TropicalSoup

Central Park Splinter quilt

Another wee quilt in the shop. This one features Kate Spain's gorgeous Central Park line, as well as a few Oval Elements by Art Gallery, and of course, plenty of Kona - Snow, Taupe and binding in Celery. This quilt was born out of an idea I had for a block - and it came together just the way I saw it in my head - love when that happens! lol

The quilt is heavily quilted (between 1/3 and 1/2 of an inch apart) in wavy lines, that give it a particularly delicious feel and sense of movement. It measures 39" x 40" post washing and drying, and is so ridiculously textural and snuggly that I am going to have to put it away or risk wearing out the fabric from *petting* it!

I really really like this fabric line...I can sense another Central Park creation here soon...or at least the fabric stashing for it!

 

Echino quilt

I keep meaning to show you D's birthday quilt (for last year)...that I finished at the beginning of *this* year. Oops. It sat for a (long) while as a basted beast, then for a (longer) while as a semi-quilted creatures, then I finally got around to finishing the quilting, and it seems to have spent an awfully long time waiting for binding. Sheesh, such a long time frame for a relatively little quilt, but boy is there a good amount of quilting in it! And quilting linen blend is not for the faint hearted!

 

Most importantly, D is very pleased with the finished product (he wasn't quite sure about it pre quilting), and it works very well flung over the sofabed in the drum room!

Ali's travel journal

 

My little sister (well, one of them - I tend to stockpile little sisters!) Ali moved to France at the weekend. I know...I'm a little vert with envy too! She is down in Antibes where the plan is to crew on a super yacht, in between shopping French flea markets for vintage linens for her big sister, of course!

 

To commemorate the move - and hopefully ease the transition a little - I made her a travel journal, in quilt form. This is it. This and a fabric pen were gifted, and the idea is that Ali can write down every port/town/place/significant memory on the back of the quilt, to create a scrapbook of her adventures. (A particular niece and nephew have already added their autographs...)

 

Ali has gorgeous design sensibilities, but I couldn't go past some kiwiana fabric for this little piece...everyone should travel with weta, tuatara, kea, and the ubiquitous pukeko and kiwis!

Immy and Cole also made sure to give this quilt heaps and heaps of cuddling. As Immy explained it, it's so that when Auntie Ali misses them, she can snuggle her quilt and feel the cuddles! awww

 

*The cat in the bottom of the first photo - that would be Mahé - the unbitten one. Cookie is doing well though, healing nicely, and she gets her stitches out today. She has several large, weirdly shaped bald patches where they had to shave her, and I am currently calling her BEB - Badly Executed Brazilian - but the moniker doesn't seem to be catching on. Probably just as well...imagine a small child explaining that at preschool!

Seven

(gorgeous candle pic by Jessica.Diamond)

Darling Atticus, today is your birthday. You would have been 7. Seven. wow.

Imogen woke me this morning to tell me excitedly that it was your birthday, and had I remembered? I had. She and Cole then proceeded to sing happy birthday *directly* to you - on their knees, with their wee hands clasped in prayer. I am ridiculously tickled that your brother and sister are wholly convinced that prayer exists for the purpose of talking directly to their brother, and God doesn't really come into it except in His role as a compassionate landlord of sorts, who shares babysitting duties with Nana Mary.

Sweetheart, I am not going to go on and on about how much I love you and wish you were here with us in more than a narrative sense - you know all this; I talk to you all the time. Instead, I'm going to say I hope you enjoyed watching the hut your siblings made on their beds with the biggest quilts and longest broom handles in the house...I heard them having a conversation in it last night after bedtime (note to self: big homemade huts are fabulous things, but they will help ward off sleep for small children better than even gorillas in the cupboard!) about how they would make it bigger if you were there to play with them. I teared up a little, and got considerably less grumpy about them still being awake so late.

Happy birthday, my sweet little bunny boy.

My creative space - the creature feature

 

Tootling through cyberspace yesterday I was catching up on a blog (I can't remember which, ack!) when I came upon the link to these Icebox penguins on the Diamonds for dessert blog. Commence squealing from cuteness overload. Cole, Imogen and I had a go at making these, and it all was going swimmingly, until it wasn't. Basically, my brain fell asleep and I put way too much in one lot of batter and not enough in the other and we ended up deviating rather dramatically from the original intention at that point. I ended up putting all the batter together (which resulted in exactly the right amount of flour!) and so instead of inset penguin tummies, we just had tealish cookie dough. No problem - white chocolate buttons popped on top before baking took care of the tummies, and edible googly eyes and teeny tiny edible pumpkin sprinkles (hooray for finding those in the pantry!) stood in for beaks and feet.

The munchkins were responsible for adding the ingredients into the mixer, kneading the colour into the dough (I love the marbled effect that 4-year-olds-tiring-of-the-task created!), placing the cut cookies on the baking sheets, and attaching the eyes, beaks and feet. And quality control. Lots and lots of quality control at every step.

Today I've sent 2 very happy and pleased-with-themselves little people off to preschool with cookies they all but made themselves. And we'll definitely be doing this again - maybe one day even the way the recipe intends!

 

 

I find myself continually wandering past to get a glimpse of them, they are so cute. And then I rip one of their heads off with my teeth. I can say with certainty this batch has no hope of long term survival!

~~~

Visit more delicious creative spaces over at Kirsty's.

ps. we had Ammalissa for dinner the other night. Cole took great delight in telling his sister that her baby was delicious, and then falling about laughing!

Scraps

I need to do something to get my scrap basket.drawer/box/pile under control. Since I work at a very deep desk, I thought a line of these along the back wall might be quite fun, as well as a scraps solution - the plan is to make the lining in different colours to help with sorting. I just pottered about to get the right size, though I think if I make more handles I'll beef them up - they're  a little T-rex's forearms for the rest of it. It's all in linen-cotton mix fabrics, with fleece interfacing to add some stand-up-ability. Plus, that feature fabric just kills me. A goat! In a fabric store! Handling bolts! And stitching! Selling to a squirrel! Entirely too ridiculous to resist.

Softies for Christchurch

Remember Softies for Christchurch, the fabulous brainchild of Leonie from Kiwi at Heart, to put something soft, squishy and loveable into the hands of kids in Christchurch? I've been meaning to make some ever since I signed up, only to be crippled by indecision on what to make. Honestly, indecision sends me to crazy places. Finally yesterday, I shut myself in the studio for 2.5 hours and wouldn't let myself do anything apart from get some softies together. And here they are. They're a bit fun and silly, and hopefully not too naive or primitive for the recipients. I am hoping to make a few more in the next month, both for Christchurch as well as for Japan* (oh Japan, such devastation!) Hopefully the next lot will be a bit more polished. The one good thing about endless creative indecision is that I have sketches of at least a dozen other wee softies to attempt!

(Bertrand and Twinkles both fell over in the earthquake, but without a soft squishy pink tail to land on, Bertrand fared worse, hence the plaster!)

Cole and Immy have been quite taken with the wee things, and (apart from suggesting they keep these ones and I make some more!) have asked to write a wee not to the recipient. Immy suggested some wording but I might rework it a little, *we love you in christchurch and hope you don't die or get squashed in a building* is a lovely sentiment, but might not be quite the right way of putting it!

 

*I know I've seen something, somewhere, about a similar initiative along the lines of Softies for Japan...will hunt the details down and post them here in case you're able to help.

The Christmas Countdown

 

Only 9 months to go, people! Just kidding, clearly. I hope! (Okay, seriously, those of you who read the above and got excited need to be ushered into a dark and mouldy room and beaten with a wet fish!) So whilst it is nowhere near Christmas, I thought I should try and finally get around to showing you what became of that french knot wreath I started making way back when.

 

 

I love the way it turned out from such a simple idea...I confess I used to find excuses to wander past it a few times a day, and it didn't get taken down until February!

 

 

I couldn't hazard a guess at the number of french knots in this sucker, but there are about 500 beads (I think) in various greens and deep reds, and the odd cluster of broken chain stitches around the perimeter to give the wreath a feeling of texture and perspective. And about 12 different shades of green thread, in different weights, thicknesses and composition - a little something I like to call vising my treasure chest of embroidery thread!

A few people who have seen the finished item have asked if I would make one for them, and I was thinking about offering a tutorial-ish guide here so you could make your own if you were so inclined - anyone interested?

 

Cookie bite

(These 2 spend a great deal of time cuddling together...it's a constant Mutual Appreciation Society meeting!)

We had a wee fright today. Miss Cookie, 1 of our 2 beloved kittens, had a nasty looking injury to her abdomen - basically, a hole that was deep enough that it wasn't bleeding, and almost 1 1/2 inches in diameter (sorry for that!) Immy spotted it when she came to give Cookie a cuddle just as we were leaving for ballet class, and was so distressed, that she started these great heaving sobs, and her whole wee body was shaking like she was in shock. She was overcome with anxiety, and kept saying how scared she was that Cookie would die. I probably shouldn't have been surprised by the depth of feeling and anguish, but I confess I was a little. Cole, bless him, ever the protective *big* brother, tried to reassure her by saying *it's okay Immy, Cookie's not dead yet.*

As for me, I did that thing you're not really supposed to, and personally guaranteed Cookie's future wellbeing (I confess I had managed to sneak a peak at her wound by then and had decided - based on little more than blind faith, determined optimism and the very strong need to help my daughter cope - that whilst nasty, the damage didn not appear to be life threatening).

I managed to simultaneously check out the wound a bit more carefully (I am so grateful that Cookie and Mahe are the most ridiculously compliant cats...especially after our old cat Stussy who would happily try to take your eye out for looking at her wrong. I often joke we should have named these 2 Cheech and Chong for their laidback stoner natures!), get Immy dressed for her ballet lesson, Cookie into the cat cage, both kids and cat into car, and let the vets know by phone that we were on our way.

My sweet daughter spent the whole trip to ballet class singing lullabies to her furry sweetheart, all made up on the spot and for the most part a variation of *cookie I love you and you will be okay, hush hush sweet lovely*... Thankfully my lovely friend was already at ballet with her daughter so I could deliver a red eyed Immy into her care whilst Cole and I continued on to the vets. (No, normally I wouldn't even entertain the thought of taking Cookie to the vets without Immy, but the big ballet production is in 2 weeks and she has been so dedicated I wanted to try and work it that she wouldn't miss today's important multi-class rehearsal.

The good news? Our lovely vet saw Cookie straight away, and after reassuring both of us that the wound was eminently fixable - and most likely a dog bite given the additional 7 puncture wounds (seven!) - she made a point of giving Cole a message to take to his sister: Cookie needs an operation to stitch up the hole, and she'll need to stay there a while to get some medicine and be looked after, but she is a very brave cat and will absolutely fine. Good as new. Coley was so delighted at the news, and at the chance to ease a little of his sister's heartache. We made it back to ballet in time to see the second half of the rehearsal.

The very good news? Our vet was sweet enough to ring and give me an update after the surgery (it went well!) and to ask to speak to Imogen to convey the news. It was such a wonderful, caring gesture for the vet to acknowledge Immy's relationship, I got a bit teary eyed.

The most excellent news? Cookie's coming home tomorrow...and yes, Immy will most definitely there to collect her darling ball of fluff. We can't wait! (And neither, I suspect, can Mahe, who has spent the evening wandering around like a lost little lamb without his sister about - they are normally each other's shadows....rather like another set of twins I know, come to think of it...)

 

Quilt terrorist

Hmm, a bit hard to show you things when they have been take hostage my small lumps of fur...Am currently negotiating hostage release terms...