Some of the horses

Some of the horses I see on my morning walk. This paddock has about 13.

The ‘headbands’ are used to keep the flies out of their eyes and thus stop infection. The eye parts are shadecloth-type mesh.

2012 FMQ Challenge: January

I had fun practising free motion leaves, the first ‘lesson’ in the 2012 FMQ Challenge.

I think I improved, and I enjoyed trying some thread enhancements I’d never done before.

I used my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen to do the quilting, and except for the final practice piece, all practice sandwiches were done on off-white sheeting, with some offcut cotton or bamboo batting (I can’t remember which as I made these practice sandwiches ages ago!). The bobbin thread in all cases was a soft pink Deco-Bob.

Here are my practice pieces, with a little about each. Click a picture to see it in full size.

Practice piece 1

My first attempt; dark green rayon thread:

Front:

Back:

Practice piece 2

I enhanced this piece with some echo quilting; same dark green rayon thread as first piece.

Front:

Back:

Practice piece 3

I elongated these leaves so they were more like eucalypt leaves, and made them stand out by flattening the background with very tight bubbles (a la Susan Brubaker Knapp’s approach). Dark green rayon thread with an off-white Deco-Bob thread for the bubbles.

Front:

Back:

Practice piece 4

To avoid getting into a ‘leaves are green’ mindset, I used a purple rayon thread (Robison Anton) for the base leaves. I then went around them loosely with a fluoro orange thread (Mettler?), then again with a variegated metal thread with copper, gold, red, and green in it (Guterman?). I then used a lighter green rayon thread (Mettler) to echo the leaves and make them puff out a bit more.

Front:

Practice piece 5

Still sticking with the ‘leaves aren’t always green’ theme, I decided to do some elongated leaves in a blue and tan variegated cotton thread (Superior?), then went around them with an aqua blue variegated thread (Rainbows), then I used a silver metallic thread (Wonderfil) for the stems and veins of the leaves ONLY, then followed that with tiny bubbles in the same silver thread. I quite liked how this turned out and call it my ‘Blue Gum’ piece!

Front:

Triptych of practice pieces — #3, 4, and 5 (right to left); each section measures about 5 x 6 inches.

Practice piece 6

My final piece. I decided to get away from the off-white fabric and used a large scrap of bright pink cotton I’ve had for 25+ years! I just stitched basic leaves, but in silver to show the effect of metallic thread (Wonderfil) on a plain background.

Front:

Back:

Grayscale:

I changed the photo to grayscale to show the stitching in metallic thread as the bright pink fabric doesn’t photograph well.

So there you have it — January’s challenge completed!

(These photos are also in Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhondamadeit/sets/72157628756341477/)

2011 blog stats report

WordPress.com compiled a summary report of this blog’s stats for 2011. It’s here: http://sandgroper14.wordpress.com/2011/annual-report/

I like that the number of visitors to this blog would have filled the Sydney Opera House 19 times over

2012: The year I participate in my first online quilting challenge

I’ve signed up for the Free Motion Quilting Quilting Challenge here: http://sewcalgal.blogspot.com/p/free-motion-quilt-challenge.html

I’ve never done anything like this before — I’ve always directed myself, not had the directions given to me, so that will be a challenge in itself! Two friends of mine have also signed up, so it will be interesting to compare notes.

Etsy Treasuries #75 to #118

I’ve been very slack about putting up screen shots of Etsy Treasuries my items have been featured in. In fact, it’s March 2011 since I put up a gallery!

So here they are (click on a small image to show it full size):

We drove 700 km — for a steak dinner!

I’ve got a birthday coming up in a week or two, but as it’s really close to Christmas and my Mum’s 80th birthday, we decided to celebrate my birthday early. How? By driving 700 km for a steak dinner! Actually, it was a 756 km round trip (for those in the US, that’s about 400 miles.)

Was it worth it? Yep! We did it last year too, though then we stayed two nights. This time we stayed just the one night, so we drove 4+ hours down to Albany, checked in to the accommodation, went out to dinner, slept, checked out of the accommodation, and drove 4+ hours home again! We were gone about 28 hours all told.

Other than the fabulous meal, wine (we took with us a 1997 vintage Penfolds Bin 389), and company, it was so nice to view the landscape on the drive down and back. It made a pleasant change for our eyes from focusing on a computer screen (or sewing machine stitching area) all the time. Of course, it’s summer, so the landscape was pretty yellow/brown. Some wheat had been harvested, but not all.

We stayed at a serviced apartment right at the bottom of the main street of Albany, directly opposite the new Entertainment Centre and below the old post office building, which has such great castle-like turrets! The apartment is one from Albany Harbourside Apartments. There are pictures below, but I forgot to take a picture of the kitchen/dining facilities in the apartment!

Dinner was at Rustler’s Steakhouse. We started with a single serve of four beef and field mushroom croquettes with a plum sauce that we shared. Then I repeated last year’s meal by ordering the rib eye steak on the bone, medium-rare, with blue cheese butter. My husband also had the rib eye on the bone, but with a mushroom sauce. Our steaks were just fabulous. They were cooked to perfection, had plenty of flavour, were tender,  and had a lovely (but not overpowering) char flavour. The blue cheese butter complemented my steak perfectly. It was a big meal, but we got through it Before and after pics of my steak, below (and with my husband’s bone that I gnawed on — he’s not really into bones!). Sorry about the quality of the pics — I took them with the camera on my phone (still not used to it), while holding the phone above my head, and with no flash!

After we let dinner settle for a while, we split a home-made lemon meringue pie for dessert, which was served with a very subtle and delicate chocolate honeycomb ice cream.

All in all, a great 28-hour break away from normal life!

(Click on a small picture to see it full size)

BTW, we saw a few animals along the drive to and from Albany, other than the usual suspects (cattle, horses, sheep, various native birds), including: a snake, a king skink, several bobtails goannas, a very fast and scared rabbit!, kangaroos, some emus, a paddock of ostriches, black alpacas, donkeys, etc.

And we also spotted a billboard advertising a shearing company called: “Peeling with Feeling”

Smoke from Margaret River fires

Last week, there were some devastating fires in the Margaret River region, about 90 minutes south of where we live. The smoke blanketed the entire southwest, including Perth.

Here’s the sunset from my home office window on one of the very smoky days. You can *just* make out the ridge of sand dunes in the far distance — they are normally in clear view — and you can’t see the estuary at all.

Here’s that same view on a normal morning, a week after the fires:

Cheeky crows

Recently, we’ve had a plethora of large moths, but I don’t think that it’s the moths that the crows have been after — I think it’s something much smaller (ant? spiders? midges? mosquitoes?). Sometimes the crows (and magpies) peck at the corners of the floor to ceiling windows in the spare bedrooms — it’s loud enough to sound like someone’s knocking at the door! Occasionally, they’ve jumped on to the window ledge outside where I sit in my office and attack whatever little beasties they find lurking in the crevices and nooks and crannies. So I took some pictures of one of them the other day.

I love where I live!

Here are some pics from my morning walk (black swans) and from the drive into town twice a week (kangaroos)…

Cost of craft work

For my most recent quilt, I sort of kept track of my fabric and thread usage and time and got a BIG surprise:

• 16x batik fat quarters (@ ~$7 each = $112; offcuts of this fabric made the binding)
• 2.5 metres backing fabric (@$22 per metre = $55)
• 0.5 metres yellow border fabric (@$22 per metre = $11)
• 1 metre blue border fabric (@ $22 metre = $22)
• 500 metres Superior thread ($15)
• 500 metres bobbin thread (~$10)
• 2.5 metres bamboo batting (@ ~$30 metre = $75)
• Pattern from Four Paws Quilting (~$10)

So, the supplies alone for this lap quilt cost a surprising $310!!!

Time taken (approximately):

• Choosing main fabrics and ironing them prior to cutting: 1 hour
• Figuring out pattern instructions: 1 hour
• Cutting main fabrics: 3 hours
• Sewing top together: 8 hours
• Choosing, ironing, cutting and sewing on border and binding fabrics: 3 hours
• Sewing extra blocks into backing fabric: 1 hour
• Laying out the three layers and pin basting: 2 hours
• Quilting on the HandiQuilter Sweet Sixteen: 10 hours (some 84,000 stitches!)
• Final ironing, squaring up, trimming ready for binding: 1 hour
• Adding binding (all by machine): 1.5 hours

Total time (approximately): 31.5 hours

I didn’t count electricity usage (sewing machine, quilting machine, iron, room lights) or amortisation of the costs of the sewing or quilting machine, or factor in annual servicing for both, or attendance at courses/retreats to learn new techniques.

If I charged $20/hour for the time taken (that’s less than a cleaner makes!), the base cost of this quilt would be $940 ($630 labour + $310 supplies), before looking at any profit. Adding a 25% profit margin would make this quilt $1253! I just can’t see anyone paying $1250 for a lap quilt.

Let’s do some more sums, assuming fixed costs for the supplies ($310) and a fixed profit margin (25%) but changing the labour rate:

Wow! I’m charging WAY too little for my quilts on Etsy. That said, people still baulk at more than $100 for a lap quilt. As you can see from the above, the supplies alone cost more than $300, without factoring in time or profit.

After all that, this quilt is going to a friend as a gift. That’s my choice.

But I tell you what, after looking at the real costs of making a quilt, I won’t be quitting my day job any time soon. I’d be going backwards trying to compete with some of the prices on Etsy, and would be getting nothing for my time, let alone any profit margin. I can’t see how someone can make a lap quilt and sell it for $100, unless they are getting the fabric for nothing and have a team of slaves elves to help them.

It’s all so very depressing… How can an artist/craftsperson make a living doing their craft? How can they charge a fair price for their labour, so that they aren’t in the poor house, yet the customer feels they are getting value for money?