And So it Ends

This is it. The last day of my wonderful holiday. Tomorrow I go back to work after a long relaxing break doing not much at all!
Today is Australia Day and all three sons are celebrating at friends' having BBQs. The weather is beautiful. My poor husband is working and I am home alone. How good is that?
I've walked, stretched, shopped, done 2 loads of washing, 3 hours of school preparation and sewed for a couple of hours. Not enough to finish anything to show you. All this while keeping an eye on the cricket and the Australian Open.
Last weekend my husband and I escaped for another 3 day break to Tasmania. The highlight was our visit to the Mona Gallery. It sure stretched our imaginations, shocked, sickened, delighted and made us laugh. That is the point of this unusual gallery.You take a gorgeous half hour ferry on Hobart's magnificent Derwent River to get there. Then you take a climb up 99 steps carved into a cliff to arrive at the gallery. Several elderly people really struggled to get up there and I wondered at the sales people not warning them of the climb.

Standouts were the snake by Sidney Nolan made from more than 1600 drawings. It was enormous and striking, taking about 2 years to make.

These are some of the drawings that made up this piece.

There was a poo machine that stunk. It was in a huge white room. A person would feed it and it would process the food to eventually come out as you know what at the other end. I pretty much dashed through that room, nose held tight.
Just as absurd was the goldfish in the bowl with the very sharp knife. It was just sitting on a chair.

They had a massive exhibition featuring an artist called Wim Delvoye. This person was into everything from carving truck tyres, stained glass windows, sculpture, photographs and a truck that was made from metal, and left to rust.
Lots of modern art was featured, some of it very controversial and not very nice, as well as 2000 year old sarcophaguses, ancient gold coins and pottery. Certainly worth a visit if you are in the area.

A Weekend in Daylesford

I went to Daylesford for a 3 day break with my hubby. I'm already on holidays so didn't need a break from anything but he has been working really hard so we decided to drive somewhere not too far away. Daylesford is the home to some natural springs and the community makes the most of it and charges the most for their spa treatments. I am not sure that they work but we did have a private bath at Hepburn Springs and organise a luxurious massage but mostly we just enjoyed being away and doing not much at all. The surrounds are beautiful. Here are some pictures of the cottage that we stayed in.

And it's garden - this plant was amazing!

Most of the houses look like this:

And there were some fun places like this:

 I also managed to put together some more hexies.

Hard to come home really.

Working on a Dream

I've had Laurie Wisbrun's Tuffted Tweets fabric in my stash for ages now but I never knew what to do with it. I checked out her Flickr photos and got some ideas and flicked through all my Kaffe Fassett books for inspiration and then slept on it. There is a design in Kaffe's Country Garden Quilts that has always fascinated and terrified me because he has marked it as being difficult. I like to dream about designs and work out patterns as I fall asleep. It is a lot better than thinking about all my worries and sure enough, in the morning I started to play with my dreams.

The shapes turned out pretty easy to cut because although Kaffe's book used templates, they were easily cut using a rotary cutter.

This is his quilt:

And here is the first part of mine because I haven't put the border on yet:

I'm really happy with it so far. When I started placing it all down on the floor I realised that I had to sew it all together as it lay on the floor because I would never remember where all the pieces went. I pinned a block and sewed it and then worked on the next block. There was a fair amount of unpicking too as I mixed sides up. I got through 3/4 yesterday and finished it just now. I forgot that my family is coming over for dinner tonight and the carpet I work on is actually where we move the dining table to so it all had to be finished today.

Goodbye 2011

Did I really do all of this?

No wonder the house was never clean!

First Free Day

Today was my first free day of the holidays, if you don't count taking all three sons to their three respective jobs, at different starting times and at different locations.

So of course I had to visit my two favourite patchwork shops along the way.

Patchwork on Central Park were just unpacking bolts of Kaffe Fassett shot cottons. They have a huge range now. I love the shots. They are so much more interesting than the plains and seem to fit into a lot of the things I am working on like this:

This is not the final layout. I am just trying to make enough blocks to join together to fit the back of this tablecloth so it can be double sided.

I also visited Amitie to get some more perle cotton (they have every colour you can imagine there) because I finally decided how I was going to quilt this:

The fabric on the right is the backing I bought from Spotlight.

I guess I am very lucky to have so many places to go shopping when I need some fabric but after taking stock of what I have got going on at the moment I have realised that I have to stop spending, and start finishing so that is the plan for my holidays.

End of Year Prezzies

School is over for the kids and I just have 3 official days left. These days have been filled for me with a Math's professional development day with my favourite guru Michael Ymer,  an anaphylaxis course and a full day first aid course. I am not sure when they expect me to clean out the classroom so I guess I will be working for a few extra days but it's all good because in my head I am already on holiday.
I made a few end of year presents for my co workers. We are not big on giving presents at school as we would have to buy so many but as I already had a few bits and pieces made, I thought I would.

I decorated t-towels with hexies.

Put together some little Pocket Purses made from scrappy strips.

The fabulous fasteners come from Nikki at You Sew Girl .

They are really easy to put in and super strong.

Lastly I made some Xmas decorations for our amazing secretary who works for a dragon (almost) and still finds a way to do everything and have a smile on her face.

She said her tree was going to be blue and silver this year. Apparently she changes the theme every year.

Today is Sunday but that did not stop my special order from Japan arriving this morning.

It's called All my thanks and Love to Quilts by Goke Keiko.

I first saw this book at Cathy's house and just had to get my own copy.

I know it's all in Japanese but the pictures are brilliant and I do have the advantage of having a son who speaks and reads Japanese but the book seems to be mainly photos.

My camera is not the best to show off these amazing quilts. They are embroidered and quilted and totally wild. I will try to borrow my son's camera to give you some better shots.

Lastly I have been experimenting with some shot cottons. I am building on all of these blocks and will rearrange them a 1000 times but I am enjoying this new project.

Disappearing Nine Patch

I think I just wanted a quick fix when I put this together because this design is so easy to make but in the end I was disappointed with the finish. I cut really big squares and made 5 giant 9 patches from some fat quarters I had bought earlier.

I then chopped them all in quarters and sewed them up again after rearranging the new squares.

I am working on so many long term projects at the moment, I haven't had the satisfaction of finishing anything.

One week to go and school for my students finish and then another week of cleaning, a first aid refresher and more cleaning and I am free for 6 whole weeks. Ah the wonder of it all.