Quilting, especially oversewing. Tips for rank beginners from an uninitiate.

Yes I know. The noun "Uninitiate" is taking extreme liberties with the English language. It's my turn ok?

Things I've learnt from my first quilt:

1. If the ladies at quilting class tell you that your first project is a single bed sized quilt tell them politely to get stuffed and make a cot quilt. A single bed sized quilt is far too big for a beginner and becomes overwhelming. Get yourself a quick taste of success and do something small. If you don't know any babies make a cot quilt and give it to the cluckiest woman of reproductive age that you know - or you could make a table runner.

2. If you capitulate and decide to make a huge quilt make sure you have a huge table to work on. If you don't have one, buy one. If you're not going to buy a larger table you are going to be doing a lot of your work on the floor, so, join a gym. This is so that you can get onto your knees and back to standing up again at least a hundred times in an afternoon without needing a Radox bath and a massage afterwards.

3. If you decide to make a huge quilt do not oversew it yourself no matter how expensive professional oversewing seems to be. If you like the finished look of your patchwork try to remember that you stand a good chance of wrecking it if you do your own quilting. Like I did! :-( If you do oversew yourself, keep it simple: long straight lines only starting from the middle and working out. I tried to complicate things and have ruined my first quilt. This is heartbreaking after all the effort that went into putting it together!!!

4. If you've ignored all my sage advice so far and still want to do some complicated oversewing I have more things to say that might put you off. Don't. Don't do it. No really. Don't.

Didn't work? *sigh* read on then.

A large quilt is extremely heavy and has to be rolled or scrunched up in order to fit under your sewing machine arm:



With a quilt this size and a sewing machine this size turning the quilt is going to be a bitch if not impossible so you are mostly limited to straight lines especially in the centre of the quilt where your rolled up portion will be thickest.

If you do not have a huge table, the heavy rolled up portions drag all over the place driving you nuts. You will need an assortment of chairs scattered around your tiny table to take the weight and the patience to sew in very short bursts, readjusting the quilt after each burst.

If you do not have a walking foot, you need to keep a huge amount of pressure on the quilt to ensure the top moves at the same rate as the bottom. This gets harder and harder as you go along. Your arms and back will be sore. You will be grumpy. Quilting will not be fun.

Some more sage advice for stubborn, bloody-minded beginner home oversewers based on my experience:

Don't oversew your quilt. You're still ignoring me aren't you?

If this is your first patchworking effort it is likely that there will be some not so straight spots. In this case, DON'T attempt to quilt by stitching in the ditch. This will magnify every single crooked patch in your work. (My own quilt has every single crooked bit magnified because I thought it would be easier to follow the seam lines. Pha!!)

If you've made a quilt with contrasting light and dark patches (as I have) no matter what colour you choose for the oversewing your mistakes will stand out. Either the light thread on dark fabric mistakes or the dark thread on light fabric mistakes.

If you're still thinking of doing some complicated oversewing on a home machine with a large quilt for your first quilt, good luck to you. I'll see you in rehab. :-( Personally it's the most difficult and cumbersome piece of sewing I've ever taken on and I'm going beyond back of burke crazy with it. Hopefully I've put you off completely and you are frantically googling for professional oversewers....

Using procrastination activities to monitor your reluctance to perform a task.

I am procrastinating. Specifically, I am postponing talking to the car sales reps by disposing of the dead ringtail possum in our back yard. THAT is how much I don't want to talk to the sales reps. I'd rather be dealing with dead animals.

Crying over spilt soup... and tax.

When you've been one on one with an energetic toddler all day, and your husband comes home from his air-conditioned office and complains that he felt a "bit tired this afternoon", is it ok to fume inwardly and fantasize about pulling his scrotum up over his ears? Or should I just sigh and remember that suffering is contextual and we all suffer according to our own personal pain continuums?

Nah, fuck it. Fantasizing about doing actual physical harm is far more satisfying.

Today was 37 degrees. Today we stayed inside a stinking hot house all day. Today, this is what I really wanted to get to:

Yesterday I bought the borders, backing and wadding and I'm desperate to get started oversewing so I can just FINISH the damn thing.

Instead I had to do this:

WOOPS forgot the folders. That ended up being only half of them:


Why did I have to do the boring tax? Because I thought today was Wednesday, why else? I completely stressed myself out trying to get everything sorted because I thought our appointment with the accountant was tomorrow.

The poor toddler desperately wanted to help and we just ended up at logger heads because she wanted to sort, and write and add up just like Mummy and of course I yelled at her every time she touched anything. I tried to make up for it by letting her stir the soup at the stove "like a grown up" (the soup was cold and the stove unlit). She had a great time:


I didn't:

...and the carnage the next day...

Last night we had our dearest family friends and their extended family over for a BBQ (lucky I cleaned up eh? Or could they have been the driving force?) six adults and seven kids ranging in ages from two to fourteen made for a noisy, splashy, lovely evening. The following photos are of the aftermath that will take less time to deal with than the spring clean on Monday! It was the first real relax I've had since the silly season, good company, good food and good kids always does it for me.

You can see how much of the Monstera had to go before none of it was touching the BBQ. For those who are worried that we killed it, don't. Monsteras are veritable weeds, you can cut them back to stumps and they'll come right back up.


You can see the reflective inserts on 2yos life jacket in this one (up against the brick wall). Thank goodness for the life jacket. 2yo decided to hop into the pool twice without consulting an adult and the second time was when she fell in. Worth every penny.


I also BBQed my first whole fish - Trevally for those who remember my Orange Roughy episode - and it was yummy.

Outside "Tidy" my bottom, outside OVERHAUL is more like it.

Yesterday, while just being at home I decided to tidy up out back so that we could use our BBQ for our guests tomorrow night. I thought it would just be a matter of sweeping and cleaning the chairs.

Yeah Right.

In order to get to the BBQ I had to cut away the Monstera foliage, remove the bikes, the gardening equipment, the ladder... *sigh*

I only remembered to take before and after shots after I'd moved the bikes and the worm farm to the shed and 11yo had started to move everything off the concrete to the lawn so we could sweep.


In this photo you can see the Monstera trying to devour the BBQ and the ladder under the table where it has been "stored" all winter. The concrete is supposed to be red. It's covered in dry dirt and dust. The yellow tonka truck has not been moved for months and is home to all sorts of multi-legged fauna.



From another angle: most of the things on the table have been picked up off the ground.


A close up of the clam shell sand pit cover where I have dumped "stuff" when I can't think of what to do with it. It's mostly gardening stuff. Most of it could go in the shed I suppose. Only the shed is now full of bikes...


Some of the broken pool gear that is going to the tip.


The rest of the pool gear, most of which is degraded beyond repair and is going to the tip.


I found this under a pile of leaves near the Monstera - for the uninitiated it is computer software. I wonder if Hubby has been looking for it?


I decided to make it a spring clean and got the 11yo to do the windows...


...while the 2yo washed the dirty sand pit things.



Then 11yo did the windows AGAIN (poor bugger with his perfectionist Mummy!) while 2yo cleaned the chairs.


11yo also helped prune the Monstera, did some sweeping, shifted the tip rubbish to the front and... oh, cleaned a chair. Mummy did the rest. I publish the following photos as proof that this area can be spotless. This is as clean and tidy as it will be for the rest of the year. Guaranteed.





So, all you people at work. Wanna swap?

The breast feeding pics that Facebook banned.

Can't remember how I found this collection of breast feeding photos that were removed from Facebook, but it's enlightening. A couple of the more pertinent (not to mention old) points that were made were:

Men's nipples can be photographed and those photos published without comment but a woman's areola is obscene. One of many examples of double standards within our nice western patriarchy and...Facebook.

Photos of topless women holding babies are pornographic according to Facebook - you can bet they haven't removed any photos of topless men holding their tots.

The funniest photo is captioned: "If breast feeding on facebook disturbs you, please feel free to put a blanket over your head." Any woman who has fed a baby under a blanket so as not to frighten the general public with the sight of a baby having lunch will know precisely why this is hilarious.

In my opinion, if photos of breasts doing what they are supposed to do appears to be pornographic to the viewer, then the viewer might want to ask themselves some pertinent questions with regard to what turns them on. Breast worshipping, (or viewing bare breasts as obscene which equates to a hatred of breasts), is a cultural phenomenon. For some reason our culture seems to be afraid of breasts, as though the sight of a nipple might drive men mad and contaminate the minds of little children. Fear of exposed body parts is one of the more ridiculous social norms I grew up with, and one of the hardest for me to overcome (if you think I exaggerate consider that I feel naked just showing my ankles), yet I can still see past my inhibitions to the logic of the situation.

The logic is this: Breasts are milk making machines, it's a biologically hardwired thing humans have going on. Even men's breasts, usually considered redundant, can be made to produce milk. What breasts cannot do is possess magical power over the minds of others. Breasts cannot make a man have an erection or desire sexual intercourse, nor can they make little children into sexual deviants. Amazing though they are, breasts simply do not have those powers. Despite all appearances to the contrary, those extraordinary powers lie elsewhere, in the context. Our poor beleaguered breasts exist within a society that indoctrinates us with a sexual view of our milk making machines. And SEX, oh my goodness, SEX is BAD. Soaked in our deeply Christian culture is a morbid fear of SEX. We do not talk about the SEX, we hint at it, we suggest that there may be the merest possibility that it may be going on. We protect our children from the SEX while allowing them to see footage of people shooting each other. I fear I may have digressed...

The upshot is this: breasts have no special powers other than making milk and providing a soft place for children to rest their heads. All the other powers attributed to them are actually sourced in our craniums. It is the mind that makes the breast a sexual object. It is definitely the mind that makes a picture of a breast feeding baby pornographic. Facebook needs its head read.

Take a shower while the toddler roams free - how bad can it be?

How bad could it be? Well, the toilet could eat your toddler...

Normally I don't attend to personal hygiene when I'm alone with 2yo. She's too active, too curious, too inclined to climb and far too aware that when I'm in the shower I can't see into the other rooms. What about nap time? I'm on the internet, I can't do that when she's awake either. You can see that I have my priorities well and truly sorted out.

Today however, things were getting a little extreme due to us being on holidays and me being with 2yo full time. So I promised myself it would be super quick, told 2yo what I was doing and dived under the water.

Five minutes later I hear the crash of the toilet seat and figure that she's going to the toilet again (her new hobby) but this time it's followed by a wail, "I WANT MY DUMMEEEEEEE!!!!!!!" 2yo usually only says this when she's been thwarted, she doesn't sound hurt so I yell out that she'll have to wait until I'm out. Normally she would come in to the bathroom at this point and threaten to tear the shower curtains down if the dummy doesn't appear instantly. This time she is mysteriously absent and the wails are getting more and more insistent and even a tad distressed. *sigh* I reassure myself that if she's capable of that much noise she's not in mortal danger and cut my shower short.

When I find her (using the sound detection devices growing on either side of my head) I find her up to her armpits in the loo. The poor tyke had decided she was going to go to the toilet like a grown up, took her little seat insert out, and fell into the toilet bum first. All I can see of 2yo is her head and arms and her legs from the knees down. She's done that folding-herself-in-half trick again. Last time she folded herself in half she fell through the back of a chair bum first. If she hadn't become truly distressed when she saw me I'd have taken a photo. She looked hilarious. I think it might be a while before we can coax her onto the toilet again, she wasn't a happy little girl. Who'd be happy after a prolonged dip in the bog?

While I'm here, I just have to say something about my new iron. It's so good I'm scared of it. I'm scared of making an ironing mistake just in case the creases never come out. It glides over everything, uses steam power rather than heat, and makes disturbing guttural noises as though it means business into the bargain. By comparison my old iron was a hot water bottle. I LOVE good engineering and Sunbeam have won me over again. Good on THEM!