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.