Bagging

My best friend Dace's gorgeous daughter asked me to make her a bag for her 21st birthday (tomorrow). A sort of red sort of a messenger bag sort of thing.
I was dead chuffed, and, of course, left everything until the last 48 hours before getting started. Just like last time.
Lily told me there was no point in making a messenger bag that wouldn't take a laptop, so after a bit of research and a lot of google images, I worked one out.I needed quite a bit of thinking and swearing time when it came to the gusset, and again with fitting and lining the flap ... but the closure idea came from pictures of an Amy Butler bag. There is a huge zip pocket on the outside back of the bag, pockets across the front, and an even bigger one right across the inside back, as well as custom-fitted pockets for iPhone, pens, camera and anything else.The wonderful hand-printed outer fabric, which I got from Materialise (click over there on the right -->) is a sturdy twill that I reinforced with very stiff iron-on interfacing. I had trouble trying to centre the pattern because it isn't exactly symmetrical. But once I'd realised that, I was okay.
I also had trouble banging in the press studs, and working out how the strap adjuster worked, given that this cryptic drawing was the only guidance the manufacturer, Birch, sees fit to provide (it's bloody useless). Fortunately, I was able to take everything over to Nick, who easily and efficiently fixed it all for me.
Dace had thrown me a curve ball by saying this bag had to be h-u-g-e, and by holding out her hands to show something vaguely the size of half a fridge. But my research in cyber-webby land all pointed to a bag that would fit a 14" (36 cm) laptop, so that's what I made.
Only dang is that I'll miss the party tomorrow night, or most of it, because I'll be at work. But I'll rock up on my way home for a piece of birthday cake and a hug.

Production line

Components of 10 Our Lady tea cosies, ready for assembly.And an early batch of ornaments getting their first coat of white paint, ready for decorating with paint and paper.It's busy round here.

The big wait

Taught myself free-motion quilting while I was waiting for the Independents to do the big reveal yesterday.

The citrus-sharp paisley is one of the Liberty Art Fabrics, classic prints by Liberty that have been re-worked and coloured by Kaffe Fassett. I got it from here.

And yes, this is yet another tea cosy. Sorry if you've had enough.

I'm making a whole mob for my Christmas shop, and I've already got a few orders — yay!

:: Off to work in a couple of hours ... just time to make another ...

Green tea?

I do love the virgin tea cosies — there've been two so far and more are on on the way — but I think this one is my favourite so far.

For high tea with Father Ted

Our Lady of the Immaculate Tea Strainer #1 (goes with last year's Our Lady of the Immaculate Kicthen aprons).

This is the reverse:

(I'm expecting to get struck by lightning any minute ...)

Domestic arrangement

... with steam iron

Cosy #1

For summer tea parties, I fancy.

One wall finished

I've finished the first wall, including a trio of ants, a procession of ladybirds, a couple of caterpillars, a big fat grasshopper and a green frog, all at kids' eye level.

I think I'm a day's work away from finishing the second wall, seen below at its very early stage.

I shall miss my days spent at Maggie's — it's been such a laugh, and I've had so much fun chatting to her and her clients, and having my friends drop in.

Farther up the wall

The gorgeous Maggs plied me with cups of hot frothy coffee and played lots and lots of Harry Nilsson today as I got on with the mural. This one's almost finished, save for a bit of a touch-up here and there.

I also have to floralise (my own word) the remaining big white discs. I've been waiting for colour inspiration, and I'm thinking bright, bright orange or hot, hot pink. Then there are to be a few bugs and critters in the low grass and foliage for kids to find while they're waiting for their mums or for Maggie to cut their fringes.

I'm very relieved to report it's been a hit so far with Maggie's clients, especially one young woman, who thinks a mural like this may be perfect for her children's library ... and who has taken my card ... (much excitement at this prospect).

:: At home this weekend there'll be more knitting, and quite a bit of sewing, and generally doing nothing more strenuous than walking the dog. Bliss!

More up the wall

So long since my last post ... woops!

Isn't this fab?

It's a handmade papercut card all the way from the gorgeous Emily in Wales. Thanks so much, Em! I love it - now I'll have to send you one back ...!

:: Last week, I was in Albany, visiting my parents and looking after my brother, who had surgery in the town's crowded and ancient hospital.

This week, I've been working full-time, and loving it. The sub-editor was away, so I was him for this last issue.

From next Monday I'll be the actual editor for a month and a bit while Sir is away. Yay!

:: Everyone seems on the move lately. One of our reporters has moved to New York. The sub-editor was in Bali this week. Sir will be in Italy and Greece from Saturday. My cousins in the UK have been to Turkey for their holidays. M is in Paris; Laura has been to the Red Centre and Sydney. David's brother and his family have been in France and Belgium for two months and now are in the US. Lily and Nick are off to Seattle and New York next month. Will's planning a trip to California.

But I'm happy with winter in Perth. My feet are only ever so slightly itchy ...

:: I'll be back up the wall tomorrow with my gorgeous best friend Maggie. Here's a hurried pic of how my mural is looking ...

... but it still has a way to go.

Up the wall

I'm waiting for photos to explain what we got up to in the last post.

In the meantime, I've started painting the mural at my best friend Maggie's hairdressing salon. Early days yet, and my moods and feelings are swinging widely between wildly ecstatic and WTF am I doing — how can I possibly get this to work without it looking like someone threw pizzas at the wall, thereby disappointing the entire world?

But oh! The joy bit is really really good. And I haven't really started at all, yet.

And I do so love the chance to work BIG.

This was my bloody big bungarra, which I painted on the front window of our San Diego restaurant before all the fit-out started. That would be mid-2006.

The builders were going to whitewash the windows while work went on inside — I don't know why builders do this. I remember back in the '60s when my grandparents white-washed their windows when they took the curtains down and re-papered the living room. Same thing, I guess.

Anyway, I wanted to do a bit of Aussie art stuff on the restaurant window rather than have it blank and boring white — and it was a huge window — so the builders lent us their hydraulic lift (now THAT was fun!), I did a quick sketch, roped in David and the kids and went for it.

This pic was taken when I had the outline done. Next stage was colouring it in. I don't seem to have any pics of it finished — my hard drive died before I left the US and I lost thousands of pics. But you get the idea.

I remember the same big panicky mood swings between blissful delirium and sweaty-palmed paranoia — so that must be normal!

Stitchin'

Don't have much time or eyesight to do a lot in my lovely room at the mo.

The DLBs are all quietly slumbering on the bookshelf and waiting for faces.

So, too, is the doll; though truth be told, in a sort of perverse existentialist affectation, she actually revels in the identity-lessness.

Diabolical bunny (above) is still in limbo while we try to decide if a bit of trans-species surgery (ie, cutting his long bunny ears to short round ones) would meet his inner need to be a bear and help him with his issues.

Granny rug is assuming that one day she will be bigger than a hand-towel so she can be truly useful and keep something warm.

The papercuts are filed in the flat and the dark, where the cow is perpetually jumping over the moon and wants to complain but can't because I haven't cut up to her yet.

So while I've been working at the paper, I've turned my back on all these loud, needy creatures and got on with a quilt. Peace and quiet.

It's a whole-cloth cot quilt. Very manageable size. No piecing or fiddling required. Just occasional mindless sewing up and down with the walking foot on the mighty Bernina.

The top is a Japanese Kokka cotton in bright cheery stripes, the other side a fabulous polka-dot cotton in a goes-with-anything ochre-yellow that I found for two bucks a metre in Albany's brand-new and huge Spotto store.

I'm sewing on the binding while I watch the footy on the telly (you bewdy, Dockers!)

I couldn't find anywhere on the interwebs that would make me the sort of sew-in labels I was looking for, so I've sewn my own.

:: David came home on Friday, a day early, and all is again right with the world. I'm cooking a big bold chicken curry in the slow-cooker to take to David's mum's for dinner tonight, and shortly all my kids will descend on me to make me lunch.

Happy day to all you mothers.

Love from me

X

Doll number one

She has the most enormous thumbs and her arms are upside down.

She has no features, and her legs are twisted.

Poor dolly.

I do like her frock, though.

:: My best friend Jane rang me a while ago to say that the shop where we hope to sell our baby goods and make an absolute ripsnorting fortune has sold one of her quilts. Yee ha!

Tangential

I'm feeling in the mood for a little carving and block-printing session. The inky muse is sitting on my shoulder.

This must have been because I sorted out my workroom yesterday and piled up all my lovely white and creamy-calico cottons, plus some of the brights I dyed a few months back.

We'll see what eventuates!

:: This is the papercut picture I cut for Tracey, way over in Far North Queensland. As well as bloggers, we are longtime Scrabble buddies on facebook, and while we were chatting during one of our games (she probably whipped my arse as usual), we organised a swap: a papercut for some of Tracey's brilliant quilting.

Tracey started the ball rolling by quilting this quilt I'd made for a cousin's first baby in England, and she did an amazingly beautiful job ...

... all swirls and stars. Gorgeous! I'm expecting to hear from Brighton any day now to say the quilt has arrived, and that baby Jasmine will stay warm and cosy beneath it during the rest of their Arctic winter. Brrr!

:: I'm reading Someone at a Distance, by Dorothy Whipple. It's a beautiful Persephone edition I bought in Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon — isn't that an exquisite cover?

(I went mad in there - imagine, a bookstore starts in a shop on a corner, then it buys and expands into the shop next door, and then the shop round the corner ... and eventually it takes up an entire city block, on all levels; a rabbit warren of books ... sigh!)

Whipple (1893-1966) is a brilliant writer, subtle and fluent, with a perceptive eye for characters. She says a lot by understatement and quiet observation — admirable.

Here in Australia, we haven't heard of her very much, if at all, but I recall listening to a few of her short stories being read by English luminaries through the BBC Radio 4 website, and was blown away by her story-telling.

Someone at a Distance, set just after the end of the war in the early 1950s, is about a warm, loving, happy family and the effect of the arrival in their midst of a cold-as-ice, hard-as-nails French girl, who is to be a paid companion to the family matriarch.

It's fabulous. As someone on the back-cover blurb says, Whipple is the 'literary heir to Mrs Gaskell'.

:: I'm off now to carve some rubber.

Dodging the heat

Drawing dinosaurs

doodling with crochet

and dreaming up ways to finish these butterflies I started painting about three years ago!

All done

Finished (with three or four leaves discreetly re-attached!) and framed this papercut, a wedding present for a young couple with a big old Victorian house.

It was a stroke of great luck that their initials were J and R, beautiful letters to play with, with those lovely long curvy tails ... though now I look at this pic, I think the J is a poofteenth higher than the R ...

Today's brand-new project is to make four aprons for my best friend Belinda, for her to give as Christmas prezzies. Brilliant!

:: Thank you for all the queries about what happened to the moth in my ear! I've had no symptoms, no deafness or irritation, so I'm assuming the moth has ... disappeared.

Cuts

Been working on this one for a while. It's to end up in a big old Victorian house in Mt Lawley, so I had to get the feel just right.

There have been a few leaves lopped (they'll be invisibly fixed with microscopic dots of acid-free rubber glue), and I nearly went blind doing the grapes, but on the whole I'm very happy with it — hope you are too, Dace!

:: Went to see Julie & Julia last night — loved it.

Amy Adams is brilliant as the younger, present-day character, blogger Julie Powell. And Meryl Streep is an absolute joy to watch in the role of Julia Child. Before all the hoo-ha about this film, I'd never heard of this cookbook writer, or seen her on TV. Now I'm curious to find out more, having watched Meryl's amazing performance of this enormous (she was over 1.8m tall), vivacious, life-loving woman with her excited whooping and yelping and drunk-looking delivery.

And it's so funny! Meryl must have been chuckling all through making the film.

I was equally touched by the very great affection between her and her shorter, balder husband. Such a lovely man! All in all, a really fun, interesting movie — with blogging in it to boot!

More C stuff

A fairy. For the top of the C tree. She started as an angel, but I thought she had on too fancy a frock, so I've rubbed out her halo and given her a couple of holly leaves for festive ambience.

Hmmmm. Looking at her, I'm not sure about those wings ... a bit banana-like. May have to have a re-think ...

:: Bloody amazing weather in Perth today. Sunny, breezy and warm; it makes you feel g-l-a-d to be alive. Apart from the horrible, horrible news from South-east Asia and the South Pacific.

A snip too far

This one went wrong — but I do kind of like the vaguely sixties look, and will have another bash at it.

It was an idea I had for a friend of Shelley's, who has a big milestone birthday. Her name begins with K, so, liking the shape of that letter, I thought I'd try to incorporate it into this flowery design.

But I was being way too smart-arse, and when I got to cutting the bits around the K, parts of the design that were not anchored (duh!) fell off!

Anyway, after a night at work, I don't have the eyesight to cut today, so I'm on to the sewing machine.

Or maybe printing.

Certainly not dusting, hoovering or cleaning the loos ...

Progress

I've finished the mother-wren for Marnie's birthday. It just needs mounting and framing ready for the weekend party.

After all the deliberations about the border, I decided on simple leaves. And in the bird's breast is an image of her two little ones in the nest!

Today, I started the flowery pic for Edith at Mum and Dad's village.

I can work on it for two to three hours then I need to get up and move about, so Yoshi's getting lots of walkies in the park between sessions.