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 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!
The past few weeks, have been completely crazy. With the lead up to Christmas being generally chaotic in retail, my personal life has been equally filled with pressing engagements – Christmas shopping, projects to finish, and a surprise family visit.
My brother, in between mining jobs, went traveling. He works, then travels, then comes home and works again. Only this time, he got caught overseas, and couldn’t find his way home due to locked borders, and no flights and an invisible foe! This foe, (aka Covid~19) has turned the whole world upon its head, and made life crazy for a lot of people. For us in Australia, it has been testing, but nowhere near as hard as some others have had it. (My sincere condolences for those of you who have lost loved ones, my strength to all of you, to keep carrying on in spite of the virus). But, returning to my brother, he was stuck landlocked, in a small country between Vietnam and Thailand. Laos was to become his new home for 7 months.
Prior to his journey, I gave him a few of my creations to photograph in different places around Australia, not knowing he was going to jump on a jet, and head OS! But off he went – flung through the air in a tin can! The first I knew he was overseas, is when he sent me a pic of the two Faeries I sent on adventures!
Fern
Jasper
After 7 months abroad, he came home, Faeries in tow, and I met up with him again this week, gladdened by his being home, and being safe.
We toured the local National Park and had a walk along the beaches and rocks, and it gave me another idea, as often creative people get inspirations from the environment around them.
With a rostered day off, I decided to get making a Christmas card photograph, and began by crafting a tiny driftwood Christmas tree. Inspiration from the waves, I added a few tiny seashells I had, as decorations on my little tree. All set, I grabbed my big camera, my Faerie Mermaid, and the tiny tree. Donning my Akubra Hat (Aussie brand of fine pelt iconic hats) I made my way to the beach!
I hopped out of the car to note it was rather windy, and I stood assessing the beach, and all its occupants, and the place I wanted to photograph – out of the wind – was occupied by several families. Opting for the windier unoccupied end of the beach, I watched the waves come up the sand and where they finished, and where the best place to set up my scene for my photograph happened to be. Decisions made, I made my way onto the beach, as a gust of wind flipped my hat off my head, which tumbled its way along the sand, flipping this way and that, as I giggled madly chasing it.
A thought occurred to me, that it might just be too windy, but being the persistent type, I grabbed the hat, stuffed it under my arm, and began setting up my scenery. Poking wires down into the sand to anchor my lightweight props, my scene set, I laid out a towel to prevent the sand from entering my camera. Here is where the fun began, the setting of a perfect scene, the photographs that would eventually become my cards for friends and family. I was in my element..
I lay down on my stomach, set up the shot and set the macro lens to automatic. As it focused on the Mermaid, I was just about to complete the shot, when the camera refocused.. this time, on the approaching wave! Yes, I had a split second to raise the camera and my body up, just in time to get drenched by the incoming wave! Floundering about like a sea lion in the ocean, I saved that camera from the Ebb of the Ocean! Mother Nature was trying to tell me with the prior flipping of my hat, that today was probably NOT a good day for playing with her!
Looking about, I noticed my Mermaid had returned unceremoniously to the waves, and my tree had completely disappeared! I couldn’t find it anywhere! The towel I was lying on was a balled up mess of sand and fabric, and I was becoming more a part of the beach with every movement, collecting sand like jewels both all over my clothes and within them. I was beginning to feel like a bad sandpaper commercial, with the abrasive grit between my skin and my clothes!
Bedecked in silicon glitter, I pulled myself up, checked the camera over to make sure it survived, and began looking in the returning waves for my Mermaid. Plucking her sand covered body from the water, I gave her a quick rinse. BUGGER! Her hair saturated, her soft skin drenched and dark, I flicked her about to rid her of the sand and almost called defeat. Picking up the drowned rag I found a tiny darkened Xmas tree, missing a few ‘decorations’ that the ocean claimed back, I thought.. no.. I shall not give up!
Resetting my scene a little further towards the plant matter and not the wet stuff, I started all over again. I was already drenched and covered in sand, I again lay face down and repositioned the camera and cracked off a few photographs. Watching carefully, making sure I was indeed, out of reach of the Oceans cold, watery fingertips.
As I sit here and giggle about it now, as I did on the day, wondering if anyone had witnessed the spectacle of the beached sea lion floundering about in the persistent waves, it brings me to think about the year that was 2020. The hardships, the unseen foes, the enduring spirit we all have inside us, and the golden glittery opportunities we all have, if only we choose to see them. The humility we feel at something more powerful than ourselves.. LIFE! The ever present force that keeps us moving forward, in the face of great adversity. The positivity, creativity, and above all, LOVE! The love we share with ourselves, others, and for the memories, the places we go, and the world around us. No matter where you all are, if you read to the end of this paragraph or not, I wish for you all, to find peace, happiness, and love at the close of a difficult and tumultuous year. ‘ Merry’ Christmas to you all! ~ Rails.
