Monthly Archives: August 2015

A Splendiferous Sydney Saturday

30 Sunday Aug 2015

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The weather yesterday was perfect. It was around 20degC, with a light breeze and a cloudless blue sky. So we decided to go and check out Sydney’s latest park/walkway at Barangaroo. This is one of the oldest parts of Sydney and is in the Rocks area close to the bridge. If you get a chance to visit this park then take it. It’s been beautifully landscaped with native flora and has two pathways. One is crushed sandstone which echoes the beautiful sandstone structures everywhere and the other Tarmac which is great for bikes and the like. Here are some photos I took.

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After walking through the park and enjoying the sunshine we strolled around Walsh Bay and found a host of interesting restaurants and cafes I didn’t even know we’re there. Naturally, we had to stop for lunch and it was just so relaxing sitting there in the dappled sunshine looking out over the water.

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Now here’s a place I’d love to live. It feels like a village yet is in the heart of Sydney, minutes walk away from just about everything. So, just in case any of you has a few million stashed away that you could live without, I’m accepting donations for my “living the life” fund. 🙂

How long should poppies last?

29 Saturday Aug 2015

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I bought these gorgeous poppies on Tuesday.
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This is how they looked on Friday.

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I know flowers demonstrate the ephemeral nature of beauty, but really? Three days? Is this normal?

Help! I need the sewing room organising fairy.

28 Friday Aug 2015

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How do you organise your sewing room? I have such difficulty in deciding where to start and how to sort my fabrics. Do you keep your untouched fabrics separate from the ones you’ve cut into? And how do you fold those cut up ones? Do you sort by colour, by type, or by collection? And what do you with ones you’re still working on and don’t want out of sight, because they’ll be out of mind? And what do you do with sewing machines that are surplus to requirements? They seem to be quite hard to sell. As you can see I need the ministrations of the organising fairy.

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All suggestions gratefully received.

A change of project

27 Thursday Aug 2015

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I’ve squared up my steam punk blocks but I’m putting that project on hold while I try to to think of a way to make them into a quilt I’ll be happy with. Thinking, thinking, thinking…

So, in the meantime I’m going to go back to my Islamic Tile quilt. It currently has two borders on it. See below.

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So the next step is to fuse the crosses onto the plain teal fabric and then attach them. I think I actually need to cut some more crosses. I have enough to cover the width but not the corners.

Decision making agony!

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

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I’ve finished the Steam Punk blocks but I still can’t decide what to do with them. I had a play on the floor but I’m not really enamoured of the results. Take a look. I even tried using them as a sort of border so I could create a medallion for the centre.

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Here are some more designs I played with on paper – slightly easier due to not having to deal with a four-legged, shameless camera hog.
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Any ideas?

Another appliqué circle technique

24 Monday Aug 2015

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Anna Maria Horner has come up with another way to prepare circles for appliqué. It may help me form circles from those I’ve already cut out and that I had trouble forming with starch, an iron and some Perfect Circle templates. She makes use of the heat conducting properties of aluminium foil. It looks very promising so I thought might give it a go.

These photos show my results. I’m impressed.

Back pressed

Back pressed

Front pressed

Front pressed

Back with foil removed but Perfect Circle still in place.

Back with foil removed but Perfect Circle still in place.

Circle with template removed.

Circle with template removed.

If you’d like to give it a go, here’s her blog post.

Trying a new technique

22 Saturday Aug 2015

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I’m trying a new, to me, technique. I’m about to appliqué the centre circles onto the Steam Punk blocks. I made the mistake of using the template to cut out the circles. What I should have done is cut out larger circles, tack around them and then use my Perfect Circles to make the circle. Now, because I used the template, the circles aren’t big enough to do that with. I tried freezer paper and that didn’t work either, so I’m trying the freezer paper on top method. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Playing around with Steam Punk

21 Friday Aug 2015

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The Steam Punk quilt by Jen Kingswell is a lovely quilt. See pic below.

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However, I’m running out of steam and I’m keen to wrap this one up so I’ve been playing around with the layout. What do you think?

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The reason I’ve gone for on point, as per the original, is that it looks more like a wheel that way. When you see the blocks square on they look more like pizza slices (this was pointed out to me by several people on FaceBook). Here is a selection of my blocks so you can see what I mean.

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Maybe they’ll look less pizza-like when they have the central circle appliqués on? It’s so hard to decide!