My Creative Space

Taking over the derby world, one butt at a time!

 My creative space is full of derby shorts commissions this week, which is exactly how I like it!
 I love sewing for derbygirls because choosing your 'boutfit' (the uniform in which you skate) is a real creative endeavour, it expresses who you are and celebrates difference.

So this week I've been doing bold yellow stars, nostalgic girly ruffles, and sporty silver speed stripes.

  And a little bit of quilting for myself on the side :)

Head over to kootoyoo for more creative spaces!

A Quilt for Mum

How right that now on this beautiful sunny spring morning, the quilt I have been working on for my mother is finally finished!

 I began it so many months ago, no long after my father's death.
It contains fabrics from Dad's quilt, as well as the three quilts for my children.  It has fabric given to me by my sisters, fabric my mother gave me after a trip to Cairns.  It has a piece of the 80's shorts I wore to the roller disco!  And it also has pieces of one of my Dad's shirts, I've left the buttons and the pocket on.
  I chose the bluebird motif because I remember my mother singing to us "There'll be bluebirds over, the white cliffs of Dover", and she used to have jewellery with the enamel bluebirds on it.
  Everything except the stitching together of the squares is by hand.
On the back I have used a retro sheet from the op-shop.

 I chose the design for the border because I feel that for Mum it had to be simple, and pleasing.  The interwoven design also represents the weave and continuity of family.

The Panda is Back!

 The Panda is back!  After four weeks absence, it is wonderful to have our family back together.  Something has to 'give' when he is away, and computer time is it. 

I have also really taken to heart Clutterpunk's montasking ethos, and have tried to give up feeling like I should be doing something else, or just more.  So, this is what I have been enjoying lately...

 

Lots of rain, and I have resigned myself to repeatedly fetching towels and putting clothes in the washing machine.

 

I have continued to entertain myself with painting names and graphics on things to skate in (nobody does THAT much skating though!)

 

I'm quilting the worst kept secret quilt in the world.

 

The quilt of disarray stalled for a while, until I figured out the problem- it was all too neat, the leaves too flat and perfect.  So I shoved  them in a sock and put them through the wash. Now they are slightly frayed, slightly crumpled and crunchy looking - perfect!

Not Much to Report

Not much to report here...

 Bye Bye :(

The parmesan crackers were quite nice, and finished off by me, but the poppyseed crackers were a real winner and polished off by the spawn...

 I got this top for $1 but I hate turtlenecks...

Aaahh, much better...

Excited little head popping out from my finished front of the Bluebird Quilt...

And still trying to get the design right for the Quilt of Disarray.
Well look at that.  Seems like there was something to report!

My Creative Space

My creative space this week contains caraway cracker dough.  I love making crackers, rolling the dough so thin when you pick it up to put it on the tray it drapes like embroidered crepe de chine and the light shines through it.  This flavour was pronounced by adults to be 'delicious', and pronounced by spawn to be 'Um... I don't really like it'.

Also in my space, painting of one kind and another, and working on sashing for the Bluebird quilt.
Hope everyone else over at Kootoyoo is feeling inspired warm and safe!

Love and Loss

I have finished the applique on the last block of the quilt I have been making for my mother.
This quilt includes pieces of all the other quilts I have made, as well as donations of fabric left over from my sisters' craft projects, and some fabric from my late father's shirt.

I miss my Dad.
I miss my Panda.  (Who is going away for three weeks to the middle of outback Queensland.)
I miss my first love, my friends who moved, my friends I don't see often enough.
I miss all those I've lost, forgotten, ignored, and neglected.

I love my spawn. (Showing off our table centrepieces depicting members of our family.)

I love sesame crackers, just about to be pounced upon from the corners of the frame.

I love skating.

My Creative Flurry

I seem to go in waves of flurried industry followed by doldrums of heavy inactivity.  At the moment I'm in a storm of production...

Working on derby skirts for a derby friend, and cutting out leaves to applique onto my quilt of disarray.

Experimenting with different ways to emblazon derby names on different garments.

Blogging and being unwittingly photographed in the early hours of the morning...

By the spawn who hijacked my camera (again!)
I wonder who else is feeling inspired over at Kootoyoo?

A New Quilt called Disarray

A new friend has had these 'block of the month' pieces languishing in her craft pile for years, so when she found out I love sewing (you'd only have to know me an hour or two to figure that one out!) she GAVE them all to me booyah!
  The original design is formal, traditional, neatly following a grid pattern.  So of course I had to mess it up!  There is something fascinating to me about the exceptions to the rules, the pressure points where things begin to fracture, the start of an unravelling.

  I have kept the formal grid for the main body, but will be cutting leaf shapes from different fabrics and appliqueing them in a pile which will be swept upwards across the quilt.  At this early stage I think I will leave the edges of the leaves raw, and hold them all down with the quilting.

My Creative Space

My Creative Space this week has involved dragging out this quilt which has stagnated! because I have been working on some random softies and roller derby shorts for my new etsy store!  (I had to find a way to stop my house filling up with soft toys and bout-fits.)

For more creative spaces, head on over to kootoyoo!

Perfectionists Anonymous

Today's theme it would seem, is orange and green.  I was struck with the vibrancy of these colours in my food today!

Asian Coleslaw, made from that wonderful cabbage I received.  Its essentially the same ingredients as a regular coleslaw (cabbage, carrot, spring onion and celery today), but with a delicious light dressing.  (Sweet chilli sauce, lime juice, fish sauce and garlic in a ratio of 4tsp-2tsp-2tsp-1tsp)

 

Pumpkin soup, pre-puree.  Everyone knows how to make this right!  Mine just has lots of pumpkin, celery, carrot, onion, garlic and cumin.

  And continuing on with my green theme, this is the first quilt I ever made.  

At a time of brute anxiety and nervous tension, I had to be busy and just began sewing squares together.  I had never quilted before because I had let my ideas of doing things 'properly' stop me from doing things at all.  This quilt represents me learning to let go, and facing my fear of producing something embarassingly shitty.  I learned that an imperfect reality is better than a perfect (and never realized) idea.

  Spurred on by the wonderful support of friends, in blogland and beyond, I am gestating an idea.  Inspired by "Regretsy" and all those people who audition for talent shows despite not having any, I am cooking up a plan.

  Its not quite ready yet..