The Last Piece

Sullivan's Edge Blog Hop!

So, my friend Pat Sloan asked me a little while ago to try out these diamond edge rulers. The idea is that the rulers have a diamond carbide coating along one edge that sharpens your blade as you cut, how cool is that?

I tried out two sizes of ruler. They're easy to use and once you get used to the scratchy noise as you cut, they do sharpen your blades. They also have a coating on the back that stops the ruler from slipping. You will find the rulers in loads of different sizes including the two I got, 6 1/2" square and 6 1/2" x 12 1/2", in loads of quilt shops (including in Australia) and in Joanns in the USA. 

So to keep the Hop rolling along and have some fun, Pat asked all the bloggers to answer the following questions.

If I looked in your fridge, what would I find?

At the moment, depressing things like celery and radishes because I am on a diet. Also tempting things that I am not allowed to eat, like chocolate frosting and full fat yoghurt, and always a lot of leftovers, because I have two teenage boys and they need to be fed wether I am dieting or not!

What is your favourite TV show of all time and why?

For sure The West Wing. It has everything I love. History,clever writing, brilliant acting, wonderful staging, humor, tragedy, and Rob Lowe. I have all seven seasons on DVD and I must have watched them all through at least 10 times. Barlet for President!

mmm. Hello Rob.

If Hollywood made a movie of your life, who would you want to play you?

Meg Ryan, but Meg Ryan in French Kiss, not Meg Ryan with the long hair. I love that haircut she's got. And then maybe they could have Kevin Kline play Damian, even though he looks nothing like him. If you have never seen French Kiss, it is worth watching just to hear Meg Ryan say, "You people make my ass twitch" in a pretend French accent.

And now to the giveaway!!

Want to try out a Sullivan's Edge Ruler?

Just answer one of the questions above by leaving a comment on THIS POST and I will pick a winner on Friday, September 30 - that's US time for all you Aussies, we get an extra half a day :)

Make sure and check out what all the other bloggers have to say, and visit their lovely blogs as the hop progresses.

Monday -           Pat Sloan http://blog.patsloan.com/

Tuesday -          Rachael PS I Quilt

                        Alison Cluck Cluck Sew

Wednesday-      Erin One Piece at a Time

                        Victoria Bumble Beans 

Thursday-         Liz and Beth Lizzie B Creative

                        Me!

Friday-              Dawn Spring Water Designs

                        Emily Carolina Patchworks

Everyone on the hop is sharing their favourite recipes, and so I thought I would give you a good old Aussie one to try out. 

Australia Day Pavlova

A Pavlova is a meringue based dessert named after the Russian dancer Anna Pavlova on her visit to Australia in the 1920's. It's an Aussie tradition and one I always make on Australia Day - although my family never needs an excuse to eat it.

 

Ingredients (serves 6)

6 (59g) eggs, separated

1 1/4 cups (270g) caster sugar

2 tsp cornflour

1 tsp white vinegar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

300ml thickened cream

2 tbs icing sugar, sifted

Finely sliced rind and juice of 1 lime

2 bananas, thinly sliced

3 kiwifruit, peeled, thinly sliced

Pulp of 2-3 passionfruit

 

Preheat oven to 120°C (248F). Line an oven tray with foil. Brush with melted butter and dust with cornflour, shaking off excess. Mark a 24cm-diameter circle on foil.

Use an electric mixer to whisk egg whites in a clean dry bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition, until meringue is thick and glossy and sugar dissolved. Rub a little meringue between fingers. If still "gritty" with sugar, continue to whisk until sugar dissolves.

Add cornflour, vinegar and vanilla and whisk until just combined. Spoon meringue onto the foil, using the marked circle as a guide. Smooth sides and top of pavlova. Use a small spatula to forms little peaks around edge of pavlova.

Bake in oven for 11/2 hours or until pavlova is dry to the touch. Turn off oven. Leave pavlova in oven

with the door ajar to cool completely. Don't open the oven door all the way or your pav will collapse. When completely cold, transfer to serving plate or store in an airtight container until required.

Use an electric mixer to whisk the cream and icing sugar in a medium bowl until firm peaks form. Spoon cream onto the top of pavlova. 

You can use any fruit you like (it's particularly good with strawberries and raspberries), but this mixture is my favourite. Pour lime juice into a ceramic or glass bowl. Add banana slices and toss to coat with juice. Drain. Decorate pavlova with banana, kiwifruit, passionfruit and lime rind.

 

* Disclaimer - Pavlovas are not on my diet. 

Round Ups

Here's a round up the news of the week!

The Bloggers BOM has started, with Sherri McConnell of A Quilting Life kicking off the festivities. Her block looks like this:

and you can find the tutorial to make it and begin your Bloggers BOM quilt at her blog! Watch out on the 25th of each month for the next post in the series. I'm going to follow along and make my own version of the quilt. Here is my version of Sherri's block:

In other news, Kathreen has asked me to guest post on Whip Up this week! If you are interested in how I design my fabric, you can pop on over and check out my chatter. And di you know that Kathreen has a new book out? Its called The Little Bits Quilting Bee. I will be on the blog tour later next month so watch out for that.

Thank you also to GenerationQ Magazine, who has featured my thread dying post as their post of the week this week. If you don't know about GenerationQ go check them out as well!

I am doing a few really fun blog hops in the coming days and weeks so stay tuned for those - and also I'm off to Houston for Quilt Market at the end of October so things around my house are covered in fabric, patterns, mock ups, quilt blocks and booth decorations! In between a few classes, the most recent at Cottage Quiltworks last week. All the girls in this class are making one of my patterns, either from the books or from a single pattern.

Here is Hanging Lanterns, coming along very nicely.

Whirligig looking just beautiful:

Two different versions of Shades of Grey using my From Little Things fabric range!

And Stars in Your Eyes! Can't wait to see these progress over the coming classes. 

If you are on the South Coast and would like to take a class with me, I am at My Patch quilt shop in Milton teaching on October 8, come along and join in the fun!

AND, my packaging has arrived and so soon I will be able to reveal to you some of my new products... so exciting! The applique kits are already available via email (not via the shop as yet). They look like this:

And contain everything you need to try my applique technique as shown in this month's Quilter's Companion DVD, which is also available from me. The kit is $40, the Hera marker is availavle seperately for $10 and the DVD and magazine together are $13. Email me at [email protected] for  orders or more details.

My kids are on school holidays at the moment so I've spent the last few days with a tribe of boys at the beach. 

The weather wasn't great but they managed to spend their time running up and down the beach in the rain with a football or swimming and appearing at the door blue with cold and starving. A lot of food has been eaten and a lot of movies watched in the times when the rain was torrential! Oh well the fun of being kids and staying up all night on sleepovers.... two more weeks of holidays to go so I'm sure we're up for more of the same.

Onwards :)

The Blogger's BOM

 

The marvellous Jackie over at Canton Village Quiltworks has decided to host a FREE Bloggers Block of the Month. Jackie hasgot together 12 fantastic bloggers to design a block each, and do a tutorial on their blog on the 25th of each month for everyone to follow. Lucky me, I've been invited to play along and make a block too!

It works like this. Jackie has sent us all these fabrics:

and we all have to use the gray piece and no less than 3 other prints to make a block for a sampler. Each month you can play along and make the block, but you don't have to use the same fabrics, you can use whatever you like. There will be a Flickr group for you to post your creations to and a Mr Linky for you to add your details to if you're playing.

Check out Jackies post for more info and watch my blog every month for my version of everyone else's blocks and details of where to look next. There are some FANTASTIC designers (and some of my awesomely fabulous mates) playing so this will be a blast! Here's who's up:

September - Sherri McConnell - A Quilting Life

October - Vicki Welsh - Field Trips in Fiber

November - Stephanie Dunphy - Loft Creations

December - Pat Sloan - The Voice Of Quilting

January - John Adams - Quilt Dad

February - Amy Smart - Diary of a Quilter

March - Allison Harris - Cluck, Cluck, Sew

April - Amy Lobsiger - Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts

May - Cathy Underhill - Cabbage Quilts

June - Pam Vieira-McGinnis - Pam Kitty Morning

July - Victoria Findlay Wolfe - Bumble Beans Inc.

August - Amy Ellis - Amy's Creative Side

September - Sarah Fielke - The Last Piece (that's me!)

October - Jackie Kunkel - Canton Village Quilt Works

Have fun!

PS. Only 3 applique kits left, and the FQ stack of FLT is still up for sale, see the below post :) 

 

A Quilters Companion DVD

Have you seen this month's Quilter's Companion yet (Issue 51)?

A while ago I shot a DVD with them and it has just been released! It's all about how I do needleturn applique and it also has a great show and tell of my quilts at the end. The DVD is an hour long and shows you everything from chosing fabrics and cutting out to how to finish the blocks.

The magazine also has the pattern for my quilt, A Walk in Deventer, which I made after visiting The Netherlands earlier this year. I was walking through the town of Deventer at sunset and there was a market in the square that inspired this quilt. It's a great project for a beginner appliquer as it repeats the same shapes over and over, and also gives you practise on inside and outside curves, inner and outer points, bias strips and circles. 

For those of you without easy access to a copy of QC, I am selling the magazines for $13. The DVD will play in your computer if you are overseas, but not in your DVD unless you have an international DVD player. 

Due to popular demand I have also put together an applique kit for you, containing everything I use for my method of applique. 

The kit contains:

Tweezer scissors, applique needles, applique glue and a silver gel pen for $40. I can also include the Hera marker (which I use for making positioning creases in background fabric and for making bias strips) for an extra $10.

I ship worldwide! Please make sure and tell me where you are emailing from so I can give you an accurate postage estimate. The applique kit will be available soon in my online shop along with a new range of patterns and templates being released at the end of October. Please note that the shop is still under construction so if there is something you are interested in that isn't hooked up for purchase yet please just email me and I will sort you out. 

ALSO on the shop front, I have... drumroll.... ONE, VERY last fat quarter stack of From Little Things. 

I promised a lady I would cut her a stack for a kit and I did and now the pair to the FQs I cut are sitting here waiting for YOU. I said I couldn't cut any more but I have - this is it before St Ives takes over! So if YOU want to buy a stack of From Little Things this is your very last chance. Drop me a line!

[email protected]

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THANK YOU

To everyone who has commented, Facebooked, tweeted and emailed about St Ives. I am truly humbled by your beautiful comments and I appreciate you all so much! You guys are the best. I'm sorry if I haven't replied to each of you individually but between the blog, the Houston quilt show and Amy's quilt, my email inbox is a scary, scary beast. Rest assured I have read and appreciated every single word.

THANK YOU

To the over 100 of you who have so far sent over 160 blocks for Amy! I know how many I need for the two quilts and I'm not quite there yet, but with so many people having offered I know I will have enough for both quilts. Special mention to Lydia who made SIXTEEN blocks!! You rock Lydia!

THANK YOU

To Brenda who made me a special little needle case out of Kaffe Fassett selvedges and tucked it in with her blocks. You're a sweetie Brenda, you made me feel very special :)

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Happy Tuesday Quiltland xxx

That's One Big Box.

That poor UPS man could hardly get it out of the truck! I didn't feel asking him to carry up up the stairs was really fair, so we had a little fabric picnic. 

Holy moley!! Woot woot woot!!!!

What a wall of colour!!

And then, inexplicably, a few on different bolts, which kind of wrecked my little wall set up photo thingy. Those crazy Leciens! :D

St Ives, a story from my childhood, by Sarah Fielke for Lecien, Japan. Coming soon to Quilt Market near you.

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This fabric will be available wholesale in Australia from Charles Parsons and in the USA from Lecien, USA. For all enquiries outside of these regions including European countries, please contact Lecien, Japan. The fabric will be available for retail purchase worldwide from approx. January 2012. A full list of stockists both bricks and mortar and online will be posted on my blog after Quilt Market at the end of October. Thank you for all your enquiries about it, please direct any questions regarding sampling, patterns etc to [email protected] :)

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In Which I Dye my Own Thread

Guess what I did on Saturday? My friend Lisa Walton (you know, the totally famous Lisa who won the Jewel Pearce Patterson Scholarship at International Quilt Festival - you know the one!) is teaching a class at Quilt Market i how to dye your own threads. She invited Erica and me over on the weekend to try the class out and make some threads of our own. How fun!!

We met at Lisa's with some other intrepid students and learned how to make thread into skeins. This is very useful information (and amazingly simple!) and soon we were all rapidly making skeins of up to 15 or 20m of thread to dyes different colours. 

Lisa had all kinds of different threads for us to try out. I picked:

Perle 8 (the shiny white thread), rayon (the shiny tan), crochet cotton (slightly thinner and creamer than the Perle), embroidery threads and some sashiko (the thickest thread). We also ripped up some cotton sateen into fat quarters to dye underneath our threads. 

When we had all made our different skeins we trooped off to the Dyed and Gone to Heaven dyeing factory.

Yep, that's it. Can you believe Lisa and her husband Peter dye all that fabric for Dyed and Gone to Heaven here? Hundreds of metres of it. 

We all put one fat quarter and some fabric into takeaway boxes with out threads on top, and soaked them in soda ash solution. Please don't ask me any technichal questions about this - the last time I dyed anything I was 13 and it was a tie-dyed t-shirt! I just followed Lisa's excellent instructions. 

Then came the fun bit. 

Our turn!

Wow look at that table of whites turn to COLOUR! What fun!

Here are my creations soaking in their little boxes, waiting....

And here they are at home 24 hours later, washed and dried and re-skeined and ready to stitch. I love how they all turned out, and how different even the ones from the same box are! You could never make the same thread twice.

I think this one is my favourite.

Can't wait for something to quilt to try it out. Thanks so much for having me Lisa! If you are going to Market or Festival I HIGHLY recommend that you check out Lisa's class, you can go home with some Perle 8's you hand dyed yourself, plus get to meet my friend into the bargain :)

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PS: Thanks again and again to everyone sending blocks for Amy. There are literally hundreds of you, and I will be able to make exactly what I hoped for if they keep arriving at the rate they are! If you want to make a block it is NOT too late, I will take any and all that I get and if I need to I will put them on the back as well as the front. I don't want to turn anyone away who wants to help, this is just such a wonderful response for an amazing lady. Thank you all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

PPS: I didn't want to write a 9/11 post, there are thousands upon thousands out there without me adding to the cacophony. I do want to say that today I am thinking of my friends in New York, thinking of the victims, the survivors, the first responders, and thinking of the wonderful, vibrant city I love so much, which my husband and I fell in love with after living there when we were first married, nearly 20 years ago. Every time I go back I feel I am coming home.  

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....

 

St Ives Arrives!

Oh my gosh it seems like I have been waiting forever but this afternoon the UPS man brought this to my door:

A meter each of my new range, St Ives!! I'm so excited :-))

St Ives is about my childhood. I grew up in a suburb of Sydney called St Ives. It's very different now, but when I was a little girl it was really bushy and leafy. Each print has a story behind it that means something to my childhood in the 70's and 80's, the print colourways are named after the colours of Slushies.

Here's a sneaky for you:

Watermelon

Polar Purple Shiver

Cherry

and Blue Vanilla. Remember blue slushies, how they made your tongue blue for the rest of the afternoon and you coud stick it out at your brother?

That's all I can show you for now :) Stay tuned over the next few days and I hope I can show you a few more up close!

PS. Offers of help are still rolling in for Amy. Rest assured if you want to help I will fit your block in somewhere! And if you are looking for the link to help with donations you can go here. Thanks everybody, I'm so moved by your support and your lovely emails. xxx