Already planning my next trip away

Another weekend away from the Sydney crush has really lifted my spirits. Fresh air, wide open spaces, and a little time with family has reminded me of the good things in life.

I am already planning my next trip away ... to the annual Sew It Together weekend for craft bloggers. This year it will be held in Canberra and I think it's on the June long weekend.

Registrations opened a few days ago and you can find the details on Facebook here. I can't wait to find out more about the craft sessions planned for the weekend, but I do know that some craft shopping is scheduled so that automatically makes it a great weekend in my opinion.

But this Easter long weekend isn't finished just yet so tonight I'm going to kick back and relax and catch up on sewing hexie flowers for my swap partners. I am soooo far behind!

Not much crafting happening here

What's going on Jo? You haven't blogged for 17 days!

I've never been a prolific blogger but I am a busy crafter, and I like to blog about my craft. What's going on, what have I been doing with my time?

Well last weekend I had a mini-getaway to Queensland to go to a friend's wedding. Three days off work - tick. A trip to Noosa - tick. Perfect weather - tick. Perfect perfect wedding - tick tick.

And why didn't I do any craft the weekend before? I blame that on Game of Thrones.

Have you heard about Game of Thrones? It's the Emmy-award winning TV series based on the Song of Fire and Ice by George R R Martin. I'm not a fantasy geek, and I've never even finished a chapter of Tolkien, but I'd heard great things about Season 1 so I wanted to see it.

I loved it, I wasn't disappointed. Well I was a little bit disappointed when I got to the end of the Episode 10 late on the Saturday night, so I started again at Episode 1 on the Sunday. Action-packed script, top-notch acting, filmed on location in Croatia and Northern Island, looks fantastic.

So that's what I did with the weekend before last.

Season 1 turned out to be the Book 1 of a series, so I picked up a copy at Sydney Airport on my way to Noosa. I bought the rest of the series on the way home, and am halfway through Book 2, The Clash of Kings.

Season 2 begins in the US on 1 April. I can't wait till it gets here.  (Warning - there's lots of explicit sex scenes and full-on swearing in Season 1, which are not in the original book. Lots of violence too, but that's in the book.)

That's why there hasn't been much crafting done around here lately.  I have a stockpile of brand new fabric just waiting to be hexagon-ised, triangle-ised and diamond-ised for my store, but it's just going to have to wait until the Easter break.

I might be tempted to do a little sewing tomorrow though. We'll see.

Other things I make - websites

I love it when I can solve a problem for someone, especially when I find a solution that is easy for them to use and saves them time.

A friend mentioned to me last week that he needed a better way to process payments for his business. He was really just thinking out loud, but I had a few bright ideas on Saturday morning and by the end of the day I had set up a website, shopping cart and payment system for him. From scratch. Using software I had never used before.

(I don't mean to boast, but I really was pleased with my efforts, and that doesn't happen very often.)

The website template was cluttered and old-fashioned though, not his style at all and not suitable for his business, so on Sunday night I spent a few hours (ok, more than a few hours) redesigning it.

I came up with a clean, clear design using pomegranate-red and marine-blue graphics on a white background. (Yes I made them too. Sometimes I'm a stickler for getting things exactly the way I want them.) I'm sorry I can't show you the website here but maybe the colour-scheme will show up in a quilt soon!

The best part is that I've streamlined the website so that it only takes 4 mouse-clicks to select, order and checkout your item. And it's mobile phone friendly. (My very own app!) I can't wait to hear how it works for him. Fingers crossed!

Which reminds me ... a while ago I stumbled across a fantastic product, a perfectly simple solution ...

In my craft room, I have quite a few things plugged into a power board. That's not the problem, the power board is fine, the problem is that I don't like leaving items on stand-by, especially ones that I don't use very often.  (I don't count every penny, but there's no need to throw away money is there.)

And the only power socket in the room is hard to get to as it's behind a table. But I found this product a while ago and I absolutely love it.

It's just an ordinary power board ... but with a 'pod' attached. The pod is a footswitch so you can turn all your equipment on or off with just one tap. It's on the end of a metre-long extension cord so you can hide your power boards and messy cords but have the footswitch within easy reach. 

I got mine on eBay but a few electricity suppliers and green groups are selling them too. The brand name is "Efergy".

It's not a sexy item to blog about, but it turns me on. (Bad pun, baaaaad pun, but it's late and I'm tired.) I think it's cool in its simplicity. I love simple. I love easy.

New Stock - Hello Luscious and Domestic Bliss Hexagons - and a finished project

I've made something for me and something for you.

This is for me ...

You can't really tell from the picture but it ended up about 140 cm by 140 cm (because that's all the fabric I had in that range). The curves were surprisingly easy to machine-piece and of course I die-cut all the fabric so it was quick too. I've used a thin wool batting in the middle because I find it's just the right temperature for me.

And I've made these for you ...

Hexagon Charm Packs and Hexagon Multi Packs in the brand new Domestic Bliss and Hello Luscious ranges.

I've only made limited stock so far but if you need more packs just email me and I will make you more. And I definitely have to make LOTS more of the Hello Luscious Charm Packs because I'm tempted to make a queen-size quilt from it, now that I've got the hang of machine-piecing the hexagons.

I love the soft colours of my new apple-core quilt and I like the mid-weight colours in the Hello Luscious, much better than that stronger bolder colours I've been using lately, e.g. for my Rose Star Quilt.

The new Charm Packs and Multi Packs are now in my store. And don't forget the Free Offer is still on for a few more days - a free pack of paper or card 1" hexagons with each Hexagon Multi Pack purchased.

Back to the drawing board - Rose Star quilt

It's back to the drawing board for me to rethink my Rose Star quilt. I've pieced 8 blocks so far and I love them all. Here are my favourites ...

Each block looks great on it's own (perfect for cushions) but when you put them together there is just too much going on. Too much colour, too much pattern, and not enough space in between to give your eyes a rest.

It's missing ... I don't know ... balance, cohesion, identity. What are the words I'm looking for ... it just doesn't make sense. So it's back to square one with this quilt to find a way to bring it all together. I do have an idea about how I might make this happen, but I want to try it out before I tell you about it.

It all comes down to how to use colour. I don't think I've found my feet with it yet. I look back at the quilts I've made over the years, and they've mostly ended up quite blahh because I've been unadventurous with colour.

But last year, when I found Lily's Quilts blog  and joined in her Hexalong doing the Candied Hexagons quilt, I went colour-mad and decided to go bright and bold with each block. It did not work. It definitely did not look like this GORGEOUS quilt by Lizzie Broderie.

My Candied Hexagons are still in pieces. Same problem as with the Rose Star quilt, I jump into making the blocks without a clear idea of where I'm going and what the whole quilt will look like when completed.

So it's back to the drawing board to find the right balance between not enough colour (blahh) and too much (aarrgh). And I think I need to include some more plain fabrics in my mix. I'm going to start by looking again at some great tutorials by Lily's quilts all about colour ...

http://lilysquilts.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/interested-in-dead-simple-qal.html
http://lilysquilts.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/resistance-is-futile.html
http://lilysquilts.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/choosing-fabrics-qal-guest-post.html

And if you can suggest any great tutorials for me to look at, I'd love to hear from you. Help me find my quilting style, my colour, my quilting mojo!

Stock update - More die-cut fabric hexagons in store

Hello! Yes I'm still here. I'm sorry I haven't been blogging lately. Something's been on my mind and I've been tossing back and forth about what to do. I guess the best thing is just to tell you about it.

It's about my fabric hexagon packs, you know the packs containing the inchy-sized fabric hexagons.  Surprisingly, when I started making them from Moda's ranges last year, it's turned out to be more economical to make them from Layer Cakes than from yardage.

An added advantage is that my customers know exactly what they're getting in these packs, i.e. enough hexagons to make a standard inchy-sized flower out of each of layer of the Layer Cake. I've been putting 7 hexagons from each layer in each pack. That's enough for 6 petals for each flower (42 flowers per pack) plus a spare from each layer. 

However, I've found that if the Moda Layer Cake is even just a millimetre too small, there's not enough fabric to die-cut the spares. Even though the spare ones end up just a millimetre short on one side - which doesn't really matter if you're hand-stitching them - it really bothers me that they are not absolutely perfect!

So from now on, each inchy-sized Hexagon Multi Pack will have 6 hexagons from each layer. That's 252 hexagons per pack and exactly enough petals for 42 flowers, but not the spares.

I've been busy die-cutting more of these packs for you and have just restocked these 2011 favourites:

Circa 1934, Curio, Etchings, Giddy, Good Fortune, Hometown, Reunion, Rounneries Deux, Strawberry Fields and Terrain.

2011 Favourite - Hometown

And here's a sneak peek of the next job on my To Do list: making some pre-cut packs from these brand-new 2012 ranges: Papillon, Petite Odile, California Girls and Vintage Modern. (I love them all!)

2012 - California Girl

 You are welcome to pre-order them by emailing me. Just let me know which ones you want me to die-cut and I will put them to the top of my To Do list and make them within 24 hours.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, the Free Offer is back on in my store until 6 March. With any purchase of a Hexagon Multi Pack, you'll get a free pack of 100 paper or card hexagons (or 50 of each if you prefer).

Rose Star Quilt - die-cut papers now available

All my plans for the weekend flew out the window as soon as I picked up my latest custom-made die a few days ago. This one will die-cut all the little kites and hats for the Rose Start quilt (my latest hand-piecing obsession).

I wanted to get some packs of kites/hats/hexs cut up for you this weekend, but of course I first had to do a proper scientific test to see if the papers turned out fine. (That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.) Here's the first block I made ...

 ... and my second, just to make sure the results of my first test were accurate LOL. (They look a little skewed, but that's because I'm missing the photography gene.)

 

I've just listed the die-cut papers in my store in a mixed pack called the Rose Star Pack. You can choose from paper or card and choose from a pack of 350 pieces (175 kites, 175 hats and 25 hexagons) or 800 pieces (350 kites, 350 hats and 100 hexagons). 

The centre hexagons have 2" sides and the finished blocks are 12" wide by 10" high.The product descriptions will give you more info about measurements and quantities.

I would love to pre-cut the fabric for you as well but I definitely think fussy-cutting is essential for the Rose Star quilt. The fabric range I am using for mine is Prince Charming by Tula Pink for Free Spirit. 

P.S. Thanks to CG who first told me about this block. I was instantly smitten. There's a tutorial about the "Rose Star" block here and more inspiration in the Flickr group here. I've just found out it has also been published as the Jazz Hands block in Material Obsessions 2, although that one is completely pieced with the little kites. (Thanks Suz for the info.)