Hexie Heaven

I know it's been a busy week because I just made my bed for the first time since last Sunday. How do I know it's been a week since I last made my bed? Well, last Sunday I bought a new bed. Or more accurately, as The Sensible Girl likes to correct me, a new mattress for my lovely Dutch slatted bed base. It's like sleeping at a hotel. A good one, not a dodgy one in a hick town during a stopover on a manic drive from Sydney to Perth. That's another story. 
 

This new mattress fits so snugly into the base frame that I can't tuck in the sheets. So I just kind of shove and make do. But the summer quilt atones for my housekeeping slovenliness. 
 

I have been trying to make some serious progress on my latest hexie quilt. Well, actually, not sure if its my latest, strictly speaking. But it's surely ongoing and so stupidly massive that 'making progress' seems futile. Like walking on a treadmill: you never get anywhere but you know it's doing some kind of good. 
 

This is my quilting corner. I know the pic's a tad bright it's a sunny Sunday morning here in Sydney. A welcome break from the rain and wind. Not sure if you can make out my Dutch houses on the window sill.

The hexie quilt is on the hoop. It all started from a layer cake. I think a Barbara Brackman for Moda one. All lovely muted tones. But then I guess I just went crazy and bought, borrowed and stole fabrics that went happily along with the original layer cake. I chose a hexie size so that I could get a whole flower from one 10" square. And then made 81 of them. Appliquéd onto a large square. Sewed it all together.I know this is a long time ago because this pic is taken in my old house. And I moved just over two years ago.

Got it machine basted at the lovely Material Obsession (a life's joy to live ten minutes away). And set about hand quilting it. Three compatible designs: larger flower over each hexie, scallop within each centre...

 

...and four-sided loopy design over the corner where blocks meet.

And this is the back. You can still see the basting threads. I'll still be quilting this baby when I'm ninety.

And then there's hexie turtles....

And teeny tiny hexies appliqued onto 5" squares....

And then there is the crochet....



This is a little spider web quilt made from a City Strippers (the City Quilter) kit bought while in NYC with The Sensible Girl. I introduced that here. Two and a half inch strips of sweetness, mainly Botany by Lauren and Jessi Jung I think, and an equilateral triangle ruler.

This is my latest...Collections for a Cause (Friendship) with a couple of blending randoms thrown in...all on a sweet little mustard gingham.

 

 

 

Luddites and Football

So here I am sitting alone in the grandly titled Council Meeting Room, having just finished an ICT committee meeting where we discussed amongst other things tablet trials (android or apple?), video conferencing and storage limits....so yes, from the sublime to the, shall we say it, rather less sublime.
So great to sit in a meeting, have the question raised about what is available for independent schools with video excursions and conferencing (the det schools wipe the floor with this stuff), so I put out a tweet and within 30 seconds there's feedback.
It's also great to have the lovely Chris, teacher librarian extraordinaire who is so humble in her approach but so dynamic and keen to get amongst technology, seeing its potential but also seeing its inevitability.
In my opinion, we don't need to be concerned about swapping devices between junior and senior schools. These are kids who are moving between devices without a thought. It is the adult digital immigrants who find it difficult to entertain the dynamic nature of technology.
Anyway onto other matters, tonight I am going here...

I wish I could orient the pic but you get the picture (literally)...football with the Parramatta Eels who are bottom of the ladder on 4 points. Shame. I'm pretty much just going for the food and unlimited alcohol.

Duty

i am writing report comments on 230 semester 1 reports. i am new to the school so i have pictures next to me of the little girls about whom i am writing closing, hopefully encouraging comments.
but because it's report writing 'season' (education is such a seasonal job...it's right up there with owning a pool shop), of course i am finding a whole lot of other distractions suddenly a whole lot more fascinating...like blog-cruising, list-writing, flickr-photostream-updating, netball-watching (go sydney swifts!) and sister-chatting...not to mention all the other 'pinteresting' things i get sidelined with.
my latest list is 'quilts i want to make one day'. it includes:

• farmers wife
• another log cabin but a scrappy one this time a bit like this one from red pepper quilts...one of my blog crushes!
• a jacob's ladder like this (love everything lucy does) but maybe using this tutorial 
• clare's stars - my cousin's specialty
• equilateral triangle or half square triangle or this one too
• tumbler with the ready cut fabrics i bought at fabric-a-brac in sydney a few weeks ago
• swoon (who doesn't!)
• salt air crossing using a lovely little fandango jelly roll i have tucked away
• enduring grace - i bought the book about 15 years ago in holland but have not got past a bit of applique experimentation

so there you have it. a long list. a big pile of reports. i know what will win.

A Nine-Patch of the Disappearing Variety

I had a couple of lovely charm packs of Bliss (have a look at it here). A little play with Jenny's Disappearing Nine-Patch found here at the end of a Quilting Queens afternoon, was all consuming, and 90 minutes later I had the makings of the basic quilt top.

Then home to add borders including my first go with prairie points of the continuous variety found here (where would I be without youtube...?).

A spot of machine quilting (my first ever attempt) of cross-hatching and scallops and I was good to go. I just had to wait for Madi to be born.....

New York Web

When I was in New York in 2010 with The Sensible Girl, we stopped by The City Quilter and I picked up a couple of their City Strippers (kind of like Jelly Rolls but not necessarily all from one range, so they're individual and quirky). One of the packs I got contained a lot of Moda Botany by Lauren and Jessi Jung. So I sewed them together in pleasing triple strips.........cut them with a 60 degree ruler (an equilateral triangle) ....

 

Joined 'em into cute little half hexies....alternating the orientation of the triangles so I got this cute alternating centres and outside strips but consistent middle strips.

(for those playing at home, each 42 inch strip set yielded 11 triangles....not exactly what I planned but it means I have heaps of triangles left over for another quilt which is already forming in my mind!)

I tried them in this combination, going for a scrappy, somewhat random spiderweb effect, but I just felt the pretty fabrics and patterns were lost and because I had alternated the direction of the triangles in the hexies, the hexies themselves were even a bit lost. So......

I set them with white triangles using white fabric I had bought to go with the City Stripper in NYC right back at the start. Lovely Sister Susan solved the problem of how to finish off the gappy top and bottom by using a third of a hexie (a diamond...patchwork is all about maths!). Lovely yellow border and now it just goes away until Term 1 ends and I can face quilting it!

Love it, but!

A National Day for All?

Today is Australia Day, a distinctly uncomfortable day for many of my country-folk who cringe at the idea of placing our National Day on the date of the arrival of European settlement. "Uncomfortable" and "cringe" are actually massive understatements. The 26th January 1788 was a day that began a long, fraught and often violent relationship between Indigenous Australians and the millions of immigrants who flooded their land. Today, reportedly sparked by a shameful comment from the Leader of the Opposition regarding the 40 year anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy opposite Parliament House (the original Occupy movement!), our Prime Minister was threatened by an enormous crowd of people and needed evacuating from a function she was attending. She was jostled, pushed and bustled into a waiting car by security officers. She lost a shoe in the process. Such is the unresolved, unreconciled depth of justifiable distrust and disgust by many Indigenous Australians.

Tomorrow I start a new job.
I say 'start' but in fact I've been there for two weeks but without most staff or any students. I'm not scared as such; I know I can do the job and I feel inspired. So there's not fear exactly, but there is this feeling. Call it natural trepidation, excitement, anticipation. I also hope I hear my alarm.

I'm not completely unknown to the school. I've worked for five years at the 'brother' school across the road. And the staff know some of what I'm about as a leader. But I wonder if they are scared? A renewed direction, a different energy. I've done this really daggy thing and bought every teacher a reflection journal. I really believe that for a school to continually improve it has to be a reflective school. Teachers (and leaders!) need to continually reflect on what they planned, what resulted, the expected and unexpected outcomes, the modifications that need to happen, and what they have learned as a result. This can form the basis for ongoing professional learning, which in turn can be a vehicle for growth via reflection. It can be exciting. I hope they are excited.

Wives and Daughters

I got chatting to Robin online today. Robin was one of my first friends in Holland. Her daughter was in the same class as The Little One and we pretty much bonded over quilting, and a shared indignation of the premature adultification of little children. Those two interests don't have a whole lot in common, but it was a pleasure and relief to meet someone else who also wasn't keen for her 7 year old son to attend a birthday party to watch Austin Powers.

Robin introduced me to lovely people. And until I found a full time job, we'd meet regularly to quilt. She credits me with teaching her. I didn't really. The pleasure I used to feel riding Giselle the Gazelle, her basket loaded with quilting goodies, up the road to Robin's house in Blaricum, past farms and quaint houses, is something that has never left me. When we finished the group, they gave me a lovely collection of William Morris fat quarters. I made notebook covers out of them.

Today I got a lightning update on her amazing daughter, about to start grad school to become a professor of biology. A doctor no less.

I keep up with Robin these days on FB. I see photos of her in her various guises, mostly as indefatigable amateur athlete. It's a cliche I know, but it is difficult to reconcile how much life has moved on. I told her about The Sensible Girl getting hitched.
So it got me nostalgic (even though it was only two and a half years ago!) for the quilt I made.

Over the kitchen dresser that
The Little One rescued and renovated.

Diamonds and Stones

  

Some weeks are just shit.

Monday may start out well, but through a complex process of interpersonal interactions, disappointments, reality-checks, injustices and unreasonable deadlines, by the time Friday night comes around, the final assessment can be summarised in that one word. Shit.

I probs shouldn't use the word 'shit' in case my mother is reading. Although I figure I'm pretty safe given that she told me today that her computer's not working. I called in to see her on my way home. I just sat on the sofa that she's had since I was 4, drank the tea she made me, and listened to her catalogue of the week's activities of 'senior citizens' outings, Tuesday club, volunteering at a school and a church, and walks with her neighbour Amy. My mother has volunteered at the same school for fifteen years, ever since her retirement. It's a school for young people who, for a variety of reasons can't be in mainstream schools. And my elderly mother goes and cooks with them, and does craft with them, and goes on their overnight trips to exotic locations like Dubbo. That pretty much blows my mind. Then she showed me the new plantings in her garden and drilled me on when her bougainvillea would flower and what did I think of her new garden edging? It was a nice hour or so. And apart from the fact that the sofa could really do with either re-springing or putting out with the Council Clean-up, it was surprisingly comforting.

And now it's Friday night on my street.

And there's a tangello in the fruit bowl.

So what are you doing this weekend?

In Sydney, it's promising to be sunny. I'm going to the library which is about 100m from my house. I'm going to the library because I figure, if I am every going to counter my weird work-avoidance, that four hours there, will be worth eight hours at home.

And I'm going to eradicate the last remnant of the week from my bones and my being.

Best Laid Plans

I'm studying.
Well. Kind of. 
I am enrolled in a Masters. But I tend to go in fits and starts. Like doing a bit and then taking a semester off and then maniacally undertaking two subjects at once during a busy term at work. That's this term's undertaking. 
I download the readings. I draft beautiful study schedules outlining what I have to do each week. I order the texts and whoop when they arrive. 
But the 'doing' of it does not come as easily as the 'planning to do' it.
I'm not sure why.
I went to university when I had three small children. The Man was working crazy shift hours a fair distance from home. I went to uni every day. I came home. I read, did assignments, prepared presentations into the small hours. I helped teach my own kids how to read, do assignments and prepare presentations too. But it was a juggle. I was usually late for netball/football practice and piano/guitar/violin lessons. There were constant washing crises. I lost friendships. I was stressed and often on edge. But I did it.
So now, when it should come easily, I struggle to settle to it. I do all the self talk, like: You are really interested in thinking about this topic/issue/subject (which I always am). And: This will be really useful at work (which it always is). I have grand plans of reading two hours a day. I'm good at the planning part. 

So now I'm off to make a cup of tea and sit in the sun and do two readings before I'm allowed another (setting myself rules and restrictions is part of the planning-to-study routine I have perfected). I'll let you know what I learn about the Gifted Child in the Mainstream Class.....
Cheers,
GND

Oh. ps. I kind of went off and made sweet little muffins. Packet mix but GF and super yum. But I did read heaps about the ICM - Integrated Curriculum Model...lots of connection to IB.



Just had to include my sweet tea towel - Cath Kidston of course



Big Apple to Bird-in-Hand to Bondi Junction

Last year The Sensible Girl and I had the best mother-daughter experience of recent times. What began as a wistful chat one afteroon about New York, transformed into a holiday to remember c/o two planning days: one to book plane tickets and NYC accommodation (hello roomarama)and one to buy NYC bike tour, Broadway show, out-of-town transport and accommodation. The rest was planned via a series of frantic texts, emails with attachments and phone conversations.  

Two events of the past day have brought this holiday flooding back...as if the Empire State Building linocut on my computer desktop is not daily reminder enough -

1)I moved house this year and due to lots of reasons, have not really finished unpacking and sorting. My current sorting project is the study bookshelves. I love to sort. I love to discard and rationalise. Last night I said to The Man - I'm just going to sort through my cards. To which he replied - You mean you are going to tidy them and then put them all back. Me - No. I am going to cull. I did too but not as seriously as the night before when I reduced two and a half shelves of quilting magazines to one single lever arch file of favourite future (hopefully) projects.

Anyway, I digress. The Sensible Girl was over to offer moral support of the sorting variety, and we stumbled upon my NYC diary - a little A6 book of tickets, observations, maps, leaves, conversation transcripts, daily schedules and such. I try and do a little A6 diary every trip. A self contained record. Every page is a reminder of the little things that made the trip so great: the happy accidents, the encounters with taxi drivers, guest house owners,hardware store keepers and just real New-Yorkers (to the point that our lexicon is now scattered with Bob-isms, Donna-isms, Vivian-isms and Gary-isms), the hilarity, the loveliness of New York in the Fall, the mania of two women so alike and yet unalike as to be the perfect travelling companions.

Among other things, this diary contained details of our trip to Lancaster County to hit up the quilt shops and get an Amish fix. That was where we bought The Fabric. Travelling home our bags weighed over 100 kgs. Which brings me to the second reason for being in a New York state of mind.

b) Yesterday the stitching sisterhood was in session. While in Bird-in-Hand I bought some French General - 15 charm packs and 3 bundles of 8 fat quarters.

We met at Sooz's and in true sisterhood production-line style began to cut, sew, turn, iron, bask in the loveliness.

Using the Dresden Plate ruler and Jenny's failsafe tutorial, we've started. Deborah on precision cutting, Sooz machining, Annabel and I turning points and pressing and arranging into colour groups. Blades all ready to go - all 1200 of them. Updates as we go.   

 

Scraps - too lovely to discard

What's In A Name?

Girls named Kate/Cate seem to be getting quite a bit of press lately. Posing naked (again) Kate, Marrying for love Kate, Tackling climate change so-she-can-look-her-children-in-the-face Cate. From the sublime to the ridiculous. I'll leave it for you to decide which is which.


The year I was born, Catherine was the most popular name for baby girls, and so naturally, my parents made it my second name. My lovely sisters, were given the number one most popular name the year they were born. As their first name. I went to school with a lot of Catherines, Kathryns, Cathies, Kaths, Katies. I would have loved to be called Cate. So why wasn't I similarly bestowed with Catherine as my primary moniker?


My mother explains it as such: As new migrants, they couldn't quite understand the Australian predelection for abbreviating names as a form of cultural acceptance and affection. As far as they were concerned they had given their two first girls lovely, complete, not-unreasonably-long, names. And yet every Australian automatically re-christened my sisters with a newly shortened sobriquet. My resourceful parents solved this when I was born. Bequeathing to me the shortest of names, four letters, single syllable.


I feel, as time goes on, I am really growing into my name. Only to be expected I suppose, given that it's the name of a ninety two year old. Don't get me wrong. I'm all about tradition and heritage. I buy antiques and quilt-by-hand for goodness sake. But there's old names and there's old names. Mine isn't the good kind. As a middle name, you can't go past it. As a middle name it works*.


But as a first name it's frumpy and uninspiring.  Through work, I've met people face to face that hitherto I had only communicated with electronically or over the phone. More than once I've been greeted with: Oh, you're younger than I had imagined. Stupid name. No one else has it. Well, no. That's not strictly true. There are others. Mostly alice-band wearing religious zealots. Or old ladies. Evidenced by the fact that it was in the Top 5 most popular names...in 1911.


I like old ladies. I hope to become one. Perhaps then I'll like my name.


*So much that The Man gave it to The Little One as her middle name. Unfortunately, as the children have my surname as a second middle name, smack bang between her cute first and charming last names, The Little One has my whole name. Oh and that's her lovely Double Irish Chain I made her way back. Fabric from the quilt show in Brugge. Hand quilted with cross hatching, Irish tulips and Celtic knots.

Keeping The Boy Warm

This is the latest of my finished projects. It's a quilt for The Boy with Dutchman's Puzzle blocks combined with a Flying Geese border. It's hand pieced. Hand quilted. Started about six years ago on a school excursion to Canberra. The Dutchman's Puzzle, chosen by him, with its centres reminiscent of windmill blades, is a nice nod to our love off all things Nederland.

His dad and I had kids when we were just kids ourselves. While our friends were spending their youth in nightclubs, The Man and I were spending it on nightfeeds. Friends did the post-school European adventure; we did Wiggles concerts and holidays in Huskisson. And so, when I'd finally got my degree, ten years after leaving school, with the promise of tulips and cheese, we packed up our children, our furniture, our lives, and relocated to Holland for a European adventure of our own.

We got jobs, we found a house in a village of thatched rooves and cobbled roads. And yes, it had a working molen (windmill). The children started school. There was only one moment in the five years that I doubted the decision to become 'het meisje naast de deur".  It passed. We began to build a little life there.

Everytime I get on my beautiful fiets with it's large wheels and touring comfort, I am back in Holland. And I hope that's what this quilt does for The Boy. The quilt's on his bed. He lives in Sydney's Inner West; a sharehouse, architecturally vintage, with detailed high ceilings and explansive hallways, with lovely housemates who set each other baking challenges. I sent him a text to tell him the quilt was ready. His reply? Can I come over now?

It's a lovely quilt. His colours, his design. His quilt.

Family, Choices, Motivation and Acupuncture

A lovely long FB chat with Chris tonight about family, choices, footy tipping, motivation and acupuncture got me in a reflective mood.
I'll introduce you to the girlfriends who fill my life with joy and challenge and fulfillment. What is the collective noun for girlfriends? A giggle of girlfriends? No, not enough. A grace of girlfriends seems more apt. 

I'll start with Chris. Not for any reason other than she was the last girlfriend I spoke to. And, along with Cathy, if I don't count my sisters, Chris is pretty much my oldest friend. I've known her so long that I still inadvertently call her by her pre-marriage name.  

Chris is a thoughtful, reflective, problem solving girlie. She wonders about the events in her life and the lives of others, and sets about searching for answers. Her candour is confronting but empowering. It cuts through. Chris surrounds herself with beautiful things; humble, charming, effortlessly chic things. And she has made beautiful babies. But Chris has a clutter to contend with; worries  and trauma buzz around, threatening hope, stealing peace. I see Chris's passionate drive. A calm grace.

Staying friends with childhhood friends is tricky. A bit like a marriage; reinventing the relationship at each stage to keep it relevant to what is real at that time. Chris and I have undergone a bit of a reinvention too. Despite years of travel, living away from each other, consumed by careers and day-to-day family diversions, I have always felt her hand on my life. Her laugh and particular cadence of speech (!). And now, we both quilt. Not often or very purposefully. But it's a little thread between us. We sew together when we can. We chat about it. And we chat about more besides. It's our little bit of lovely in a year that has seen a lot of un-lovely.

My kids adore her. The Little One wants to live in a House That Chris Built, all French Provincial chicness. The Boy feels appreciated and listened to. The Sensible Girl loves her so much that she was a 'must invite' when she married her own Man. By her interest and humour, Chris has shown them that they matter. I'm a sucker for anyone who loves my kids. It's like they've joined my secret society.