Miss Piggy

To Market, to Market to buy a fat pig,

Home again, Home again,

Jiggity Jig.

Only I didn't have to go so far.

My husband made my Miss Piggy for me.

Do you like her?

Should I paint her pink/ flesh/ nude / naked/ natural. ?

OR

Should I just put a coat of oil on the wood?

The ears and the tail ? I think they need a bit of colour.

I tried to dye some 'roving' today but it hasn't really worked.

I had white roving and tried a brown dye and a strong yellow dye.

I have ended up with a very pale beige and creamy lemon colour.

Do I have to use a special dye? for roving.

The dye didn't go to waste as I dyed some wool [cloth] and I will felt it later.

It turned out a beautiful pale yellow.

Sue Spargo Workshop

Up bright and early this morning and down to 'Amitie' in Bentleigh. I spent the day at Sue Spargo's workshop. I did a workshop with her last year and it was wonderful. Today's was even better.
Today we were making her 'Greta' needleroll. You can see hers if you go to her website and also her blog.
We could have the background in any colour and fabric we liked, although hers had been done with velvet and silk matka. The applique is done with felted wool and embellished with beads, ribbon,velvet and thread.
Here is Sue explaining what she uses for embellishments on another project of hers.



This is a close-up of the bird on the above piece. I love the shape of her birds and although this shape seems to be used throughout her patterns no two are ever the same because of the fabric,ricrac,beads and threads that she uses.

This is another workshop. Every leaf is totally different. They all have different stitches and fabrics.

We had a delicious lunch supplied by Jenny and her husband and the day just flew past.

Here is what I achieved. This is the outside of the needleroll. It will fold into three when finished,

so the centre piece of fabric, will be the back when closed and it will have a label on it. The piece to the left- the patterned fabric on the lower half is a pocket and the piece on the right is the front of the needleroll and still has a velvet flower to be added along with threads, beads and felted roving balls for decoration. Melissa who is Sue's travelling companion on this trip showed us how to make the balls. The inside when I get to it has several pockets, scissor keep, thread holder,needlecase and a velvet bird for a pin cushion. I highly recommend ,if you get a chance ,you go to one of Sue's workshops.

It was a great day and she's coming back to Australia in 2012.

Results

I had a lovely afternoon of sewing on Saturday and traced and cut out the templates for the border pieces in the evening. On Sunday I pulled out my box of felted wools and cut out the
applique for the border. I have just finished sticking on the pieces with Roxanne's Glue.
Here is what my Scrapbook Quilt now looks like. It is lovely to sew wool applique on as it only requires a whip stitch and is soft on the hands.

A Weekend Retreat

I went to the Ballaarat Quilter retreat. It was held at a 4* Convention/Motel centre which was on several hectares of land with beautiful gardens. Unfortunately, Ballarat is one of the coldest places in Victoria at this time of the year and although it only rained now and then, there was a continuous howling wind. The room which I shared with Bev was good, having the beds made,
meals cooked and the dishes done was wonderful. Morning and afternoon tea was accompanied by homemade biscuits made by the Ballarat ladies.
Bev, Ros,Linda and I had come to do a quilt designed by Di Ford called Drayton Hall.
Janet O'Dell, who owns the original quilt was also there for the retreat and had brought the quilt along for all to see.
Here is a photo of some of the fabrics in the quilt.

This is the whole quilt. It is enormous. They were photographing the label which was hand written.

This is a photo of Di Ford's, Drayton Hall. Beautiful.

This is a photo of what I accomplished over the weekend. It seems so little. I had bought a floral fabric with these medallions on it and decided to have it in the centre with the hexagons around it instead of having the hexagon centre and floral wreath like Di's. Fussy cutting hexagons took up a lot of time and even more, to sew them together. The ones on the left have still to be stitched together. I machine stitched the edge of the centre to the background and I have a lovely chocolate coloured fabric for the scalloped edge.

On the Friday night after dinner we met all the tutors and saw a Show n Tell from them.

On Saturday night after dinner we were entertained by a female comedian, Monica Dullard. I haven't laughed so much for a long time. The tears were running down my face. We discovered there was a large number of stitchers called Pam and a lot of them owned Pphaffs, Noeline caught the comedians attention, so much so that at breakfast the next morning when our eyes met we both burst out laughing as we remember the night before. One of the tutors' was caught answering a text message on her phone, it was her 60th birthday, and as she said the next morning she will never forget it after the ribbing she got from the comedian. Those that had decided to go to bed early truly missed out on a great time.
Here is a photo of Monica during her show.

Don't you just love the size4o Bonds cottons.

Work in Progress

Before I ever discovered patchwork I spent my time doing X stitch. I made different things
or framed them but mostly I put them in a box and forgot them. Recently I got some new furniture for my craft room so I changed things around and came across my x stitches. This is one I have now made into a pincushion. Do you like how he looks? Maybe a bit of ageing is
needed.

I have slowly but surely been working my way through the blocks for the Scrapbook Quilt and now I have them all finished. Next come the setting triangles and then the border. I was going to make them in black wool but feel it would be too heavy for the centre which is mostly cotton. I will now use cotton and do the applique on the border in wool which should work well.

An Ending and a New Beginning

I spent yesterday and today sewing on a binding so I have come to the end of making a quilt.
I first saw this pattern when Corliss, Threadbear quiltshop, released it at the quiltshow in Melbourne. I have also seen a picture of the original quilt that she designed this one from. I have changed the bottom border slightly to suit me but apart from a leaf missing here and there I have copied the pattern.
Pam Hammer from Threadshed quilting, quilted it for me beautifully, she knows I like my quilts lightly quilted so they are still soft and cuddly. It will now get washed to give it the more wrinkled look I like.

This is my Civil War Bride's Quilt.
A quilt with a new beginning. This one is going on my bed.