Jasmine's picture

My seven year old great-niece draws the best pictures! They are beautifully designed and have lovely detail. She sent me this picture of herself playing soccer last week with her stepmother and little baby brother in a baby buggy in the background. I think that may be her older brother playing soccer too but I'm not sure about that. Look at the sun wearing spectacles! And the lovely action of the players.

Anyway, I wanted to make her something special with her artwork and decided to look at the t-shirts in town to see what I could find. I found a long tunic with a vinyl transfer in four parts so I printed two copies of her picture onto a t-shirt transfer sheet and ironed them onto fine white cotton. Then I sewed them onto two of the sections on the t-shirt. I used the small stipple stitch on my pfaff machine and I used embroidery tearaway on the back of the t-shirt fabric to give it stability while I stitched. Do you think she'll like it? It looks very large but I think its meant to be worn with leggings and maybe a belt.

Gluten Free Brown Bread!

Kate of Gluten Free Gobsmacked posted a recipe for a great Gluten Free Brown Bread the other day and tried it, as she specified, in a loaf tin however it took a lot longer to cook than 30min and it stuck to the tin although I had oiled it. I had to break it up to get it out of the tin. But it was very yummy and I have been having the broken pieces spread with jam in a bowl with milk and yoghurt and a banana for my breakfast every day this week.

So I decided to try it as a flat bread which is how I make my brown rice bread every week. It came out beautifully. I made one tray of the brown pepita bread which has a lovely heavy 'brown bread' texture and flavour and three of the brown rice which actually taste and look like a white bread. Because I make 3 or 4 trays of the 'white' bread a week all mixed up in one bowl and then divided between the trays, the trays are not always evenly loaded and some of the slices are thicker than others. When it comes time to make a meal I often split the thicker slices with a sharp knife and make sandwiches. All the slices are frozen as loaves in plastic bags.

So here are pictures of a tray of uncooked dough, the cooked loaf, the brown bread cooling and the last two white loaves cooling with the first two loaves stacked ready to freeze. 

A Happy Village

I spent the whole of Sunday in the very pleasant company of 19 other Cotton-On Quilters. We attended a workshop run by Dianne Southey who was teaching Karen Eckmeier's Happy Villages.

The villages are made of zig zag shapes inspired by the tetris game. You cut your pieces first from a limited number of fabric squares and then place them randomly, jutting up to each other (or overlapping) on a cotton batting square. Then you cut rooves, steps, doors, balustrades and windows etc and the village magically comes to life. All the pieces are glued on with tiny dots of glue instead of using vliesofix or wonderunder. To finish it, a piece of tulle is placed on top of the completed piece, backing underneath the batting and all the layers are pinned and then quilted. Mine needs a bit more quilting and I cut the tulle from the sky area after I had quilted around the outside edge of the village. It also needs binding.

I don't know if I'll do another village - too  many small fiddly pieces but I might use the glue instead of vliesofix sometimes. I'm not sure about the tulle over the finished piece either - it changes the colours too much but I am considering using it over an appliqued, raw edged background with uncovered motifs over the top of it.

NANZQ Quilts Aotearoa

I've entered 3 quilts in NANZQ Quilts Aotearoa this year and I heard today that 2 of them have been accepted. Its a juried show and the best reason for entering is to get the judges' critique on your work. I think its funny though that the quilt I like best was the one rejected. Now we are all waiting for next week, 17th September to hear how the judging went. I'm not expecting to win a prize though, the competition is very hot and I'm happy to just have my quilts accepted.
 

  

These are the three I entered: Orange Vase, Delphinium II and Delphinium III. Delphinium II was not accepted. The judges' comments on Delphinium II were: "Nice background, great colour combinations, flowers need grounding to inner border." I guess I have to wait until after the judging to get the comments on the other two.