Monica Poole and Elaine Lye

I am a member of the Australian Sewing Guild, and while I am usually unable to attend their Neighbourhood Groups, I do like to attend their Industry Days. Yesterday it was at Niagara Park, Central Coast, NSW. Monica Poole from Moonshine Designs was our first speaker. Monica has a fashion industry background, but has worked on Patchwork Patterns and designs - especially Quilt-As-You-Go designs - she is now venturing into fashion patterns. Her work is just lovely! Her output is impressive! She has been using the Texture Magic or Shrinking Sheet products to add texture to some vests ....




It's been a little while since I've done a quilt - and yes I purchased a couple of patterns - sounds like a good autumnal project!
Sandy Curtin was the next speaker - she has an amazing collection of fabric, buttons and bits and pieces for sale - her new shop is in Whittingham near Singleton.
Her hubby sells old farm machinery and she looks after vintage textiles - what a combo!

Elaine Lye was another speaker. She was very cool and had a very interesting story - TAFE teacher and world traveller ..... her work is amazing - she is a textile artist in the true sense of the word! Here is a Shibori jacket, that must have a gazillion different techniques in each little patch - the more you looked, the more you found .......

She was prone to buying tablecloths as she travelled and then made them into jackets and embellished them .....
She doesn't throw anything away - here is a little bag made from fabric strips knitted together.

Here is Elaine ....
And finally, here is one of her great necklaces - I might have to look into doing some classes with her!



Elaine is one of the tutors at the next Guild Convention in Ballarat - the convention has a most impressive line up of classes - i can't go this time, but hopefully one day!

Thirteen

My baby turned 13 this week - another milestone! I printed some photos onto the inkjet fabric sheets, found a motif from a purchased cushion that was no longer functioning, and decided to add a couple of cool iron on patches and some fabric for the borders - yes, another birthday cushion ...... sorry about the colour on this - oops!

I unpicked some of her old Size 7 jeans for the cushion back.
I used applique foot Twenty Three (the number two character has gone into early retirement on this computer ...!) to applique the sequinned fairy ......
I stitched together the unpicked jean pieces to try to get some kind of flat squarish shape - I did two rows of topstitching to represent proper jean seams and I kept the raw edges visible.
I squared off the back of cushion shape and added some bleached denim to fill in the blanks.

here is the completed cushion top, and of course, I used Goldies Cushion Inserts (70cm),

I use invisible zippers in the side seam.
She loved it! Happy Birthday my dear little Sweet Pea!

The Drum

Nicole is one of my students .... here is her DRUM BEAN BAG.......
She bought the pattern at the recent Newcastle Craft Expo .....
The brown fabric is a strip of chenille, the remaining fabrics are all patchwork strips.
The top part features a free machined piece with Texture Magic (or Shrinking Sheet) underneath a layer of batting and the top layer is homespun. Isn't she clever!! Of course filling it with the beans was best part!!!
Happy 17th Wedding Anniversary Pete and Nicole!!!