Crazy About Wool

I am so enjoying visiting all the crazy wool people on this blog hop. I love to knit and crochet but I also love to make things with wool fabric and wool felt. I fell in love with crazy wool pincushions when I joined in a round robin sewalong a while back. It is still my favourite working pincushion.

Then I made a whole one myself.

The pattern is here.

For today I made an Aussie Christmas decoration to share. Summer is marked by noisy cockatoos flying over our house so it only seems right to have one on the Christmas tree with the robins and cardinals.

Here he is hung on the mango tree out back. And it just happens that the real cockatoo called in the other day too.

I scanned in the pattern. I am not sure if it will come out exactly the right size but close.
You can download it as a PDF.

I free motioned around the pieces in matching thread.
I trimmed the red square next to the bottom edges of the cockatoo piece first, then the top next to his crest, then the back to make it square.
I sewed the red square to a green square.
To give it a good swing as it hangs I added two washers from the tool box to a second green square and sealed them in with some iron on vilene.
I folded a piece of ribbon in half and tied the ends in a knot. I then sewed on the second green square sandwiching the ribbon.
To get the pieces to stay in place while I sewed them I used my trusty spray baste. I quick squirt on the back of each piece with an A4 piece of paper as a drop sheet.

I really wanted to get my knitted dolly finished for today but she is not quite done and she will have to make her debut another day.

Make sure you visit the other blogs in this Crazy About Wool blog hop. Today's list is below and you can see each day's schedule at Pieced Brain. Thanks to Denise for hosting this fun hop.

Tuesday, September 24

Quiltscapes

Marla's Crafts

Secretly Stitching

Marjorie's Busy Corner

Sew Many Yarns

Val Spiers Sews

Quilted Crow Girls Design

Happy Quilting,
Val

Some scrapbooking

I have only been having a bit of a look in at everyone's blogs lately without much commenting. A lot of my time I have been enjoying the lovely weather and watching the birds and the clouds. In the evening I have been doing some catchup watching of Doctor Who using ABC iView. I have the Apple TV box and can connect the iPad to the TV wirelessly and watch them while I knit or play a bit on the computer with some digital scrapbooking.
I am not much good at creating layouts for the pages so I just look up some layout sketches onlone and follow them approximately. I made this this one with my new coastal kit from Nitwit collections.

I was looking for a free collage maker and found Fotor which seems really good and easy to use. I made a little collage to cut up and put in my hand written journal. DH is not sleeping. He and Stumpy are looking at the ducks. The Energex helicopter flew over really low the other day.

I have joined up for the woolly blog hop hosted at Pieced Brain. It starts in a few weeks. I am hoping to get my knitted doll finished to show and I will work on some more blocks for the Summertime wool applique quilt.

Happy Quilting,
Val

August update for Welcome to the North Pole

Can you believe it is the end of August! I will have to put some serious time into my North Pole quilt to get it finished. This month I only did a bit more on the Santa block. I still want to stitch on some snowflakes and each row has some finishing to do. All the big stuff is done except for the stars and moon at the top but they should be pretty quick to do.

 

I hope everyone managed to do a bit more this month. It only takes a bit at a time to get things done. I hope none of you have packed it up as a UFO yet!

Happy Quilting,

Val

 

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Feeling good

A great big thank you to all those lovely people who voted for the cat quilt and Stumpy over at Pets on Quilts. It was also great to get so many nice comments from visitors to my March post about the cat quilt.

I have just been feeling good lately. It is important to stop and smell the roses. With some luck and lots of planning I am really enjoying my retirement. I have achieved a balance where everything is important but nothing is really important.

I love designing things to make using my Derwent pencil box that I bought at the Derwent pencil museum on the site of the original Derwent pencil factory in Keswick UK. I still have my set of Lakeland pencils in a tin that I used in high school. The box is a pleasure to use.

 

I haven't done much sewing the last few weeks but I did buy myself a second sewing machine to keep set up for free motion sewing. It is a Bernette made by Bernina. I love the one I already have. The new one is a bit more simple but it was only $149 on special at Spotlight.

New one.

Old one.

 

I have spent a lot of time playing with the glass and the kiln. I will need to do some sewing so I can use the buttons and zipper pulls I have been making.

I still get really excited about what everyone is posting about in their blogs and I have been looking and commenting on lots of blogs but I follow so many it takes ages to visit them all. I have spent some time resorting them in Bloglovin into folders like shop blogs, inspirational blogs, hobby quilters, old friends, swaps and linkies. That way I can just look at one folder at a time and it is not so overwhelming. It never ceases to amaze me how many wonderful quilty bloggers there are.

Wishing you all happy creative days,

Val

 

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