Midweek Mutterings

A really sore eye, swollen and red, took me off to The Tweed to see the optometrist.  The Tweed, a suburb about half an hour away, is the nearest large shopping hub, with malls of shops full of everything you need....or don't.  While I like to shop locally and we do have an optometrist in town, I've been going to the one in Tweed for around 10 years, they know me by name and have all my records there......so I keep going.

The offending eye.....or eyes as it turned out......had eyelashes growing in, down instead of up! I was just relieved that was all it was, despite my yelps of pain as he tweezered them out. Feels much better now.

Tweed has the nearest fabric shop for 30 kms in any direction, so of course I had to pay a visit.  A fresh injection of teals was needed, as Kate has announced there'll be another Ovarian Cancer fundraiser quilt, to be called Scinteallate, a clever play on words, for which Kate is renowned, and which will feature teal stars on a cream background.

A little stash building

A stop at the library on my way home was necessary to pick up two books I'd ordered.

 

 I've been waiting ages for Grown and Gathered, by Matt and Lentil as there's been a long waiting list for it, and I can see why, for starters, it's beautiful.  It feels nice to hold, the photos are bold and bright, plus it's crammed full of great information and delicious recipes. I wondered if it might be a 'style over substance' book, but no, it's a great resource, with lots of detail communicated simply. It's set in Victoria, north of Melbourne, so it's good to have almost-local information, rather than northern hemisphere guides to growing and gathering.

Yum!

 The other book, Mending Matters by Katrina Rodabaugh, is newly published, and celebrates the sustainable fashion community, while exploring repairing, patching and mending.  I'm not new to any of these practises, but it's always fun to see what others are doing, and I support the philosophy of  knowing where our clothes come from, and finding alternatives to fast fashion.  Her book is full of stunning images of patched clothing, I love her palette, and the fact that some of her patches are plant dyed.

Little pink patch dyed with avocado seed

I saw this gorgeous cowl made from repurposed linen op shop ( thrift store) trousers, and it inspired me to dig out a piece of fabric I stamped and dyed on my last trip to India.  It doesn't get terribly cold here, but I often feel a chill around my neck when I walk Mirrhi in the early morning, but I hate having a woolly scarf around my neck, and find they unwind and get in the way of vigorous ball throwing.

So it seemed ideal to turn this lovely fine, soft length of cotton into a cowl.

I'd had the circular stamp made up in Jaipur

I cut the fabric into two pieces, cross wise, one smaller then the other, then stitched the pieces together into a tube with a french seam, and hemmed the long edges.  An hour later, Mirrhi was not very happily modelling my soft cotton cowl for chilly days. I popped it on when I took her out a bit later, and it worked just fine....nice and light, not bulky but adding just the right amount of warmth.
 

Oh dear, can it come off now? 

Not the true colour, taken with a flash

I've been stitching along the seams for a bit of 'fanciness'.

Closer to the true colour

projects from Mending Matters

I'm off to bed now to have a good read............

Light and dark

scrappy teal, that is 

Kate, from Tall Tales from Chiconia is making another fundraising quilt for ovarian cancer. This time it's a tribute to a friend of hers who passed away recently, and Kate has designed a stunning quilt which is called In The Arms of the Angels.  You can see her sketched out plan here and the story behind the quilt.

Kate put out the call for help to make background and border blocks, and so I put my hand up for a couple of these.  The background needed to be in soft shades of teal, aqua, blues and creams and I used scraps to make this kind-of log cabin. I included some pieces that didn't make it when I was playing around with ideas for blocks for the Go Teal it on the Mountain quilt.

And a couple of antique tiles in reverse colourway. Kate wanted low contrast blocks, without a strong pattern that would 'jump out'. 

These two rectangles are 12x18, and are for the borders, with once again ' patterns that don't jump out as these are to be a mosaic to frame the inner window'.  I was running low on teal fabrics by now, and while I have plenty of small scraps, I didn't want to have tiny pieces in such large blocks, so had to be a bit creative in joining the larger scraps......some being 2.5 x4 or 4x4 and saving the few long pieces I had for the outer edges.

  

Check out Kate's post here to see the start of the quilt going together, and the magnificent set of 3D wings Kate has made. It's really worth having a look to get a clear idea of Kate's vision and how my scrappy blocks will work together with others being sent from around the world.

Joining in with Kate and Gun's monthly Scrap-Happy Day, which is open to anyone using scraps of anything.....fabric, paper, wood, anything that turns your scraps into something useful. Details are on Kate's blog.

See you next time.