Keeping Up

... more like NOT keeping up actually - I seem to have missed quite a few letters for ABC Wednesday ... and that isn't the only thing that I seem to have got behind with ... sigh ...

Is it just me, or does life seem to rush by faster these days?

I thought about doing a late post for J ... but I am not sure you really want to read a post about Junk - lol (I could probably find a few pictures of rubbish to put here, or I guess I could have posted pictures of my sewing/etc stash - I collect all sorts of stuff and DH says that most of it is junk!) but the next letter is due in a few days so I decided I may as well start writing a K post a bit early - then I might actually be able to put one up on time ... if I remember to finish writing it ... I guess I could set it to post automatically anyway ... but last time I did that I never came back and finished it so this time probably wouldn't be any different - LOL

I guess I could still put some photos of my junk here and call it "Keeping things" ... LOL

(probably easier than finding photos of my Knitting - seeing I don't do much of that - I prefer to crochet ;-)

hmmm - I actually DID post a J post last time around (where I did mention my Junk) ... but without pictures - so I guess I could put them in here instead - LOL

I wonder what I would have posted for the letters I have missed?

G for gee I am disorganised? or goodness me where has the time gone?

H for how did I get behind again?

I for I don't know where the last few weeks have gone/I don't seem to ever have time to get all the things done that I want to.

... and J for just another boring blog post? LOL

but if you Keep reading ... I might eventually get to the point ... if there is one ...

maybe I should post about what I have Kept up with ... just ...

I did manage to finish some stuff for that ACTTAA exhibition that I mentioned in my last post
(yes - not just that quilt, but some other stuff too)

I finished this rather odd crochet rug (could it be a Knee rug? lol) for the exhibition:



It was meant to look like paddocks seen from above ... it does to me ... and to the person who told me it made her home sick for the area of farmland where she grew up ...

I also made this bag:



it is made from some odd fabric I found in my stash (I think it is linen ... looks/feels like linen ... could be anything - my fabric has come from all sorts of odd places). I machine quilted a few wiggly lines on it then hand stitched/etc in between them ... and added a few dangly/etc bits. The light green yarn is some from a ball of acrylic yarn that I bought at a farmers market in some town in the middle of Turkey! (it cost me the equivalent of a dollar, and I wish I had bought more than one ball! ... I used it to crochet a silly beanie - which I did on the tour bus the day after I bought it! ... if I had realised how good it looked used for embroidery/stitching, I would have bought more ... I guess when the half a ball I have left is gone ... I will have to use something else instead ... )

Those 2 things (the rug and the bag) and the black hole quilt I just posted about (and yes I did just write that post ... I am trying to get this one done BEFORE it is time to post my K post ... in fact I started writing this post yesterday) ... those 3 things were what I had on display in the gallery section of that exhibition.

I also made some stuff for the fashion parade ... I also modelled the stuff I made in the fashion parade ... people took photos of me modelling it, but I never got around to taking any photos of the stuff myself ... if I do that (or get sent any photos someone else took) in the couple of days before I post this (or it posts itself if I decide to set it to do that ;-) then I will put them in here ... but if not, I won't - LOL

The other section of that exhibition is the bazaar ... and I made some stuff for that too.
I also had a pile of stuff left over that didn't sell last year ...

I made these 4 phone thingys just before the exhibition, and the ear rings are actually some I made quite a few years ago!



I also finished this scarf that has been sitting almost finished for a while ...



... and I added it to the pile of a few others that were left over from last year.

and I decided to sell this plastic bag and beanies that are made from ... plastic bags!



and I had an idea and made up a few packets of bits of interesting yarn to sell:



I don't think much of it sold though ... I guess I probably should have put a bit more effort into it? LOL

I had a few more things for sale, but I either don't have photos of them or already had photos but not recent ones that I found when I dug these out - I took these last few photos on the lawn (or the fence!) next to the car park at the place I went to before dropping my bazaar stuff off on the way home, because I kind of didn't get around to doing it any earlier!

I did sell a few things ... have not sorted it out and worked out exactly what sold, but I noticed that someone did buy a fabric bowl that I made a few years ago, it was one that didn't sell last year or the year before ... my things are probably a bit odd, and therefore have a limited appeal ... LOL
(and there are a few very talented and quite professional people in that group - so there were a lot of lovely items for sale for people to choose from)

btw ... the clothing I made for the fashion parade is rather unusual too ... a crochet shawl dyed with food dye and vinegar (and a weird hippy dress I made to match it but will probably only ever wear as a nightie or fancy dress), an outfit made from 3 of DH's old business shirts (which actually ended up looking way better than I expected so I might have to wear that somewhere), and a skirt made from a too small around the middle skirt I got from an op shop and bleached and altered/added bits to ... which I might also wear ... sometime ... on one of the few ocasions where I actually wear a skirt instead of just wearing jeans/pants - LOL

oh - and the thing I mentioned that I went to on my way to delivering the bazaar stuff - was actually the trade display part of a green energy/etc conference, where they had a sort of a workshop thingy run by some people who are getting into making re-cycled clothing - like the stuff we have already been doing in the ACTTAA group ... I didn't have a lot of time to organise much but I took along a pair of old jeans and a pretty old green cotton dress (that I think I may have bought at an op shop because I liked the lace on it and the colour of it and was thinking of making it into something else) ... I ended up doing some slicing and dicing and started yet another UFO (Un Finished Object) - hopefully when I finish it, it will become an interesting skirt ... and I might have enough fabric/lace/etc left to maybe make a bag or something to match it ... but (like this blog post ;-) who knows when/if I will ever get around to finishing it ...

(yes ... I am putting a future time/date on it so it will be scheduled to post itself when that time/date comes around ... and if I get around to taking photos of that clothing I can still add them in here before it gets posted ... but somehow I don't see that happening - lol)

hmmm ... seems there is a glitch in blogger or this poor old computer ... or something ... I just hit the post button and it changed the date/time back to today, all by itself, and posted it ... then it let me edit it and change the time and date ... but it is showing up on my blog with Tuesdays date on it ... wow - time travel - LOL (or - really scary thought - did I just loose to days and it IS Tuesday?! ... hope not ... the time on the computer screen still says it is Sunday evening ... even if my blog does appear to think it is Tuesday already ... )

ok ... I think I fixed it ... so if anyone was subscribed to my blog they may have got this post early ... or if anyone just happend to be looking during the 5 minutes this post was up there early then they may have seen it ... I hit the "save as draft" button after I added the other purple edit and it is now NOT showing up again ... but it isn't listed as "scheduled" either ... sigh ... but ... "nothing ventured nothing gained" - now that the date/time seems to be staying how I set it, and showing up as one minute past midnight on Tuesday (which is what I did change it to before it changed itself back, and what I again changed it to when it then still showed up on my blog, but as being posted on Tuesday) ... I might just see what happens and hit the "post" button again ... and if it shows up early then it shows up early - it will "fix" itself when it actually IS Tuesday - because nobody who didn't look this evening or tomorrow will know any different - LOL
(well ... you wouldn't have if you had not read this - LOL)

I finally got around to making another Journal Quilt

I was planning on doing a Journal quilt every month this year ... maybe not exactly IN each month - but FOR each month - and I WAS planning on trying to do them within a month or so of the month they were for ... or at least actually DO 4 or 5 in the first half of the year before I got busy doing stuff for the Canberra Quilters Exhibition or the ACTTAA exhibition

... but that kind of didn't happen (neither did the big tidy up of my sewing room/etc ... I probably should be doing that, or the rest of the house, now ... lol).

but ... I decided I had better get a wiggle on and make a few - because if I have at least 5 done by early in December, then I can drop 5 of them off to the "owner" of http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aus_NZartquilters/ who just happens to live a couple of suburbs away (so I don't have to post mine like most people do) and they will be included as part of another one of those travelling exhibition things that we did last year, with our journal quilts from the year before. (where the quilts were displayed at the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne, then went to a few of the craft shows around the country, and then on to a couple of other quilt shows/etc, before they came back home to us at the end of the year.

so ...

... in the first 2 or 3 days of October - I made my journal quilt for September!

ta-da:



It is called "... Of Black Holes And Froot Loops" - and was inspired by the fact that CERN officially turned on their new Large Hadron Collider - despite the fact that a group of froot loops were trying to take court action to prevent them turning it on and creating black holes that they were afraid would swallow up the whole planet ... no black holes yet ... and we are still here too ... but that actually has more to do with the fact that they have not actually got it fully operational yet - in fact I think I read somewhere that they have managed to break it already ... oops?

here is the back of the quilt:




of course I had to get silly writing the "label" on the back - lol ...

btw, the bit up the top has been left empty of writing because that is where I need to sew the "hanging sleeve" that we have to put on them.

Hmmm - those photos are a bit iffy - colours are sort of ok but not quite (the black isn't black enough and the lime green looks a bit too white) ... and the whole thing is dull and blurry ... sigh ... black textile stuff is not the best thing to try and take photos of (so why do I keep making black textile stuff? LOL) ... and I think the new camera (which DH has taken with him to the motorbike racing at Phillip Island near Melbourne) takes better photos inside at night than this older one does ... maybe I should try doing a scan? lol

I notice that the dodgy text spacing/layout still seems to happen when I put photos in posts too ... I was hoping they had fixed that while I had been busy doing other things - LOL

(maybe it is something I am meant to fix? or maybe I should just stick the photos in first and then do the writing? lol)

hmmm ... the scanner doesn't seem to like lime green! LOL

- the only things that are the right colour are the black background and the 2 white beads!

... the 2 bright pink ones only sort of look pink and I am not sure why lime green thread shows up as white and the lime green and not quite so lime green beads look violet and blue!

(the colours of the beads are actually correct in the photo at the top of this post - lol)

I fiddled with the colours in the scan (using the photo softwere that I use for that sort of thing) ... but I don't really know what I am doing with it (whatever I know is what I have found out by hunting in menus and clicking on stuff) ... this isn't right either but I like the effect ... and at least the lime green IS lime green! LOL



btw ... if anyone is wondering what those beads are/where I got them? ... and how come you have never seen those cute round circles anywhere in the shops? - then you have not read about them in my "Peculiar Plastic" post - yes - these are some of those "beads" I made from cut up plastic drinking straws! - I got some coloured drinking straws (various colours - the "beads" on here came from fluoro green and pink ones, and a white one) and I cut them into little bits (about 1 or 2 mm long) ... some stuck together when I cut them but most of them popped back into circles when I poked them or squeezed them - I then laid them between a couple sheets of baking paper and ironed them flat! (if you do that I suggest an old iron/ironing board - not the one you use for your significant other's buisness shirts - lol) and open the windows/iron outside so the plastic fumes don't stink out the house/do you too much damage ... I didn't really notice the smell, but DH did when he came home a while later! ... oops ... next time I might take the iron outside (with an extension cord) ... yes there is sure to be a next time - I can think of a lot of uses for these cute little loopy beady things ...
(I guess part of the reason for the odd colours in the scan could be that the beads ARE flouro plastic ... maybe the scanner has trouble with stuff like that, because the light is reflected/refracted differently from semi-transparent plastic than from a printed page ... which is what MOST people scan ... LOL)

maybe I should take another photo in the daylight ... and/or try the other camera (which I didn't use this time because DH took it with him when he went away to the motorbike racing down at Phillip Island)

maybe I should post this and go have a "midnight snack" (I know - it is already past Midnight, and I was going to go crawl into bed shortly - but I just noticed that I am hungry ... lol)

Peculiar Plastic

Yes - I am sure you will all agree this looks peculiar:

- it is actually a set of "Inchies" - which are 1" x 1" squares - that I made for a swap on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aus_NZartquilters/ ... the theme for the swap was "Plastic" and we each made 7 sets of 9, kept 1 and sent in the other 6 sets so the person doing the swapping could swap them all around and send us back 6 different sets ... I got mine back the other day, but I have not taken photos of them yet ... I might blog about them when I have actually mounted them on something, or whatever I end up doing to display them ...

(this is the 4th inchie swap we have done, and I have not done my thing with the ones I got back in the other 3 swaps yet either - lol)

so ... why am I blogging about this lot now?

well - I thought someone (either someone from the swap or the one or 2 of you who actually come here to read my blog - lol) might want to know how I made them.

The pink fabric is non woven polyethelene (the stuff they use for "green" shopping bags etc - actually it is one of those bags you get when you ... or your teenage daughter ... buy clothing at a certain shop with very loud music playing and a few "normal" items of clothing in amongst lots of stuff in very small sizes that seem to be designed to fit peculiar shaped kids who want to look like they are adults who belong on a sleezy street at night - lol) the silvery looking stuff printed on the pink fabric is parts of the logo that was on there.

The 2 with blue on them (top right and bottom left) have a layer on top that was done by cutting up strips of blue plastic shopping bag and laminating them (with laminating sheets in the laminating machine they have in the front office at work) ... the middle square was done the same way, but I laminated some little motifs that I tatted - in fact those squares were the reason I used the laminating machine in the firtst place - the others happened because the laminating sheets were A4 and the tatted motifs only used 1/3 of a sheet, so I grabbed some other stuff to experiment with the other part of the sheet (I also laminated some dead flowers, from a pot plant I have next to my desk, on the other 1/3 of the sheet but I have not taken a photo of those).

The bottom left bluish square has a purple sequin stitched on with lime green thread, and stitched on top of the sequin (holding it on) is a bit of fishing line tied into a weird knot.

The other bluish square (top right) has a round plastic beady thing (that I made - more on that later) also stitched on with lime green thread.

The top left, top middle, bottom right and bottom middle squares have a layer of black and/or clear plastic over the pink - it was the front of a "book" of furnishing fabric samples, that I was just about to throw away (the plastic, not the fabric - lol) when I remembered I was about to make plastic inchies. The bit of plastic was black and clear, so some squares ended up clear, some had black on (carefully cut/chosen so they had the black stripes/corners on them) and one lot (top middle) had all black.

The top left and bottom right squares (and the one in the middle on the left hand side too) have offcuts of plastic, and those weird beady things I made, sewn on to them (with lime green thread again) ... the offcuts were from both the plastic I used on the tops of those, and from the laminating sheets (it was a real pain to sew through those - they are rather tough!).

The middle square on the top row has a purple heart (cut from a plastic bag from some yarn I bought from that big fabric/yarn/craft shop that has purple bags) and on top of that a heart cut from some netting (I think it came from the lolly bag I got at a wedding reception last year) and on top of that is a pink heart (same pink fabric stuff as the other lot) ... stitched with lime green thread of course (well with the pink and the black and stuff - I just had to use lime green - lol).

The middle square on the bottom row is decorated with a square of "fabric" I made by ironing shredded bits of shopping bag and other plastic (lolly wrappers etc) and cutting it up.

The squares on either side of the middle row have the same plastic (from the fabric sample book cover) on the bottom, under the pink fabric (except for the set I kept, which for some reason has the right hand side one on top - oops - there were a few "mistakes", most of them ended up as spares that I kept and didn't put in the sets, but I must have missed that one - I did finish them in rather a hurry so that I could post them [almost] on time)

The middle left square is decorated with another one of those beady things I made, on top of some more "fabric" I made - by ironing different coloured bits of shredded plastic shopping bag (btw - both lots of ironed stuff were done with baking paper under them, and on top of them - so it wouldn't stick to what I ironed it on, or to the iron)

I think that covers what I did on/to all the squares ... probably in more detail than anybody cares to know - LOL

Now ... about those beady things I mentioned ... how did I make those?

well ... I had this weird idea and tried something, and it actually worked - I got some plastic drinking straws and cut them into bits about 1 or 2 mm long (so I had a pile of little circles) and I spread them out between 2 sheets of baking paper and ironed them flat ... and the 2 coloured ones? - some of the straws were a bit thinner than the others so I put them inside each other before I cut them up ... some of them stayed together when I cut them, and became 2 coloured beads ... now I need to find a 3rd size of staw and try 3 colours - LOL

(some of them did squash together flat when I cut them up, but most of them popped open when I touched them, and the rest did when I picked them up by the ends and squeezed a bit)

I have not got around to taking a photo of a pile of the drinking straw beads, but here is a scan I did, of some of the beads in with some other leftover bits that I put in a plastic bag and gave to the person organising the swap.

btw, they also look really good stitched onto black fabric, and decorated/embroidered around, with that same lime green thread!

(but I have not taken a photo/done a scan of that yet either ... that will have to join the long list of other things I still need to blog about)