ... and I nominated FOUR UFOs that I would finish by November this year ... nothing has been done on them since! LOL  ... I also nominated THREE UFOs for a similar thing a group of us from one of the yahoogroups I am on ... at least one of them was the same quilt as one of the other 4 ... and at least one wasn't ... can't remember offhand exactly what 4 I nominated for the CQ one (I think I do have it written down, but I can't be bothered getting up and looking right this minute) ...  wich means I either have 5 or 6 quilts I promised to finish this year!!!  ... I WAS going to finish one or 2 of them for the Canberra Quilters exhibition (coming up at the start of August) ... but a couple have way too much stuff to do in the time I have to do it, and with the others I wasn't sure how long they would take to finish, or what I wanted to do to finish them ... so - me being me - I STARTED some more!!!  so now I have a quilted bag (half made) and 2 small art quilts (one partly done and one barely started - I should be out doing that now!) ... and a miniature quilt (partly done, but lots of fiddly hand work) ... all needing to be finished by the end of July - LOL

Yes I should get them done - provided I actually get out to my sewing room and DO the machine sewing that needs to be done on the 2 art quilts ... then most of the rest of what has to be done on them all is a pile of hand sewing, which I will be able to do in the evenings in front of the TV

Then ... once those more urgent quilts are done (have to do those - the entry forms are in - lol  ... the UFO pledge ones are ok if I don't do them all - I can "carry over" any I don't finish to the next year ... I just don't get my name put in the draw for the prize unless I finish a quilt) I still won't get to work on those other 5 or 6 UFOs ... because I will be busy trying to make/finish at least some of the dozens of ideas I have for stuff for the exhibition for the textile art group I am also in! (and I have some very Unusual ideas for that ... fabric and yarn plants, stuffed people, mushrooms, vines ... all sorts of weird stuff - LOL ... mine you I don't think I am the only person making some Unconventional things ... the theme is "Garden Tea Party" and I have a sneaking suspicion that at least some of it is going to look like things might look if we had been actually smoking that caterpillar's pipe!)

I really should be out sewing the quilt that I was going to do when I got home this afternoon ... Unfortunately I didn't get around to it - I went visiting last night (stayed the night at a friend's place) and ended up coming home with a plastic bag of strawberry plants, and a couple other odd things like agapanthus and stuff ... so this afternoon the dog and I spent an enjoyable few hours outside in the front yard weeding and tidying up ... and planting strawberry/etc plants ... and then he still wanted to go for a nice LONG walk at Sunset ...

but ... this post looks a bit bare without photos, and because I had to send in photos of most of the stuff I entered in the quilt show (yes I did have 3 other things finished, that are also going into the quilt show) I can put photos of a couple of those UFOs in here:

This is the one I WAS going to do this afternoon (and hopefully will be able to go and do at least some of in about 10 minutes time ;-)



yes ... I "drew" on the photo - lol  ... at the time (and also now ;-) this quilt was just a bit of fabric (sitting on top of some batting and backing fabric I will use for it) and my idea ... what I am meant to be out doing now is quilting those lines I have drawn an idea of in green ... then I will cut some holes in it ... then I can hand sew around the edges of the holes and add some more stitching and beads/etc by hand while watching a TV show or 5 ...

This is another one I started ... the idea came to me about 2 days before I handed in the entry forms!



None of it is sewn together ... I just cut out all the bits and laid them out on the table ... the photo is sideways - those are the toes of my fluffy slippers on the chair that I had to stand on to get high enough above the quilt to get it all in the photo - lol (and again - I drew in a few bits to make it look more like it is going to look ... hopefully it won't take to long to do all the machine sewing bits ... then joining it all together shouldn't be too hard ... famous last words? lol)

And ... also at the last minute - I remembered that there was a creative clothing challenge (could be clothing or an accessory - like a bag or hat or whatever) ... so I started this bag - the theme is "Go Green" ... so this is a green (and black) bag with little bags/purses/phone pouch/etc to GO with it)



I actually did some of the hand stitching on this one this morning at my friend's place ... it is looking good - if everything goes as quick and easy as that bit did, I might have some spare time between finishing this stuff and the quilt show delivery date, to make a start of more of the stuff for the textile art exhibition ... (yeah - like THAT will happen - the Usual thing with my quilt show entries is that I am still stitching at least one of them the day, or even hour, before I have to deliver the stuff!)

I don't have a photo of the miniature quilt I entered - that catagory didn't need me to submit a photo ... I might have to take photos of all this stuff once it is finished, and add it to that half done Q post that I didn't post (seeing the title of it at the moment is "Quilts" - LOL) and then post it ... maybe even not as an ABC Wednesday one - lol

eek ... my evening is running out and I still have that quilting to do ... I had better post this and go do at least some of it ... or things could get Ugly - lol