Wonderful Chrissy Pressie Ideas and Inspiration

Just had to grab a coffee to settle the dust and of course have a little browse on the web as I sip. Checked out Creative Studio, and Judith has a post on Handmade Gifts for Men, she has a whole pile of wonderful ideas and there are many more in the comments left by others. Worth checking out. Just click on the Creative Studio button in the sidebar and enjoy, back to the dusting.

Dusty Day

Welcome back Sheila from a lovely holiday. The pics of the family shows a great time was had by all, those Grandies surely are just the cutest.

Our meeting was a little unsettled, the smell of dust was heavy in the air, there are excavations in the school grounds just across the road that we watched as we enjoyed our various lunches outside on the patio.

Shortly after lunch the pile driving started, that rhythmical pounding of pylons into the earth is enough to put anyone off their stroke, in fact I swear that some people were taking little jerky stitches in perfect timing with the pounding of that pile driver.

The smell of the dust was increasing and we still put it down to the excavations, never dreaming that the dust storm we had seen on tellie in the morning had arrived to bless us with a fine powdery coating of red, but as the afternoon wore on and the light turned orange it all became just too clear that the dust storm had arrived.

Val bought in her flimsy with a couple of variation blocks to show us. This is the workshop that Val will be leading us through next week, showing us just how she created this lovely small quilt.
Her flimsy usesJapanese prints but as you can see from the variation blocks, Kiddies prints or Brights would work equally well, as would any of your fave prints.
Val will be using her copy of the Christine Porter book, Tessellation Quilts, our copies have not yet arrived.
I ordered them from http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/
Amazon has new shipping rates and talk about sticker shock! ouch!
Book Depository are more expensive per book but the free shipping makes up for it and brings them down to the cheapest place I could find anywhere to purchase books.
Insertion: At 10a.m. The Book Depository Website is not working, so let it go for a little bit and I'm sure it will be working soon. A.
Some time back, Janet made the most lovely crazy patch Jacket, but as it is quilted she found it was just too hot for our climate. Last week she took the sleeves out and converted it into this lovely vest.
Here, she is explaining where her new bag will come from............yep.......she is going to use the sleeves to make a bag to go with the vest - and if there is any left over she will make a hat and if there is any left over she will make mittens. Not one to waste the beautiful things in life is our clever girl.
The saucy mannequin pose.......Ohh la la, Janet!
And of course the view of the back of the jacket. Beautiful work.
And this is the view from the back of the Cottage car park looking over the escarpment down to the housing estate below.
There are areas in Australia that had it worse than us, but personally, having gone through Mallee dust storms, my heart sank when I saw that red dust coming in on a Northerly wind, knowing that I had left the north facing windows open to keep the house cool.
Everything has a fine talcum like dusting of red. No sewing today folks. See ya.

Machingers Machine Quilting Gloves and the Supreme Slider

Thought you might like to know a first hand experience of the Machingers quilting gloves and the Supreme Slider as recommended by Leah Day.

I found her Free Motion quilting tutorials and posted the info a little further on down the page or
here
An Update:
Quilters, Needleworkers, Bloggers, are all such lovely sharing and caring people. Joy, one of the talented Gum Tree Designers, left a comment on this post not only nice words and thanks but telling me how to do a link. Wow! and I can make it work! I know it does 'cause I tried it twice.
Thank you so much Joy!
You can check out Joy's blog by clicking on the 'JOYPATCH' button in the sidebar and while you are there enter her give away, or really get carried away and enter all 9 Gum Tree Designer giveaways for all the info and links either use the buttons in the sidebar or go here
[Now I have seen other blogs that instead of having a great long link can hide it behind one single word. Well guess what?, haven't found out how to do that yet - not even sure what you would call the action so that I can google it. Ohh well, another learning curve, along with the free motion quilting, sorry, I digress, back to the gloves and slider.]

The gloves are great,nice and light so shouldn't be too hot in summer, rubberised finger tips really grip the fabric and elasticised wrists to give support and help guard against fatigue, the packaging blurb states ' for reduced fatigue and tension in hands, arms, shoulders, and neck'. Well that might happen with practice, but I can tell you that my shoulders still creep up over my ears, so more time spent practicing is a must.
Yes, you can fiddle with the cotton with the gloves on, but really, thread the needle?, again, maybe with practice, but to use your scissors or snips and to pull the bottom threads up is do-able.

A bit of a pig in a poke to guess the sizing, really it is more on the length of your hand/fingers than the width. I ordered the Medium/Large but would have been happier with a smaller size as the fingers are a bit long, another joy of short stubby fingers, gee such a long joyful list.

However because the gloves are stretchy, I found that to push the gloves up the fingers and seat them firmly, much as you see in old movies when some glamorous socialite was getting ready to leave the room, keeps the grippy fingertips at the end of your fingers and not hanging over the end in stitching space. No don't ask, the story is just too too sad.

The Supreme Slider is fantastic, soo slippery, and sticks nicely to the machine surface BUT, yep its a big 'but', if you have a top loading bobbin the first indication you have that you are out of thread is when.......you run out!, The mat is opaque and the bobbin is hidden. The mat has to be picked up to keep an eye on how much thread is on the bobbin and also to change the bobbin.
Now as time marches on and that 'new possession' feeling wears away I might take a pair of scissors to the mat and cut a slot from the punched hole out over the bobbin cover, not much as it might catch, but it's a thought. Yes the mat is trimable, in fact its suggested that you trim the mat to the size of your machine bed but as I want to show the group the gloves and mat on Wednesday I have kept my mat intact,.... so far!

Now if you have good hand strength neither of these products are probably necessary in your life, but with reduced hand strength anything that helps to cut down on drag and friction can only be a good thing.

Gum Tree Designers Wonderful Australian Designers....... sharing

I've been driven nuts lately, oh all right, nuttier, by a countdown button on several of my fave blog sites, a countdown button in days, minutes, seconds - until the world of blogging goes nutty, as curious as I was I couldn't find an answer but now is all revealed.

http://gumtreedesigners.blogspot.com/

The ever generous Jenny of Elefantz had a dream, to bring other Australian Designers, some well know, some just emerging, all under one umbrella, or if you prefer, the one gum tree, to offer their own original designs to download free. yep FREE..... and that dream has become a reality.
Starting on Monday 5th October and every Monday thereafter for 9 weeks there will be a free Christmas themed design available for free download.

Now if that isn't generous enough, just to get the ball rolling, so to speak, each designer has a giveaway on her own blog, now gals I'm not talking something small here, you should read the list of yummos each designing blogger is giving away, they will blow you away!

So grab a coffee, two choccies, one for you - one for me, and go for it. Click on the link
http://gumtreedesigners.blogspot.com/ to join the crowd under a Gum Tree and knock yourself out.
......actually, on second thoughts, use caution, just do it gently or you may end up suffering from a creativity overload. ..........I kid you not!

And when I can fix it, the button will be in our sidebar, but I just couldn't wait to share this wonderful new site with you all.

Don't Look Now - Free Tutorials and Inspiration

The talented Kellie from Don't look now! at http://dontlooknow.typepad.com/dont_look_now/
has some inspiring free tutorials on her blog, two of which are these cushions.

Kellie also had some exciting news to share, she will be visiting the Angel next year in March! Kellie mentions on her blog that two of her quilts, Meg's Garden and Oh Christmas Tree are visiting Patchwork Angel over the next month, just gotta find some time to go drool over those.

As some of you know, it is quite common for bloggers to have 'give aways' to celebrate anniversaries of blogging or a certain number of hits. Kellie has just had such a give away, but not for her the usual pattern or small item, no, Kellie gave away a quilt! Yep, thats right, a quilt, a very beautiful quilt too.

Ohh how lovely to have won, but not to be, Anna from Thimbleanna, http://thimbleanna.com/ won, talk about excited!, pop on over for a visit and while you are there, make sure you have a look at Anna's idea of the perfect way to get the ironing done.

Leah Day - Free Motion Quilting, Videos and Designs

Stumbled upon this rather brilliant blog by Leah Day with Free motion Videos and designs.
Leah has a project, to create a new free motion quilting design every day for a whole year.
So far she is up to Day 27 - Lightning Bolt,
You can catch up with Leah here, http://www.freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/ ,
now I have not had time to look at every days design so far. but they all seem to have a tutorial video, clear concise and easy to follow.
Each days post has a difficulty level, an explanation on directional texture and suggestions for use.

This site is a wonderful tool for anyone wanting to learn Free Motion quilting. I've got myself some sandwiched homespun and I'm off to practice day one here at
http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-08-15T07%3A11%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7
Will show you my results at next weeks meeting, may even post a pic or two on the blog.