Giraffes

I have joined Carla Sonheim's 'Year of the Giraffe' class and have been very busy drawing LOTS of giraffes! I am definitely not an artist but having done one of Carla's workshops before I knew this would be a lot of fun and I thought it would be really interesting to concentrate on one subject for the whole year. Here is what I consider to be my best drawing so far, along with a couple of others I drew with my eyes closed!!

 

Then of course I had to have a go with my sewing machine. To me drawing on the machine is like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. Hard! You have to move the fabric while the needle stays still!

The stitching on my 'kantha' scarf is coming along slowly and the fabric is starting to pucker nicely.  Very relaxing and calming to work on this in the evenings.

And for a bit of local fauna - a group of yellow-tailed black cockatoos have been in the pine trees eating the new pine cones. They are absolutely beautiful birds but quite destructive, and noisy. The photo is a bit blurry because they are high up in the tree!

Finished alphabet

Before the year ended I finished the second alphabet for ALetteraWeek2012. All the letters were cut from an Ikea catalogue. I made an envelope/box for the letters from the catalogue cover and finished it of with a paper ribbon and pearl button. Not something I've done before but it was fun working it out.

 

Time flies!

It's been a month since my last post! Christmas, New Year, visitors, babysitting, gardening, extreme weather (45C the other day and more to come!) - it's amazing how the time flies! 
I have been making some little hexagon needle books as a gift for the participants in a workshop I'm teaching in March. Fussy cutting the front hexagon and choosing a matching fabric for the back was a lot of fun. You can find the pattern here. I modified the pattern slightly by making it a bit smaller (1 1/4 inch hexagon instead of 1 1/2 inches), using only one page for the needles and adding a ribbon loop. I also found it easier to stitch the front and back hexagons to a larger piece of felt and then trim them carefully. 

At the Quilt Show in November a friend and I bought some lovely fine cotton lawn(?) from the Material Obsession stall and we each made a scarf using four different pieces of fabric. Now we are going to stitch it to death Kantha style! I have made a start.

 And some exciting news (for me!) I am going to the USA in July with 5 friends. We are going to Eugene first to stay with one of my friend's sister, then to Black Butte to stay and attend the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show and then onto Seattle for a few days. Should be fun!!