The Last Piece

Twitter!

Ahhhh! I changed my screen name on Twitter from @thelastpiece to @sarahfielke and Twitter is still picking up @thelastpiece's tweets- and apparently the new @thelastpiece has a foul mouth! Please disregard any and all Tweets read on this page while we remedy the promleb, and please come tweet with me at @sarahfielke! Hope you had a good weekend....

In Close Up

Beautiful afternoon....

Quilting, quilting, quilting....

Scroll down for the giveaway post. Happy Friday....

Growing

Things are growing out of the bolts in the sewing room. Branches are growing leaves and birds are tweeting in the branches.

I'm having so much fun! Don't forget to enter the Giveaway to win some From Little Things for yourself, to enter leave a comment on the post below. Sweet dreams, another long day of stitching tomorrow!

A Little Things GIVEAWAY!!

Ok girls, an occasion like this calls for a giveaway I think!

Here's the deal. Blog, Tweet, Facebook or otherwise let the world know about From Little Things and you will go into the draw to win one of five packs of eight From Little Things fat quarters.

Make sure you leave a comment ON THIS POST and tell me about what you did. You will get one entry for each way you told your friends, so tell as many as you can in as many ways as you can!

That's one pack of each colourway to five readers! Help me spread the word and you could have some Little Things before it's even shown at Houston, you lucky chickens.

You have until September 30 when I will draw the winners by RNG, so be quick like rabbits! 

From Little Things

It's here it's here it's here it's here!! 4 boxes of 41 bolts of From Little Things by Sarah Fielke for LECIEN has arrived and is sitting on my kitchen counter. 

Just love it. Love it! Can't think what else to say.

The colours in these pics are not quite right, but I will try and get some proper shots in proper light tomorrow. 

Only one thing to do before starting to chop it up -

 

Bring it On!

Well the train is well and truly out of the station and headed to Houston for Market. My fabric is in the air on it's way to me - or it would be if there wasn't a storm in China and the flight was cancelled!!! I mean really. Really?? Patience my pet....

Keeping me distracted from this little piece of horror news though has been the week full of book photo shoots. I spent the first half of the week touching the studio up with the last few details, like a peg board for all the bits. Well most of the bits, I do admit to having a little more quilting junk than that.

A new bed for Madam who must be present at all such occasions. Doesn't she look pretty nestled down near all the fabrics?

There are some other finishing touches which I will keep hidden for now!

Sophia from Murdoch Books and my photographer Sue (that's the posessive MY, because I think she is AMAZING!! I wish I could show you all the beautiful, beautiful pics right now but I suppose I'd better keep some things a secret) raided my sewing room for all the pretty toys and we set to work.

Amy you may recognise some things in there! Thank you for the lovely presents, you can see that I appreciate and love them.

Apparently Sue is a photographer, so I can't show you her face on television. I am going to bend her rules and show you the back of her head though so you can see us hard at work.

Here is me wearing my beautiful silver hat.

It's very hard to photograph hands so they don't look like large pink spiders, I discovered. All shots involving hands take a long time. 

Working hard or hardly working - two days of this and we discovered that arranging pretty things while someone takes lovely pictures of them is really tiring. Still more book shoot to come, but we have a few weeks break while the design team swing into action. 

Sophia also brought something exciting over for me to see.

Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?? I just love the cover. I'm not allowed to keep this one, it has to go back to the Production cupboard, but ones we're allowed to put in the bookshelf and flick through will shortly be available for sale in the US of A. I should point out that if you already own Material Obsession Two this is THE SAME BOOK, they just change the cover for US publication to play with everyone's heads. :D

If you're a shop in the US that stocks Material Obsession books, or you know of a great shop that does, or if you have made one of my quilts from either book, let me know! I would love to get a gallery going of quilt pics and stockists lists, so shoot me a note and we will link you up and maybe give some things away for those that respond. 

Have a great weekend everyone, I'm off to Flo's stand at Sibella Court's flea market this morning, I'll let you know if I find anything good! Any other good markets on in Sydney today I should know about?

Building

The hubby has been busy again and this time we are nearly ready to have a front door! Hooray, as people have been entering through the side door for nearly 6 months. 

On the weekend we bought a reclaimed door circa 1940 or so from a junk shop, took the stained glass out (it's going back in) and painted it a beautiful, shiny blue.

A couple of old patio doors will be the side windows to let in lots of light. Damo spent the day building the frame (these are just leaning up) and tomorrow he will hang the door and bolt in the windows. A lock and a big silver knocker and we are ready for company to call. How exciting, a house key to my renovated house!

Tomorrow, Thursday and Friday we are shooting quilts for the book again, so there will be no Wednesday night class, but here is what they got up to last week. The girls have made great progress building on their waggas.

Time for bed - happy Tuesday everyone.

Friends

Over the weekend a special friend of mine from Kindergarten was here in Sydney from overseas, so we decided to get the old gang together and catch up. I have known these girls (and Richard there, I know he's not a girl) for over 30 years (!!! good lord) but I haven't seen Elena for 6 years, or my friend Floss for 5 years even though she lives right here in Sydney! She's just had a baby so it was wonderful to see her and meet her beautiful Wednesday.

(Why do I always squinch my eyes up like that when I smile? Note to self)

We all agreed it had been far too long and we must get together more often. Why does this happen? When you sit back to think about it all, our lives move so fast. We think we have all the time in the world, but in actual fact I could put all those girls faces right back into their school uniforms eating lunch on the oval and they would look pretty much exactly the same, despite 6 kids between us all and the interveening years.

Sitting around the table looking at their faces I promised myself that I would not let the next 6 years run by. Friends are what makes the things in our lives that are difficult and heavy to carry easier to bear. I have friends of all kinds the world over these days, both face-to-face and online friends, some of them very very special to me (you know who you are) - but you can't replace the friends that were there when you were growing up, who know what you were like at age 5 and 15 and 25. 

I love you guys. And I love you too, Beril and Chris although you were interstate and not able to attend our gathering! And most of all I love our kids, all 9 of them, because even though I don't get to hold them all as often as I'd like they are the next piece of the puzzle and I hope they all get to be friends in some way someday!

PS. The amazing kitchen we are sitting in is at Elena's sister's house - she and her husband are artists and the whole house is literally covered with their paintings and scluptures. It's just wonderful. 

Moving Along at a Rapid Pace

So many things to blog today I could decide which one first. I have been a little absent in blogland due to the business of real life! I've had both my amazing boys' footy teams win their grand finals - 

Mine is blondie in the middle. And here's Oss looking sideways sheepishly at the camera.

Very exciting. I can't stop looking at them at the moment - I'm sure you other mums of teenagers out there know the feeling. You turn away for a moment and turn back and they grew. It's astonishing.

The wonderful husband has in the mean time been fitting out my studio, and he is nearly done! I've done heaps of shifting and unpacking.

Isn't he amazing?? His carpentry skills are just phenomenal. It's not quite finished yet but that didn't stop me moving in!

And as I was moving in, I thought why not SEW in there and make a prototype for the bag pattern I've designed for From Little Things, my fabric line with Lecien. The meterage isn't here yet, but that doesn't mean I can't test the patterns out. I decided to use an old feedsack for the outside and some Old New Spicy Scrap for the lining.

Cute huh? It needs a good press. 

Such a warm day today for the first day of Spring! Lucky we got the tomatoes in! How's the weather where you are?