Annies Crazy World

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All Winter I have quitly been looking forward to going North for a Holiday but it wasn’t until my plane tickets were purchased a few days ago that it has seemed real and even now it sounds almost to good to be true…I am leaving on the 2nd of October and will be away for nearly 4 weeks, going first to visit my brothers near Townsville and then to visit my son who happens to work on a tropical island, he works at Bungalow Bay Youth Hostel, on Magnetic Island which is a 30 minute ferry ride from townsville in Northern Australia…

Most of today was spent in the garden where I did gerneral cleaning up while a friend pruned the bush.

Tonight I have been stretching a friends embroideries ready to put into frames.

My Storage System has always been based largly on Boxes, partly because they are cheap, partly because I simply like the boxes, partly because I had never seen a acommercially available storage system that I liked the look of…that is until I purchased a Stationary organizer for my printer papers, and I found myself eyeing it off, thinking that it would be good to store the beads in, one day I emptied out the paper and filled the draws with beads and some charms, the image above is the first organizer on the shelf with may boxes…

I liked it, I went and bought another 4, one for the paper and another 3 for charms, kept finding different things I could store in them and bought another 2…it was some time before I went to get another one and found that they had changed the design of the draws, the new ones actually keep the paper more dust free but don’t stack well and they are bigger…I shopped around and found a store that still stocked the ones I had and bought 3 sets, which I stacked 3 across and 3 high and they have been the one spot in my studio that has been organized.

Last week when I put them on the top 3 shelves of a cupboard I thought another 3 sets of draws would be ever so handy and I headed of to the shop just hoping that they would still have the same ones…when I found that they did I bought another 6, which gives me enough to allow for uture expansion, I have put things that can be moved elsewhere, as I need them for beads, charms and threads…I will give you a peek into the draws as I get them organized.

with some serious fileing planned I purchased a box of 300 clear plastic sheet protectors and 5 pastel coloured Manilla Arch folders.

I have put my quilt portfolio stuff into the pretty coloured folders and will use the missmatched black ones for other less important paper work…

I also purchased 2 cardboard flat pack file sorting boxes…they fit on this shelf so well that they may well stay there but my primary purpose for buying them is to facilitate the sorting that I need to do.