Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to All

This nativity scene is constructed outside the City Hall building of our beautiful fair city.  Everything is so green after the lovely summer rain we had recently.

During the holidays I hope to work on some unfinished projects and play around some more with paints and textiles. 

My Sashiko quilt has been ‘maturing’ in the cupboard because of an artistic block.   The girls at Indigo Niche helped me, and suggested another piece of sashiko stitching be added into the next border, so I have launched into stitching this rather large piece of sashiko!!! Thank you dear Sue and Colleen.  It is a great project to do at night in front of the very boring TV.

I would love to get this quilt finished this year some time – but then again – we will be going on our camping trips again this year!!

   

This piece of rather tawdry paper cloth has now become this little book cover.  The little square of watercoloured paper was given to me by Shirley, and it was perfect for the front of my book.  Shirley.  There are another couple of embellishments to go onto the book yet, and I have now added some paper pages into it.  The lime green rectangles are finger painted with ‘Silk’ acrylic glaze.  It has a lovely sheen which doesn’t show up in photographs.

In the last month or so I tried another technique for paper cloth and the results are quite different.  It involves using paper and crayons and stabilizing it all with fusible interfacing, chopping it all up, and rejoining with more stabilizer.  It is interesting, and I will be showing it to the TQ Art Quilt Group in January where they can all have a go at creating some of their own.

This piece is a work in progress.  Goodness knows what I will end up doing with it.  It may get all chopped up again!!

My dear husband has been baking bread.  Is he trying to make me FAT!!  it smells divine coming out of the oven and who can resist?  I love eating the crusts with a big layer of butter and a smidge of vegemite.  mmmmmmm.

A friend of mine emailed me this.

So, to all my dear ‘fruit cakes’ have a very Happy Christmas and Festive Season and all the very best to all of you for the New Year.

Until then……………………………………..Dianne

Stitch, Cloth, Paper & Paint

This is the title of the latest book by my all time favourite textile artist, Angie Hughes.

I was gifted this book by my dear friend, Shirley. Mwah to Shirley!!  It is a very inspiring book and I can’t wait to try some of the techniques Angie uses.

There has been some fun and games around here at Eat Play Quilt.

Christmas parties, birthday parties and joyous gatherings with family and friends.

Lunch with Joan, Vicky and Marleen.  We talked and talked and beautiful gifts were exchanged.

 

Lilian had her 6th birthday on 9th December and Nana made her a chocolate cake.  Her mummy made her the Rapunzel cake for her little party she had with her friends.  She is loving her new ‘Frozen’ nightie.

Summer fun with her friends on Sunday.

Some simple tags I made last week with Dylusion sprays, acrylic ink and black sharpie pen.  After the photo I added a square of washi tape to the bottom of the trees for the pot.

Lilian and I did some crafting today.  We are looking after Lilian for this week and up to Christmas while her Mummy works.

Today one of our projects was making stamps from foam sheets and doing some printing with acrylic paints.

            Lilian’s stamps                                                                         Nana’s stamps

We mounted the foam to wooden blocks kindly donated by Shirley.  Thanks Shirley, they have been put to good use.

Loads of fun!

Until next time ………………………………….Dianne

A Little Sojourn

We are back from our little sojourn to the north.  We visited our favourite place in the world again this year, Town of 1770.  If you are a Queenslander and haven’t visited 1770, as ‘Molly’ would say, do yourself a favour.

The photo above was taken while I was having my morning coffee in front of our camper.  We were RIGHT on the beach front.  Walk out of the camper – take five steps and you are on the beach.  Heaven.

Along the way we stopped and visited my cousin and husband on their fish/mango /sugar cane farm.  How they fit all the work in that they do I will never know.  I am in awe of them.  We also visited my cousin Janet’s mum, Aunt Lyla, who was married to my Mum’s eldest brother.  He is now deceased – we all miss him terribly. 

 After we left Bundaberg we spend 4 days in the most idyllic place ever.  It is called Norval and the pristine beach stretches forever. As you can see, you are allowed to drive along the beach.  Windows down, wind in the hair, it was invigorating.  

The boys went crabbing and caught these beauties.  and we had…….

fresh crab sandwiches on fresh bread.  Love

While we were in 1770 I was thrilled to catch up with my long time friend (from Grade 1 actually), Maree.  We have not seen each other for many, many years.  Her father and my mother were cousins and we have always kept in touch.  To make the reunion even better, my sister and her husband were able to join us for 5 days too.  It was so much fun catching up!

We were then joined by a whole gang of friends and friends of friends from Bribie Island and the Sunshine Coast.  It was soooo much fun.  We enjoyed our get togethers every afternoon and ate and drank waaaaaay too much. 

The sun set on our little holiday and it was home and back to reality.

Until next time…………………….Dianne.

Blogger on Ipad App

I am trying my hand at using the Blogger App on my Ipad. 

All I can say so far is, it is not easy and doesn't want to play my games. We will see how this goes!!!'

Sweet Peas - one of my favourite flowers. I wish I could share the scent with you.  Thank you to Valderie for gifting them to me after our special event at Toowoomba. 

Some secret sewing has been going in these past few weeks and there is nothing I can share on that front right now. 

Lilian recently had a day with Nana and we did some painting. I painted ( or attempted to paint) a poppy card for Shirley.  The significance being, no matter what happens to us or where we end up, I will always remember Shirley and the friendship we share. I am just an old sentimentalist.

After painting we had to play Mummys and then Doctors.

Dr Lilian with baby on the 'bed'. 

" Now, what's wrong?"

Mummy giving the bottle

Now for some solid food. 

Special thanks to Shirley for donating the baby :)

Very shortly we are going back to visit one of our favourite places, 1770. Paradise!

Now it is time to find out how to publish this!!!

Until next time .............Dianne

Not Much–How about you?

Poor old blog!!  Life has been pulling me in all directions but not the way of the blog, alas.
We have had some roller coaster rides these past couple of months, but life is slowly getting back to normal (whatever that is)


We set off on a trip to the south on 1 September but were called home when my father got ill.  He is pretty good now and back home receiving in-home help.  Hopefully we will get away again soon.
In the meantime we have started a small reno project.  Our ensuite bathroom was looking very tired and had ‘issues’, so this week DH pulled it out and work begins soon on reconstructing it.  Oh joy!

There is not much to show on the sewing front as my mojo has taken a sabbatical.  Also I had to have a small procedure under general anaesthetic which knocked me about for a week or two and seemed to take the wind out of my sails.  I missed the annual quilting retreat last weekend ( sad face) but because our trip was cancelled in September,  I was fortunately able to attend and enjoy working at our Toowoomba Quilters Annual Exhibition.
Toowoomba Quilters Exhibition has a fabulous facebook page if you would like to check it out https://www.facebook.com/TQ.Exhibition
Here are some photos of some quilts I liked at the exhibition.

This one won the Viewer’s Choice prize.  Kudos to the maker, Betty Fawcett, for putting all those little pieces together and doing such an amazing job of quilting it herself.

This one is called ‘Insanity’ for obvious reasons.  Yes they are all teeny weeny hexagons there in the border (shown on right close up).  Marion made this and got second in the viewer’s choice with it.  Well done.

I loved the fresh modern look of these two quilts.  Left, made by Lyn Crump and Right, made by Lynn.

Another lovely big hexagon quilt demonstrating much patience made by Jean.

Lovely soft colours in this one made by my friend Lynn.  I love the borders especially the grey zig zag.
 
My friend, Linda Wrench has put her crazy blocks together with a stunning shade of duponi silk.  We started our blocks some 10 years ago in a class with Robyn Ginn and Linda has pipped me to the winning post and got hers together.  boo hoo.  Mine is still languishing.  Beautiful, Linda!
In the background I have been working my way through some more TAST stitches and hope to share them with you next time.
Until then,  happy quilting and crafting to you all ……………………..Dianne.