Stitching For The Tipsy Girls

I've talked before about our cross stitch group of five, we meet every Monday afternoon. From reference to the number of celebratory bottles of champagne we quoff every time a cross stitch piece is completed, the title The Tipsy Cross Stitchers has been born.

Every Christmas we go out to lunch (well, we go out to lunch every couple of months to be honest) and we give each other a small present. We are treated to delectable home made goodies such as rumballs, shortbread and rocky road, plus macadamia nuts straight off the tree and other treats such as nougat and little xmas plates. I used to give home made apricot jam, but since our apricot tree decided it was no longer going to be a prolific fruiter, jam has been off the gift list. So, what to give?

Back when I made a roll to store my cross stitch in a few months ago, Anne started jokingly saying that I should make everybody one for Xmas. Hmm. Hmmmmmmm, I thought, that's not a bad idea! So, I've been pondering this for a while, how to make them, what fabric to use and so on. I knew I needed to make them longer than my existing one as it only holds a medium size piece of aida cloth, so if they were a lot longer then I shouldn't put wadding in it because it would end up fat and enormous.

I was struggling with how to make these rolls look, when one night I had an epiphany which stretched into a big think for a couple of days. I decided to make them almost like a club item, using a photo of us all, and the title "The Tipsy Cross Stitchers". I had a pack of 5 sheets of photo transfer paper in the cupboard, so I got to work on the computer and made up 3 image sheets containing what I needed.

Next was lots of thinking to work out measurements. A nice glass (or two) of chenin blanc assisted. :-)


Although I was using the same fabric for everyone, I decided to give each lady her own colour scheme for the edging, her name and the closure buttons.

I ironed Vliesofix onto all the photo transfer sheets then cut out and fused it to the fabric. Then I machine stitched around the edges to hold it all in place.

I bought 5 mailing tubes from the post office and glued on thin wadding to pad them a bit and make the fabric sit a bit more snugly. Then I folded the fabric in half and stitched a seam just over 4 inches down, which gave me the right size sleeve of fabric to slide over the cardboard tube. Then I ran a seam up each side and stitched a big cross right the way across to hold both layers of fabric together nicely. Finally I added a binding across the bottom, trapping a couple of loops of elastic which looped over 2 buttons to hold the roll closed.

Da dum! Here they are.

Wildlife Confusion

We are currently relaxing, watching a tv show on Australian wildlife, and the current section is about the platypus.

Meshell pipes up...
"I learnt about them in school, they can give you an electric shock".

"Huh? The tiny furry platypus? Now I know the males have a poisonous spur on their hind leg, but no, no electricity. Aren't you talking about an electric eel?"

A discussion ensues, with M insisting I look it up. Ok.
She is wrong, of course - and she calls herself Australian.
I comment about our hard earned dollars wasted on her education.
Steve (the master of smart-arse-ness) then ponders whether there is enough power in a platypus to run a toaster.


I concede that she may be confused. Playtpuses can use electroception to catch their prey, which is the ability to detect electric fields generated by muscular contractions of disturbed shrimps etc.

Sigh... don't you love it when you collect great fodder for teasing. :-)

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

I've been on a trip down memory lane. I kept journals when my children were tiny, and I had a re-read this week. One item deserves a mention here.

Allow me to set the scene. I am at the doctor's surgery, and in tow is 16 month old Meshell, an articulate child with an impressive vocabulary (hasn't changed much eh). She is wandering around the doctor's surgery chattering to herself.

I have to have an internal examination, the scourge of being a girl. I'm a bit tense as you can imagine. Ok, it's time to lie on the examination table after removing the appropriate clothing. Meshell notices this and comments "Mummy ni-ni's".

Then Meshell spots my abandoned clothes next to the examination table. She wanders over, picks up my undies and waves them around loudly proclaiming "Mummy pucki pas" (plastic pants for those needing interpretation), then proceeds to wear them on her head whilst continuing her pottering around the room. Then of course, as is the way with a toddler, she wouldn't give them back and I was faced with the prospect of chasing her around the room whilst nude from the waist down. Thankfully I was able to use my superior grown-up intellect and tricked her into bringing them to me with the bribe of a biscuit.

The doctor struggled to maintain his professional composure and I have to say that the whole experience was lightened up nicely. Kids!

Stitching Kandinsky

Monday afternoons is our cross stitch group, but as my brain is a bit befuddled from this blasted virus I thought I'd play safe and bring some knitting instead. Remember how I raved about Melody Johnson's mitred square cushions and I just had to have a try at them? I've been doing a few squares here and there and this is the first opportunity I've had to see them all together. hmm, I think a few adjustments are in order. I don't like the big square in the bottom right corner, it seems insipid. I'm inclined to do some more with black in them, I like the contrast in the centre square. Anyway, I'll just keep churnin' them out and then have a big play and use the best blend on the front and the crappy ones on the back.

This is my current cross stitch project. It's a Kandinsky painting that I converted to a cross stitch pattern with one of those software programmes. Lordy, I hope it's legal and Mr K isn't rolling in his grave.... still, it's only going on my wall so hopefully I wont be clapped in irons and forced to eat gruel.

I'm quite enjoying this project as it's something a bit different. I was interested to see that the cross stitch conversion programme didn't quite know how to cope with the geometric lines and has not interpreted them as lines at all, just hints of lines. Actually I rather like the effect, gives it a unique look.

My friend Anne is also stitching a pattern made by this cross stitch programme, but her pattern was created from a family photograph of a house on a river. It looks fantastic and she is stitching it on linen which makes it look doubly fantastic.

I'm glad I went to sewing (I nearly piked out cos of illness), it always lightens my spirit as we get down to the serious duty of chit chat. It was an interesting blend of conversation with such things as people being inadvertently locked in the toilet to keeping travel diaries to the US veto on vegemite. And, I must tell you, they were on the champagne AGAIN!

Tea and Sympathy

It's been a hard week.
What with me battling disease and pestilence whilst soldiering on at work, cough cough sniff sniff...

Finally finished work today and joyous with the thought of four days off I made myself comfortable on the bed, laptop on my lap(obviously), catching up on some reading. Here I was stalking Crazy Aunt Purl's blog and the next thing I know I have re-awakened from unexpected slumber, with my finger still poised on the PgDn button.

And at the end of my bed is my son Paul, just standing there, leaning over slightly, just staring. And smirking.
No-one has any sympathy for me in this house.

Actually I've just managed to persuade Meshell to make me a cup of tea. It took a lot of begging and hugging but I now have my cup of rejuvenating brew. Thank you darling child.

Never Let Them Shop Unsupervised

Steve needed some new shoes for work. Now, I don't know about you but I think about $75 is a fair price to pay for decent work shoes. Anyway, we were in this shoe shop, with "30% off" signs everywhere, and Steve selects a number of pairs of shoes to try, most of which have price tags around $90. Yep, that's fair enough. He plucks one more shoe from the display shelf which has no price tag (and this should have been a clue) and this proves to be the most comfortable. Yep, these are the shoes for him so off he goes to the counter to pay. $170!!!!! And I think they were the only pair of shoes in the shop that weren't 30% off. Flippin' heck, they'd better last for years and years.


Steve feels he redeemed himself with this however...

This is the innards of our dead computer (look at all that dust!!). Apparently the fan has seized up in the power supply. So Steve pulled it out and bought another one. He tells me that he expected it to cost $100 and it ended up being $50, and apparently that makes it ok to spend $170 on shoes. I will continue to love him as he fixed the computer. :-)

Aren't computers amazing things. I mean, look at all those bits and bobs in the photo. How did anyone ever manage to realise that all those wires and thingys all attached to each other would mean that we can write Blogs and other amazing stuff.


Sometimes I don't know how I put up with him you know. Look at this example. This is my laundry, haven for washing clothes, drying clothes, home to the odd bucket and bottle of bleach. You can therefore understand my astonishment when I discovered this intruder. I believe the excuse was that he didn't want it to get dirty outside. Needless to say the outboard found a new home in the shed the next day...


He has his moments though. This was his most fabulous fishing expedition in his life, when we visited Albany and he went out boat fishing with a friend. This is a Samson fish and we're still munching through kilos of tasty fillets in the freezer.

Friends and tipsy Cross stitch

Smiles all round after a yummy lunch and a nice glass of Goundrey unwooded chardonnay, these are my lovely friends Wilma, Anne, Angie and Leanne. Every Monday afternoon we get together for our sewing group where we cross stitch, solve the world's problems and some of our own as well. And every 3 months we take ourselves out to lunch to celebrate, just for the heck of it.

And speaking of cross stitch, these are my last two completed projects.

This old fashioned sewing room cross stitch came in a kit complete with the little charms to sew on later. I added a few of my own to make it 'mine' if you know what I mean. I quite like cross stitches like this, where the picture is broken up rather than covering the entire cloth. You can sort of 'tick off' each section when complete, makes for self satisfaction.

This Christmas stocking was a secret present for my quilty friend Pennie. It was the first time I'd cross stitched on linen and I really like the effect. A little more difficult to do but by using a sharper needle than usual to negotiate the knobbly bits in the linen it went along ok. I love the intricate detail on this, it made it very interesting to sew, albeit challenging as well.

We have a tradition in our sewing group than whenever anyone completes a project they have to bring a bottle of champers. Any excuse for a glass of bubbly. Some ladies have been known to complete very tiny cross stitches to keep the champers flowing regularly. One of our teenagers was surprised to learn that we only have champagne on completion of projects. She thought one of us just brought a bottle every week as part of afternoon tea.