2 sleeps till take off and I am getting very excited…I have been feeling a little bit panicky that I wouldn’t be ready to go but today I got everything but cloths ready to pack with a day to remember anything that I have missed.
 As Part of todays packing I made myself up a buzy box…small bottles of paint, brushes, pens, sticky tape, glue…I have in mind keeping a decorated travel journal, wether it will happen or not is yet to be seen but I am prepared.
I have put in the box of tatting shuttles and my tin of beads for making beaded bears, you can see some of the bears here and here.
And the all important sewing notions together with a selection of pink threads, beads, laces, charms, buttons and silk ribbon so that I can continue to work on my pink project.
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I am not going to have my pink project finished before I go but I did take time out from cleaning packing to do one more seam.
This seam is 2 overlapped rows of Feather stitch from TAST week 7 which I have trimmed with beads attached with 3 straight stitchs.
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I am not going to get my pink project finished before I leave so I am packing it up with threads beads and other bits that I will need and will take it with me…Finding a few of the charms and a particular piece of braid, that I want to go around the top part of the photo, required some serious sorting to be done, the boxes on the left are the ones that needed to be sorted the boxes on the right ready to sort into.
 
 I was picking my neice up from school again today so I left the sorting until she was here and after having a cup of tea and a lamington for afternoon tea we spent about an hour sorting what was in the boxes…we didn’t get through all of it but this lot is ready to be integrated into the storage draws, a job for when I get back from holidays…and I did find the charms and braid.
When we had put everything away for the afternoon we went for a walk in the garden, while out there she picked a red Camillia and presented it to me, I said I would float it in a dish and we went to look for one, it looked good in the one we found but needed more with it, and more and more, it grew into quite an arrangement and when I said to her that we should photograph it she arranged a whole setting for the photograph.
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I didn’t plan to spend any time in the garden today but when I woke up to a blackout which turned out to be a planned outage till 4pm, for maintenance, I vaguly recall receiving a letter of warning, I went out and got my car rego paid and visited my sister and when I got home it was still cool inside and a lovely sunny day out side so I decided to dig a hole.
 I am widening this garden which requires digging a few inches into the hard packed clay and as it is dug out in expands in quantity, with most of what I have dug out over the years I have added heaps of Gypsam, cow poo and compost and it comes up as good soil but what I dug out of this hole I used to fill in this little area which is a lovely place to sit in the late afternoon.
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6 sleeps and counting down till I leave for my holiday, I am getting very excited but feeling tired from trying to get done to have the house organized before I go…I spent time in the garden before heading off for a midday dental appointment, I thought I was going to be late but got a lucky carpark and then when I got into the dentist the tooth that needed a replacement filling had no nerve, without the nerve there is no feeling and no need for an injection and no numb mouth.
Between the dentist and picking my neice up from school I visited Sharon who showed me The Batsford Encyclopaedia of Embroidery Stitches by Anne Butler, that She found at the lifeline book fair…A wonderful variety of different stitches all well illustrated with simple line drawings, an inspirtional book…I want a copy…I made sketches in my visual journal of a few stitches although looking at them tonight the look a bit like hieroglyphs, I hope that I can translate them back into the stitches.
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TAST Week 39 is Reverse Buttonhole Bar…I wasn’t immediatly attracted to this stitch because I don’t like straight lines, so I thought that I could make it do a zig zag if I put a bead on each spoke of the first row of buttonhole.
To add beads to the buttonhole I had to use a thread fine enough to fit a needle that would fit through the bead…I have had these beads for about 20 years and never used them because they are a little to bright for what I like but they are just perfect for this pink piece and they have a biggish hole so I was able to use a metalic thread.
I zig zagged the second row of buttonhole from side to side of the beads but when I got to the end the seam didn’t look finished, interestingly the fix was to do another row of buttonhole along the base of the first row which is where the stitch illustrated by Sharon started.
I like the way the metalic thread peeks out along the bottom edge.
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I didn’t get any sewing done today and have done bits of so many things that I don’t know what to blog tonight…The day started with a trip to the hospital to have my daughters swollen knee looked at after she fell on it and did more damage than usual.
 I did some tidying up in the front yard after the weekends work in the garden, the photo is that garden space ready to pave and with the pergola moved to its new home.
I did some cleaning up inside, shopped and prepard supper for the Allsorts friendship quilters who met here tonight…It was a buzy day but not a s buzy as it could have been because I didn’t have to clean the studio which is staying tidy now that it is so much easier to put things away after I have used them…It has been fun watching the reactions of people who have seen my studio as it was before, they are amazed that there is so much space now.
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The TAST Week 38 Stitch is Knotted buttonhole band
I varied the length of the bars so that I would get a wavy line, I used 2 colours for the buttonhole part to make it look twisted and I did the buttonhole partin the opposite direction on the 2nd side just to see what happened…I did find it hard to keep the tension on this stitch which does reduce the enjoyment of working the stitch because it dirupts my rythm.
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 I started by handstitching the seam in the bottom right corner that and couldn’t resist cutting the gold parts of the fabric design so that they sit on top, the design is done with some sort of glitter paint which prevents the bits from fraying and a little bit of fusible webbing holds them in place…because the gold pattern is quite delicate I did a low key double knot stitch in a matching thread on the seam so as not to overwhelm the gold bits.
I am thinking that I might do something similar on the other diagonal seam and then add a pot/vase/basket/jug/urn or container of some sort in the position that I have marked on the image.
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The sewing machine in its new location, it does cover the bottom half of my design board but the heater on the wall on the left side of the image no longer works so it can be removed which will gives me a good big wall to put a new design board which has the advantage of being able to stand back from it….and haveing design board behind the sewing machine may well be handy, the pink fabrics are pinned there so that I am ready and set to…
 …Sew.
On the back and the front of the foundation fabric I marked a line the size of the photo and another 1/4″ inside for the seam allowance.
I ended up with only one seam that will need to be hand stitched.
On the last seam in the bottom right corner I wanted to keep the curve of the gold glitter pattern on the fabric so I cut around the part of the disign that would be lost in the seam, I then stitched the seam up to it and jumped over it to finish the seam, I then gently pushed that part of the design back through the seam and used a little bit of fusible webbing to hold it in place.
I am not going to get this finished, as I had hoped to, before I go on holiday but it is at least well started.
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