Fun Quilts You Can Do Too
And a Goodbye from the penguin boys! They are putting their sneaky adoption plan into action and have activated their Christmas parcel disguise.
Continue reading “Christmas Eve 2019: Colour & Inspiration Tuesday”
The tree is up, presents are bought, plans are mostly laid. The weather outside is variable; this week it is stinking hot, until it’s not. It’s going to be 44C by Friday. For those of you not familiar with Celcius to Farenheit, 44C is about 111F. Then Saturday will have a maximum of 25C….. that will be one heck of a cool change when it blows through. It’s starting to feel a lot like Christmas!
Although 44C is not the hottest we’ve ever had (46.6C in Jan 2019), it will equal our hottest December day on record. In fact, heat records are set to fall in much of this sunburnt country of ours this week while I try to pack and quilt. Two not-so-great options for this weather, but we have health, water and shelter, and no bushfires nearby – a lot to be thankful for. Christmas Day will be more like our December average of 28C.
And in harmony with end-of-year thankfulness, it’s that time of year when the Chameleon expresses his gratitude to you my readers by breaking out in song. Continue reading for your annual dose of Clever Chameleon Quilty Christmas Carols!
Continue reading “Warm Wishes: Colour & Inspiration Tuesday”
It’s Christmas in July season, and that means it’s time to re-visit and perhaps even re-invent some Christmas-y projects either for fun or future expediency (or both). 😀 Christmas time is often so hectic, that it’s always nice to be able to pull gifts and decorations out of the cupboard with a relieved sigh of “And here’s one we prepared earlier!”.
Recently my friend Joy mentioned that she was collecting her Christmas in July thoughts. That was my prompt to remember that I still haven’t found time to try out the projects from the Sew Early 4 Christmas hop that Joy ran with Pam, Susan and myself last year. Yeah, a whole year ago! As you may remember, my response to that nudge was to promptly start Susan’s wreath pillow, which I will finish soon.
But, there’s no point in being creative if you can’t get distracted. So Susan’s wreath project got set aside to thread paint the Chameleon. And then I thought I would just quickly make up Pam’s gift bag and Joy’s Christmas crackers….
And the Chameleon and I got totally got carried away. *Surprise!*
We mused: if we add a couple of Christmas present-themed mug rugs (coasters) to the bag and crackers, it would make the collection into a cute, coordinated Christmas for Two gift set. So we made some. And then we worked up a quick tutorial for the coasters for you, so you can make your own Christmas for Two set too.
So this is Sew Early 4 Christmas, revisited and upsized. Happy Christmas in July!
Continue reading “Christmas For Two: Anytime, Anywhere.”
This one’s a tough one. We’ve been asked to “use any fabric art/non-traditional quilting/sewing/thread painting technique using 3 Aurifil thread weights” for our July Island Batik Ambassador project. Any size, any technique, as long as the result is Artsy Fartsy. And I am just not feeling it like I usually do. Which is odd, because I have created plenty of non-traditional artsy fartsy quilt pieces in the past. And I am a big, big, big thread connoisseur. I love them all – rayons and metallics and 12wt Lana, and even bobbin work with embroidery floss. And I get the same thrill from a rack of thread colours as I do from a new box of paints or crayons….
Maybe it is because my collection of Aurifil is a bit limited in colour and thread variety. Maybe it’s because it’s cold and grey outside and I have endured days of incessant noise in stereo from 8am every day because one neighbour is remodelling the back half of their house and the other is completely demolishing. Gack! Or it could simply be that I have just finished preparing four quilts for our annual State Guild show and now have a big dose of anticlimax after dropping them off this morning. Whatever the reason, the Chameleon is off colour and I feel like a Grinch at Christmas because the whole Island Batik Ambassador family is doing this thing and insisting it is going to be fun and I can’t get enthused….
Hmmmm….. Christmas. In July. Now, there’s a thought.
By the way, have you ever tried to fussy cut a batik?
Continue reading “Artsy Fartsy: Colour & Inspiration Tuesday”
