Sunday Stash #74

Four Fat Quarters

Today Sunday Stash is being hosted by Amanda at What the Bobbin? and she has a real Heather Ross treat in store for you.

Last week we had a tie for the most visits to the linkies by Ms Midge and One English Teacher.

I have only four little goodies for you here today. Each $1 at the recent Spotty sale.

I will see you over at What the Bobbin?

Finding Farrah

Some of the ladies in my online quilt group Quilt Club Australia were inspired to start some Australian Travelling Stashes earlier this year. Basically a travelling stash originates with someone who puts some craft supplies together, it travels around the country courtesy of our expensive Australia Post system and folks take out what they want and replace 'like for like' until it returns like a boomerang to the originator (hopefully with not the same items returning).

'Farrah - the Fat Quarter Stash' was the brainchild of Bronwyn of Stop that Owl. She weighs just under 3Kg and is pregnant with about 40 fat quarters of all descriptions. 

Farrah arrived  at my Post Office, from Kelly of Made By Kelly... , yesterday afternoon. I was pretty impressed that she could fit into a 3Kg satchel to be honest. Kelly was wise enough to put her into a giant snap-lock bag first. It did not take me long to make up my mind about what to take out. Actually 2 of my choices were ones that Kelly had just put in!

I already had 5 replacement FQs ready to slip back in. A couple of refolding of some and she was back ready to be posted again. 

The next lady on the list is going to be thrilled when she sees some of the prints inside.

Sunday Stash #21

This week's post, in honour of the 4th of July, is brought to you by the colours red, white and blue. Earlier this week I posted about the Handmade swap items I made with RW&B charms - I have since discovered a RW &B blog hop if you are interested.

I found most of these FQ prints rolled up and presented without selvedge at my local Big W store. I was actualy in search of Lizzy House's 'Castle Peeps' as some of the girls from QCA had found some at their local stores. Sadly there were none but I was happy with what I did find ingloriously rolled up like this one below.

I am a bit of a sucker for Civil War reproduction prints so I could not resist the one with George Washington. And speaking of American Presidents, I read last night that one of my favourite immersion actors, Daniel Day-Lewis is studying to play Abraham Lincoln in a film about the last months of his life before he was assassinated. 

I have to thank 5 of you ladies for showing up to link last week - Alyce, Vera, Gemma, Kristy, and Heidi (from my Zakka Sew-Along Flickr group). I have to apologise for the button code not working ( I am baffled as to why ) but if you'd like me to, I can email you the java code instead. Or you can just copy and paste the button but it will not link to my blog.


So what's new in your stash this week? I am curious to find out.

Vintage Vices

I am not much of shopper (apart from online). I don't have many favourite stores (apart from IKEA and bookstores). I dislike grocery and clothes shopping. But I have one indulgence - the Op-Shop (Thrift Store). Not for clothes but for 2nd hand books, knitted toys and vintage crockery.

I was introduced to op-shopping by my lovely friend Marieka when she took me to an amazing store in the Barossa Valley town of Tununda. She also introduced me to a love of vintage sheets. 

Do you remember these kinds of patterns that used to adorn your bed back in the 70's and 80's? Well now they are much sought-after. Particularly the retro vintage ones. I love them.

You can even buy vintage sheet fat quarters online. These are some that I bought from an Esty store called Vintage Spoken Here. There is also Local Honey Crafts   Duckie House  Whimsie Dots

Imagine my delight, when a fellow quilter pointed me in the direction of the  'Vintage Sheet Fat Quarter Swap' on an Australian blog called Green Tea and Red Nails.

My FQs so far

It is running this month of February....so I signed up. Then I got out my vintage beauties and started ironing and then cutting them into 20x22" (Australian) Fat Quarters. It certainly helped to have a NEW blade in my rotary cutter!

Sheets still to cut.

Meal Plan Mondays

This is what's on our menu board this week. The stir fry was delicious - with carrots, cashews, zuchinni, onion, mushrooms and fresh corriander. The roast chicken from the weekend was held over until this week and I will do it in my benchtop mini-oven so as not to heat up the house. It has been horridly humid now that the rain has stopped and the sun is out.

For many rural and regional Queensland and New South Wales residents, the rain has not stopped and now they are inundated with flood waters again - some for the 3rd time in a year! The Qld towns of St George, Mitchell, Charleville, Roma, Cunnamulla and over the border, the NSW towns of Mungindi, Narrabri, Moree and Wee Waa. Some have been forced to evacuate under mandatory laws. This truely is the land of 'droughts and flooding rains'...and not much in between thanks to La Nina and El Nino.

The levee holds steady at Wee Waa in NSW on Feb 3rd 2012

but residents on properties have to construct their own and hope for the best

others can do nothing but watch the waters rise over theirs.

Flood waters engulf 80% of the Qld town of Mitchell on Feb 3rd 2012

and our wildlife is not spared either

On a lighter note....this is the adults home-made pizza from Sunday night. It has tomato paste, leftover beef and bean burrito mix, boconcini, mushroom and semi-dried tomatoes. It was tasty and full of texture.


How is your menu looking this week?

Halloween Projects

Last year my mother made a fabulous 'Halloween' quilt from a kit called "Spooks on Parade" from 'Keepsake Quilting' (Still available). The fabric is absolutely gorgeous and she kept all of the scraps. The quilt now belongs to my eldest son and he loves it.

I have 2 other kids and so I had it in mind to make them a 'Halloween' themed quilt using the scraps and some more fabric I picked up in the USA post-Halloween sales. I do want the kids to have a quilt each for the month of October this year....so I set about piecing things last month. 

I know that Halloween is not everyone's fancy. But I love the colour combinations of oranges, purples, greens and blacks....and I love the character mix of bats, cats, spiders and stars. But when I looked at this layout above, I was pretty disappointed. Thankfully my mum still had the original pattern for her fab quilt.

Surprisingly I have only made one other quilt from a pattern...the Eye-Spy fussy cut kind. So I was keen to try a pattern and this one promised to be easy to cut out and assemble. The original kit came with precut Fat Quarters in gorgeous fabrics. The pattern was pretty easy to follow as it is a 'Whack and Stack' style, however, my fabric stash yielded FQs of different sizes (Australia and the USA have different measurements...go figure!). So it was not as easy as it should have been.

Then there was the problem of 'orientation'. Some fabrics clearly had a 'right' way of facing, some were '2-way' and others were universal...the spots, stars, cats etc. In the end, I still got the orientation wrong on a few of the fabrics but it doesn't matter.

'Bats on Parade' quilt top

The bats were from precut Halloween shapes from Keepsake Quilting. I added little teeth and eys to make them more comical.

'Jack-o-Lanterns on Parade' quilt top

Likewise I made the plain pumpkin sihouettes into cuter jack-o-lanterns.

I have to piece together a back for both but I am waiting on some black tone-on-tone wide back fabric from 'Hancocks of Paducah'. Watch out for Part 2.