The Last Piece

A Handmade Christmas

We're on the downhill run now!

Things are a little tight in the Fielke household for Christms this year one way and another, and so I've decided that where possible I'm making everyone's gifts. (Pause here to laugh hysterically and tear my hair out in clumps.) This is a relatively easy task in terms of materials - after all I have a vast stash of fabric, a cupboard full of baking materials and a festish for ribbons and stationery. It's been fun figuring out how to make a budget Christmas just as beautiful as a lavish one!

First up I wanted to make some little gifts for some of my students, and for the wonderful ladies in the beautiful patchwork shops I work in regularly in Sydney. I tootled around the internet until I found these:

What are they? Does this help?

Cute huh? Can't you see those with a little summer dress? I found the tutorial here, along with a couple of other great Christmas gift ideas I'm going to try. I particularly love the balloon wax candles, and I've already made some labels for the jars and pots of things I'm baking and cooking using Wordle as they suggest. What fun!

The tutorial suggests using cut up knit or jersey for the bracelets, but lucky me already had about 6 cones of Hoooked Zpaghetti that I was given.

This fabulous yarn is made from offcuts from the fashion industry - making it re-purposed as well as fantastic! You will need at least two colours to make a set, I have two reds, an ecru, a pink and a purple so I can make different colour sets for different people. I think they look lovely all stacked together.

Next I thought about the littlies in our family - there are a few and I also have several god-daughters and friends kids to think about. Instead of getting them all one thing this year, I thought I would make them all up a little Santa-sack with their initials on.

Inside is chocolates, hair ribbons and nail polish and pretty stuff for the girls, and chocolates, little notepads and bouncy balls etc for the boys. I think they'll have fun unpacking the bags to see whats inside, it was much less expensive for me to fill the bags than buy them all something seperate, and plus it was fun thinking little things to go in each bag for each child!

You might notice my gift tags and wrapping paper - plain brown paper at $2 for 10 metres is a load cheaper than shiny gift wrap, and I think the tree looks lovely with all the presents wrapped in brown, with green and red ribbons and luggage tags for the gift tags. Again, very inexpensive and I made them Christmassy either with bit of fabric stuck on and decorated:

Or with these little paper shapes stuck on. $2 for 100 little Christmas trees! I either drew details in or let them be cute on their own:

Don't worry I'm not done yet - there are tons more gifts to make and some great tutorials too, so hang in there and I'll share in case you too want to make some pretty things for Christmas. In the mean time I have to finish quilting this:

On a severe deadline for Quilter's Companion for next year, hand quilted and four more borders to go! Phew...

Small Things That Make me Giggle

Somehow knowing your boys are still little enough to climb trees lightens everything up.

And knowing your Dad is still little enough to get up there helps too!

I also was concerned for Chewbacca when I saw this new Liberty Print last week.

Apparently it's a place. You decide.

Happy Tuesday....

 

Quilt of the Month

Those of you who've been reading along with me a for a while will remember that I have mentioned this before a few times... but really, if you haven't yet subscribed to the International Quilt Study Centre's Quilt of the Month yet, you really must. It's FREE, and every month they send you an image of a different, usually antique, quilt, and some info about it.

If you're interested in the history of quilting at all, or just like eye candy, hop over and check out this month's offering - this beautiful red and white applique album quilt from the 1800's. There's an interesting bit of info about why these beautiful album quilts are breaking down and need extra TLC. Well worth a look. 

This is Kind of Cool

Just fiddling around and found this at the V&A site. You can upload your photo - here's the cabbage rose I've been playing around with.

 And then choose your number of colours (max 20) and complexity (this is advanced) and they give you the pattern...

I think I would add more colours and fiddle a bit more with triangles vs squares etc, but pretty fun huh? 

   
 

More Splashback

First off, I have to apologise to anyone who commented on the last post and who comments in the next few days. Usually I try really hard to answer everyone's comments, but at the moment I am just running around in circles trying to move house and finish writing a book all in one go. So please forgive me if I don't reply to your comment, I do read every single one of them and I love knowing you're all out there!

I took some more pics of the splashback on Sunday after I finished painting it, but I forgot to do it before I started packing it away to take it to be fired. 

 

The tiler is putting it in tomorrow so I will take some pics of it in its natural habitat when it's all up and grouted! 

We are nearing the end of such a hugely long and stressful project in the renovation of this house - I'm sure that anyone who has renovated on a very tight budget knows what I'm talking about! It's almost not excitement but sheer relief to be going HOME on Saturday. I can't wait to sleep in my own bedroom and look out at my own garden with it's familiar gum trees. Even though everything will be unfinished and messy for quite a while yet, it will be worth it to be home!

Splashback Saturday

Yep, been planning it for a while, but the tilers come this week so I have to bite the bullet. Time to paint the splashback for my new kitchen.

I know quite a few of you were wondering how I was going to do it. So here's the process so far. I bought greenware tiles. These are 15cm square and there are 24 of the - 6 x 4. We have a large oven!

 

I hope you can see these, it was kind of hard to photograph. I gave the tiles four undercoats of white glaze, then sketched the design onto all the tiles at once. I pushed them together so it was like drawing on a large sheet of paper.

 

I used a very sharp HB pencil which will bake off in the kiln. I made sure to keep it very sharp and to press lightly.

 

Next I started painting in the stems of the leaves and the sticks. I used a chocolate brown glaze which I hardly diluted with water at all and a very fine brush.

Next I started painting in the leaves and the trunk of the tree in sections.  I made sure to dilute the glaze with water (not too much!) so that the glaze soaks in to the raw tile. I will go back when it's dry and give the leaves some veins. 

Thats where I got to today.... more tomorrow on what I suppose will be Spashback Sunday!
 
 
 

My Love Affair With the Mailman

It must be such a great job being my mailman. I mean, I can't guarantee that EVERYONE on my street is as happy to see him as I, but certainly I always open the door with a big smile on my face, because if he's knocked, that means FABRIC. 

I have been such a lucky girl this week! First up, Linda Lum deBono sent me fat quarters of her beautiful new fabric line for Henry Glass, Inspiration.

 

Isn't it cute? Look at the gorgeous birdies on the feature print:

And as if that weren't enough, she also put in a copy of her book, Cool Girls Quilt.

 

Thanks so much Linda! Linda also has a new book coming out soon, Jolly Stuff, which looks SO cute, you can see more pics from it at her blog.

 

The very next day, there was my friend the postman again with one of those urgent looking yellow bags that Amy got the same day. It was full of this - 

Luscious new Kaffe Fassett fabric. sigh..... Just in time for me to cut up the last lot :)

And this morning - there he was again. Stop, Mr Postman, I said. People are starting to talk. 

This time he had a copy of The Crafty Minx by Kelly Doust, for me to review for Sewn from my friends at Murdoch Books. Thanks girls!

 

Ok enough of my postal love affair - have you ever seen these? Rhinetex is the biggest distributor of patchwork fabric and goods in Europe, and every time they get a new range in, they do one of these funky little videos on YouTube about it! It's a great way to see the ranges and what's in them. Fun huh?

Ok, got to go get everyone's dinner before I teach a class tonight - have fun everyone :)

Sarah Fielke, Material Obsession, Material Obsession Two

 
  
 

Sausage Dogs

OK, I wasn't going to blog tonight..... I've had a mad, mad week and nothing I can report that any of you would be interested in! And then, hopping around in bed with the computer on my lap, I bumped into sasuage dogs. I have a bit of a thing for sausage dogs.

 

The Persnickety Pelican over at Etsy has solved my Christmas card problem by combining two things I am crazy about, Christmas and sausage dogs. An unlikely combo, I realise.

 

She even has gift tags.

 

And for those of you who are Scrooge-y or don't feel sausage dogs are festive enough ,I recommend to you, sausage dog soap.

 

I mean, if that doesn't make you smile I don't know what will. Night everybody.

Dishing on the Fabric

Wow, we all like the fabrics I got in the mail huh? I am embarassed to say that this is my SECOND delivery of the teapot fabric, the first was loved so much it was cut and pieced before the postpack had time to flutter to the ground. Here are the designers:

Little starbursts and the teapots are from Hoodie's Collection for Blank Quilting

Two florals are from Flower Power by Jennifer Panagelli for Free Spirit

You will all probably be slightly peeved to know that the postie was kind to me agan yesterday, delivering these.....

Delicious Art Gallery fabrics by Patricia Bravo, from her Girly Girl collection, and also -

 

Robert Kaufman corduroy ( I have a very little friend who is getting a very little pinafore made out of this!) and the birds are Nature-ology by Studio E. Please bear in mind that I do make a living by cutting these up and so I need a good variety.... that's what I tell myself and my husband lol

Also in the mail yesterday was a package from Amy! She does spoil me. 

 

Two beautiful pieces of fabric (LOVE those greens), and a block of the Sea Salt chocolate that she has been talking about on her blog!! I would show you the chocolate but it seems someone opened the package right away and ate some, so I can't :) Doesn't that pretty orange card look fantastic with the green fabrics?

And lucky last... I don't think I remembered to show you this?

 

Isn't that beautiful? Margaret from my Friday class has been working away on this lovely version of my Potting Shed quilt for her niece, who loves Frangipani colours. The quilt is quilted and bound now and I took this pic a few weeks ago, but forgot to share it with you. Didn't she do a lovely job?

Redeeming Features

ooo I was so cranky this morning. SOOO cranky. First it was really hot last night and I couldn't sleep. Then I got to sleep, was all set to play golf this morning and was really looking forward to it. BUT, I woke up and found that my trick shoulder was playing up again, the result of a whole lot of old injuries we won't go into here. That meant no large arm movements, which meant no golf. C.R.A.N.K.Y. There was quite a bit of banging in the kitchen and muttering under breath going on around here.

Once I got everyone off to school (which nearly involved some arguments when certain small people were dragging their feet!) someone knocked on the door. At 9am around here, that can only mean one thing.

 

My friend the postman. The first package made me,smile, but the second package made me crack a grin.

 

New friends for my pincushion collection. Now I ask you, who can look at that and be cross? I challenge any one to be cracky after seeing that stack.

Feeling considerably happier, I settled down to piece some teeny diamonds. Realising after about an hour that the shoulder wasn't going to stand up to the sewing machine, I nearly broke out in crankiness again, but instead settled to this, which ALWAYS cheers me up -

 

As I was sketching, the husband (perhaps tipped off by the stream of muttered profanity eariler), came into the studio bearing a toasted bagel with cream cheese for my lunch, perhaps my favourite thing on the planet. 

Happiness levels almost restored, the universe sent me another treat. Another knock on the door revealed this:

My friend Sam with a bunch of flowers to thank me for the weekend at the beach (completely unnessecery, but very much appreciated!).

And so, redeeming features triumph once again. The shoulder is on ice and will hopefully mend in time for golf next week, but if it doesn't I'll settle for another day like today :) Here's hoping all of your days are as nice as mine. Sarah Fielke, Material Obsession, Material Obsession Two

PS. Yes, Charlie was Edward Cullen from Twilight. Congratulations to all of you who guessed and who are obviously as Twilight obsessed as me, and comiserations to those of you who either have not discovered Twilight, or who are on Team Jacob. lol!!!