Needle Lace Talk

I've just joined another Ning group, this time about another of my passions at the moment, needlelace. I was searching my files for a photo of an ATC I made for Susan Lenz's exhibition Cyber Fiber in South Carolina. I put my one and only completed sample of Aemelia Ars style needlelace on it and sent it to her in exchange for one of her own. Must have deleted that photo, or I've filed it somewhere strange. So I had to pop over to her blog scroll down to find my ATC and save it again. So here it is, a well travelled ATC not looking too shabby for my first attempt and a real tribute to the teaching skills of Margaret Stephens my fabulous tutor. I used olive coloured swarovski crystals, gold beads and gold tiny sequins to add some bling to the card too.

New Blog template

Decided I needed a little renovation so chose a new template and played with some colours - hope you like the result. Sometimes a change is as good as a holiday, especially on a nasty wet and cold day, LOL. However, I seem to have lost my "about me" description, drat. One day I'll learn to leave things alone !!

It's raining cats and dogs !!!

Australia surely is a land of contrasts, as Dorothea MacKellar said in her poem "My Country"
I love a suburnt country,
a land of sweeping plains,
of ragged mountain ranges,
of droughts, and flooding rains

Well, I think the flooding rains have definitely arrived on the New South Wales coast in the last fortnight. I think it's rained every day, and often ALL day. As a result I had to decide today whether to brave public transport in the cold and rain to go grocery shopping, or wait till someone is home to drive me to the shopping centre. I chose the latter, and raided the "emergency" supply of pasta meals for my lunch. I had a hot shower, put on tracky dacs (that's slang for loose track pants and sweater) and put on the gas heater in the family room. Here's Bob (the female studio cat) taking full advantage of the heater to warm her tummy, she lays like this for ages, LOL.



Here's a frontal view of Bob outside last year with her friend Blackie Puss. BP was a stray cat we sort of adopted, and he was a whole male who used to fight off all the neighbourhood cats to protect Bob. Sadly, we had to take him to the Vet for some treatment for an abcess and discovered he had Feline AIDS. This would have meant keeping him inside at night and a lifetime (albeit shorter) of meds. Bob has her own medical problems which make her very anti-social at times so unfortunately we had to make the painful decision to have BP euthanased. He really was a lovely old black and white puss and I miss him being around.



The wild weather on the east coast of Australia has even seen a mini tornado hit Lennox Head, a beach side town up towards the Queensland border. It's been declared a natural disaster zone and will take weeks to get cleaned up and back to normal. Thankfully no-one lost their life although some people were injured by flying debris and many had very lucky escapes.

TAST 2010 week 11 and week 2

I've been quite keen to try a few more "catch up" sessions this past fortnight, so here are my week 11 attempts at Bullion buttonhole stitch. I should confess that the first 2 attempts were ripped out, I think there is a trick to putting just the right number of wraps on the needle for the size of the stitch and this took me a while to master. I like the sample with the beads which looks like a row of flowers. The middle example has some glass facetted beads on the bottom of each bullion which I put on before going to the next stitch in the row.




Next is week 2, Diamond Stitch.




I got a bit confused with Sharon's diagrams here, but once I realised that the work had to be turned 90 degrees and the stitch worked down the line, I grasped it. The second sample is worked one stitch at right angles to another and so on, then the beads sewn in the spaces made. A useful stitch to have if large areas needed to be filled but still left a little open, if you know what I mean, LOL.

TAST 2010 week 12 and week 1

I've been very lazy so far this year, and have let the TAST 2010 parade almost pass me by !! I've decided to tag along when I can, and am saving and printing all the stitches each Tuesday. Week 12's offering from Sharon B was Sorbello stitch so my first attempt at this stitch is pictured below.


I found this one relatively trouble free, and like the texture that knot in the centre gives to cross stitch, which is not one of my favourite stitches I will admit.


On week 1, so long ago now, I cut a piece of evenweave linen and zigzagged the edges ready for my sampler of stitches. I stitched the first stitch, Knotted Loop Stitch and then patted myself on the back !!


I liked the rhythm this stitch has, and tried a tricky thing with some weaving through it on the end of the row.
Little did I know how hard it would be to get back to that sampler, but over the next few weeks I hope to "fill in the gaps" both on the sampler and in my stitch repertoire. And along the way I hope to re-discover my love of stitching, something I hope to be able to do while babysitting 2 days a week with my dear little granddaughter Amelie.

Catching up

I'm the busty one in the top row, right with the short blonde hair

This photo was posted recently by a long lost school friend Rhona. We found each other through a social networking site, I didn't even know this photo was still around. What a hoot, we were dreadful at volleyball, we never trained, and we never won as far as I remember. We were all too interested in boys by 4th form (now year 10). I recall my boyfriend in the beginning of this year was much older than me, 8 years in fact. By the middle of year 10 I'd "dropped" him and taken up with a friend of Rhona's boyfriend. Frank was the complete opposite of Clive and in year 12. He didn't last too long either. 10 months later I was going out with my husband-to-be and we're still together after 36 years on May 11th.

The last few months have been a blur of babysitting Amelie, visiting with Riley and other family events and committments. Middle daughter moved back home with boyfriend for 6 months while they saved for a home together. They moved out at Easter. Not a lot of stitching or sewing is going on, apart from the regular making of ATC for swapping in my online group. I went to Wagga Wagga in March for an Embroiderers' Guild Convenors' Meeting and had a great time. Then on Easter Sunday DH and I flew to Norfolk Island in the South Pacific for a week's much needed R and R. I'd won a travel voucher in a charity lottery, you know the kind where they phone you to buy a ticket or tickets? First time I've ever won something, so we had to choose a Pacific rim destination. Norfolk seemed like an idyllic location, and my SIL has visited and recommended it to us. As soon as I can fire up the computer which has the photos saved on it I'll post some to show you what I mean.

I'm still here !!

Miss Amelie, aged 14 months


Just a quick post to say I'm still here. People must wonder what happened to me, this blog is a little out of date !! It's been a very busy year so far trying to keep up with all my committments, even though I vowed to make "focus" my watchword this year. Not a lot of embroidery going on, or costume making for that matter. The year is flying by and I promise to update at the beginning of May (gosh, that's only at the end of next week!!!!) after the Embroiderers' Guild's major exhibition is over and I catch my breath. Please call back ?

Counted Thread Band Round Robin progress at last!

It's been more than 2 years since an international group of 10 people signed up for a round robin project on a now closed Yahoo group. Eventually we were down to 7 people who stitched a counted thread technique on a band, no more than 2 inches wide, then sent it on to the next person on the list. The schedule of 6 months was soon abandoned with some of the group members suffering life's ups and downs including death of loved ones and marriage break ups, but the "stitching sisters" (as the new group was called) were always there to talk to and share the joy or heartbreak.

This week in Sydney has been hot and humid, way too hot to go outside or do too much strenuous activity. It seemed like the perfect time to sit quietly, put on the air con, and finish designing and stitching the 3 bands I've managed to stockpile here. They were certainly not forgotten, but prioritising my commitments had shifted them to the very bottom of the UFO piles. So Norma and Sarah can look forward to seeing their bands in the USA soon, and Margaret's is in the designing stage and will be started by the end of this week too.

Sarah's band with my work in green at the bottom
Sarah started her band at a very tumultuous time in her life. The journal cover she sent with her partly finished work was an oriental postcard and she asked us to stitch something that made us feel tranquil. I chose to stitch a traditional blackwork band taken from an old English book. It reminded me of clouds and seemed really peaceful, a little like the clouds on Wedgewood blue and white Willow pattern china? I used a lime green DMC pearl 8 from my stash so I hope she likes it.


Norma's band with my work in blue at the bottom
Norma sent a pumpkin coloured linen for us to stitch on, and I chose to echo the shape of the first row worked by Norma herself at the top. The design again was from an old English blackwork pattern and represents Pomegranates I believe. I used blue DMC Pearl 8 cotton thread for this blackwork band. I was nearly finished when I discovered I had made a counting mistake in the middle, so had to "reverse embroider" or "frog" 2 whole pomegranates. I hope Norma likes my work too.

Amelie's first birthday

This blog also chronicles my family, so from time to time I like to brag a little about them.

Today is Amelie's first birthday, I just can't believe it's been that long since we sat outside the maternity unit waiting to hear the results of an emergency Caeserian on my oldest daughter. Amelie Jane arrived weighing 2.51 kg and measuring 45 cm, a tiny bundle of joy. She's grown up into a delightful little girl, who makes everyone smile when they see her beautiful happy face. She giggles at her cousin Riley and her good friend Gabriella, aged 4, makes her laugh out loud by jumping up and down. She snuggles into my shoulder when I'm putting her to sleep for a nap on the 2 days a week I babysit while her Mum goes to work. I'm really enjoying her company, it brings back very fond memories of her own mummy's babyhood. I introduced Amelie to the Wiggles on DVD, and she starts to "dance" whenever I switch on the DVD player, long before the DVD is even loaded. Her favourite songs are Dr Knickerbocker (she can make the thumbs up sign to count number 1) and Shimmie Shake. On her birthday she was seen "dancing" to some house music playing on the stereo at home, so she likes most musical styles really.

Her birthday party was held on Sunday 10th, about 30 family and friends went to her home for afternoon tea. Aunty Bel managed to make 40 cupcakes and a cake in between looking after my grandson Riley, a fabulous effort !



It was extremely hot and humid, over 34 degrees C outside and the ducted aircon struggled to cope with the crowd. Aunty Bel and my son Peter brought Riley's new wading pool to put up for the littlies. My hubby (Pop) brought a folding gazebo and we shaded the pool with it. You would have laughed at all the adults standing around the pool under the gazebo watching 4 kids splashing about!


Riley and Amelie in the wading pool

Only problem was, after all that exercise and no afternoon nap you can guess what happened next. The birthday girl fell asleep on my shoulder.



Mummy tried to wake her up but we decided to let her have a 30 minute nap. She still wouldn't wake up so we pressed on with the cake cutting and speeches while she slept on Mummy's lap. She woke up smiling when everyone sang Happy Birthday though, and eventually unwrapped her gifts. A great day even though it was a long one!

Recent textile ATC activity

I've just started my third year of making and swapping textile ATC, those wonderful little 2 1/2 inch x 3 1/2 inch artworks, with the Scquilters online group. I've filled 3 A4 albums with 9 pocket pages of swapped cards, over 300 of them now. We suggest themes and our "list mum" randomly selects one and puts it into a database online. We then sign up in groups of 6 people, making 6 and sending one to the other 5 people on the list. Sometimes its hard not to sign up for every single swap, other times I find I don't like themes or am just too busy to make cards. This year we're running a Birthday Swap so I'm looking forward to receiving 30 ATC with cards this month ! Our group is very talented and the variety of cards is amazing. We recently challenged ourselves to a Loosen Up swap, where mystery "prompts" were posted every few days and we made cards not knowing how they would turn out. I am dismal at handing over control in case you hadn't noticed, LOL. As it turned out, my daughter was ill at the time, so I saved the prompts. I've documented the process, hoping it would inspire me again. The following photos show the steps I took in response to the online prompts.


Make an 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 inch background square which I marked with card sizes



Add triangles or add red, I did both.


add a strong diagonal or pictures cut from a printed fabric, so I added a strong diagonal in a printed fabric.


Add something very light or use crayon or paint, I added some Angelina fibres and fused them

This resulted in the previous step being nearly covered over, not to worry, carry on. Next came "add cross stitch or ribbon, lace or braid" I added some cross stitches. Finally, "add curvy lines or use a repeating pattern" I made a repeating pattern using my programmable embroidery stitches on the sewing machine. Finally "cut up, back and edge as usual"


Voila! The finished card, as requested. I didn't really enjoy that as much as I should have, or perhaps the circumstances were just a bit overwhelming at the time. Might try another in the future, lots of other members are keen to try again too.

A busy few months

The last few months have been quite busy. In late October my husband was hospitalised with another heart attack which required 2 stents this time. He was still off work when I started looking after Miss Amelie, and we were just settling into her routine of 2 days a week when her mum was hospitalised, see previous post. Then came the holiday period with her mum and dad at home, my hubby had his holidays and my teacher daughter was around too. Consequently we haven't got fully back into our routine, and I'm hoping she'll slip back into it fairly quickly. I'm really enjoying our time together, she's growing up so quickly. Crawling properly now and pulling herself up to stand using the furniture. Her birthday is the 11th January, can't believe how quickly that 12 months has flown by.


The birthday-girl-to-be

Amelie's cousin Riley, my little grandson, is 16 months old now and running everywhere. The 2 cousins love to get together, she laughs all the time when he's around. I don't see Riley nearly often enough, since Mum and Dad both work full time and he goes to daycare we only get to visit on the weekends, or they come to us sometimes.
I'm really looking forward to the big 1st birthday afternoon tea bash for Amelie on Sunday, 4 generations of our family will be there.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Pt 2

Of course, it's already after Christmas. However I need to catch up with my blogging, so please excuse the title for now.

Christmas around here can be quite frenetic, but this year I had a good excuse to slow down a bit. We had a bit of sad news just before Christmas, with my oldest daughter hospitalised with a miscarriage. Everything was put on hold to support the young family and help with Miss Amelie. Then some exciting news with her partner proposing marriage and giving her a huge diamond ring to seal the deal straight after Christmas. We'd been keeping the secret since mid November, we thought he'd never get around to it!!

Santa was good to everyone in our family, especially the littlies who were spoilt rotten of course by all the grandparents. Lucky husband and I received tickets to Darren Coggan's show Peacetrain at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall from our kids, pre-theatre dinner included. We chose to go to Aria, our first time there. We certainly weren't dissapointed, the meal and scenery were both wonderful, we felt like A-listers sitting in the restaurant at Circular Quay watching all the ferries whiz in and out, watching the world walk past under our feet. What to say about Peacetrain? Darren sounds just like a young Cat Stevens, and wove 24 of Cat's songs through a narrative about his life. The capacity audience really got involved in the show, most of whom were around our age and like hubby and I probably went to Cat's Sydney concert in the early 1970's !! Everyone in the line for the Ladies at interval was raving about the show, a very good sign, LOL. He certainly deserved the standing ovation, would recommend Peacetrain to everyone.

My santa figurine collection went up the week before Christmas and will come down in early January. I added a few and also received some for Christmas gifts from family, so can now count 64 old fashioned Santas in the display.


Santas on the entertainment unit


Small santas on the sideboard!

I'll certainly miss their company when I pack the Santas away, the room looks so cheerful when they are up. Will have to put back the family photos, and perhaps add a few new decoator touches. I'm considering starting an angels collection for this coming Christmas, as they are available all year round and should be easier to find!
PS santa photos of the grandkids are hiding on the sideboard too!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here pt 1

Today is the first day in several weeks when I could relax and not worry about meeting my costume deadline. The Dancing Studio show was last night, a huge 10th anniversary show featuring a lot of my costumes made in the past 10 years during the 4 hour gala. I finished and delivered the last 4 pieces at midday during the final dress rehearsal and thankfully everything fitted well. Nothing like cutting it fine, but then that's show business isn't it? Now if our Summer weather would just co-operate and settle into warm but not oppresive I could get on with everything else that needs to be done before Christmas !



Here is the cover of the latest Embroiderers' Guild NSW members' magazine The Record which features my miniature patchwork quilt on the cover. My local Cumberland Group provided work for the October room exhibition at the Guild rooms, and this piece was chosen to feature on the cover. I'm quite proud of this piece, the hexagons were based on our smallest coin available back in 2000, the 1 cent piece. The biro was photographed with the bed to give some scale.

Short and Sweet

It's late at night here and I have to admit I'm rather weary. This little treasure (holding a PS2 controller!) is one of the reasons, Miss Amelie stays with me now for 6 hours 2 days per week while her mum goes to work. At 10 1/2 months she's such a cutie, and just learning to commando crawl (that's using her forearms to drag herself along and pushing at the same time with her feet) Of course now you can't leave her to pop to the bathroom or out to the clothes line because she won't be in the same spot when you get back !! It's been so hot here the last few days, 2 days in a row of 40 C degrees plus so the air con has been running flat out. I'll need to work hard to offset the carbon emissions now, won't I?

I'm also very busy at present making costumes for the Dancing Studio end of year show, so this will have to be a short and sweet post for now. Hooroo !!

Stitches and Craft Show de-brief

The last month has just flown by for various reasons. I haven't been entirely idle, just catching up on sewing commitments for the Dancing Studio, doing alterations for family members and making ATC for my online swap group.
The big display at the Stitches and Craft show was very well received, 39 pieces of pink themed work on display and over 450 people voted in the Viewer's Choice competition. It's very gratifying to see your hard work mounting a display rewarded with such positive comments, and of course the work featured was just brilliant as well. I think I can safely publish a photo now, in a few day's time the winner of the whole competition will be a announced anyway. I can tell you now that the overall winner of the Viewers' Choice comp was different to the Judges' Choice, isn't that interesting?


The volunteers (wo)manning the display

The winner of the Viewer's Choice is just to the right of the lady with the long sleeved striped shirt, called "Jane McGrath's Rose" it features the rose named after the wife of one of our Australian national cricketers who died from Breast Cancer after a long battle. The rose was 3D with stumpwork petals in a pale pastel pink, so beautiful. Wish I'd been the lucky embroiderer, but alas I had no time to enter the competition this time. Perhaps the next challenge?

Just a quick note..

This week in Sydney I'm working at the Stitches and Craft Show at Rosehill Racecourse for the Embroiderers' Guild, stand 120 on level 3. I set up on Tuesday, and will now work Thursday, Friday and Sunday, whew !! It'll be good though to sit and stitch and talk about embroidery with like minded folks, as well as showcase our Guilds' latest group project, the Pink Ribbon Challenge. 40 pieces of work were hung on Tuesday, including bags, hangings, sachets, framed pictures and unframed panels. Quite stunning really, will post up photos after the event.

I've been a bit slack lately, popping around reading other blogs and not posting on my own, but time has been very limited. One particular blog I'd love to plug is Pat Winter's Gatherings, where you'll find lots of great work showcased and even a link to her "store" if you'd like to own some of her work yourself. Or you might be lucky and win the latest giveaway if you sign up and mention her blog yourself, VBG. I'd certainly love one Pat's little birds nest necklaces to come and live in Oz. Fingers crossed?

Alert ! Cuteness ahead !

While I'm in a nostalgic mood (must be all the coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial service on the TV affecting me !) I thought I share a couple of photos of the progress of the grandkids.

Riley is now nearly 11 months old, and has take a few tentative steps on his own. He has about 5 teeth, and is a real little boy now.


This professional photo was taken in May, we call it his "supermodel shot"


Of course he follows Wests Tigers, a western Sydney Rugby League team followed by 4 generations on his fathers' side as well as on his mothers' side of the family.

Amelie is 6 months old this weekend, boy time really flies doesn't it !!


She's at the rolling over stage, but hasn't quite mastered rolling front to back yet, so gets quite frustrated and squeals loudly.

I think she gets her temper from her mummy, and from me before that. I was a terror when I was a teenager, I gave my mum and dad a terrible time when I didn't get my own way!



She's the happiest little girl most of the time, and rewards us with great big smiles.

There's quite a family resemblance, I have photos of myself and my other daughters which compare very favourably with Amelie at various ages, then occassionally she's the spitting image of her Daddy. And isn't that just how it should be, ? My husband and I are very lucky new grandparents, our children have presented us with adorable grandkids and we look forward to watching their further progess as they grow up.

Miss Muffet had a dolly....

My friend MaryAnne at Magpies Mumblings really started something with her photos of childhood dolls. I immediately pulled my own childhood friends from their safe box in the top of the wardrobe to compare.

Luckily I still have my friends Margaret, a Pedigree hard plastic walking doll from the late 1950's and Sue a vinyl Roddy doll from the early 60's and an even older Panda bear from the very early 1950's. Panda was given to me for my christening I believe and used to have a music box in his back. He has glass button eyes (a real no-no these days) and is a little worse for wear, but I'd never part with him. Margaret has not walked for many years, you would hold her hands and pull her towards you and she'd "walk" along with a rocking motion. I think my pesky younger brothers may have thrown her down a few too many times and broken pieces off the hips, and her seams are starting to open a little. This, according to my online rsearch, is not unusual with this type of hard plastic, and led to the invention of soft vinyl dolls.



Sue is marked "Roddy" on the back of her head, but it doesn't specify her country of manufacture. According to one online source, when the English factory closed in the early 1950's the molds were sold on, so perhaps her head was molded from one of those molds and assembled in Australia? I don't imagine my family could have afforded an imported doll when I was a girl, we were pretty poor back then. She still has her original lemon nylon dress and hat, but her little socks, panties and shoes are gone. Mum used to make her some great clothes, I still have some of them too. They included
- A complete school uniform with tunic, blouse, knitted beret and cardigan,
- A ski outfit with skis Dad made from pieces of shaped wood and ski poles from knitting needles and toy car tyres,
- A Red Riding Hood costume with a plastic basket, cape and dress
and lots of other knitted bits and pieces.
We used to enter Sue in the doll competitions at the school fetes, these were REALLY popular back in the 50's and 60's here, and you would raise money for the school by collecting votes (in coins) from your family and friends. We won quite a few prizes for best dressed doll.



I think the dolly dressing probably started my love affair with clothing and dressing up, so you see it's never to early to encourage the kids in something they like, you never know where it may lead them !!

PS I was very pleased today that my vinyl dolly Sue had not deteriorated badly. While re-arranging my wardrobes about 6 months ago I noticed she had a few spots and marks. I sponged her with warm soapy water, dried her well and laid her down in a cardboard box with air holes before returning her to the cupboard. So far, so good. Apparently these dolls can often suffer from Pedigree Disease where the vinyl can get greasy and spotty from poor storage, especially in plastic bags and boxes. It's very hard to treat, so I caught Sue just in time I think.

Another convict bonnet made

A while ago I was commissioned to make another decorated convict bonnet for the "Roses from the Heart" project. This is the result, a calico bonnet for one Sarah Hurley. She was an Irish convict lass convicted of larceny (theft) in County Cork Ireland and sentenced to transportation in New South Wales in 1836. Her ship was the Pyramus which landed her at Sydney Cove in December of that year after a 4 month voyage.




I chose to decorate the brim of the bonnet with a shamrock comprised of 3 hearts stitched in chain stitch for the convict chains. 3 large silk ribbon embroidered roses are surrounded with colonial knot babies breath and 7 small silk ribbon rosebuds for her 7 children. Sarah had married another convict William Jones in 1838. They lived in both the Windsor and Parramatta districts of New South Wales and when she died in 1889 aged 75 years she was buried in Mays Hill Cemetery near Parramatta.

An 80th Birthday Bash

My mother turned 80 recently, and my youngest brother suggested we do something special. Mum has never visited Linnwood so a tour and luncheon was organised. Invitations were secretly designed, printed and mailed by my brother's partner. My children helped with catering and decorating the hall, and an elaborate "white lie" got Mum to the venue, a little late, on the pretext of attending a talk about vintage fashion. I had to cover at the last minute by saying that they had arrived not long after the organisers, who had a car breakdown. I was waiting for a thunderbolt to strike me down, LOL. Mum raised us well, so I'm not good at telling fibs.


Linnwood set up for the luncheon before the tour