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I spent today using an embroidery machine. I felt at the end like it had been a day of 'work' not creativity. I ended up tired and cranky and quite over the machine. Tomorrow will be spent on a treadle for sure so I can catch up with myself from where I got out of bed this morning. More tomorrow!

A beautiful machine to use and named in honour of our smallest grandie, Gemma. I purchased her some time ago, a Singer 201K, 1952. The cabinet she sat in was awkward to sew with and ended up injuring the bursa in my left leg where it was jammed up against the cabinet edge while I was sewing. Now you know why I have not added anything to the blog for the last few weeks. My dear sewing friend, Margaret, who lives down the lane, purchased one last weekend and it had the open cabinet, similar to the ones produced in the twenties, the type with the six small side drawers, only hers had one each side, if all that makes sense. I had been de sewing machining, meaning, making room by discarding some of my collection. I asked Margaret if she would like one and within a day her husband had purchased her a 201K as well. She is now a very proud treadler. This prompted me to remove my 201K head and put it into a 1920's cabinet for more leg room. As for the little grandie mine is name

I have not posted lately, a winter flu that hung on for weeks followed by another bout of health probs, has seen me glued to the couch instead of the sewing machine. Finally, I am on the mend again. Spring has arrived and winter departed till next year. I am thankful to see the sunny days again and feel the sun's warmth, as the cold seemed to go on forever these past few months. No, we don't get snow, or even very cold temperatures compared to other places, but I missed the joy of blue skies and longer days. "Carna" came into my home three years ago. She is in mint condition, from the late fifties, early sixties. She has wonderful little silver gears on the top, and you combine them to make different fancy stitches and change her embroidery discs to make more. Her only drawback is that to change the bobbin you have to take your life into your hands and heave her upwards, hold her there, while you manouvre the bobbin out from underneath her. She weighs a ton.

The photo was missing for the post below. I shall try again!

The weather here today is cold, overcast and bleak, the kind of winter's day when I just long for summer. I miss the opressive heat of a summertime Brisbane today. I long for the days when the heat ramps up and I wake to see small wisps of black cloud appearing. Not many, however my life up in the mountains taught me that the small black wisps held the promise of thunderheads by early afternoon, building high in the sky and all that power exploding late in the day with noise and drama and pouring rain. After the storms had moved away high on the plateau, their thunder rolls becoming muted as they headed down over the Gold Coast and out to sea, the mountain air would turn icy cold and you would thrill with the sharpness of the atmosphere as you wrapped it round you. Today in Brisbane is not such a day. It is miserable and you want it just to be over and maybe the sun will shine tomorrow. Consequently my creative juices have stalled for now and the block in the photo still wait

I had started this quilt some time back. When I started this blog in fact, because a part of it appeared further down the page in my first writings here. It had then hit the UFO stash, which seems to grow biggger by the year. At the rate I am travelling the cats are going to have to leave home to make room for the quilts instead of just sleeping on them as they do. Today I 'found' the quilt,and started embellishing it again. Twenty years on a potter's wheel in my previous creative life have left me with hands that refuse to sew the kind of embroidery that I see other crazy quilters achieving. All those colonial knots send my hands stiff when I wake up the next morning. So being a lover of machines I realised I would have to use them as cleverly as I could to make my quilts heavy with stitch and glow like the inside of an Aladdin's Cave. So I fancy stitch with them, create machine embroidery with them and enrich my fabric as best I can. Block one appea

The DA VINCI QUILT - ------------------- A beautiful design from Advanced Embroidery acted as the catalyst for me to design and make this wall quilt. I rusted fabric in my old book press soaking calico in vinegar first. I wanted a old tapestry look for the piece and used roses and some brocades. Other machine embroidery designs were from Glen Harris and BFC Embroidery. Photo transer on to fabric for the hands image. Some stippling was done and all seams sewed over with fancy stitches. I later taught this quilt to the Tuesday girls, the emphasis being on how one can create a simple quilt from squares and rectangles to act as a vehicle for machine embroidery and photos on fabric.

Well, two years later and I have discovered that my blog is actually up and working. I am still quilting, the treadles are still residing in my house and my stash has grown even bigger. I will post regularly now that I know I can be seen by the world. To Maureen, my fellow quilter and friend who has been the first to comment here, thankyou! I actually got her sewing on my Jones hand crank a couple of weeks ago however no photos were taken of her stirling effort, unfortunately. She handled it like a pro. I now teach quilting and had set the girls the task of sewing on some of the old machines. Nan, who sewed for fashion houses in her day, loved every minute of it. I will post photos of their next sewing day when they next come. We call oursleves "The Coffee,Cake and Jazz" quilt group and Tuesdays see the girls sewing along to the strains of Glenn Miller and his Big Band and other wonderful old tunes.