Melbourne!

It's been a while since we last had a holiday, actually we haven't had any time off work since Christmas and it was well and truly time to take a short break.  Melbourne is running the Winter Masterpieces series again this winter, so we decided to go for a short trip away. 

The main reason for going was the Tutankhamun exhibition, which I have to say was just wonderful.  I knew that the "death mask" hadn't come with the exhibition (it never leaves Egypt) but the artifacts that were part of the exhibition were absolutely incredible.  They say that the average visiting time is about 75 minutes - we spent just over 2 hours!  The items are displayed in glass cases so that you can see all the different sides, just fantastic!

  

There was one shop that I knew I wanted to visit, I've been seeing ads in a lot of the quilting magazines, and when I figured out that the shop was located on Lygon St, close to some of the best food in Melbourne, I convinced Sir Pinkying that we should go and check it out.  We stopped for breakfast on our first morning at a place called Gingerlee - which was great - and then walked down Lygon St to GJ's Discount Fabrics.

 What can I say except WOW!  This is possibly one of the best patchwork shops that I've been to in Australia.  As readers of blogs we all see the new fabrics coming out in the USA, and then are used to there being a wait before we can get them here.  Not at GJ's!! They had fabric on the shelves that I just received notifications about from some of the big US fabric shops!  Incredible!

They had a great range of patterns, and a whole bunch of pre-cuts too.   The staff were friendly and nice to chat too (even when I asked if I could take some pictures!).  Also, I should be clear, this isn't a sponsored post of any kind, I was just one very happy customer!

 We also went walking to see the usual sites, Bourke St Mall

 Flinders St Station

 and had a lovely meal in the lane ways

We had a great view from our room, which was mostly of the cloudy overcast days.

Of course on our last day we woke up to this!

A Room With a..... Desk!

Ever since Sir Pinkying and I moved earlier this year we've been meaning to "get around" to getting a desk for our spare room so that I can have dedicated space for quilting.  There's been a couple of false starts, including a trip to Ikea where I discovered that the desk I thought I wanted was in actual fact not very sturdy, and we ended up coming home empty handed.  But yesterday we tried again and finally had success!

Here is the before:

We're lucky in that we have a lot of natura; light in the apartment and there is a beautiful picture window in the middle of the wall.  At the moment the trees outside are bare, but in the summer time they will be covered in beautiful pink flowers.  Here is the after! 

Did I mention that I share the spare room with Sir Pinkying's hobby?  Did I mention that Sir Pinkying is a drummer?  So we have drums on the left hand side, and quilting on the right hand side!! Now that's what I call a multi-function room!

I've already discovered one fantastic thing about my new desk: the little gaps in the storage foot are PERFECT to display fabric!

A Sew In!

Last week I mentioned that I'd had two fun quilty experiences lately, but I was very slack and hadn't taken photos at either of them.  This week I got a chance to have another one, and I made sure to have my camera ready!

Kyishia from PrimaNOTION came over again while Sir Pinkying was out, and we took over the living room floor!  Well... actually... if I'm going to be completely honest... I was the one who really took over the floor, Kyishia sewed at the dining room table.  So this is what the floor looked like as we got started

There may have been one of these.... 

and Kyishia brought some beautiful show and tell which I will show a small sneak peak of...a bento box quilt with Anna Marie Horner fabrics.  Gorgeous!

I got a lot done this time, and finished cutting out ALL the pieces for my Cosmo bag.  It was a LOT of cutting... as in a LOT of cutting.  This is what all the pieces look like laid out, there's two bag pieces, two lining pieces, there's the base of the lining and the outer, there's the sides of the bag, and the lining, there's the pockets (both inside and out) AND lining for the pockets!

and the worst bit?? ALL of the pieces have to be interfaced!!! It's certainly a lot more fun to do when I have company!

Ladies and Gentleman.... I have an annoucement!

Have you been inspired by all the fabulous modern quilting that you've seen online??  Here are a couple of examples that I've seen recently:

Melissa from Pink Chalk Fabrics has done a wonderful improvised pieced quilt using one of their solids fabric packs.  Or this one from My Spare Time - just gorgeous!

That's just two of what could be a very very long list.

Now for the annoucement:  We're starting a Sydney (Australia) chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild! 

 

Would you like to join us?? Jump on over to our new website and give us some basic details about yourself! Then blog about it, or tweet about it, or post about it on facebook and help us get the word out.  We have thousands of quilters in Sydney, help us get in touch with them!

it's oh so quiet....

it's oh so still.... whoops! now I've got Bjork singing in my head!

Anyway, as I was saying, it's been awfully quiet around here, things have been a little bit busy, but I have had two great "quilty" experiences in the last couple of weeks.  I see there are even a few new followers since the last time I posted - so hi to you all and welcome!

Firstly, I had a new friend over for some sewing time last week. I met Kyishia at a recently quilting group and finally had a chance to catch up again last week.  As luck would have it, Sir Pinkying was out for the evening so we took over the lounge room at my place for lots of talking and laughing and a "little" bit of quilting.  We had so much fun that we're going to do again next week.  This time I'm determined to have more than 6 pieces cut out at the end of the night!!

I did a little work on something from this book

 Using these gorgeous Heather Ross fabrics..

We went away over the weekend, which was nice.  It was just good to get out of the general rat race and have some time out.  As an added bonus, my Mum invited some friends over who are both quilters, so we had a lovely afternoon talking about all things fabric and quilting.

I've also been working away on a couple of secret projects, but I can't share them with you yet, but hopefully I'll be back with more news soon!