Val Spiers Sews: A Gift from Fiona and More Adelaide

Fiona has done a marvelous job of keeping track of all the pincushions and I was surprised that she sent a gift thanking me for being involved. Thank YOU Fiona for organising the sew along and thanks for the lovely key keeper. I put it straight onto my hand bag. I normally hang it to the inside.

I think I said I didn't buy much in Adelaide but it seems to have made quite a pile on the ironing board.

I bought a few notions. I paid $2 each for the open ended zippers. I want to try using them on tote bags so the end of the zip doesn't restrict getting into the bag. Melann's Sewing World had lots of zipper pulls. I love the little panda one I got. We had a demonstration of how easy it is to sew on stretch binding. It looked great on all sorts of knit tops. I haven't seen it before but she will post it if I can't find it. I also bought leather needles for my lamb skin leather. Horne Leather gave us 20% discount and I only paid $16 for the skin. I want to make a wallet. I finally bought a water soluble pen for tracing my stitchery patterns onto fabric. I used to use lead pencil and try to sew to cover it up.

The ribby edge is the stretch binding. It folds over like bias binding.


This is my leather. It is fairly thin so shouldn't be too hard to sew.

We got lots of free things in little gift bags at most of the shops. Sewing kit, ribbons and laces, embroidery threads, pin cushion, note pads, sewing books, thread cutter, mini cutting mat.

I bought three lots of fabric to make jackets.

Two suede look polyesters with shiny backs. Camel and burgundy.

A lovely wool with lining fabric and dark brown polyester for trousers.

And two blouse fabrics. One white in 100% cotton with a pretty flower self pattern and the other is a cotton poly mix giving it a nice sheen. They were a bit hard to photograph.

I also bought some harmony. I just love the feel of it. It is 100% polyester and drapes beautifully. I plan to make a short sleeved jacket and capri pants with a floral shell top.

I bought some quilting fabrics and shiny oriental fabric to make some zippy purses. We visited several quilting shops. The tea pots and tea cups look lovely on the black background. The roll with orange spots is little pumpkins and the pale roll has little white tea cups on it.

I love the tea pot fabric in the back.

I also love to knit so I couldn't resist some cream alpaca to make a loose knit scarf and a ball of Jigsaw that knits up into fair isle. I have been wanting to try some socks and the jigsaw looks fascinating.

I wanted a panda mug from the zoo but they looked pretty ugly so I bought some playing cards in a nice tin. I loved seeing the pandas.

Funi

Wang Wang

Now I can play solitaire like Mrs Pollifax :)

We visited the Botanical Gardens and I was fascinated by the lily pads. These are a giant African variety and I didn't know they had such mean spikes underneath! The stems were all spiky too.

The edge is just turning up and you can see the spikes.

Inside the Museum of Economic Botany (MEB) we found the most interesting work of art by Fiona Hall Grove . It included a peep hole with a beautiful light show on animal and plant shapes. It is hard to describe but it went for several minutes changing colours and positions of the lighting. It was past all the dried seeds in long glass cabinets so unless you liked that sort of thing you wouldn't walk in and see this magical peep hole. It is part of a larger timber art work.

I left this as a big file so if you click on it you will see it better.

Funny how the birds in the south are the same but different. This White-Backed magpie is only found in the SE of Australia. We have Black-Backed magpies here in Qld. They are almost the same but ours only have a white collar on the back of their neck. The picture shows the white going right down the back. This sort of thing interests me.