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!

When I can't quilt.

Life's kinda busy at the moment. The party this weekend, a small matter of dinner for 200, editing and ideas and chocolate cake and - oh, I'm not going to bore you.

We all have times when we're just unable to quilt. Or to draw, collage, stitch or embroider. Whatever yoiur craft addiction, I'm sure you know what I mean.

And at times like these, I like to flick quickly through pictures that inspire me. It's like slurping down a chocolate milkshake all at once, because you can feel it filling you up for hours to come. (Okay, so that's not the best analogy in the world - note to self: revise.)

Tiny bits of inspiration can percolate while everything else is going on. And I promise myself that soon - soon - I will draw something like this.

(This is not a slab of chocolate. I know what you were thinking, Curlypops! No, it's the carved wooden screen across the quire of a cathedral in northern England, near the Lake District. note to self - look up cathedral name...!)

Please pass the salt and pepper...

... or could that be, the kitsch?


What delights! Our first stop in Amerrr-ica included a Saturday in Seattle, and while he went off to the Museum of Flight and the Flying Heritage Collection, I went to Pike Place Market.

Now, I admit that I am a spoiled girl, with Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market right on my doorstep, and so while I enjoyed Pike Place Market, it wasn't a life-changing experience (You see, I had that, in the Queen Vic, and I went back to the UK and applied for a visa. That's definitely life-changing.)


So, you can see why I wished that the girls of blogland and the TCB could be here with me when I hit the motherload of all salt and pepper kitsch. An entire shop devoted to crazy character salt and pepper sets.


(I'm sure they're used to women circling their windows and aisles, giggling quietly to themselves.)

But I wasn't sure if they'd want me taking pictures, so there are just a few.

B

Eye spy...

Something that makes me happy.


Last year, we went to Italy. I can't quite describe how happy I get when I go to Italy. We both get a little silly, actually -- he used to live there and I used to go there alot, so it's comfortable and fun. We love the people. We adore the food. And I get quite completely doo-laly when I see a Brunelleschi building, empty, waiting just for us to sit and enjoy.

Eye Spy thanks to Cindy and this week's theme from Iris and Lily.

Blogtoberfest: Excuse me while I step out for a quick break

I almost made it through an entire day without blogging. Of course, I still read a dozen or so of your posts, but I was going to be cavalier, I was going to step outside for a day, I was going to have a quick smoko 'round the back of the Forum ( 'cept I don't smoke.)

But here I am again. Perhaps I ought to be worried?

Sometimes, there's no bus for what feels like hours, and then all of a sudden three come along at once. Well, it feels a little like that with the job-hunt at the moment. I've got a busy week ahead of me, with interviews, 'chats', applications to send in, and volunteer work starting. And it's my birthday tomorrow, so I've got a dinner date with the lovely Mr. Tacc, and I am told that there will be a special trip to a craft shop of my choosing - frahfrahfrah!!

As for the photo - these charming young Romans were spotted outside the Coliseum by Mr. Tacc, who is quick with the camera, but not quick enough to escape notice. Having a smoko. It's probably a historically accurate activity, soldiering being what it is.

I hope you're soldiering on with your Blogtoberfest - with little breaks to keep your spirits up.

PS: just in case you think this is no longer a sewing blog, I'm making myself a summer shirt. Badly. I'll post some photos if I'm feeling brave. (It might just become pyjamas.)

Italian dreams

Tonight as dinner cooked, I was looking at photos on the laptop and sighing over the pictures from Rome. I've been thinking of Italy all day, today - just can't get it out of my head....


There's been a lot of thinking going on lately, about this new adventure of mine called; "What am I going to be when I grow up?". I have been searching, and looking, and talking to people, and examining my past with the aim of finding my future: which new career will suit me best? I count myself lucky to have had an excellent first career in marketing, with 12 years of book marketing, online editing, and its associated fields. But it's time to move on, or move over - the shift might be just across the hall or it may be all the way down the street and around the block, into a new industry. Meanwhile I balance the question of time, and the necessity of finding something soon.

Beep! Beep! Where is this little blue truck going?

To the market perhaps, she loves food! Or just to hang out outside the art gallery and look painterly? She's had an interesting life so far.

As a part of this search, I'm using a book many people have recommended before, called "What Colour is Your Parachute?", by Richard Nelson Bolles. It forces you to assess and stand back from what you have been doing, what you love doing, and where you can make a living, through a series of exercises you do. Together, the exercises build up a picture of where you're going (or should be going). Best of all, the book gives you a regular shot of confidence, which can be sorely needed when the hunt goes on for several weeks, and you start to worry.

What have I discovered? Well, that there are so many things that I'm enthusiastic about, but writing, books and art are always there. Thinking, looking and learning. Being with people. I have met some fantastic people through the search through interviewing them about their jobs, and what they love (and loathe, if they want to tell me).

Like the Aussies say, it's a long road. I'm looking out the door, wondering whether to trot left or right, or just see what turns up.

Honk, HONK! With a honko-horn like this, you sure would hear me coming...

This is....

My favourite place to buy fabric...

Amsterdam!

My heart starts to race just at the thought of all of the fabric shops, button shops, the retro market stalls and wonderful bagel cafe we went to every morning.

Fabric booth at Albert Cuyp market
Originally uploaded by Matthieu en Maaike

The best of all is the Albert Cuyp market area, where there are stalls as well as some fantastic shops, catering to the theatre and costume trades as well as to people like me who, the first time I went, were astounded by the fabrics. I'd never seen silks like that, so shimmery and rough - or screening camouflage scrim for theatre sets, and of course, everything in between.

When we lived in the UK, I worked for a publisher who was creating co-publications with a Dutch publisher. And so, every 2 months or so, off I went to Amsterdam for a day or two, and hopefully a weekend if I could afford to stay on. Being a complete market fiend, this was heaven!

There's a wonderful description of the Albert Cuyp market from Morelle (who makes beautiful bags!) - that is so similar to my experience, too!

B

Posted Stitches goes live!

It's online!
Some of you know that I have been working quietly for a couple of months now on Posted Stitches, a monthly art quilt challenge with Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood. Jennifer runs the CraftSanity blog and podcast that I have mentioned many times, and we became pen pals earlier this year after a podcast of hers in which she interviewed Samara O'Shea, author of "For the Love of Letters" (CraftSanity episode no. 69)

Much to my surprise, soon after we started exchanging letters, Jennifer got in touch and asked if I was up for an exchange challenge: one art quilt a month, to a pre-agreed size and on a pre-agreed theme.

The challenge, however? You have to use materials that were sent to you by the other person.

The first quilt challenge was a self portrait. Now just imagine choosing fabric and embellishments for a complete stranger to make their own self portrait with. -And receiving a surprise parcel yourself, with the makings that you have to fashion into a portrait of your own. And you have just under a month to finish, because in my case, I was on the road with my needles and thread, travelling Europe and the UK, carrying Posted Stitches in my rucksack.

Fun? You bet! Want to see what we made? Check out Posted Stitches, where it's all happening.

B

The travel quilt: finishing stitches

We're home. Three months of around-the-world excitement, bag-lugging, photo-snapping, talking looking and thinking, and here we are: back in our little house. We close the door behind us and the travelling is all over.

Or not.

I feel like I do when I've just completed a really big, really involving hand-quilted quilt. You plan and cut and sew and work on it for months. Starting it is exciting, but sometimes you have to find the energy to pick up and keep going. You learn to fall in love with it all over again somewhere in the middle. You make mistakes. -And if you're me, you veer of the plan and make adjustments partway through. You see new things in the process, get into the rhythm of it, breathe and relax while you're stitching and think of other things. Sometimes big problems sort themselves out, quietly, at the back of your mind while you are stitching.

So too with travel. A really long trip takes planning, time, and a different kind of energy than a short holiday.

You start off on your adventure, and everything's exciting. Sometime, perhaps several weeks later, you make a few mistakes and you get tired, and perhaps a little overwhelmed by the enormity of the trip (just like a quilt!). You need somehow to learn to love the travel life again - to think about what you're seeing, and to allow yourself just to be who you are, wherever you are. Not defined by house, friends, job, car, clothes, culture, language - all of those things we use when we're at home to say to the world "I am this kind of person". Everything is now, in the present tense.

Weeks on the road and your ties to home re-knot and re-arrange themselves: some friendships become more important to you (as you realise how much you're looking forward to seeing them again), and others are reunited - people you used to see every week but who you've left and moved away from. Those friends are still there, still themselves, only maybe a little bit different, and that can be exciting.

Finally, with the deadline in sight, you start to pack things in. When I quilt, I nearly always miss my deadline by a week or two, and the same with this trip: we decided to extend our stay and return a week later than planned. Which has its own challenges, not least financial! We fell prey to the 'just one more thing' trap as we tried to see to much, got sick, had to sleep - and finally, took those last days in Vancouver, the last stitches on the binding of our travel quilt - nice and easy.

So here we are: back in Melbourne, from summer to midwinter, in our chilly little house with all the leaves off the tree in the yard (hey - who stole the leaves? Oh yeah, winter started while we left).

And we're all wrapped up in a cuddly quilt of our memories.

Doing some drawing

While sorting out some stuff at my parent's house, I came across a big box of my old sketchbooks from 10-15 years ago. Maybe a dozen or more, thick books filled with not-so-good and rather-good drawings and ideas - they were pretty inspiring, because I remembered what it was like to play and draw ideas every day.

On this trip, I've tried to draw something, even if only something small, every day. This is a big thing because I haven't done that for about 10 years - basically since these sketchbooks got put away. -And although I'm enjoying it and I'll persevere, it's annoying how much I've forgotten (like how to draw convincing feet!) Grr. It's not that I didn't want to draw, all those years, it's just that other things - like learning to embroider and to quilt - took over. And so drawing retreated into a corner and instead of drawing and painting anything that took my fancy, all I did were the occasional black and white cartoons for many, many years.
I sat down and drew this one after the Quilt Hunting expedition at the O'Keefe ranch, having seen a stack of folded quilts in a cupboard just like the pile in this cartoon, above.

It's amazing how some feedback sets you running again: I've been working on a collaborative project with a new friend, Jennifer of the CraftSanity blog and podcast (watch this space: we'll be launching it very soon!), and also enjoying looking at the incredible leaps in skill made recently by my Dad as he paints more and more often, and takes lessons and challenges himself. (And he's organising a fantastic Canadian art show, Art Visions 2008). So I am trying not to listen to the demons and to learn to draw feet again - I can see from the old sketchbooks that I once knew how, so it can't be all that bad!

At the bottom of our suitcase, as we head into the final, homeward leg of our round-the-world trip, I've got a fat soft big old sketchbook, busting with ideas. -And the last 50 pages are empty, so I've got some work to do: time to fill 'er up!

Quilt Hunting, part 2

Well, it wasn't only quilts that we found at the O'Keefe ranch - there was also a cowboy exhibition in the museum, with all sorts of artifacts, including these beautiful embroidered gauntlets.

The caption reads: "Beaded and fringed gauntlets were extremely popular among the cowboys of the BC Interior. These gauntlets from the South Okanagan are ornamented with beadwork and embroidery".

When I first saw the gauntlets, they reminded me of the embroidery you tend to see on Canadian First Nations' items, such as moccasins and gloves. There are a few examples in the Textile Museum of Canada, such as this embroidered and beaded decorative cuff (presumably for a coat), made by Woodlands Cree in Western Canada, c. 1880, or this pipe bag from Ontario, of about the same time.

Most of the photos in my previous post were from the Schubert House, on the ranch -- but of course, there was a main house, which was decorated in rich style as befitted a successful ranching entrepreneur of the late 1800s.


The recreated ranch house kitchen...


... with a triple Irish Chain quilt on display below the window.

The very expensive William Morris wallpaper on the stairwell and hall. Somehow this stairwell manages to be dark and rich-looking, but not gloomy. Perhaps it's because of the light wood of the banisters and the high contract on the wallpaper, or perhaps also because the staircase is freestanding and there are no supports or posts constricting the space?

You can't see it in this picture, but a judiciously-placed mirror enabled the lady of the house to glance up to the upstairs landing from the parlour - just to make sure that there were no eavesdroppers amongst the children of the house!

And finally, upstairs in one of the bedrooms, a beautiful washstand sits next to the bed with a faded beauty of a log cabin quilt. The colours of the room are cool and comfortable, but not dull - simple and charming.


- Now I want to go and make a log cabin quilt!

B

Quilt Hunting

Today we went down the road to the O'Keefe Ranch, in the dry hills north of Oyama. Worked by father and son for over 140 years, the O'Keefe was established in 1867, and it's now a heritage site with houses, a store and a church, farm machinery, proud chickens and young sheep, and of course... quilts.

Imagine my delight when I came up the steep stairs of the log cabin (the original house), to see this lovely feather applique quilt.

My memory says that this is called a Princess Feather quilt, but perhaps I've got that wrong? (There's a quilt like this in the textile collection of the American Museum in Britain, at Bath).

There were also more utilitarian quilts in the children's rooms in the Schubert House, one of the houses on the ranch. I loved the blue walls and this well-worn, slightly faded tufted bed quilt.

Downstairs, in the farmhouse kitchen, a very knowledgeable guide sat and told us the tale of the settlers coming across the whole of North America to build and live in this house. A party of descendents , some of whom had grown up in this actual house, were visiting.

The tale of their ancestors' cross-Canada journey is incredible: from the East to Fort Edmonton - two months by Red River wagon. Mrs Schubert was pregnant, and although friends begged her to stay in the East until the child was born, the couple were determined to get to the Goldfields, and they set out with their three young children, all under 5 - one in each saddle bag on their mother's horse, the other perched in front of one of the men.
Confident that they would reach the Goldfields of interior BC before winter, and before the birth, they struggled through the Rockies on foot and on horseback, all the way to the wild rivers of BC, where, starving, the settlement team finally took to rafts. -Only to discover that their river suddenly descended into a canyon and a mighty waterfall. So they walked. Three days up and around a mountain, then down again to the river to build more rafts, where, somewhere on a riverbank, not far from Fort Kamloops, their daughter was born.

I can hardly imagine the story, though we're sitting on old chairs in their kitchen, and there are toddler great-grandchildren rolling around on the grass outside. The swing screen door bangs, and when we go out into the meadow, it all looks peaceful, as if rivers and starvation and drowning never shadowed the horizon, and we know that they lived to a ripe, quiet old age.

A Currant Affair

Red and juicy, some of them dried already and prey to birds, the currants glow like jewels. I can feel the sun on my neck and my back as I stoop over the bush. Every so often, a berry breaks, and my fingers are stained red with the warm juice.

Dad’s currant bushes are on the edge of the property, on a hot, dry steep slope. You’ve got to watch your feet scrabbly gravel. Every once in a while, a warm red berry pops off the bush and lands, caught in the dry stiff grasses. It’s hot.


I’ve gone out to pick the berries, not knowing what I’ll make with them – arguably a foolish thing to do, but I want to play in the kitchen indoors where it’s cool.

So I’m out in the heat, snipping sprigs of berries and encouraging the occasional ant to look elsewhere for dinner. We opt to split the bush: there are enough berries for everyone and no doubt for some early-morning birds, too.


Inside, the berries are sorted. My feet hurt; it takes almost an hour to pluck and clean just over 2 cups of berries, but they are so beautiful that I’m proud.

The best sprigs stay to one side for garnishing; the rest onto the stove for sauce. I have to get a clean spoon, because I’ve licked this one! The sauce is warm and bubbly, very tart – almost, but not quite, sour.

Red Currant whip – 15 mins prep; 1 hour cooling time

Lemon sherry cream
- Some heavy cream, about 1 cup
- Half a fresh lemon
- 2 Tablespoons sherry
- sprinkling of sugar
In a bowl or a large measuring jug, stir together the cream, the juice of half a lemon and the sherry. Sprinkle with sugar. Whip with a wire whisk until frothy and stiffened – this may or may not take 2 minutes. Put in the fridge to cool.

Red currant compote
- 2 cups fresh currants
- 1/2 cup sugar
Place the currants and the sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Let cool. You can strain it if you want, but I don’t mind the seeds.

Layer nice glass dishes with cut nectarines, spoonfuls of the currant compote, and chill until dessert time. Then pour the lemon cream on top and blance sprigs of fresh currants to decorate. Best served chilled.

Enjoy!

Hexa-heaven

I told myself I would never make a hexagon quilt. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always admired them, but I decided long ago that there wasn’t enough time in my life and patience in my character to see me making a hexagon quilt.


That was before I received in the post an innocuous-looking kit containing 7 squares of fabric and 7 pre-cut hexagons. Just baste them on, trim the corners, and sew into a flower. It’s really not hard. What I didn’t realise was that it’s addictive. – And I thank my friend who started the interest with this lovely story and the kit: she did give me ample warning, so I’ve got nothing to complain about…

What I discovered was that although there is no time in my life for hexagon obsession, there is, on the other hand, a lot of waiting time involved in travelling, and a project that does not require scissors and can fit in the average pocket will inevitably become a traveller’s best friend.


No longer for me the endless games of solitaire on my iPod, I’m into hexagons, I can hexagon while I wait. I can hexagon on the train. I can hexagon in waiting lounges and on planes (sans scissors), and I can hexagon while I’m talking to people….. hang on, that’s not dead time! So why am I hexagoning?

Well, it is oddly satisfying, and I am one of those women who like to work on something while they talk. The occasional baffled comment from on-looking family rings gentle alarm bells as I remember my former hexagon-free self:
“But what’s it FOR?” (I don’t know; does it matter?)
“Won’t that take forever?” (Well, yes, but that’s not bothering me at the moment.)
“Won’t those paper pieces disintegrate and fall out?” (Ah-ha, a potential convert, thinking through the logistics. I spot a fellow obsessive mindset…)
“Do you actually buy fabric to do that?” (Blush. I pretend I’m not, but we all know the truth.)
...And so forth.


Let the hexagons roll on, I’m into the forties and counting, and I’m getting oh so much better at dividing numbers by sixes and sevens. Twelve pieces equals two outer circles; now I need contrasting centres… Four pieces from this scrap equals most of one outer circle, if I can match it, or perhaps they’ll make four good bright centres. And so on.

Thank you to Jennifer for sending the kit in the first place, to the family and friends who have understood and donated scraps, found and offered perfect card for more centres, put up with talking to the top of my head, or driven me to the fabric store. You’re all hexagonal stars!

Listening to the breeze through Canadian pines

Gsssshhhhhh....wwwsshhhhh....
It's a sound I catch sometimes, even in Australia, and it always reminds me of home. The gentle whoosh of wind through pine trees, ruffling and rustling the thousands of needles. Some love the sound of the sea on the beach, but I grew up loving the northern woods.


I've been off-line for a few days, and that's because I've been hanging out in my woods. We arrived in Canada a week ago, and since then I have swum in cool northern lakes, slapped a lot of mosquitos, gone canoeing, jumped off the dock, messed about in boats, talked with my sister and cuddled her dog, eaten bbq'd dinners, checked for bears before venturing out of the cabin in the morning, and fallen asleep under whooshing pine trees.


There's peace in the unspoken elements that represent home when you have lived away from 'home' for so long. I left in 1995 and haven't been back much since; ten years in the UK, now 3 and a half in Australia.


When you leave for so long, you find you love things about each of them, but sometimes you've got to just sit and listen to the wind in the pine trees.

London life

I'm going to make a confession: I'm a little overwhelmed by London. Maybe it's not the city itself, because I'd like to think that having been here dozens, even hundreds of times before, for work and for play, I'm not completely unused to it.


But it's the old London quandary: there is something interesting happening at every single minute of every single day, and I am just going to have to accept that I will miss things. Like Hampton Court Palace, or a concert at the Wigmore Hall. -And any number of exhibitions that sound interesting, or downright fascinating.

Am I complaining? No, definitely not. I'm on holiday, I'm fascinated by the wealth of arts and popular culture here, but I have to accept that there are only so many hours in the day, and that like many humans, I need to sleep! (And, alas! you still have to do laundry when on holiday, when you've been away as long as we have).

So for today, our last day in London, I am resisting the urge to run around in circles, hyperventilating at the prospect of leaving so much richness, and just zen it on through.

Tired, but happy.

B

Just doing a bit of ironing...

I threatened to tell you more about the V&A: and here it is!


One of the great things about the V&A is that the collections are divided, in many cases, by the material. So, Ironwork has its own galleries, which are arranged regardless of the date or country of manufacture of much of the material, in general.

These galleries upstairs hold piece after piece of iron work; gates, grilles, torch brackets, locks, decorations, and all manner of glorious and intriguing things. Black on white walls, shape after shape; it's heaven for any quilter or embroiderer or confirmed pattern-hunter like me.


How about these scrolled beauties, and the phoenix-like birds with branches in their beaks?



And these two really made an impression: I would love to embroider or applique the tree. And look closely, down to the left....


There's a silhouette of a man working metal, his force and implements:


Oh arr, heavy metal delights. That's what I call inspiration!

B

Sunshine on The Sun

I hear that London doesn't get sunshine often. And that's borne out as truth by what I see ... rain, rain, and more rain.... with a sudden break for a spot of sunshine, shining on the aptly-named Sun Tavern.


Don't you love those two dark round windows, and the bold red and white scheme?

B

Training in letters

I took these photos a few days ago, when we were still up north, in Yorkshire.

We visited the National Railway Museum, which - okay, I confess! - I thought I might find it dull. Instead, I found some design delights!


How about the colours and shapes of these signals, against the big blue roof?

- Or the lettering and that big fat W.


Best of all, I think, was the hand-painted lettering on this wonderfully-restored train.

Look at how the shadows are made of diagonals of red and green. It works!

And here's the whole thing for perspective.

It's industrial design, and it could inspire some stitching composition, or perhaps I'll try that lettering style.

B