I may have peaked too early....

December

I keep wanting to pop in and say Hi, and show you all the new fun stuff I have been up to - but there is none. 

I had some surgery in late November and am on the slow recovery. No sweeping, vacuuming, stretching. You get it ! 

I feel good and am well enough to be getting frustrated.

I could say as a result of this, Christmas will be a low key affair and the house is a mess, but surgery or not, the state of the house and the Christmas plans would be the same.

How about your Christmas ? Big plans, an enormous table of food for lots of friends and family? Or small plans with quiet times or no plans at all.

Whichever way you spend the time, I hope it is stress free.

This is where I say I am going to try harder next year and blog more often but we all know that I will stumble in and out with no schedule or plan.

Don't forget to pat the dog.

look the other way

I am not really here. I am actually sewing things for Australian Quilt Market.

I am cutting and planning and measuring and painting.

This is Calamine, he is brand spanking new. He is a busy yet cheerful little man. 

Pins and thoughts

It turns out I can't keep my crafty patterny fabric life and my enamel pin collecting and designing lives as separate as I thought. Apparently there are a bunch of people like me who swing both ways - they love a bit of making, they love a bit of pin collecting. No judgements.

If you are more kinda one way than the other please feel free to sign up to the appropriate newsletter over there on the right.  The newsletter gets you first dibs on new design and discounts and sales and all that stuff.

Some of these may be sold out (certain colours) but this is the collection at the moment.  You can see them in the shop or you can sail on by and ignore them if they are not your thing.

Wanna guess what the next crafty pin is ???

A Piece of Cake or why I am not your best choice

I will attempt not to ramble. 

My mate Peta Peace wrote a book  - it is an EXCELLENT book. (Much like Peta herself). I only ever get to see Peta at quilt show type things 'cause we live at opposite ends of the country but Peta is the kind of person who would be the same, whether you rocked up to her door for a coffee or you were sitting at some posh dinner party with her. She is ace bananas all the way !!! She is one of the most genuine people in craftland.

Months and months and months ago Peta asked if I would like to join her blog hop.... I must have been under the pump at the time because I remember flippantly responding "sure, just so long as I don't have to actually make anything" (maybe I knew that future me would have broken her sew).

A Piece of Cake – Sweet and Simple Quilts from Layer Cake Squares

So the blog-hop starts and everyone looks like they are having a ball and making cool stuff and I start to feel like a cow for not wanting to make something... and yet my sew is completely ratshit...

However I do have stay at Sewjourn planned, so that would be the perfect time to make a project for the book would it not ?

Don't get me wrong, there are loads of super things to choose from in the book. I particularly love the Modern Spools and the Square peg mini quilt. Peta has 14 patterns in her book – including quilts, mini quilts, a table runner, and pillows. There is even a quilt using my bunnytrail fabric !!!  
The book is super clear, easy to understand and has loads of diagrams (which I love). 

   So I decide to make the square peg mini quilt and get out my cutter sizzix bizzo and cut some squares and throw some linen in the bag and head off to sewjourn, where I realise I forgot all the grey squares which were going to be in the centre.  

So you need to look at this photo and just pretend is somewhat similar to the one in the book... they both have squares at least.

For the record I also forgot to take matching thread to quilt this, my bobbins, my stuffing and any pins. It kind of became hilarious to see just how many things I didn't take with me for a sewing weekend.

If you would like to follow along the rest of the blog hop and see things that actually look like they were made from the book you can catch the last week of the blog hop with the links below.

1 Sept Kate - Never Enough Hours

2 Sept Jodie - Vintage Ric Rac

3 Sept Sharon - Patches Indooroopilly (in store & online!)

4 Sept Amanda - Material Girl Quilts

5 Sept Amber - A Little Bit Biased

6 Sept Xanthe - Wife Made

7 Sept Rachel - Family Ever After

8 Sept Jenny - Martingale

9 Sept Amy - Nana Company

10 Sept Peta - She Quilts A Lot

Book Details:Publisher: That Patchwork Place, Martingale
IBSN: 978-1604688573

broken

As I may have mentioned on various forms of social media, it appears my "make" is broken. I just have zero inclination to stick to anything and less than zero inclination to start something new. 

I blame the sloth.

I was so excited ! I was pumped - totally obsessed with making a sloth. I ordered some fur that wasn't quite right so I ordered some more. I drafted 7 heads.... nah, not exactly quite right. I add the little sloth eye mask things .... the sloth looked mean.

I made awesome big long sloth fingernails (claws). I even made a sloth tail.

Did you know sloths have tails ? Did you know they only poo once a month ?

My sloth looked like a monkey.

Sloths are kinda formless you know.

I studied pictures of sloths and read lots of useless trivia about sloths.

I ordered more fur.

I got desperate. I even ordered green fur.

I have enough fur to costume an episode of Game of Thrones.

The sloth has eluded me. 

The winners of the Rockpool giveaway have been contacted and parcels have been sent.

Congrats to:

My Little blue dog

Chriss

Fribble

Amy

Anna

Frommycraftroom

AnnieO

The sloth is now dead to me.

Monday Rockpool

Yeah.... ummm.. oops I missed a day

Each time I release a new fabric range, I commission a quilt from Rita of Red Pepper Quilts. Obviously it is an awesome example of the fabric and always looks stunning on the booth,  but these particular quilts are also becoming my own personal quilt gallery of my collections- Does that make sense ?

 I have the utmost faith in Rita's ability with colour and form, not to mention her technical brilliance, so I usually just post off the fabric and wait and see what arrives. She makes every collection look better than I could even hope.

For this quilt Rita added some Kaufman solids and she designed and paper pieced those pointy point blocks... aren't they great ???

Every time I get a new quilt from Rita I think for sure this one is my favourite....

This time I am certain - this one will be hard to beat !

Thanks for joining my Rockpool week blog friends, I won't make any rash blog promises but I will try and pop in a bit more often. (I really do just get sick of the sound of my own voice).

Leave a comment to enter the giveaway for some .... thing awesome !!!

I will announce all the winners on Thursday and get in touch .

cheers

Saturday Rockpool

Its panel time !!

It is also Jodie throws blogger out the window time.

 Rockpool comes with the cutest panel (you have to trust me on this Blogger will not allow me to upload the photo). Each panel contains three friendly sea horses.

The panel comes in three colour ways

and if blogger would let me show them to you I would...

So today's giveaway will be one or more of the wonderful invisible rockpool panels plus a set of Knit purl pins.

See you tomorrow good people !

Friday Rockpool

Just popping in quickly for today's Rockpool post guys.

This stunning bag is made by Susie Colling of twirl girl boutique.

I have never met Susie but my friend Emma Wengier of Emkie designs , designs fantastic bag patterns and I really really wanted something a bit less childlike on my rockpool booth to even out the toy explosion. I had thought it might be nice to have a grown-up bag so I asked Emma to suggest someone that makes and sells from her patterns.

Of course, the bag just had to be seagulls !!

When I approached Susie about commissioning a Hippo Hobo bag from her, she could not have been nicer. (even after I explained the crazy deadline) I showed Susie some fabric photos and gave her a vague idea of what I wanted and popped the seagulls and pebbles in the post.

Susie let me know the fabric had arrived and then two days later she emailed to say the bag was finished and ready for the post ! I was so excited to get that package !! The workmanship on this bag is perfect - there is no other word for it. It is beautifully made and has incredible attention to detail. It has a zippered pocket under the flap and another on the inside.

Check out that tassle !!

This bag was the very first Rockpool item finished and ready for market. I had it laying out on the bed in the spare room and every time I felt a bit overwhelmed I walked in and looked at it and thought,

 "It's all good, I have the bag, it'll be fine"

You can follow Susie on Facebook and Ig as Twirl Girl Boutique and follow Emma on both as Emkie designs.

Today's prize will be something that I bought at quilt market as well as some Gull fat quarters.

At the rate I am going- Rockpool week may need a small extension.

Thursday Rockpool

On this fine Thursday I am going to share with you the quilt that Jemima Flendt made using rockpool fabric.

This is Jemima's hugely popular Hop Skip Jump pattern that she remade in Rockpool. It is so striking and fresh !! I love that feature band across the bottom , the perfect way to show off a print !

Jemima is another Creative Abundance designer and a bit of a super-woman. (that's code for bloody hard-working). When she isn't designing for her Tied with a Ribbon brand she is designing with her mate Claire Turpin for their shared pattern designs, Sew along.  Just to be sure she doesn't get bored anytime, she has just released her first book and filmed her foundation paper-piecing class for Creative University.

I was lucky enough to hang out with Jemima at quilt market in St. Louis and to say we had a ball would be an understatement. There was dancing, drinking, singing a little bit more drinking and some spectacular hula-hooping ! All of these activities occurred in a professional manner and there was even a bit of sight-seeing where Jemima introduced myself and Mr Ric Rac to funnel cake.
Jemima is also a consummate shopper and dessert eater - she is obsessed with desserts! (hence the funnel cake).
if you ever have to hang out with someone at a quilty thing in another country-take Jemima with you...You won't regret it!

Today's prize will be a copy of Jemima's pattern, some rockpool fabric and who knows what else ? Something fun !!! It's time to mix shit up a bit friends...

Wednesday Rockpool

Lets just check out this little band of sea-farers !!! 

Designed by Fiona Tully of 2 Brown Birds - these guys are a riot. This pattern is called Pirate Posse and I can't decide who is my favourite.

The beard just kills me - but I love the whiskery dude as well.

Fiona is a super talented toy and quilt designer. She makes the absolute cutest play sets. You have to go over to her blog now and check out her Happy Campers pattern.

 It is my favourite (the shower is the best !!).

Yep, Fiona is another of the Creative Abundance team and also lovely beyond words.

You guys have probably heard me talk about my work friend Carole before. She is an incredibly skilled seamstress and has a fantastically creative brain. Carole made the gorgeous knitting needle dress for me for Sewing School.

This time she made the coolest shirts ever. Of course I say "Carole, there isn't much time, just fudge them. No-one will be wearing them so don't worry about buttonholes or anything."

Then she returns with two beautiful shirts with the most exquisite attention to detail. Check out what she did with the selvedge !! Designing fabric is a blast but one of my favourite things is taking my strike offs to school when they arrive to show Carole. She is always so excited and has so many ideas about what to do with them!! She makes me forget the crazy market preparation slog and gets me excited.

Today's giveaway will be a copy of Fiona's pattern and a set of Buoys FQ.

Oh and in America these are pronounced boo-eeze. 

Same language-so different.

Tuesday - Rockpool

This quilt is Emma Jansen's latest design called Bronte's Stars

and it is freakin' amazing!

I was lucky enough to be able to borrow this one to take to quilt market and hang on my booth (it looked dead posh).

Emma is also part of the Creative Abundance gang and you can see all her designs on her website or follow along on IG.

Bronte's stars is named after Emma's dog who she left in Ballarat when she moved to Melbourne recently. (Just saying, Bronte is no good as an emergency quilt helper, or fabric provider and she never rings me from Spotlight to ask if I need anything).

Here it is in another colour way - stunning right ??

Today's prize is a copy of Emma's awesome pattern and a fat quarter each of the Saltwater print from the collection.

Hump day tomorrow friends - hope your week is treating you well!