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!

Decluttering, and an experimental block.

I have accumulated so much fabric this year that I ran out of space to store it, and it was in piles on the floor, which I kept tripping over. As most of my sewing stash is on shelves in the wardrobe of one of our spare bedrooms, I decided to make some more room in there for the excess fabric. On the top two shelves, we had stored photos albums, boxes of photos, board games, old calendars, and other stuff we couldn't bring ourselves to chuck out. I hauled it all out on to the floor, gritted my teeth and started sorting out. I filled a box full of paper for the recycle bin, threw out a box of negatives that were not needed, as the photos were safely in albums years ago. The albums and other photos went back on to the top shelf, along with other folders and the board games. The calendars are still to be sorted out and given to local schools for kids to cut up, although I might keep a few for craft purposes. I looked up on Google "How to recycle old calendars" and found some great ideas!

Finding myself with two extra shelves for my fabric stash, I relocated other items like threads and kits, and fitted the bags of fabric on the shelves below. Happy Jan!

One of the many quilting and patchwork books I've borrowed from our library had a very easy version of the Chevron pattern. I had to try it out just to see if I could make it work for me. I'm happy with the technique, although next time I'll be more careful in my selection of the fabric with a pattern. This one should be all the same way up, but it's not. All part of the learning curve.

Small projects.

I had some fabric left over from the Aussie birds quilt top, so I used it to make a table topper or centrepiece, whatever you want to call it.

Whilst sorting through my stash for the right fabric to start another project, I re-discovered some lovely chicken fabric, and decided to throw together some placemats to sell at a Guild fund raising afternoon coming up.  Ken loved these, and was upset to hear that I was donating them for resale!  I had to tell him that there was plenty more of those chooks left and I could whip up more placemats for him later on!

I used up bits and pieces for the borders on these, hence the black borders on the sides of one of the mats.  They are not meant to be a matching set, and I can see I will have to make sure they are labelled separately so people don't start making rude comments about them not matching!

 The back of them is just gingham.

Quilt top for Aussie Heroes, and an old doiley.

I'd started this quilt top a month ago, but once I got tied up with the exhibition at Bundoora, I didn't have time to do any more on it. So it was at the top of my To Do list this week. I've tried several times to get a clear picture of the fabric, as it really is lovely (Australian birds), but this is the best I could do. It was too long to hang vertically on the clothesline, so I hung it sideways, and flipped the photo around on my computer!  Hard to see on the pic,but there is a brown border around the green sashing.

While I was sitting in the gallery at Bundoora, I did quite a bit of stitching in between visitors.  I'd taken an unfinished supper cloth, and this traycloth commemorating the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. I bought it unworked on eBay years ago, but never got around to stitching it.   I spent the first day working on the supper cloth and felt like I was getting nowhere (it only has about 2% done), so I decided to work on the tray cloth instead, and am very pleased with my work.  It just needs the Olympic torch on the right hand side, and some gum leaves to finish it.

New linens for the collection.

My exhibition at Bundoora is now closed, and I am thrilled to bits at the success of it. I've posted details of the final week on my Early Australian Linens blog, but for this blog I want to show the readers some more cloths that were given to me, as well as a stunning cloth and doiley that I won on eBay last week. I haven't been looking on eBay much since I retired from working, as I could not afford to continue spending so much once Ken was the sole income earner. But sometimes I wanted to check out the prices that various things were getting on eBay, or I'd look for something on behalf of friends who don't have an eBay account. I was doing just that last week when I discovered a little supper cloth and matching doiley, and as the embroidery looked to be stunning in the photo, I decided to place a bid. To my surprise I won the set for less than $12, and when it arrived, I was simply gobsmacked that nobody else had discovered it!



I have other supper cloths like this, but this is by far the most beautifully stitched, and with a hand crocheted edge as well.

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While I was sitting in the gallery at Bundoora on Saturday, a couple came in to chat to me and tell me about their family linen. They were an older couple, and said their children had no interest in keeping the cloths, which had been made by the man's grandmothers in Germany around 1880. I said I would love to see them, so they turned up the next day with these three cloths, and insisted that I keep them, or pass them on to someone else who would appreciate them. As he was able to give me the names and dates of the makers, I will be showing these to our Guild collection ladies, as they may be interested in adding them to the Guild Collection.

Publicity for my exhibition.

Leader Newspapers have a small article and photo about me in two of their papers - Diamond Valley and Preston.  Here is a link to the Diamond Valley Leader item.
I presented a half hour talk about collecting, cleaning and storing vintage linens today, and it was well received.  I hope I have influenced thirty people to go home and retrieve their grandmother's linens from the bottom drawer, and learn to appreciate their value.

Mug rugs.

The staff at Bundoora Homestead are all very friendly and helpful.  They have been very kind and patient with me, and the cafe manager has brought me a coffee every morning within minutes of me arriving!  She said she does it for all the staff as well as any exhibitor who is on duty in the gallery, and won't take payment.  So I decided I would make them all a little gift, and yesterday whipped up five mug rugs.  I knew all the girls loved cats and dogs, so I figured I was safe using patchwork fabric featuring them.  The first pic is the front, and the second pic is the back of each one.

I gave them to the staff today and they were delighted!

New additions to collection.

Haven't had time to scratch myself lately, but finally got around to taking pics of the linens that were given to me last week by a visitor to the Bundoora Homestead gallery.  The first two are beautiful centrepieces, whitework and cut work respectively.

This is a very unusual piece of white work - looks like it may have been a nightdress holder, as it is envelope style with embroidered initials.  The lady who gave it to me said it was made in a convent in England.

Pristine white table cloth with cut work.

 A more recent embroidery I think - sweet cloth with tea set around it....

 And matching napkins.

Generous visitors at Bundoora!

I have been given some beautiful old linens which I will be posting photographs of here in the next few days.  Click here to read how I came by them.

No more difficulties with comments

After receiving emails from bloggers relating to that awful thing you had to do when posting a comment, I have removed that now.  So providing you have a blog account of your own, you should now be able to just leave a comment without having to type in codes and all that rubbish.  OK, it is supposed to stop spam, but I check my blogs most days, and if I find a comment that isn't nice, I'll just delete it!

My linens at Bundoora Homestead.

A few readers of this blog expressed interest in hearing more about my linens exhibition, and I have been writing reports and posting photos on the blog relating to the exhibition.  Rather than repeat it all here, if you want to see pics of the display etc. you can find it here.

A new quilt top nearly finished.

I received a heap of Aussie icon fabric to use for quilt tops for Aussie Heroes Quilts, and amidst the mayhem that is my life at the moment, I have put together some of the fabric featuring Australian birds.  All I have to do now is the borders - a border of the same green as the sashing, and an outer border of another colour, probably brown.  Then it will be on the way to Jan Maree to make up into a quilt for one of our Aussie Heroes, who must be feeling depressed since the deaths of five soldiers earlier this week...

Congratulations to Linda Steele!

Linda Steele is a prolific quilt maker and embroiderer who lives in Melbourne, and her work consistently wins many awards.  I have seen many of her quilts at quilt shows around Melbourne, as I'm sure many of this blog's readers also will have done.  She has just posted some exciting news on her blog - one of her quilts has won "The Best Of Australia" award at The World Quilt Show in New Hampshire USA.  She mentions that quite a few other Australians have won prizes.  You can go to Linda's blog here, or straight to the World Quilt Competition winners here, to see photos of all the winning quilts.

Jewellery organiser.

For anyone that takes issue with my spelling of jewellery, I just spent 10 minutes reading dozens of websites about the various versions of the word, and I decided to go with this one!
Chunky jewellery seems to be the 'in' thing over the last few years, and I've accumulated a few pendants that just make a mess in my jewellery box, so I left them lying on the dressing table.


   When I found a website with instructions on how to make a jewellery organiser, I thought what a great idea!  I found a cork board at our opshop for $1.

 Took some fabrics from my stash...

 Used this craft glue...

 to stick the made up fabric on to the corkboard.

 Put a few of these pins on the board...

 Tra la!   Neat row of chunky pendants, with room for more when I add to my collection!

One good turn deserves another!

RAKs are popular among bloggers lately.  Random Acts of Kindness, or one good turn deserves another, whatever you call it, has a way of working in unexpected ways.  A friend contacted me about a month ago, to ask if I knew anyone who collected swap cards, as she wanted to get rid of her childhood hobby collection.  I do collect them myself, but not the cards from C's era of the seventies, so they were of no interest to me.  But I suggested to C that I ask the swap card  collectors club if they would like to buy them, and she said that's fine.  So I phoned 'B' the secretary and arranged to take C's cards over there and see if she thought the club would like them.
B was pleased to see me, and delighted with the cards.  We sat in her kitchen and while reminiscing over a cup of tea, she suddenly remembered she had something for me.  She disappeared for a minute, and returned with an old card table cloth.  She remembered that I collect linens, and has had this one for years. 

Needs a soak of course, but it is in excellent condition, and is a different design to the others that I have in my collection. After some more talking, B remembered that she had unfinished embroidered items from her mother and grandmother, and as B isn't an embroiderer, she offered them to me. Whooo hooo!

 Unfinished apron complete with cottons.

 Sweet little supper cloth above, closeup of design below.

 Doiley to match the supper cloth.

Centrepiece and matching doilies, started in very neat stitching.

 
 A box of threads...I don't know how people can work with a tangled mess like this!  I will only keep the skeins, the rest will be thrown out.

 A box of skeins in one colour which is such a beautiful shade of gold-beige.  I'm sure I can find a project suitable for this!