Ms Julie is the Head Honcha of this place. She does enjoy visitors and coffee is on the house. She only has half-n-half and no sugar available, however, being so sweet she no longer needs sugar. Snark is her love language.
For the last few days the west coast of the US has been suffering through a blistering heat wave. It is predicted to last at least 10 days. I dashed to the coast and boondocked for a few days and was quite blissfully delirious to wake up chilled and shivering!
Cool as Heaven
Alas, I had a few appointments so had to come back and deal.
I’m “between” projects right now. Have done a zillion hexies for a commissioned quilt, but it’s stalled out pending working out the actual design. And my Paper Lantern’s is too big to work on comfortably anywhere right now. If I’m able to escape to the coast again, i’m seriously considering bringing it along anyways. There’s only 1.5 corners to complete and then insert. Then I’ll have to decide how to finish it!! I’ve got a few all cotton sheets that might well work as the backing. The thought of putting ANY batting in it at the moment is enough to make me faint.
Raelene convinced me (took about 2 seconds, after I convinced her) to get a Ghastlie’s panel, and, currently, scouting out a way to make it into a quilt is about all I’m up to for now! It’s got the most adorable grouchy bat as a square and it reminds me of my oldest grandbaby when she was just a wee little beastie and would furrow her brow and look suspicious.
little grouchy bat is from the Alexander Henry Ghastlies line...
So if anyone has any suggestions for an adorably ghastlie quilt, lemme know!
Raelene, send me some of your cold weather, please!
The New year has started off rough. Life has kept me otherwise busy, anxious and pre-occupied. To cope, I’ve been working on an EPP quilt. Small pieces, handcut templates, basting. All mind-less, repetitive activities I’ve used to cope with anxiety. At this point I don’t even want to know how many kites and hexies and half-hexies I’ve made!
April 2021: Life has not returned to ‘normal’. I’ve just had to adjust, adapt, and continue on. My family has lost an important member, and every day I think of something I want to pass on, a gardening joke, a weather comparison, a smell that reminds me of another time and place. Sometimes I send the jokes or thoughts or weather to someone else. Sometimes I just lament that there’s a void. As mentioned, life continues. Life goes on.
So, on to the Aussie quilt again…
A classic romantic swag
This is by far mom’s favourite block. It’s in memory of my parent’s wedding anniversary.
Burgundy is my mom’s colour. So of course finding a floral, heart shaped pattern with a background of burgundy was perfect for this block! I quilted it very simply, following the lines of the heart and the swags.
My parents were married in February, shortly after Valentines Day, in the middle of a bad snowstorm. Because my dad was in the military on short leave, they couldn’t just reschedule it.
As she tells it, my parents, my aunt and my grandparents were about the only ones able to show up. But they were married for 45 years, so an inauspicious start wasn’t much of a hindrance. They went on to have eight (8!) of us children!! I was by far the favourite, of course (hey, its my blog, TJ)!!!
(Sidenote: I wore this same dress for my wedding twenty-five odd years later)
The reason my mom and younger brother came to Australia, was my oldest daughter getting married to her sweetheart. Everything else was icing on the wedding cake, so to speak.
There’s a certain similarity to both of their wedding flowers in these blocks, sweet pink rose clusters. It appealed to my sense of life’s circularity. To match it a bit more, I used a heart template roughly the size of the heart quilting on my mom’s block. It’s a looser, not as traditional styling as her block which was suitable for a much younger, modern bride while still holding that bit of bridal tradition.
Remember I told you to look forward to the picture of my brother modelling? Here it is. Somewhat ironic that he was attempting to model the veil without any hair on his shiny head! Also, he’s never married. Always a bridesmaid and all that…..
When I first arrived in Australia, I remember seeing the most intricate wrought iron balconies and fences and gates. Someone told me that it was called “lacework” and that description has always seemed appropriate. It shows up in cities all over Australia. This fabric has the delicate scrollwork (though not the symmetry!) of iron lacework.
When silver threads are sewn into, The quilt of life, inspired by you, The memories of all you’ve done The love you’ve shared, can’t be undone. ~ Raelene
The continuing story of the quilt that was born in Australia
My brother and mom made a lot of stops on their way to Adelaide. They flew into Sydney for my daughters wedding, stayed for a week or so in Western Sydney and then came down to Adelaide with me where I was living at the time. Of course they hit the highlights, the tourist places that everyone visits when they come to Australia. Even I did when I first arrived! I was lucky enough to find fabric that made perfect patches…
The four corners of the apocolypse quilt- hehe, sorry it IS 2020, but these four corners were placed on the quilt nearly 10 years ago – are of iconic Australian places and animals. This patch is the Sydney Harbour Bridge and is recognisable as the ocean-side entry to Sydney.
Sydney Opera House is not only outstanding architecture in Australia, but is listed as a World Heritage site, alongside the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China and the ancient Pyramids of Egypt. I remember visiting once and looking down the side of the Opera House into the ocean and seeing SO many jellyfish – huge groupings, I discovered are called blooms!
The Kookaburra (aka the laughing jackass). The completed block has a small black button with red legs, to symbolise the Redback spider, star of ‘There’s a redback on my toilet seat‘ song! During our Christmas dinner that year, I pulled out the laptop and found as many classic Aussie songs as I could. They found it funny until I pointed out my inside/outside toilet (I lived in an amazing old house) was a great place for spiders! One of the sounds I miss most is hearing Kookaburra’s in the morning.
One of my funniest memories of kangaroos wasn’t on this particular trip, it was before my mom came over. I had been a citizen for about 15 years, and while not an uncommon sight, they weren’t normally seen day-to-day. However, there was a park down the road from where I lived and after I had just denied in a call to my mom that we have kangaroos roaming the streets like deer, guess what I happened to see on a walk down my street? Yes, indeed!
My mom was tickled to see this Kangaroo, even if it was in a zoo. How often do you get to pet the cuter half of the Australian Coat of Arms?? And to give you some more classic Aussie songs, click on the link to listen to Rolf and the Beatles do “Tie me Kangaroo Down” – if you’ve never heard it, you’re welcome for the earworm! (The original version.)
Keeping to the theme of Australian animals, this block is a brolga (a type of crane) in a billabong. This was eventually quilted with both spirals (a recurring theme in my quilts since it’s often symbolic of change, evolution, wisdom and infinity) and short straight stitches resembling rain from clouds. Mom initially thought the birds were emu’s, as her zoo visit included an ‘attack’ by an emu for a treat in her hand. Emu’s have very small brains and tend to think buttons, hair, and anything held in the hand is food and they want it. That can be frightening, their beaks are big and the feet are bigger and both look like weapons close-up!
Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, is a fascinating place. They have an isolated population of what is widely considered the last genetically pure strain of Italian Ligurian bees. We had dishes of honey ice cream (too sweet for me!), honey sticks and I got myself a hexagon of sweet smelling bees wax to wax threads for hand quilting – used in this quilt, actually! Memories are not just what your mind remembers, but also what your sense of smell remembers. If you want to learn more about the Island, and the bee population particularly, you’ll find one source here. I promise, no earworms! Just the pleasurable buzz of learning new things!
This block brings back fun memories. What can be more Australian than a Koala? Well, there’s the Australian drop-bear, read a history of this elusive critter from the Australian Museum. Beware, elusive as they are, they’re scarier than the Tasmanian Devil, even!
Featherdale Zoo has a strict policy against ordinary mortals cuddling their Koala’s. My brother was standing next to the open enclosure after the educational talk. The big female in the enclosure dropped down from the tree onto the hip-high fence around the trees and climbed directly into my brother’s arms and gave him a cuddle! The Zoo attendant rushed over and told him cuddles were not allowed, and my poor brother had to sputter that he hadn’t actively taken her up. We tease him about his animal attraction and possibly the grey in his beard, and his rounded stomach made her think he was a koala. He really didn’t agree, but what do brother’s know, right?
Later, we rented a cabin on Kangaroo Island, and while we saw plenty of wallaby’s, we were THRILLED one late afternoon to see a large male climb down a gum tree and galumph across the golden fields to another tree. Even after 18 years or so, that was the closest I’d ever come to a wild Koala, and certainly a first for my mom. Not my brother, though, since this was after his cuddle-up.
Skates, or stingrays. upside down, they look like they have sweet faces!
My brother really wanted to do a scuba dive when he was in Adelaide. There was a well known dive site not far off-shore where an old ship had been deliberately sunk. Lucky for him, I knew someone who had a scuba suit and tanks he could borrow, so he could join a dive group. While I’m not entirely sure he saw any stingrays or skates, I admit i just loved the pattern and just had to include it in memory of that dive.
There’s going to be at least one or two more in this series of posts. It’s been great fun going back and looking at the blocks and my mom making them. My brother will show up in photo’s next post doing some fashion modeling for us! Stay tuned, it’s worth it…
Love and blessings for the New Year, may 2021 be easier than 2020.
My last blog post was about a new quilt I made for my young granddaughter. One of the quilts I also finished this year was a quilt I helped my Mom with about 9-10 years ago. This blog is similar to the previous blog about the Unicorn Quilt/Family Ties. There’s a LOT of meaning in these blocks I’m about to show you. However, there are 24 quilt pictures and a few extra, so I may break this into a few blog posts.
She’d never made a quilt before, so I taught her most of what she knows.
My mother and TJ, my younger brother, had come to Australia (her first and last visit) for my eldest daughter’s wedding. She stayed three months, and we did quite a few side trips to places like Featherdale zoo, the Blue Mountains, Kangaroo Island, several vineyards including a fascinating visit to a bio-dynamic vineyard where we bought the most delicious late harvest white wine. I don’t usually drink, but we did go through several bottles of that wine while they were visiting!
Cheese classes have been on my mom’s wish list for years. I did a quick search, just a few weeks before Christmas, to see if I could find any classes going on in the area. Amazingly, there was a place up in Hahndorf, Udder Delights, that had just had a cancellation of two students. I explained that my mom was from the US and had always wanted to take classes, and they were kind enough to offer me the two spots – normally you have to book ahead by as much as a year, we were told!
Cheese-making block (cheese in the middle, cave around that and olive groves surrounding the area as the third border)
The cheeses are made below the Udder Delights cheese shop , in their cellar. To this day, my mom still has the instructions, the rennet, the forms – everything you need to make your own cheese. We took home some Feta we had made that day as well. And of course, we learned whey can be used in everything from breadmaking, soups, and as a fertiliser in the garden. I’ve done all those things since then. The hills of Hahndorf have a lot of vineyards and olive oil groves, and we showed that in the olive leaf inner green border. The cave is represented by the darker leaf border and the cheese as the innermost block. We didn’t make it cheddar coloured, as feta and ricotta are creamy white.
We also took a dolphin cruise. Now, my brother is a first responder, and it seems EVERYWHERE he goes, he meets other firemen and first responders. This cruise was no different, and he talked up a storm with the guy, and gave him one of the first responder patches he carried with him everywhere in Australia.
the notion of dolphins, if not actual ones
We FINALLY saw some dolphins cruising along the boat just before the finish, and we were thoroughly delighted. Since my mom grew up in the Great Lakes region in the midwest, she hadn’t had much chance to see dolphins prior to her trip. While paisley isn’t technically a dolphin, they do look like them from above, right?!
Looks like truffles, cobblestones and sheep’s wool!
Being choc-o-holics, of course we went to the Haigh’s Chocolate shop in Adelaide, and bought their famous truffles. We also saw some cobbled streets and did the Adelaide tourist thing – including the farmers market. It had been a very long time since my mother had been to anything resembling a European Farmer’s Market, and this was as much fun for her as it was for myself and my brother. I adore Farmer’s Markets, the more diverse the better!
These are the Aboriginal fabrics that showcase some of the artwork and imagery of Australian Aboriginals in our travels. We were lucky to see a young man playing on a didgereedoo at an art gallery we visited. These blocks remind us of the Elders and Tribal lands that we stood on.
Mom bought small boomerangs painted with Aboriginal designs, and these reminded me of boomerangs – properly thrown – and their whirling paths back to the start.
This is the only block mom dislikes on the entire quilt. Witchity grubs! Of course, the dot painting style is familiar to many who have seen Aboriginal art. The witchity grub, is a protein rich food source for outback wanderers as well. I fully admit, it gives me a childish giggle whenever I see it and it’s one of my favourite blocks.
I’m already working on the next post for this, and at the end of all of them, will show the quilt in its entirety. With some luck, I should have the next installment up before Christmas. Hoping you’re enjoying the start of this series and that it gives you food for thought. Just not grub related food, as mom would most assuredly agree with!
(AKA: Why do i cut up old fabric with family stories attached for grandchildren who will never meet those families?)
Long ago and far away, in distant lands, there were once neighbours – friends of my mom who lived up the street from us. I remember, she and several other friends gathered in this neighbours basement, around an old-fashioned quilt frame, and had a quilting bee . I remember this every time I watch “How to Make an American Quilt“. Vague memories surface of laying underneath the quilt and being fascinated when light from the windows made the underneath look like a stained glass window. Whether I actually laid under the quilt or not, I think that’s when my interest in quilts started. It took many years, three different countries and a dissolving marriage before that interest turned to actually starting to learn about quilting.
I’ve asked my mom about that quilt since then. She said that after that day, she remembers the neighbour asking my mom’s opinion about her mother’s quilting stitches. They weren’t as tight, as small and as straight as they used to be in her hey-day, and she thought maybe she should take them out and do them better. My Mom remembers that she suggested no, that the neighbour would always remember her mother making those stitches, when her mother was no longer be around, that it might provide some comfort to know that her mom’s hands had made those stitches, perfect or not.
My mom has a few quilts of uncertain provenance. She has a lovely butterfly quilt, blanket stitched with black thread, that is unraveling in places. The fabrics look a bit 1930’s or 40’s. She thinks her grandmother had it, but doesn’t think anyone in the family actually quilted, so it might have been bought or a gift. Regardless, it’s now family heritage, and when I one day mend it, I will use threads and fabrics that have been in my family and used in quilts I’ve made.
When quilting these days, especially for family members, I deliberately include a lot of symbolism. Some in the block patterns I use, some in the fabrics I use, and some are in the actual quilting.
front of unicorns
My youngest granddaughter lives in Australia, while I currently live in the US. I made her older sister at least 2 quilts both before and after she was born, though I left before the younger one was even a twinkle in her parents’ eyes. So when I found out she adored unicorns (‘corns she called them), I immediately went and found material with unicorns, and pink and purple sparkly colours to match. I chose a pattern called “Family Ties” by its designer, Quiltin’ Jenny.
Though this young granddaughter and I don’t know each other well, yet, she is my family and always will be! When the top was done and it was layered, I quilted stars, and a wild-form paisley that matches the unicorn tails. She and her sister are my stars and moon, my loves, and paisley’s are symbolic of new life, new seeds – an embryonic form of the great woman she will grow up to be.
Bright and sprakly corny ‘corns
There are also parallel quilted lines in the long areas of the pattern. She, her parents and myself are all parallel, and at times interlaced, generations.
back of unicorns
The back of the quilt reminds me of bright bloomy fireworks – grandbabies are so worthy of celebration and fireworks!
sister’s bees!
Normally, I would put material from a previous quilt, into the next or next several quilts. I can’t use any of the material from her sister’s quilts, as I don’t have it anymore, but there are bees on one of those quilts, so I can include some bee material (or an embroidered bee) on the label to connect them.
I have yet to put a label on the Unicorn quilt, so I will find a matching material to include on this one. Luckily I have a LOT of purple to chose from that was used in my recently finished “Starry Starry Night” quilt (to be featured in another post). In my mind and my creativity, it shows the continuity in life; how one generation or project continues on in the next generation or project. It has become a “thing” with my quilts this year. Possibly because 2020 has shown me how you can have someone in your life, thinking they’ll always be there, and then one day, when you don’t expect it, they’re gone. But those lives have and will continue to have ripples in lives they may never know.
There are more quilts that I either finished or started this year, but that’s for another post!
Case in point. a few days ago I had written a wonderful blog post. I’m not familiar with the blogger yet, and went to find a method of changing text colors. Tried to go back to post and it had disappeared. The days have been very angsty since then. My inner child reappearing, and pitching a fit.
I’ve always thought myself a phlegmatic, relatively peaceable, calm-in-a-crisis person. 2020 had made me face the fact that I’ve been fooling myself for a number of years.
However, every hour, every day, every month, every year we can have a do-over. I’m not sure anyone wants a 2020 do-over though. Just that it would be over and done with so we can start again next year.
Let me introduce myself and my co-conspirator in this venture. Rails has been my dearest friend for a LONG time. I’m afraid to calculate how long. Her son was in nappies and bottle when I first met her. He’s now taller than both of us, has a deep voice and facial hair. Our daughters were friends in school, they’re now married and we both have grandchildren.
I’m older than her, but she’s often wiser than me. I’ve traveled significantly more than she has, but we both have wide world-views. She doesn’t get podcasts, I adore them and my favourite way of sewing is with a podcast in the background. When I figure out how, I will be listing links to those I like best.
Rails is far more creative than I am in real life, but I’ve got a very vivid imagination and amazing google-fu (though I use DuckDuckGo, never Google!) which is a good substitute for hands on creativity. Links to her exquisite hand-dyed fabrics will soon be provided, and will probably feature in their own post!
We both love bright colors, though oddly enough I often find myself dressed in dark and plain block colours. Rails likes orange, I’ve long since forgiven her for that flaw.
We both love our children, and wildly adore our grandchildren (all girls).
We both love quilting, colour, patterns, egging each other on in evolving ideas. We will eventually post some of those ideas in the form of quilt patterns. Rails is enthusiastically dyeing fabric not only for these patterns but because it brings her enormous joy to see what happens when she mixes this with that, ties this way and twists that way and finally hangs it out and we both cheer at the beauty that she produces.
Though we are currently separated by a bazillion miles, give or take a few hundred thousand, Rails and I support each other through thick and thin. We dream of someday retiring to Tasmania with a little quilting/tea shop business. Wisteria , quail and timtams are part of my plan, Rails will have to pipe up with her own.
Plans for the future? Rails is going to be putting her fabrics up for sale soon. She’s been experimenting and taking notes. Fat quarters, fat quarter bundles, mandala panels, and Shibori panels are on the current short list. We’re still working on quilt patterns. Some of those will feature the panels and hand dye’s as examples of how her lovely fabric can be utilised. And FUN, after this year, we girls, JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN!
Signing off,
Julie
postscript: I am bilingual with Australian and American slang. If you are not and are confused with the occasional comment, noun or spelling, feel free to ask! My mother often says she feels she has to come behind me with a translation dictionary, when I visit her and talk to her friends.
