Woodpile

Sometimes the colours in your stash just have to be put together. I spend entirely too much time 'saving' favourite fabric for some perfect as yet undesigned project. I'm trying to be bold and just cut into it. (After all, it's a certain bet there will be more gorgeous fabric along soon to woo me.)

A mini quilt is just the right size. This reminds me of being inside the summer cabin my family had when my sister and I were kids. It looks like roughly stripey cabin walls. Reminds me of red flannel pajamas and that plastic drawer lining paper that's supposed to look like wood. I love the chips of cornflour blue, almost lilac but not quite.

It's all making me happy, especially the red and white backing.

A cup of tea and sitting in front of the fire while it rains outside. Snoozing dog at my feet, I am planning the quilting pattern to go on top of these rough hewn logs.

Mindful gardening

I bought a book today - which in itself isn't unusual, because it happens all too often, but this one looks different, interesting.

One of my most cherished books is Zen and the Art of Quilting, by Sandra Detrixhe - I have read it, and re-read it nearly a dozen times. Thinking of that quiet book with calm confidence saying yes, I do know what I am doing with my quilts -- I picked this one up. The Art of Mindful Gardening, by aptly-named Ark Redwood. (If he was a character in a book, you'd never believe it.)

It helps that it's cute. And so 1930s in style (I freely admit that I'm a sucker for 1930s design ethic: I am reading a biography in the 30s now, and I love classic prints in the style like this cover).

So, what am I doing, blogging about a book I've barely read? I'm excited and I wonder if it will live up to the dippings-in I have tasted and enjoyed.

The garden is lush now, the tomatoes this week measured not in numbers but in bucketfuls. The season is changing and mists in the morning on the farm tell me the days of summer are almost gone.

I read, once, that the true measure of a garden is in the delight it gives you as you notice daily changes. The slow ticking turning of the year. Today I admired new shoots on the scarlet runner beans (maybe another crop is coming) and enjoyed my rustic wooden trellis, the red flowers all tied up with scraps of gingham red-and-white fabric. I delighted in snapdragons pushing out second shoots short but fat with flowers, seed pods rattling dry - break them open to gather next summer's colour. Zucchini for dinner, round ones the size of a tennis ball and two little long dark, dark green ones. Black beauty, they're called. Grilled. The sweetness of tomatoes from the bottom of the bucket.

I can't think of anything much more mindful than a garden. Let's see how this one goes...

Cuttin it up

Yesterday a crafting friend loaned me the very inspiring Prints Charming book. It's full of ideas for very simple screen printed motifs, often combined in projects with plain fabrics, like natural linen.

It's a very modern look we've come to expect from craft these days but because the screen printing has its own roughnesses and slubs, it doesn't fall over into being too clinical and cold. It looks hand made, and that, with simplicity, is its charm.

 One of the motifs from the book - done by stencil, not by screen

I haven't got any screens for printing, so I got out my trusty stash of freezer paper so kindly sent to me by Jennifer years ago, whipped the safety catch off my scalpel (i.e. removed the piece of cardboard I keep over the pointy end) and got carving.

Tonight I have heat-set the paint and they look finished. I wonder what I will use them for?

 

My own idea - trying to blend orange and yellow in the poppy petals. The faint grey line is for stitching a quilted circle around the motif in several colours of thread. Next project!

Grey

Grey but happy, I love this quilt!

See how there are patches of flowers and writing in the trucks and cars? I wonder if each vehicle was hand-appliqued or created on foundation paper and then applied.

Gorgeous. Fun but not hokey. Just right.

Another bit of gorgeousness from Luana Rubin's photos of quilts from the 

Tokyo International Quilt Festival. One of these days I've got to go!

Turquoise green

More inspiration from summer holiday thinking.

I'd love to make a quilt with these colours, or to try to paint this vase.

Photo by Luana Rubin courtesy of her Flickr Japanese Textiles and Flea Markets collection.

I love the shape and how you know it would just be the right heaviness in your hands. Also, the mottled surface in each colour - it's old, perhaps not top quality. (The photo was taken in a flea market in Japan.) I even love the rectilinear lines at the bottom that at first read like Greek key designs (you know, square maze trails) but turn out to be irregular compartments.

I think most of all, I want to watercolour paint this image with wet swirly colours bleeding into each other. An inspiration - and a challenge!

Lilac

Last post was golden, this is a soft shade of cool lilac.

On a hot day before Christmas, off we went to Castlemaine to visit the excellent art gallery. I've been there before but like all of the best museum galleries, the Castlemaine gallery seems to reveal something new every time.

This is, if I recall correctly, a WW2 era bridesmaid's dress. I wonder, was fabric in shortage when it was made? If yes, then those bias-cut panels on the bodice must have been even more stunning: extravagance added to elegance.

Or maybe it was a refashioning of a pre-war dress? Something about the bias cut makes me think twenties, even teens - but not the colour. Maybe an old dress was reshaped, dyed, made new.

And as for the colour, that lovely cold shade of lilac. Summer skies and spring grass, tiny flowers and cool mornings.

I love to wonder about the hopes and thoughts of whoever made and wore it. I hope it was a magical wedding.

I can't decide whether I like the cut more, or the colour. They're both so fantastic, you just want to wear a dress like this and twirl and twirl and twirl...

Golden

A Big beautiful bag o lemons were given to me this week, each one perfectly yellow, fat and tight with juice. Smelling like lemon oil.

I'm going to want them in summer when all the lemon trees are sleeping, so here's what I did:

Slice clean lemons and layer in a sieve, with coarse salt sprinkled between the slices.

Leave overnight, over a bowl and under a teatowel.

Pack tightly in a sterilised jar, paprika sprinkled between the layers. Cover completely with olive oil.

And in about three weeks they'll be perfectly soft and not bitter. Amazing in salads and with roasted veg.

Time to plant some zucchini!