Lorien Quilting

I need your help with show and tell

I love reading blogs. I like seeing into peoples lives, how they create and all the usual day to day adventures. But the thing I love most is when people post photos of quilts. I'm always chuffed when one of my favourite bloggers finishes something and posts some pictures. And I've noticed that the number of people viewing my blog spikes when I post quilt photos so I know there are others out there just like me.

So I had this great idea. A blog that showcases lots of quilts from lots of different people. Maybe so many people that we could feature one quilt every day. Wouldn't that be awesome? So I decided I'm going to try to make one.

I have set up a new blog (I will still keep going with this one too) that is for everybody to "show and tell" their quilts, just as if we were all in the same room. I'm going to run it in my spare time (I'm working on getting some) and if you all help me by sending in your quilts we can hopefully get to one quilt each day. It's not a commercial venture - I'm covering all the costs from my own pocket - it's just a place for quilters to share their projects with others.

It's for everyone - beginners, professionals, hand or machine, pieced, applique, art quilts, new quilts, old quilts, whatever. If it's a quilt, we want to see it.

You can include links to your blog/website/suppliers/webshots album, etc and use it to drum up business, or you can just show your quilt for fun.

There is more information on the new blog called Quilters Show and Tell. I have put one of my own quilts up there to show how it works and I would love some feedback and suggestions, but most of all I would really, really love some quilts to look at. Will you show and tell with me?

I decided I want to ride my bike around to save on petrol and get a bit fitter. It should work great because every way I go from my house it's hills, hills, hills. I figure if I can ride my bike to the post office and the patchwork shop (my two most frequently visited places) I'll make a big dent in the fuel bill and the belly.

Husband and I spent Tuesday night tricking out my bike with all the gadgets I could get my hands on to make riding around safer and practical (and fun!). I got a trip computer and a headlight:

A super tough bike lock to tie it up at the shops:

And a luggage rack with big pannier bags for all my post and shopping. I like the big reflector panels - I really don't want to be squashed.

I had to pay extra for the dog.

The end result was pretty good - a functional bike with lots of safety stuff and plenty of room for shopping.

I took my first trip yesterday. Bags packed with a quilt to get binding for, ding ding! Off I went - to the patchwork shop of course! The shop is about 3.5km away and it's all hills so I rode down the slopes and pushed the bike up them ;o) I'm sure I'll get better at it if I keep going but I was puffed out and sweaty by the time I got there. And it took 27 minutes each way - hopefully that will improve too. I haven't tried a trip to the post office yet because that's even further away with more hills so it will take forever - I'll pack a lunch.

Anyway, it was the first day of trading in Foothills new shop and it's just beautiful. A just reward for all my pedaling.

Sandra and Lesley are still in the process of setting everything up but they let me take these photos to show you.

Lesley's husband made this amazing counter - what a clever clogs. That's Sandra in the picture.

There's twice as much space in this shop as the last one, or maybe more.

And this huge classroom in the back:

And there's a kitchen and toilets even further back but I thought you'd manage without a photo of those. I bought binding and a couple of metres of backing fabric, and a couple more metres of fabric to make pillowcases (photos to come). I poked around the shop for an hour or more recovering from my Tour de Hills and then I thought I'd buy myself an extra treat for actually making it all the way to the shop (there was some doubt I would get all the way there). I'm now the proud owner of an Ott Light! It's a special blue one so I'm extra excited.

When I was sufficiently recovered and had refilled my water bottle and had a coffee I packed my quilt and all my purchases into the bike bags and set off for home. 27 minutes later I arrived safe and sound. And there was heaps of extra room in the bags so next time I can buy way more stuff.

Longest post evaaar

It has been a long time between posts so to make up for it I’m writing the longest post I have ever attempted. You might need a caffeinated drink to get through it, or perhaps a light meal. Maybe snow shoes and a native guide.

Regular readers will have noticed that my segues are usually poorly conceived so for this epic I have abandoned them entirely in favour of headings.

WEBSITE PROBLEMS         

I had a major website breakdown recently when my host company broke both my websites’ email systems when they were trying to “upgrade” them. It took five days to even get them to acknowledge there was a problem and even then they didn’t fix it. So I got mad.

I found a new host company who were really helpful and moved all my content to their system in record time and without me having to do a thing. I love them.

But things are a little behind on the update front because I haven’t learned how to use the new company’s system yet. All the travelling of the last few weeks has prevented me getting the new patterns and catalogue up on the website.

If you would like a new paper catalogue and you live in Australia or New Zealand just let me know and I’ll pop one in the post.

All the new things should be on the sites shortly, just as soon as my feet touch the ground.

NEW ZEALAND QUILTERS CONFERENCE

This was my third time to attend this conference and it just seems to get better and better with each visit. It is always held in Cambridge which is a beautiful part of the world and the atmosphere at the conference was buzzing. Lots of happy ladies, a few men (also pretty happy), great food and lots of quilty classes and workshops.

I usually only do the vendor thang because vending means working through all the breaks between classes but this time I did take one class – I couldn’t resist. It was Kim Bradley’s colouring class and it was sooooo cool! Kim is famous for, among other things, the amazing hand colouring she adds to her quilts using all sorts of techniques that she has been researching for ages.

You all know how much I like colouring in and a lot of that is Kim’s fault. I was lucky enough to get to see a preview of one of Kim’s classes a year or two ago and she was so generous with her time then, talking me through what to do and helping me overcome the problems I had been having when I was trying it at home. So there I was in New Zealand, drooling over her quilts and there was a space in one of her classes – it was meant to be.

I took some photos of the quilts that she brought with her:

 

These next ones don’t have any colouring on them at all – it’s all done with the thread on a black background.





Amazing aren’t they?

And this is the sample I was working on in the class. Of course it’s not finished yet but I have moved on to one of my big quilts using all the techniques she taught us in the class.

And this is a big quilt that I have started colouring using the same techniques:

I’m not very good at it yet. They seem to look much better from further away.

This is the quilt I have to colour:

That’s a lot of flowers! I will keep you updated on how it’s going.

NEW CAMERA

On the way home from New Zealand I treated myself to a shiny new camera so now I can take decent photos for my website and for this blog – I can hear you applauding. I used the old camera to take a photo of the new one:

It does nifty stuff like macro:


And it has a special setting for taking shots of my aquarium:


The weekend after I got home from New Zealand we went down to the beach for a few hours. I love the beach when it’s a bit rainy and windy – I get to have it all to myself.

Except for this guy:




MY DOG

Thanks to all the people who asked about my little doggie! Her name is Ginny and she is a Griffon Bruxellois like Verdell in As Good As It Gets (the dog Jack Nicholson has to look after for his neighbour) except with short hair.

 

She is fully grown, in fact she will be two years old in a few weeks.

AQUARIUM

I still have the aquarium and it has been trying my patience for the last few months.

I got a couple of new inhabitants – yellow tailed damselfish. I don’t have a good photo of them because they’re super fast little buggers. I called them Marian and Juliette because they were the only damsels I could think of.

Then things went pear shaped.

First there was a red slime algae outbreak that I caused by overfeeding them. It, and the resulting poor water quality killed all the coral. At the same time Pierre (the little red shrimp) died, although that was due to his eatability, not the algae.

I couldn’t get rid of the algae even though I tried all the recommended actions. Eventually, in February I had to medicate the tank with stuff to kill the bacteria. Bad idea. Steve (the anemone) went all limp and let go of his perch. I watched him for a couple of days and then one day I found him lying on the sand all white and floppy. I poked him but nothing happened. Even the Nemos had abandoned him. A rotting anemone is the worst thing to have in your aquarium because the toxins it release will kill everything else in the water. I had to move some rocks to get him out but I eventually reached him and scooped him up in the net. I set the net off to the side of the tank and put the rocks back in place, then tipped Steve into a Ziploc bag. One little bit of him was hanging onto the net – not dead yet! So l put him back on the sand, where he just let the water flow waft him into the corner of the tank. I put some rocks around him so he wouldn’t blow into the heater and started a routine of checking on him every fifteen minutes. A few days later, the Nemos went back to him. I thought that was a good sign. He stayed in the corner for months, not eating but not dying either. Then finally, about a month ago, he ate a quarter inch piece of prawn, then the next week he ate another one. Yay!

A couple of weeks ago I decided he’s going to live where I say he’s going to live and that’s that. So I moved him, which is against all the anemone keeping rules. He is now living in the middle of the tank with the Nemos in close attendance. He has eaten three times since he got sick but he is still very unwell. It has been a very long four months trying to nurse him back to health but I think we’re making some progress.

But nobody in the tank is making it easier. The Nemos try to take his prawn pieces away because it takes him a long time to eat. I have to sit in front of the tank with a stick for half an hour, swatting at the thieves until Steve puts the prawn in his mouth.

And Mike has taken to digging holes. First he dug himself a bedroom under a rock and he sleeps there every night. Then he dug a tunnel from the front of the reef to the back, the perfect size for him but he lets the others use it too. Then he dug a tunnel along the back wall, causing a structural collapse of the reef rocks - fortunately the coral was already dead and gone and none of the living inhabitants were trapped in the rubble. So I did a rebuild and then he had to start again. His most recent excavation was a secret tunnel between his bedroom and Dory’s bedroom. Cheeky monkey.

Dory has white spot which are little parasite things that look like white spots on her pretty blueness. I’ve treated the tank twice and made no progress but now that I’m leaving her alone it seems she might be getting better.

And last but not least, Michel lost an arm. A big pinching one.

Poor Michel.

And then last week, just before I left for Sydney he shed his skin and POP – there was a new arm underneath. Cool. It’s a bit smaller than the other one so he looks like he’s been lifting weights with one arm only.

So things were a bit grim in the tank for a while but now they seem to be looking up. They all seem to be getting along, they’re all eating and everyone has their correct number of limbs.

QUILT AND CRAFT EXPO

The Quilt and Craft Expo is a trade show that’s held in NSW at Rosehill Racecourse. This year they added two days of longarm quilting classes and gathered a bunch of longarm-specific suppliers to make Longarm Symposium.

I drove all the way from Melbourne to Sydney on Friday – ten and a half hours!

I had signed up to have a small trade table and a chair, just to be there and be involved. When I arrived I found the organisers had provided me a table, three chairs, a light and some display space to hang some quilts! They had even given me a proper sign, just like the regular exhibitors. I have never done a trade show before and I was a bit worried about how it would go but it was great! I had some space on the side of Kaye and Bruce Brown’s booth so there was always someone to talk to they were kind enough to show me some of the Statler Stitcher’s new moves so that was fun.

All the longarmers and their suppliers were all in one row so there were lots of people I knew.

I put up some quilts around my table. Didn’t look too bad for a beginner

 

but I’m not up the standard of the other displays like Hugs ‘n’ Kisses

and Always Quilting.

Here are some snaps from around the venue:

AMQA Challenge quilts

And Tracey and Michele were there with the A1 machines and IntelliQuilter:

SHOPPING

It’s not often I get to buy fabric at wholesale prices. You might remember my last trip to a quilt market and all the charm packs and jelly rolls I brought home. Well, there are now only two jelly rolls left. Clearly they were a good investment so this time I was prepared. And I spread my buying out over two days so it didn’t look so bad.

I got this nice bag:

And inside the bag, two packets of jelly rolls:

And a big packet of charm squares (that’s ten little charm square packs)

I can hear you saying only two rolls and charm pack? That’s not as bad as last time. Well I’m not done yet. I found out what a layer cake really is. I thought it was a new name for a charm pack but it’s not – it’s better.

This is a charm pack:

This is a layer cake:

Here they are together:

A layer cake is 40 pieces of a range of fabric, cut 10” by 10”. BIG pieces! So, naturally, I had to buy some of those.

I got four packets of layer cakes, each from a different range. They’re so luscious!

Four packets, four layer cakes in each packet, forty pieces of fabric in each cake. Um, that’s 640 ten inch squares. Luckily I didn’t work that out before I bought them. No wonder the guys at that stand kept giving me free Moda bags (I got three) – they were probably worried I’d sue them if I slipped a disk carrying my purchases out.

And I got some bias on a roll. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it, but I’m glad I’ve got it.

Then yesterday I went to my local shop and did a little more shopping. Only half metres this time but aren't they lovely?

 
Finally, we have reached the end of this mammoth instalment of Lorien Quilting news. Thanks for sticking with me this long!

I’m home for a while now so I should be back to more manageable and regular bloggery.

Testing new fabric

I was asked to test some new fabric from Widebacks last week. Of course I said "Yes please" (like I might have said no). Gimme gimme! So this package arrived:

How cool is that? A quilt back in a bag. It's called Island Style by Kathy Mom. I think it's from Japan (there's lots of Japanese writing on the cover) but judging by the photos on the packet it's designed for Hawaiian applique. Hawaiian applique fabric from Japan quilted at my house in Australia - awesome.

Anyway, I had the scrappy bargello top just sitting there so I whacked this on the back and got to it.

The fabric is huge - 230cm x 300cm, nice and square, easy to handle. I don't prewash anymore (no time) so I just gave it a quick iron and that was it.

It was much nicer to quilt with than some other fabrics my clients have brought and the thread nestles down nicely into the weave.

So that means the scrappy bargello is now quilted. Talk about a multifunctional quilt - used up some stash, tested a new panto pattern (Flower Festival - to be released on Thursday), tried a new backing fabric and to top it all off I got a cool quilt. Yay!

More about the scrappy bargello and the clever-clogs who designed the pattern when it's finished and bound.

I liked the Kathy Mom fabric so much that before I had finished the first quilt I had already ordered and received another one.

This time it's a lovely cream colour that's just begging to be wholeclothed (it's a word if I say it is) so here we go again:

I'm going to colour and embellish this one and I'm sure you will all be bored to death by it when I'm finished.

Should be fun!

Apart from this little bit of quilting I have been printing like mad trying to get ready for my upcoming trip to New Zealand for their quilting conference. I won't be able to bring all the patterns with me but there will be plenty of stock waiting to fill orders when I get back. Or at least that's the plan. If you will be at the New Zealand conference and would like me to bring anything in particular drop me a line or give me a call and I will make sure I pack what you're looking for.

I must say it is lovely to be blogging again after a long printing fest. I thought I'd spare you the photos of me sitting in front of the printer for days on end but if you ever wonder where I am and why I'm not blogging you can read this entry and know what I'm doing:

Day eleventy thousand

Printed patterns today. Print, roll, pack, stack. Print, roll, pack, stack. Printy, rolly, packy, stacky!

Repeat for ten days. I have to remember not to let the stock piles get this low - it takes forever to get them back up again. It's still the best job on the planet though ;o)

Thanks to everyone who has left a comment on my blog or sent me an email about the blog - you guys are awesome! Some of you are just around the corner, some of you from the other side of the world. Wherever you are, thanks for stopping by and reminding that I'm not always talking to myself, just sometimes.

I have been printing up a storm here - to the point where I have run out of ink after reloading twice and been forced to stop.

So I did a little stitching of the Best Friends blocks and though I didn't make much progress I do enjoy the look of the pieces all laid out by the machine, just waiting for a spare few minutes.

I'm chain piecing fourteen blocks at once so I have to have my thinking hat on while I'm working.

It has been a bit cold here of late so I love having a cup of something warm by the machine. I'm a coffee person, tea person, hot chocolate person (you get the picture) and for some reason I love buying the accompanying paraphernalia.

I found these Moroccan tea glasses at T2 and I thought having two (different colours of course) would be nice. On the next trip to the shopping centre I picked up one more because you really should group things in odd numbers, right? Then on the next trip one more because I hadn't seen that colour on the first two trips. On my most recent visit they had nearly run out and I was looking at them longingly when I realised there were only three colours that I didn't have and therefor I was the owner of an incomplete collection, Heaven forbid. So now I have seven different coloured tea glasses.

I will have to get quilting soon because I have made another top. I can hear you gasping with surprise.

Disappearing 9 Patch quilts have been all the rage on Scquilters in the last few weeks so I dug out some charm packs (which are apparently now called "layer cakes" - anything with cake in it is fine by me) and whipped this up.

It relieved me of five layer cakes so at least I have made progress in the stash reduction quest, if not in the quilt finishing quest.

I have a pantograph of flowers in the works that I think I will test on this. Should be fun!

Dog Days

I didn't get as much sewing done today as I would have liked because I got a nasty headache this afternoon. I did manage to get borders on the bargello quilt from yesterday but that's about it. Still, progress has been made.

It was so cold here today that when I sat down to read my emails I couldn't resist snuggling up with a quilt and apparently someone else felt the same way.

Feel the quilty love!

Scrappy Bargello

I started this quilt yesterday and today the top is nearly finished.

It only needs borders and then in can go into the quilting pile. I know I said I will reduce the quilting pile and not add to it but you won't tell anyone, right?

It's Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Bargello pattern from Quiltville and it was super easy and really fast to make. I'll put more photos when it gets quilted and bound.

I have really enjoyed the last couple of weeks of a new work routine. I have worked a little, then sewn a little, then worked a little and kept alternating during the day and into the evening. At night I rewarded myself with blogging time and now that I have been doing that faithfully for two weeks it has become a happy routine. I have been finishing (and starting, ssshhh) lots of quilts and getting heaps of printing/packaging/designing done - it's amazing how much more efficiently I work when I only have to do one thing for a short amount of time. I must have a really short attention span ;o)   

Best Friends Blocks

With thanks to Michele and Ronda I got the source for the Best Friends block - it's from Quilters Cache. I'm making my blocks a bit bigger and I'm piecing them a bit differently but it's definitely their pattern and I love it!

Here's where I'm up to:

Eleven blocks down, fourteen to go. Don't you want to make one?

I also started two new projects today. I guess the anxiety of only having one quilt left on the binding pile and about twelve left on the quilting pile got the better of me.

The House of Plague and Pestilence

Last night while quietly cutting away at the stash in my sewing room, I looked up to see I had a little mousy visitor. She looked at me and I looked at she and then she wandered away.

I thought she looked like this

so I called her Mrs Tittlemouse.

I told Husband about her. He thought she looked like this

and bought mouse traps.