Shibori in Blue Violet

I enjoyed doing the burgundy shibori so much that I did a couple more half-metre pieces in the evening, in ProChem's Blue Violet, which has lovely pinkish undertones. The piece on the left was accordian folded along the short side, then spiralled; while the one on the right was accorian folded along the long edge, with the pleats changing direction in the middle and creating the pretty webbed area - you may need to ckick on the photos to enlarge them to see this more clearly.

Now, what shall I dye today?

Shibori part 2

And here they are. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 above....
..4, 5 and 6 ...
..7, 8 and 9....
..10, 11, 12.

All different. Some were folded, some were ironed, some were scrunched or bunched. A couple were rolled around dowels. Some are definitely more striking than others, but most I would do again.

These were dyed with Jacquard's Burgundy which has a lovely light brown shadow to it that makes for interesting shapes. You can click on the photos to see them in more detail.

As usual with dyeing, you can't really appreciate the patterns you've made until you're ironing the fabric.

I had so much fun that I'm going back to do some more.

Shibori

I am finding my present job sucks out my energy and shrivels my soul. Today, despite the call of the garden and other "shoulds", I decided to nourish my spirit and do some shibori. I tore 3 metres (yards) of fabric into a dozen fat quarters, and soaked 6 of them in warm soda ash (dye fixative) while I folded and tied the other 6. I have numbered all the pieces, and made notes so I can compare the results.

The designs were all out of my head - I wasn't following patterns in a book. This was quite a complicated one that i dubbed "The Scorpion". First, I tied knots around 3 small peach stones. Then I folded and tied the rest of the fabric. It came out looking like this:
Below are the 6 dry pieces after folding and tieing. Then I removed the wet fabric from the soda ash and put the tied pieces in the bucket to soak while I worked on the wet pieces.
See the numbers attached by safety pins?
Here are the wet pieces. All 12 are different. I've just poured burgundy dye on, and I'll wait a couple of hours for it to batch before I remove all the tied bundles, untie them, rinse and then wash them.

It took me around 2 hours to fold and tie the 12 fat quarters - shibori is a slow craft, not a "fast food" type of activity.

Biscotti

I love biscotti. I've made them for some years now to send to my children as a Care Parcel, because they keep and travel well. Now I'm making them for myself as a low-fat nibble. They're more work than usual biscuits/cookies, because you bake them twice (that's where the name comes from) but worth it.

Here's the basic recipe, and some variations.

BISCOTTI
2 cups of plain flour - you can use all white, or add some wholemeal (whole wheat)
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
half a cup of nuts. Almonds, cashews, brazil nuts, walnuts and hazelnuts are all good. For Christmas, I used hazelnuts and glace cherries. Glace ginger is great too.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C (400 F).

Put dry ingredients (but not nuts etc) in a bowl or mixer and blend. Mix eggs and vanilla essence, and add to mix to make a firm dough. Add nuts, fruit etc.

Divide into 2 oblong "logs". Not too long, not too skinny. The dough should be firm enough for the logs to hold their shape without collapsing. Place on baking sheets and bake for around 25 minutes or until firm in the middle.

Cool for at least half an hour. With a bread knife, cut slightly diagonal slices about 1/4" thick. Hopefully they won't fall apart into crumbs. Lay the slices back on the baking trays (you will need 2 trays this time) and with heat of around 150 C (300F), put them back in the oven and let the surface dry for maybe 10 minutes, then turn and do the other side.

I will often turn the oven off and leave the biscotti there to harden.

When completely dry and hard, pack in airtight containers.

Kids' Quilts - finished!

Here are the 3 quilts all completed - a pink quilt for Ivy, with ballerina fabric, applique flowers and butterflies, and quilted stars...
...a pink and purple quilt for Melody, with fairy fabric, applique flowers and butterflies, and quilted daisies....
...and for Cruz, a blue frog quilt with applique frogs and lizards, and quilted fish hooks.

Happy New Year to all my blog readers

Here's a collection of images taken over the past couple of weeks while I've been on holiday. Above is the boy's quilt that I've made for my friend's 3 year old son. It's my own original design, and matches the 2 girls' ones I made late last year. The feature fabric has frogs on it, so I made the applique blocks with frogs, lizards and water lily pads.
Here are the bags that I've made.
A view of my garden from the side border on the east side of the house, looking towards the front. If you're somewhere covered in ice and snow at present, this might cheer you up.
And here are a couple of gratuitous shots of the poodles being twins. They need a trim before it gets really hot.

Family

I don't see Cass often so have to photograph him when I do. He has been staying the last 3 days and is off at the crack of dawn this morning. We did the obligatory mother-son photo.
And here he is with the lovely Lara who flew over from Sydney on Christmas night after celebrating with her family. They are about to go stay with Cass' dad, and then go camping.

Only 5 more sleeps...

I have been making bags.....
..and recovering the seat cushions for the cane settee, so I can sit in the sun on the deck.
The summer garden is looking good - clematis, day lilies and oriental lilies.....
..and the roses are lovely this year.

I want to wish all my blog readers a safe and pleasant Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) and a happy New Year.

We apologise for the break in transmission....normal service has now resumed

Sometimes life gets in the way of the things you want to do. Rats. Anyway, I'm back, and I'm in bag-making mode. Not dyed, surface design type bags, as I haven't enough time for that at present - over Xmas/New Year hopefully I will - but bags for gifts. So I'm using furnishing type fabrics and quiet colours. This blue and red spot and stripe combination will go together.
And today I bought a pile of neutral (ugh) soft colours to mix together in various ways - I still have to work out what goes with what.

And I had to buy some of this magenta and brown fabric to make a bag to go with my new summer top, which is a briiiiiiiiiiiiiight raspberry colour. (Don't ask me what it cost!)

# 2

This is for the second daughter, Melody, who is almost 5.

In the Pink

Firstly, thank you to those blogfriends who sent me their kind wishes about Roxy. I appreciate your thoughts and hugs.

Secondly, I'm working on some children's quilts at the moment. These are for my friend Jill's children (Jill, stop reading now!). The first one is for Ivy, who is almost 7 and a keen ballerina.
Click on the photo for a larger view. I found a cute ballet-themed fabric for the main fabric.

Remembrance Day

My beautiful daughter Roxy who died 26 years ago today.

November and The Red Quilt

Unbelieveable! It's November already! Here's a collage of some more late spring flowers. I love paeony flowers - especially the deep crimson ones- but this salmon-coloured one is gorgeous too.
To my surprise, I've found myself reverting to my first love in quilts - big bold patterns and lush colours. I've spent quite a bit of time dabbling in different art quilting techniques and making all sorts of fabric , but have never been able to settle on a "style".

Perhaps I've recognised that my talent doesn't lie in inventing art quilts but in the use of colour. This is what I really enjoy - mixing my hand dyes with lovely commercial designs. Surprisingly, I also love quite simple quilt patterns too - above is the middle of a medallion quilt (Knot Garden Quilt from Kaffe Fassett's book "Country Garden Quilts") which I've simply called "The Red Quilt". Okay, there's a yellow border in there, but I felt it needed a bit of contrast. Naturally, my quilt looks nothing like the original.

Sometimes it's nice to let someone else do all the hard work designing a pattern. More on The Red Quilt as I work through all the borders.

The Long Weekend

It's Labour Weekend here in New Zealand, the first public holiday after winter, so it's much anticipated. Traditionally, there is bad weather for Labour Weekend, but that's not coming till tomorrow.

Today I felt like doing some Blended dyeing, and it's saturated reds (with a bit of yellow thrown in) that I'm doing today. Fortunately, there was only 5 metres on the roll....otherwise I'd have kept going.
I did the dyeing to take a break from taming the wilderness - some parts of my garden are NOT cultivated. I started out the back, where I plant the vegetables and fruiting plants. The clumps of grass were over knee-high so it's quite hard work when you're unfit. Like me.
These are 2 bags of early potatoes (Jersey Benne, if you're interested), so that I can have new potatoes for Christmas.

It's cherry blossom time!

This one is an upright tree...
..while the new one in the middle of the lawn is a weeping cherry. There are a number of beautiful weeping cherries that I see in Rangiora, and I decided I had to have one. I will plant other things underneath this one to make a feature garden.
I am still in love with these bags. This one is made from pastel hand-dyed fabric screenprinted with my tree design. I really like the colours .
The reverse of this is in strips - same fabric, different colourways. This will be the inside although the bags are fully reversible.

After returning from the quilting retreat, I was in a bag mood. I made this bag, which goes together in a really strange way...
..but produces a lovely reversible bag. Yes, these are the same bag. I made the little pockets from the triangles I cut off at the top when sewing the sides together - I told you it was strange.

The dogs have been clipped, so when it's cold - our spring can be very changeable - they head for the flokati rug in front of the fire.

Look! A blog post!

Yes I have been a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad blogger - but I've had nothing to blog about. Yesterday, however, I spent the day with the Lyttelton Quilters at Glentui Meadows, a country lodge in North Canterbury. Here are some photos from the day:
Sue-Ellen made this lovely bag from a partly embroidered doily and some hand -dyed fabric that didn't come out right. The combination worked brilliantly. It's partly completed in the photo. I loved the pattern, so will make some bags this way.
Here's Sue-Ellen (who won't thank me for the butt view - sorry), Donna and Aileen working hard on their projects.
I rotary cut, sewed, cut again, and made the various sections of my quilt. Heres' where I laid it all out on the floor to see how it would look together. The colour is not right in the big picture.
This is better - the light colour around the centre squares is a mauve colour. Click on the photo to get a better look - a lot of the fabric detail is lost unless you can see it closer. The feature fabric is Hoffman's "Feathers" - in the centre of the blocks, and the outside border.

New and improved!

I bought some 44 gallon drums that had been cut into smaller rounds. These are for growing potatoes, yams, tomatoes and so on. They are naturally bottomless, so will sit on top of the old garden, which had not had crop rotation practised upon it.
After painting, they look like this.............
...........and this.
And after a recent foray to the hairdressers', I look like THIS - the front part that I wanted "slightly redder" is considerably redder due to the fact that (ahem)I am actually totally grey around my face. So it's red (and longer) at the front, blonde on top and the natural strange mixture of colours at the back.

A change is as good as rest. So they say.