Sewing Bee

Tonight we are meeting at my place for a late night sewing bee.

All machines are whirring.

We are making these:

Alana’s first ever patchwork – not bad, huh?

A little revealing…

Oh my, I have worked hard this week… and yet I feel I have so little to show for it.

This week I wrote my first quilt pattern for my (coming soon) website. The first pattern is the hardest to write. It needs to exist as a template for all of the others. It needs to be styled and designed so the others can have a consistent look and feel to them. A lot of thinking goes into the writing of the first pattern.

At this point I will digress and reveal to you a little about my new website. When you visit it (when it exists) you will be invited to register. Upon registering you will create a profile for yourself. When you purchase a pattern it will be delivered to your profile. You can download it and print it at your own leisure. Pretty cool, hey?

SO… I wrote my first pattern. I included lots of photos and diagrams as well as my drawings for the applique. I styled it beautifully, made it colourful and appealing and wonderful. THEN… I saved the pattern as a PDF and discovered that it was over 8MB of information. Too, too big. Nobody wants to download 8MB!

blah!

I was so pleased with the pattern. I had worked on it for days. I was sure it was finished, but I had to go straight back into problem solving mode.

I spent one whole day revising. Making pictures smaller, cropping images closely, removing bits and pieces. By the end of the day I had the fifteen pages down to just 3.6MB. I can live with that. It looks, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same and yet it had taken an extra ten hours to get it to that point!

Now I have a template and a system and seven completed quilts. Life is good!

Work in progress – dedicated to Margot, who wants to be a dolphin trainer.

How can you say I’m shellfish?

My computer is playing up. The internet is dropping in and out. The modem may be cactus.

The whole affair is making me crabby!

Me Hearties

I am truly working at one hundred miles an hour getting quilts and patterns done. All my energies and all my thinking is directed towards actually accomplishing something. Not dreaming about it, not talking about it, not wondering about it…DOING it. All those times that I have failed to achieve my potential need to be put behind me as I move steadily towards my goal.

This is scary stuff for me. Controlling my failure is easier than achieving success. Writing it here – give you little looks, sneak peeks and tiny insights is pushing me forward. I apologise that I seem to have become a one-track record, a single topic blog. It won’t take much longer until all is revealed.

Lesley confused me a little in the last post by saying she liked the dark green quilt. That one is actually blue, the green is an applique. It also has this…

Arrr, me hearties!

Half Way

How many quilts does it take to launch a website?

I have decided that the answer to that is ten. Ten quilts to be designed, appliqued, quilted and bound before my new project can be launched. Ten quilt patterns to be written, drawn up, illustrated, edited and previewed.

That is a lot of work. That takes a lot of time. That takes a lot of sustained focus. Quite a challenge.

I am happy to say, though…

five are quilts are finished.

Half way…

yet still so much to do!

Six degrees

I recently watched the most fascinating documentary called How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer. (you can actually watch it if you click that link and have an hour to spare)

You know that game – six degrees of Kevin Bacon? It started out as a drinking game. You name an actor, any actor, then through connections in movie casts you need to jump to Kevin Bacon in six steps. It is a silly game.

The incredible thing occurred when mathematicians decided to plot out the mathematical theories behind the game. They found an equation which they then applied to other networks – electrical networks, airline networks, telephone networks, brain neuron networks. Remarkably they found that the equation applied to every sort of network. This developed a new field of science – network science.

The next breakthrough occurred in studying the internet, with the realisation that within every network there are hubs. Major players with lots and lots of links. Again a mathematical representation was formed and it was found to apply to all networks.

Then another leap occurred. Network science was applied to DNA mapping. Scientist and mathematicians joined together to represent diseases as a network. To show how one genetic condition can link to another. They found that some diseases are key hubs – cure those and you might just wipe out many networked diseases.

Thus Kevin Bacon helped to cure cancer.

I am in awe of the human brain- our ability to think, reason, to be creative in all endeavours. It gives me a lot of faith in our humanity.

Gutter Guard

This weekend Pip got busy up a ladder.

He checked out places that haven’t been checked for quite a while.

He removed all the leaves from the gutters.

All under the watch of adoring eyes.

He’s growing to be such a good man.

Cleverpants Friend

I know someone very clever who has had a magazine profile published in a national quilting magazine.

A selection of her amazing quilts are beautifully photographed for the enjoyment of the readers.

Nine well written pages documenting her creative life and detailing her creative processes.

And…

she was even kind enough to mention me!

Thanks, Kirsty. Very kind of you.

Were it not for blogging, Kirsty and I might have crossed paths at some point, but would never have really had the chance to get to know each other. Now we meet once a week to share an evening of stitching, story telling and, generally, swearing with mouths filled with chocolate. We share our creative secrets and offer support in our creative ambitions. We may yet even manage push each other toward achieving our ever elusive potentials!

Good on you, for your magazine profile. May it lead you to bigger and better things!

Sing!

If you went to primary school in Australia it is likely that you enjoyed the ABC Sing! program. I loved this. Each year we would get a new book of songs, then once a week turn the radio on in the classroom and sing along with our books in front of us.

My head is still filled with snippets of songs that appear from time to time. Songs that I distinctly remember singing while listening to the radio in the classroom.

One song was this one, which has been swirling around in my brain since 1979. If you were at school then it is probably some where in your brain too.

I would sing it to my children when it was time to hurry up, get a move on, get into it.

Now, in the cycle of life, they often sing it to me when they want me to hurry up, get a move on, get on with it.

Youtube, I love you!

Sneak Peak

From this…

to this.

My secret project is continuing along nicely.