The Travelling PicStitch Bloghop - A day at The Pinnacles

Hello Everyone,

You may have noticed that I'm not a prolific blogger, one of the main reasons for that is because I really struggle to upload pics from my iPad (good app suggestions please?) into my blog.  Today I have borrowed my hubby's mac for the purpose - which is even more alien to me.  Fortunately he returned earlier than expected from a camping trip, after suffering through a bad storm which had hit Perth earlier in the day.  And when I say bad, it was hail stones, wind, rain, a real winter storm.  A little ironic, given that summer is officially just around the corner.

So, back to the PicStitching....

Yesterday was a meeting day for our Perth Modern Quilt Guild.  We had a last minute relocation from our proposed venue (a quilt picnic at Kings Park) to my house (an indoor quilt picnic!) - I am so glad there were storms forecast , otherwise the awesome PMQG ladies wouldn't have been here to show a complete EPP newbie how to do it :-)

During the last holidays, our family went for a day trip to the Pinnacles, limestone formations which are relatively new geologically.  They are fantastic and only a few hours north of our home.  Over time, the Pinnacles have been hidden and revealed by sand cover / erosion.  I think that the visitor centre indicated that the most recent revelation was only about 10,000 years ago.  The funny part was an area where there were Pinnacles only about 10 centimetres in height.  My girls said they were baby ones, only just growing out of the sand! That tickled me.

Can you spot Mr Gallah?  My husband spotted a Gallah in amongst the rocks and snapped this pic.  I borrowed it and used the iPad app Colour Picker to find a colour palette for my block.

I picked out Mr Gallah - for some reason, his usual pinkiness was found to be a purple by colour picker!!  I was struggling to get the app to do quite what I wanted, so I upgraded to the paid version for AU$1.99 - then it let me do what I needed (I'd recommend trying the free version first - it may just have been me using the app!!)  I also picked some blues from the sky and a sandy colour from the dessert.

Then a few of the girls and I trotted off to look for fabrics in my stash.  Purples were easy to locate, as I'd been playing with them to make rainbow binding for the PMQG banner.  Blues and sandy colours were more problematic.. quite a few blues were rejected.  I suggested using my kangaroo print fabric, which is light brown kangas on a sandy background, but my pickers rejected it - it just wasn't "right". So, having raided the fat quarters with no success, I found my charm packs.  We found some blues which looked good and a sandy coloured spot.

The block shape was easy, as I had picked out a design a few weeks ago.  I used a fabric glue stick to attach my fabric to the paper pieces (otherwise I'd probably still be tacking the papers into place now!) and then started....

My centre-piece - a spotty, sandy hexagon

All my pieces and fabric, ready to go!

All stuck down and ready to sew

And finally, it's finished!

 Not too bad for a first attempt at paper piecing, if I say so myself!  Now I'm thinking that I'd like to make my block into something... maybe applique it onto a cushion cover?  I think it's a lovely souvenir of our day trip, getting sand-blasted up at The Pinnacles!

Thanks for reading, I hope you have enjoyed following us in The Travelling PicStitch bloghop.  Don't forget, you can join us for the linky party at the end of the month, details will be on the Travelling PicStitch page....  Click here to visit The Travelling PicStitch page

Has it really been That Long?

Hello friends!

I haven't forgotten my blog, life just seems to have been incredibly hectic!

Sorry about the lack of pictures, next time!

Since I last wrote, I have been on a trip to Europe, which included a few days in Paris (love it!), but more importantly, I have a first Proper Quilt Finish!!  Some of you may recognise this quilt, as the lovely Laura at Quokka Quilts blogged about it here.
It was made for my little boy's 3rd Birthday and after our overseas trip, I had only a month to make it from scratch.  The main fabrics had already been purchased, under Hugh's supervision.  He approved each of the patterns and was extremely excited by the pearplanes and helipopters.  Now, a month may sound like a long time, but for me, sewing is often limited to a Tuesday evening and the occasional weekend session.  Most of my progress was made on Tuesdays, but a group of us had a sewing retreat and more progress was made then.  The final quilting was done (free motion, started with help from Laura, completed on my little Brother 2150 after I received a ban on using Laura's machines.....  I sat and bound the quilt in the sunshine the day after Hugh's Birthday.  He was incredibly happy with it and didn't seem to mind that it was a day late :-)

The Travelling Stash

Today it was my pleasure to receive the Travelling Stash AKA Sasha.
She arrived safely in a 5kg prepaid bag.  I think she had outgrown her original 3kg bag, both in size and weight.  Truth be told, I thing she had exceeded the 5kg weight of the bag by more than just a little bit....

I didn't dare open her up immediately (although I really wanted to), as I had an awful fear that items from the stash would go missing before I could even get to look at them.  So, I waited until my munchkins had departed for the evening and opened her up.....

The stash contained many fabulous things, I pondered for quite some time as to which items I'd select...  I finally decided upon these items:

From the fabric selection, I took the Eiffel Tower (I'm off to Paris very soon, maybe I will make something useful to take along!!), the Chilli Peppers and the Who's in the Forest.
I also claimed the gorgeous woodland animal ribbon (I loved it!) and the hand made ribbon and labels.  If anyone can tell me where I can get more of those, I'd really appreciate it!
The little mouse pin cushion begged me to let it come and live in my newly arranged sewing space, so how could I say no?  I also kept the Jelly Babies pattern and the Double Wedding Ring templates.  Oh, and last but not least, I kept one of the magazines, after spotting a couple of potential projects to make.
I was very conscious of the weight of the package that had been delivered to me, so bearing that in mind, I selected some items to replace those I had taken....

The items I added to Sasha were: Flower Fairies A-Z fabric, assorted 5" charm squares, 2.5" 3 Sister's Oasis charm squares, 2.5" Riley Blake Traffic Jam charm squares, buttons, zippers, velcro, shirring elastic, invisible thread (that always makes me laugh, especially when customers at work say they can't see the invisible thread, to which my usual reply is, "that's because it's invisible!"), variegated green thread (for machine embroidery), needles, a little coin purse and last but not least a little babushka wrist pin cushion (the last two items were made by yours truly).

And so my chapter in the Adventures of Sasha Stash has concluded.  Who will be her next recipient, I wonder?  I would like to thank CassTheCoolest for organising this and hope that Sasha travels safely on.

A Happy Surprise!

Hello again!
We are still mid school holidays here and the weather has decided to turn rainy. Here in Perth, that isn't such a bad thing, it certainly isn't as cold as the UK rain....

Now, most of you know that I am still pretty new to blogging. So, I have been following blogs of things and people I like... I have been stalking the lovely Gingermelon Dolls blog http://www.Gingermelondolls.blogspot.com and etsy store for a while now. She has some truly lovely little patterns on there. Anyway, I entered a competition on her blog and this morning, I received an email telling me I had WON one of her patterns {cue happy dance!}. I am now the very proud owner of the Mad Hatter pattern - I will post a picture of him when he has been made :-)

Bye for now!

Shopping for fabric!

Hello dear blog friends!

Happy Easter to you all, I hope that you all enjoyed your day. We have been very spoiled with lovely chocolate. Miss 6 won her class raffle at school (1st prize!), so enjoyed some bonus chocolate. Miss 9 organised a special egg hunt for her brother and sister and Master 2.75 got the choo choo train with the mini hollow eggs that he had spotted in the Target catalogue. All 3 children were very happy, as were Mummy and Daddy, who also had some yummy chocolate.

Well, once again I am blogging from my lovely iPad... Where the only downside is that it won't let me add lovely images. The upside is that I can write it anywhere I like! I wanted to share some of the fabulous finds I got from my recent visit to Spotlight... We decided that my first major quilt creation would be for our little boy's Birthday in a few months time. He even helped to pick out the fabric, in that he got very excited and started saying, "Train! Helipopter! Truck!" All transport related and yes, the helipopter was not a typo, he really calls them that :-). I was so excited to show you the fabrics, but will have to wait to share them when I next negotiate using our desktop with the monkey girls ;-)
In addition, I picked up some other fat flats to get creative with, although they will most definately have to wait until after my transport quilt.

When I'm not sewing with my machine, I like to hand sew too... I have been enjoying following blogs and have been very tempted by the lovely gingermelon patterns - if you haven't seen any of her lovely works, she has a blog and etsy shop... Watch this space!

Look forward to blogging again soon,
Missy Bee

My inaugural blog!

Many, many months after setting up my blog, I am FINALLY writing my first blog post....

So what things would you like to know about me? I am mum to three gorgeous children, I'm married to an astronomer and have moved across the globe several times. I work part time in the sewing department of a local un-named store and between school runs, swimming lessons and play groups, I love all things craft :-)