Coffee with another Blog Friend!

I've been reading Lyn's blog Moore Patchwork and Quilting for a while now, and as happens so often with bloggers, we have become good friends. Lyn was down in Melbourne for a conference this past weekend, and as she had Monday morning free before she flew back to Brisbane, we arranged to meet up for a quick coffee and chat. We met at one of the many delightful cafes in The Block Arcade in Melbourne CBD.   Lyn is at the table looking at my album of fabric postcards.

A friendly waiter was happy to take our photo outside his cafe.

Lyn had visited L'ucellos during her stay, and bought me a little gift of notepad and vintage buttons - lovely!

In return I gave her a fabric postcard that I'd bought at our Guild on Saturday.

Lyn loves fabric postcards, and is currently involved in exchanging them on a forum. She makes some beautiful cards herself - check them out on her blog!

Paddy's Market at the Embroiderers Guild.

I should have posted a reminder here for my Melbourne readers;  our Guild's Paddy's Market just gets better and better!  It is usually once a year, but sometimes they skip a year.  Today I took a lot of my stash to sell, and did well, selling nearly all the vintage unworked or partly worked linens to one lady who came down from Bendigo to look for me, after buying some of my linens two years ago!  We share a love of vintage linens, so I have invited her to view my collection next time she is in Melbourne.  Ken said I have to be more careful about who I invite into our home.  I said that I didn't think middle aged ladies were going to make off with the proverbial family silver.
I know what he means though; people might quite innocently talk about where they saw all this fabulous linen, and it only takes one person with evil intent to ask where I live....But I trust all the ladies I invite here and I doubt very much if any of them are going to give out our address!

Once I'd sold enough of my own stash to have a bit of spending money, I wandered around everybody else's tables.  We all do the same thing every year, and have a laugh over it.  Often heard during the morning is "How much have you sold, and how much have you bought?!"  Here is what I brought home:
A small quilt hanger for $10, which is a bit more than what I would expect to pay at Paddy's, but I really loved this hanger with the rooster.

 Another rooster - this one cross stitched by someone who obviously didn't know what to do with it once they'd completed it.  I've got plans for it!

The ladies at the table next to me had stacks of upholstery offcuts, and I bought these pieces to use in my Christmas table runner patchworks.  $8 was better than $27 a metre over at Lincraft, and once it is made up, I don't think anyone will know it is upholstery fabric.

 I know, I know, I KNOW!  I've just sold a heap of vintage UFO doilies, and I go and buy another one??  Well, I really love the design on this  (and only $3), and I didn't like the design on the ones I sold, so there.

 Couldn't resist this dear little Christmassy doiley for $5.

 Very cute kit for a computer mousemat - cat asking  "Have you seen my mouse?"

 Christmas fabric postcards, $5 each.

Rare vintage table cloth.

First off, thank you to everyone who has left such lovely comments on my blog about my Lilydale Show wins, and the mug rug - your words are greatly appreciated as always!

My new friend N. allowed me to take photos of the cloth she brought over to show me this week. Some friends of hers also have this cloth, but unworked, and they brought theirs in to show me at my exhibition at Bundoora. N. said at the time she also had one, but hadn't looked at it for ages, and thought hers was also unworked. But when she unearthed it from a bag of cloths, she found it was completely finished. It was produced by Womens Weekly magazine at the time when decimal currency was introduced into Australia (1966). I have never seen this design before - on eBay or any other source online or otherwise, so I don't think there will be many around. I would almost cut off my arm to get one of these cloths for my collection! So if anyone reading this knows where I can find one, please let me know!

I omitted to photograph one corner of the cloth, with the one cent piece. What makes this cloth even more historically interesting is that the one and two cent coins are no longer in circulation. And the 50c coin has changed it's face many many times since 1966.

Another mug rug.

I whipped this little rug up tonight for a friend who is coming to lunch tomorrow, to see my linen collection. She has promised to bring a very rare cloth to show me, and I am quite excited about it, as I didn't even know such a design existed.

At the Lilydale Show I won....

First Prize for my Family Memories wall hanging.

Second Prize for the Rainbow Kittens wall hanging.

Third Prize for the Jars of Preserves mini quilt,

And a Commended ribbon for the Xmas Tree mini quilt!

I was chuffed to say the least, as I didn't really expect to win anything, knowing the quality of the other entries. I'll post photos of the others later on, so you can see why I was so surprised to win anything. I am NOT putting myself down when I say this; I just know that my projects are easy, and only take a few weeks to do (or even less with a smaller project), whereas some of the other quilts in the show obviously have much more work put into them, which I greatly admire, but don't aspire to those heights myself!

Found in our opshop today!

I haven't seen any really lovely embroidered cloths in opshops for ages, but I was in the right place at the right time today. I work in the local Brotherhood Of St Lawrence opshop on Friday mornings, in the front of the shop at the till, while two others are in the back room, sorting donations as they come in. One of them came up to me with a bag and whispered 'have a look at these, they were just brought in, and you might be interested'. Understatement! Interested is not the word - over the moon might be more apt!

At first glance I thought this one was machine embroidered, but no, it is definitely hand done. 

There are some other pieces that I haven't photographed yet; it was such a windy day I had trouble getting these photos, so I'll do the rest tomorrow.  There were other items in the bag as well, but I only bought the best ones ;-)

Mug Rugs

I've got a ' to do' list as long as the proverbial arm, but have been so tired lately, the thought of measuring and cutting out fabrics for a quilt top leaves me cold. I feel that I'm letting people down, as I did commit myself to several people, but it's no use trying to do something when I don't feel up to doing it, as I will just make a mess. But to keep myself crafting in a small way, I made two mug rugs. One for an American lady who is doing a little Tatting project for me. I made one side of the mug rug with Australian icons fabric, and the other side with farmyard animals fabric, as she had admired one of my chooks patchworks.

The other mug rug is for a friend's son. My friend G. is an American married to an Aussie, and she has one son back in the USA who stayed with his father when G came here to live. They have always enjoyed a close relationship, and G loves to send him all kinds of Australian stuff, as well as other things that she finds. She found a coffee mug to send him for his birthday, and I offered to make her a rug for her son to put it on. She was delighted, and when I asked what he likes, she said "Dogs", so this is what I came up with:

Happy visitors

I love to share my linens with anybody who is remotely interested in needlecrafts of any kind, and I met many such people at the exhibition of my linens at Bundoora Homestead.  Some of these people indicated that they would love to see the rest of my collection, and we swapped phone numbers etc. to keep in touch.  Two of these ladies were Melody from The House On The Side Of The Hill, and Christine from MacDonald's Patch, both of whom live not far from me, so it was easy to arrange a visit.  Most people ask me which is more convenient - morning or afternoon, not wanting to impose themselves on me for lunch.
But I always tell anyone who wants to see my collection that it will take more than just a morning or an afternoon, so they should be prepared to have lunch with me!

Mel and Christine arrived just after 10 am, and as every good hostess does, I offered them a drink first.
So we sat at the kitchen table with cups of tea and talked.  And talked, and talked!   They liked my kitchen with all the chook things and pretty cloth on the table, and took some photos.  About noon, I suggested that if they want to see anything of my collection, we need to start viewing NOW, so off to my linen room we went.  I took them through a run down of my collection, and where each category is stored, and then we stopped for lunch.  More talking, until 1.45 pm when I said we had better start looking at stuff!  They decided to look at the table cloths first, and by 2.45 pm they had seen about 20 cloths (I have about 200).  They had to leave then, and I also had to go out - to deliver my entries for the Lilydale show this weekend.  It is nearly an hour's drive each way, and I didn't want to leave it too late, so Mel and Christine's departure at that time was well timed.

They both took heaps of photos and apparently plan to post them on their respective blogs, so if you want to see what they saw today, just click on the above links in a day or two!  We plan to get together again soon (but they may have to stay overnight for a week to see everything, lol), and in the meantime they hope to catch up with me at our Guild's Paddy's Market on Saturday week. 

Quilt shows.

I've visited two shows in the past week but am not posting photos from either of them.   Ken and I spent Saturday 3rd November at the Whittlesea Show, and of course I spent a lot of time in the Homecrafts Pavilion looking at the Needlecrafts.  I hadn't entered anything this year after my disappointment with the messy display last year, but it seems that someone got the message, because there was a vast improvement in the display of entries this year.   I did take a lot of photos, not only of the quilts and embroideries, but the rest of the showgrounds as well, including the animal nursery and other attractions.  And I just haven't got the energy to post any of them on to my blogs with the appropriate descriptions - sorry!

The second show was the Blue Gum Quilters bi annual exhibition in Thornbury yesterday.  I emailed Sharon about it and we met up there and thoroughly enjoyed the show which was in a church hall.  Again I took a lot of photos, but Elyte from Tea, Fabric And Other Things, who is one of the members, took a lot of photos which are much better than mine.  So I suggest you hop across to her blog and have a peep - they are worth seeing!

Next week (17th and 18th November) is the weekend of the Lilydale Show, and I am entering four of my patchwork projects this year.

One more item for this post - and two photos to accompany it. One of Ken's cousins celebrated his 10th wedding anniversary last week. His wife was born in India, and they were married in a Hindu temple here. The ceremony was fascinating to those of us born in Australia. As Yaso still retains much of her culture, I decided to make her a table runner using a piece of Kalamkari that Laksmhi sent me some time ago. I appliqued it on to a plain back ground, and then added side borders using some Batik from my stash that matched the Kalamkari icon nicely. The back is another Batik fabric.

Message to my American friends.

I've been having a look at some of the American blogs I visit, and so far nobody has mentioned Hurricane Sandy, so I'm hoping that means you are all okay.  I know that many of my American readers don't live anywhere near the USA east coast, but nevertheless, the devastating consquences of that storm will have far reaching effects, so I ask those of you in the States to leave a comment here if you can, so I know my cyberspace buddies are okay.

I had a little spend up today while I was at the Guild.  I went across the road to the Lincraft Store looking for a storage box for machine threads.  They didn't have one, but they did have some nice Christmas fabric, and I also found a nifty little item I'd been looking for.   The suction holds the handle to quilting rulers so if the rotary cutter slips, it reduces the chances of your fingers being sliced off.  I've had a couple of near misses!

 I must have had the camera on the wrong setting - these colours aren't right, and it looks blurred.  The fabric is much nicer than what it looks here.

Then I dropped into the opshop next door, and found this charming little tray cloth for $3.  I might not have bothered buying it as I have dozens just like it, but none with an edge of tatting!  Really sets it off.

New Christmas fabrics.

Lyn Moore recently posted a photo on her blog of a lovely mini quilt she had made using some new Christmas design fabrics.   She commented that her older fabrics looked shabby in comparison, and I know what she means.  I've been collecting scraps of Christmas fabrics from opshops and remnant bins for a few years, and they do look 'old' compared to these new light and pretty Moda fabrics.  As chance would have it, I was at the Eastern Palliative Care Quilt show last week, and one of the retailers had the exact same Moda Charm pack for $16.95, so I bought it.
As usual I couldn't wait to try some of it out, so I pulled out a pattern from my stash that I've had for a few years, and away I went.

This pattern uses a darker green fabric selection for the tree, and although I do like the effect, I wanted to play with my new fabrics, so my mini quilt is a lot lighter. All I have to do now is embellish it with some stars and candles; the original pattern has used machine embroidery, but I will have to hand stitch mine, or maybe I'll buy some Xmas buttons and bling instead.

Camberwell Market.

For years, friends have been telling me about the linens that can be found at Camberwell Market, but I haven't got around to going there until last weekend. I spent about $100 on various goodies, and although there was quite a lot of linen to be found, I only bought these two cloths.
This cloth is worked in tiny cross stitch, perfectly sewn on even weave fabric. It looks European in origin. It is a bit grubby, so I have to clean it before taking some close up photos, but I thought it was a bargain for $5. The stall holder had no idea where it came from.

The lady who sold me this charming suppercloth below had a heap of linens on her stall. We got chatting and she told me she had hundreds more at home; she loves vintage linens like I do, but had got to the stage where she just had to cull them. As much as I would have like to buy more, this one was my favourite and a good buy at $30.

Art quilts

Janet Mathews, a textile artist who used to live nearby, gave two of her hand worked art quilts to me before she moved house. She intended to give them to someone else, but apparently the person didn't want them, so she said they may as well go to the opshop. I said I would probably keep them myself rather than have them being sold for much less than what they are worth, and she didn't mind if I kept them. I don't know what I will do with them yet, but if ever I have enough wall space they will be hung up on display.

The centre of this one is sewn with gold sequins, which are a bit hard to see on the photo.  There is a huge amount of work in these quilts, which are both fully hand quilted.

Close up showing the hand quilting.

The back of the second quilt.

Annual Exhibition Embroiderers Guild Vic.

The annual members' exhibition at our Guild opened on Friday and will be open seven days a week until Sunday 21st October.
Photographs are not allowed, but I sneaked this photo of my wall hangings on display when we were setting up the exhibition.

I volunteered to be on duty all day today, and in the morning I looked after the Gift Boutique with another volunteer.  In the afternoon, I sat in the gallery doing cross stitch, supposedly to answer questions from the public and demonstrate how to do it.  I think most of the visitors already knew, or weren't interested, because apart from some friendly volunteers coming up to see what I was doing, nobody else approached me! I didn't get much stitching done, because I'd chosen an old UFO to take in, and subsequently remembered why it was a UFO...small, but a lot of colours used, so a lot of time is spent studying the pattern through a magnifying glass to see exactly where the stitches fit in. Maybe the scowl on my face scared people away!

But the day wasn't a complete failure. Far from it really - I do love sitting at the Guild stitching! I bought two pretties at the Gift Boutique - bookmark with cross stitched Rainbow Lorikeet, and a cloth bag with a cat motif. There were several different colours and cats to choose from, and as I'm going through a purple phase at the moment, Purple Pussy was my choice.

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This is nothing to do with the Guild, but rather than start a new post, I am tacking it on to this post. My dear friend Sylvia sent me this gorgeous hand made card, and some extra kitties to play with! I'd bought her a pair of socks in this cat design, just for a little surprise, so this was her thank you. Don't you just love 'em!