Colour and Fabric

I'm on a bit of a colour bent at the moment.  My Mum came to visit us this weekend and I had a great time rearranging the cushions and bedding at Freedom to show her my design idea for her bedroom!!

I am really enjoying daylight savings in the afternoons and we've had a couple of beautiful sunsets like this one that I managed to catch this afternoon.  I love the way the pink plays across the top of the clouds on the blue sky.  Of course, by the time I had gone and changed the camera lens to get a closer shot, the pink was gone.

While I had the camera out, I thought I'd show you a couple of the new arrivals at our place recently.  Up first is the gorgeous "Theory" which is by Kristian A Howell for Anthology Fabrics.  I've been looking at these for a long time, and was ordering some other things (not shown here just in case someone sees something that they shouldn't!) so I got a couple of fat quarters.

Another favourite designer of mine is Sweetwater and I just love their Hometown range - I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, so I got a couple of charm pack and some fat quarters of designs that I really loved.

I've also been adding to my yellow and grey collection so here are a couple of pieces that came in the envelope that the hometown was in.

Here is the full collection of yellow and greys... this is some of my stash, some prints from my LQS, and some prints from the US

I think I'll stop there for today before you all think that the only thing I do is buy fabric!! I have been sewing but I can't show the project yet.  I'm trying to decide how to quilt this secret project at the moment but will show it to you soon!

Vivid 2011

Every Winter the Sydney gets a great festival called Vivid.  The whole idea is for it to be a festival of light and sound and each year they choose a different curator who gets to put their own "stamp" on the festival for the year.

2011 was the 3rd year of the festival, and I've been able to go to it every year so far.  My most favourite thing is the 'light' part of the festival.  Artists from all over the world contribute light installations that are put up around the city that you can go and see for free.

 It's a great way to try and get us Sydneysiders out of our homes in the cold of Winter, especially at this time of year when we've had so much rain.

 Sir Pinkying and I headed to the city to have a look at this years displays.  One of the features of this year was a show called "Firedance" which was basically flames dancing to music.  It was a lot of fun, and was just under the Harbour Bridge.

As you walk around between the various pieces, you have to be sure and look all around because sometimes they are above you!  I really liked this one - gorgeous colours!  I wonder if there is a Kona quilt in there...

The main lighting feature each year is "Lighting the Sails" where the sails of the Opera House are lit with beautiful changing designs.  I was lucky enough to borrow a tripod from a friend which meant much better photos than would have been possible otherwise

Many people don't realise that the Opera House is actually all tiled, and there is actually a very pretty pattern formed by all the tiles, which you can just catch in the photo above.

Sydney is quite a "young" city, so we don't have the same kind of grand buildings as places like London or Paris, but one that we do have is Customs House and this year it featured a great changing display that looked like the building was re-wrapping itself every few seconds, it was just beautiful!

I can't leave you without one last picture of the Opera House in full colour.

It's a Beautiful Day!

So - to all of you who are here just for the quilting related topics - I apologise... but these are the only photos I have to show you at the moment! :)


Last night I went U2!!! They were amazing! well worth it!

the stage was unbelievable, complete with this fantastic movable HD screen that opened wide or slide into a narrow band...

they played a great mix of old and new songs and were on stage for nearly a full 2 hours

Bono was in fine form...
Anyway - for any of you who get an opportunity to go - you really should! It was absolutely a worthwhile experience

Where have I been?

Hi all,

Once again, despite my best intentions, it has been far too long between posts... and where have I been you ask? Well, we've been away we went here:


we also saw a bit of this


spent a couple of days driving through scenery not unlike this...
enjoyed a lovely boat trip through here

and were constantly in awe of natural wonders like this

so, has anyone guessed where Sir Pinkying (he's not Mr Pinkying - but he's my knight in shining armour!) and I have been??

We went to New Zealand! All I can say is if you have never been, you really must go. We loved every single second of the trip. So many photos, so little time!

I did pick up a small bundle of Maori styled fabrics, which I will post a pic of soon.

While we were away, I had intended to sew 15 blocks for my Candied Hexagons, which I had cut out in preparation for the trip, but I only got as far as doing the basting! I have made some progress though (which I will post later too!!)

Happy Quilting!

Back again!

So I've spent the last week or so making a fancy dress costume for a Bollywood themed birthday party. For a woman it's not so bad, you get a sari, which is really just 5.5 metres of fabric that needs to be wrapped around you (and in my case very carefully safety pinned!) But for a guy, not so easy! So last week I made pants, a satin vest, a 6 metre long sash, and a very stylish blue satin turban! The party was on Saturday, and Sir Pinky-ing and I looked very theme appropriate, and had an excellent time. I will confess that I remember now a number of things:
1) I really don't like sewing satin!
2) I would much rather be quilting
3) hot glue is not always a good thing
4) did I mention that I really intensely dislike sewing satin?

Tonight I did a little something for myself. I've long been bothered by the plain boring strap that's on my camera. It's got the camera brand emblazened all over it in bright writing, and it's boring!! A quick google search revealed this tutorial by a blogger called Petchy (who I only discovered today!) I got right to it tonight and it's already done!! Here is the finished result




I really like the way it turned out. Of the whole process it took far longer to thread the strap back onto the camera than it took for me to make the strap! The only change that I made to the way Petchy did her tutorial is that I slip stitched mine closed. It will be easy enough to take it off again when (if) I get sick of the fabric. But for now I LOVE the oriental print, and it is in my favourite colour!

What's a "Pinky"?

I'm a Pinky! (well, it's what my sister calls me anyway)

It's one of those nicknames that started out for a silly reason, and kind of just stuck. It's been about 13 years, so I don't think I'm getting rid of the nickname any time soon!

So, this is my first post, and I'm sure that anyone out there reading is wondering what kind of things I am going to blog about. Well, mostly quilting and what I've been working on, although from time to time there may also be photography, cooking and books! I'm hoping to post at least once a week, so wish me luck!

Happy quilting!