New books, new project.

Among many wonderful gifts that I received for my birthday this year were these two books: "Memorabilia Quilts" from my sister-in-law, and "130 MiniQuilt Blocks" from my clairvoyant friend Sharon. I say clairvoyant, because she seems to read my mind when it comes to finding books for me that I have been eyeing off in bookstores or on the internet! My MIL is in an aged care facility called "Iris Grange", so when I saw this tea towel in a shop about a year ago, I had to buy it! I knew straight away what I wanted to do with it - make a lap quilt or wall hanging using the teatowel as a centrepiece. I'd found a pattern in a magazine for a totebag with an Iris in the middle, and a log cabin design around it, and I cut it out in anticipation of the time when I'd buy the fabrics to start. Of course the tote bag in the pattern was nowhere near the same size, so I had to redesign the whole thing to suit my teatowel. It was a steep learning curve, and I learnt a lot in the process, going over and over my calculations, but I'm pretty sure that I've got it right now. Last week when I went to the Quilt Convention, at the top of my shopping list was 'fabrics to match Iris teatowel'. Here's what I bought:
So in the next week or so, I shall be ironing all the fabrics, cutting VERY carefully, and pinning it all together to see how it looks. Wish me luck!

Replying to the comments on a previous post.

I just discovered that I had six responses to my post about a hand written journal, and I'm chuffed to hear that I'm not alone when it comes to relying on good old pen and paper instead of the computer! Thanks to everyone who left a comment: Joanne, I love your idea of putting little swatches of fabric in the journal, and carrying it with me when I go looking for stuff for my projects. Toni, you are a new visitor to my blog - thanks for dropping by! I visited your blog and was going to comment, but this machine froze just at the wrong moment, so I'm hoping you read this. That craft store you showed on your blog is HUGE!!! I could get happily lost in there for at least a week : - )

Australasian Quilt Convention Melbourne.

Today (Sunday) I went to the Quilt convention with my friend Cheryl. I had about $90 in my wallet, and was determined not to spend any more than that; considerably less hopefully. Well. Pigs might fly. Backwards. Not only did I come home with an empty wallet, but the credit card is considerably higher than it was yesterday : - ( But what a great day we had!! Cheryl and I always argue (not really) over who pays for what, and it boils down to whoever is quicker at the cash register! She marched up to the ticket booth and bought two tickets before I even got there. But when we stopped for coffee I pushed in front of her and paid for our snacks. At the parking paystation, she had the card in her hand and a $20 bill, but it was $24, so I whipped out $4 and put it in the machine. So we kind of shared the cost of being at the convention...
She had excellent control over her wallet, and only bought a couple of items. I had a shopping list of things I wanted for particular projects, and I had no trouble finding them. It was all the extras that did the damage - fabrics, cute buttons, craft glue that is designed to use with paper napkins, and a pack of that fabric paper stuff that you put in your computer printer to print photos on fabric. I need that to make a memory quilt for another friend. But that's another story (see my 'Birthday' post shortly on my other blog). The highlight of the day had to be the Quilt display. As always, I was absolutely blown away. I took heaps of photos, and have posted them on a separate blog here. In the meantime, this is what I bought.
Two raffle tickets for a stunning quilt which I forgot to photograph just in case.
The photo fabric paper stuff.
The special craft glue for paper napkins projects.
Buttons for future projects that I have in mind.
Super-cute kitty fabric!
Japanese fabric that I probably would not have bought, but I needed to use my credit card to buy some stuff for $13, and the stall holder said their minimum EFTPOS sale was $20, so I had to find something else to add to my purchase to make up the total to over $20. (I'd run out of cash by this time).
And these are the fabrics I needed for specific projects.
Blissful browsing! And there's a couple more of these craft fairs coming up this year...

Lucky find in a collectables shop.

I haven't bought anything on eBay for a long time - at least a year! And I very rarely find any linens worthwhile buying in opshops these days, even though I am an opshop addict, and usually visit a couple a week. So I was delighted to find this sweet traycloth in a local 'collectables' shop today for $5.
One would assume with my husband home, recovering from heart surgery, that I would have heaps of time to stitch. Not so. Oh, I've played around with patchwork, and done a bit of stitching, but my heart hasn't really been in it. Still, I haven't been wasting my limited spare time. Like most of you reading this blog, I have a vast pile of books, magazines and miscellaneous articles in folders relating to patchwork, stitching and other crafts. (This is not all of them) It takes forever to find a particular article that I can remember seeing, but not remember where it is. So a while ago, I listed all my magazines, and wrote under each heading a list of the projects in each magazine that I was interested in. These pages got very messy after a while, as I added stuff and crossed out stuff.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to do something about it. I found a leather covered journal at Savers last year, as good as new, no writing in it at all. I didn't know then what I'd do with it, but I figured it would come in handy. It has! From my tatty lists, I've copied down the information again, one magazine per page of the journal, with specific projects listed underneath, along with reminders for myself about any changes in style or fabric I thought of.
My friend Val saw this yesterday and asked why I didn't set up a spreadsheet or database thing on my computer. Well, several reasons really. Firstly, I don't have the skills to do those things on my computer. All I do is type. I've got Microsoft office, Excel, Word, etc. there somewhere, but I wouldn't have the foggiest how to use them, and by the time I learnt, I will have written up my book! Secondly, to put all the information on the computer, I'd have to drag all the magazines into another room, and switch back and forth between each magazine and the computer, to load all the information. Finally, if I want to find one of my projects, it is so much easier for me to look it up in my little journal, than turn the computer on, log into the relevant program and click around until I find what I want. Also, if the computer crashes (frequently) I wouldn't be able to access the files anyway, and my little journal isn't going anywhere except my craft room. Nuff said?